subtle

What is the Subtle Body? I keep asking the question.

According to Mosby’s Dictionary of Complementary and Alternative Medicine I understand it is a network of energy channels that transport energy derived from oxygen, sensory, and food-derived nutrients. The network lies parallel to blood vessels and nerves in the body; it facilitates and coordinates the movement of the flow of blood and neural impulses. It is not an anatomical system such as the cardiovascular or nervous system. It cannot be viewed conventionally. Instead, it is accessed through practice of imagination and visualization that can be accomplished through meditation.*

It cannot be seen conventionally? And only accessed through practice of imagination and visualization?

About this painting:
I already mentioned my shoulders and hands ache and so awareness of the body heightens. I paint a hand a few weeks ago. Now I work on the back body.  How does the body maintain balance, how is equilibrium regained.

Once again I carefully lay out a spinal column, counting out each vertebrae from the base of the skull to the bottom of the pelvis. I ground the form in recognizable anatomy but the goal is to focus on the nervous system. Woven through the center of the study are arteries, veins and the lymphatic system. Extending out from everything are the nerves.

A friend reminds me of the great Cauda Equina, the bundle of nerves that run through the lower part of the lumbar vertebra. I enhance the area. I lay structure down for a few days before I put all reference material away and work without it. 

Cause and effect. Cause. Effect. Balance. Imbalance. Physical. Subtle. Physical. Subtle. The body. Energy.  Flow. Tangle. Flow.

The body, in the short time a human inhabits it – can supply one with the greatest prod for growth. The questions change out a bit with this work –

Who am I? What am I? What is this body and what is my relationship to it?

 

the brain – the hub of the cns

Men aught to know that from the brain, and from the brain only, arise our pleasures, joys, laughter and jests, as well as our sorrows, pains, griefs and tears. Through it, in particular, we think, see, hear, and distinguish the ugly from the beautiful, the bad from the good, the pleasant from the unpleasant…It is the same thing which makes us mad or delirious, inspires us with dread and fear, whether by night or by day, brings sleeplessness, inopportune mistakes, aimless anxieties, absent-mindedness, and acts that are contrary to habit. These things that we suffer all come from the brain, when it is not healthy, but becomes abnormally hot, cold, moist, or dry, or suffers any other unnatural affection to which it was not accustomed. Madness comes from its moistness. When the brain is abnormally moist, of necessity it moves, and when it moves neither sight nor hearing are still, but we see or hear now one thing and now another, and the tongue speaks in accordance with the things seen and heard on any occassion.

But all the time the brain is still, a man can think properly.

                                              – Hippocrates, 5th century, B.C.

 

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I lose track of time and over work this brain (and my own). I get caught up in its architecture and in reading about it. In the last few years I have drawn more brains than I can say. I understand the brain is protected by the thick bones of the skull, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, and isolated from the bloodstream by the blood brain barrier.

Yesterday more becomes clear – the brain is the hub of the central nervous system. It’s the control center for all the other organs. It is the CNS! 

It is the Central Nervous System. I feel like I make a great discovery. But I believe I knew this. Somehow isolating parts in the way I did, and working them out … shifts my awareness enough to realize how profound this really is.  I don’t care for this particular image of the brain. It’s part of a larger composition and I will simplify it at some point. But the time-consuming, detailed work allowed me insight. Is that how the (my) brain works? Maybe this time.

Early in the week I drew a spinal column, and naturally I thought about the spinal cord and eventually one thing leads to another …

… I feel like I may never understand the wholeness of us.

My brain needs a rest now.

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These images are part of my fathers anatomy study – which I’ve yet to title

In the large drawing the spine will connect to issues with his Lumbar Curve.

I add the brain as representation of his occupation and interests. He’s a thinker. He studied both phycology and philosophy. I recall when he completed his masters degree in guidance and counseling.

Years ago he gave me a small 23 page booklet about Transactional Analysis. It gave me  insight to some basic principles about relationship. Everyone should be so lucky.