Bodies Revealed

At the very end of 2009, Ruf and I went to see the Bodies Revealed Exhibition.

For both of us, it was a very revealing and illuminating experience, particularly given our recent conversion to the wonderful world of yoga.

To be able to see the relationship between all the muscles and tendons was so useful, especially as all the bodies were in ‘active’ positions.

Everything had been treated with the Polymer Preservation Process, which means that the tissues look as if they are still normal flesh but in reality have been sort of fossilised in silicon.

Since the first of Gunther von Hagans’ exhibitions back in 1995, Body Worlds, along with its many derivatives, has received a lot of publicity, some good and some bad because of the source of the exhibits. When I mentioned to Softboy that I was going to see it, he said that he had really wanted to go but refused to do so when he was told that the bodies were those of Chinese political prisoners. I don’t know the exact truth about their origins and I tried to put thoughts like that out of my mind and just learn as much as I could from what I was seeing.

According to my research, this accusation was first levelled back in 2006 and was strenuously denied. Certainly, the Bodies Revealed website says that the cadavers were all willingly donated to the scientific community and this is something that a lot of people do have written into their Wills. It’s a bit like organ donation, I suppose, because giving your body up for medical research will preserve lives in the future.

A physiotherapist friend, who went on a course that utilised cadavers to help the students to learn exactly how the body works, told me that the bodies were treated with the utmost respect because being able to use them is such a huge gift to the living.

He said that to see a human body, complete with its fascia – the envelope of connective flesh that runs beneath the skin and links all the constituent parts of the body together – was amazing. In all the anatomy books, this section has been removed so that the muscles and tendons are not obscured. And yet the fascia is just as important as those more obvious connectors.

In certain relaxation poses, the pressure of the fascia on the brain caused by the positioning of the legs acts as a massage and this helps to stimulate the feel good endorphins which allow the person to truly enter a totally relaxed state.

Having tried the position myself, which is similar to the ‘recovery position’, I can vouch for the general sense of well being that ensues.

I had been forewarned about the section on the unborn child. The glass jars, in various sizes depending upon the developmental stage of their sad contents, was simultaneously fascinating and upsetting, given the procedure that I was forced to undergo a couple of years ago. But, with Ruf’s arm around me… and I guess that’s the real difference from that horrible time… I was able to reflect and learn, with just a silent prayer for all those babies. In some of the samples, it was possible to see the defect that had stopped their journey into the real world.

For more information about the exhibition and the processes involved in preparing the bodies themselves, click here