Tactile Anatomy: Get To Know Your Organs

​Our organs keep us alive and in good health, but can you feel them?

​Did you know that the pancreas feels like a wet bag filled with overcooked oatmeal, or that the heart is more of a 'spinner' than a pump?

​Come join bodyworkers Dr. Myles O'Donnell and Elena Lake for 90 minutes of organ stories! Elena will host, and Myles will share locations, functions, and textural cues for various abdominal organs, as well as stories of interacting with them in their practice.

​Both Myles and Elena practice a form of organ-focused bodywork called visceral manipulation, which fills in a big blindspot of muscular-centric modalities.

​Our organs can also store mechanical tensions which transmit to other places in our body - say, shoulders or neck - and Myles will demo some releases on audience volunteers. There will also be time for Q&A.

​We will cover some subset of: the lungs, the heart, the esophagus and stomach, the pancreas, the liver, the small intestine, the large intestine, and the kidneys. We'll explore tactile cues on our own torsos, and there may be some optional partnered exercises.

​Here's a story from Myles's practice, as a teaser:

​I have a patient who went through cardiac arrest and was in a coma for 4 days. He received 40 minutes of chest compressions. His primary patterning is in the relationship between heart, lungs, coronary arteries, and the surrounding fascial and boney layers. In the beginning, this was clearing away scar tissue from the broken cartilage and rib bones to allow the heart to fully contract and release. Now he’s almost a year into working with me and we’re working on releasing the somatic holding patterns through the heart related to his coma, his family finding him dead, and his “rebirth” as a new person following the coma.