07 Mar Co-blogging with Dr. Stephanie!
Stephanie P. Marango, MD, RYT is a Mind-Body Medicine practitioner in New York City. She merges the movement & medicine worlds in her private practice, as co-Founder of living anatome, as co-Director of the Functional Anatomy for Movement & Injuries (FAMI) Workshop, and through citywide Yoga Teacher Trainer programs. In her blog series, “Your body, your Self,” she introduces the body as metaphor. Be prepared for a stimulating exploration of anatomy, and its connection to your body-mind-spirit wellbeing!
The first entry explores the anatomy of the neck & its connection to self-expression. You can access her on-going, educational series each month on our blog and on her website, Prima Materia!
Your body, Your Self: Use your neck to self-express
The neck is literally a “narrowing” (Latin, cervix) that connects head-to-body. For many of us, it is an area to adorn with jewelry, scarves, or ties. For all of us (giraffes included!), the neck is a region comprised of seven cervical vertebrae— you can palpate your own seventh cervical vertebra jutting-out at the level of your shoulders, at the junction between your neck and back.
The cervical vertebrae are the most delicate vertebrae of the spine, each with a thin structure (to facilitate range of motion (ROM)) punctuated by holes (to permit the passage of vessels & nerves to & from the brain). But while delicate, the neck is anything but weak: our neck supports our bowling ball-sized head while simultaneously moving of it. In fact, the cervical spine has the greatest ROM of the entire vertebral column, up to 90 degrees of rotation in each direction; this ROM allows our head (and composite eyes, ears, nose, mouth) to sufficiently sense the surrounding environment.A 10lb head supported by seven, small vertebrae that have a large range of motion… no wonder it’s so easy to throw the neck out-of-whack!
Continue reading “Your Body, Your Self: Use your neck to self-express” here!
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