Q&A with Tom: Amputations & Anatomy Trains

Axel Dell asks:

Hi, all!

I was asked this past weekend how you apply the Anatomy Trains to people with amputations, and wasn’t sure how to answer the question. I know Tom talked about it at the teacher training, but I am pretty sure my little brain was overloaded by that point.

Could you give me an idea of how to apply AT to amputees?

Amputations fall under the category of things you cannot change, so cultivate serenity that leads to observation, as each of these cases are different. Surgical hardware can also create this, “And now, what?”

The Anatomy Trains describes one map of force transmission that is as even throughout as a guitar string (palintonic) in the ‘normal’ person. We all have minor deviations. But an amputee or traumatized person or severe scoliotic creates their own lines, which often do not follow the course of the chains of muscles, but cut across fascial planes or muscle fiber directions.

Seeing and teasing these out is bodyreading beyond the given trains into individuality, which can then be carried back to the normal bodyreading to see the deviations in the lines.

Specifically with an amputee, no matter how good (at least so far) the prosthesis, the weight transfer is much more down the ‘good’ leg than the replacement. So in this case, both Spiral Lines might be tracked down one leg. Then look and see how exactly they do it for treatment.

-Tom Myers