TF06: How to Teach Experiential Anatomy: The Cervical Spine

Speaker bio: Leila Stuart, RMT (Ret.), C-IAYT

Experiential anatomy is a rich, embodied learning method combining interoceptive awareness and mindful movement. It empowers students to make sustainable, healthy choices and become active participants in their own healing process. Beginning with intellectual, two-dimensional understanding of anatomical structures, the method expands into direct personal experience that can ultimately lead to transformation on all koshic levels. Self-regulation is mobilized as students mindfully explore the laboratory of their bodies through compassionate inner sensing, gradually moving from the thinking mind into the feeling body.

The practice component of this session will explore how to teach experiential anatomy by applying to the cervical spine a three-step protocol: Learn, feel, and integrate. The intellectual information learned in the first step is embodied through interoceptive awareness to deepen a felt sense of the neck. This embodied knowledge is then integrated in asana to refine movement patterns and identify safe, healing movements. We will also explore how this process contributes to mental centering, meditative stillness, and Witness consciousness.

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the concepts, rationale, and principles behind teaching anatomy experientially.
2. Explore how experiential anatomy can have multi-dimensional effects on all koshic levels.

Your purchase gives you access to the recorded sessions listed below (audio/slides)—plus .5 CE credit.