Cadaver Anatomy | What to Expect

Question: Rebecca, what's the cadaver anatomy lab like and how does it compare to FAMI?

Answer: I think it was about 4 years ago that Gail Anderson invited me to go along with a group of her students to a cadaver class at Bastry. Gail is a marvelous person, a gifted teacher and a generous and kind soul who happens to own Balance Within Pilates over in Redmond, Washington, a Seattle suburb. www.BalanceWithinPilates.com.

I was honored to have the opportunity and of course I participated but I ended up filling a role much bigger than I'd originally intended. Gail ended up not being able to attend and she asked me to guide her students through the process making sure they understood the connection of what we would be learning to the performance and teaching of Pilates.

When I took the course, it was held over 2 consecutive Saturday mornings and the group I was in consisted of a chiropractor, a midwife, a doula, a few physical therapists, a few massage therapists and a bunch of Gail's apprentices and graduated teachers. Some of those non-Pilates folks tended to dominate the class, especially that chiropractor who I ended up knuckle whapping, figuratively speaking.

I felt the diversity of the disciplines among attendees definitely took away from my experience and I wished for a single-purpose group.

Now, all these years later, that's what I've got.

The courses I'm offering are exclusively for my students who are in my Seattle studio for either April's Open Studio Week or August's Pilates Excel. I may be able to schedule an additional cadaver anatomy class in the fall attached to another workshop in my Seattle studio but the Bastyr fall school schedule is not yet finalized and we can't move forward until it is. I'll also be adding a class for our clients but that will happen outside my workshop schedule.

And I've changed the format of the class. The courses I'm offering are 5 hours in a single day.

When I took the class those several years ago, we followed a swallow of food in and out of all the places it goes and although it was fascinating, I'd rather have spent the time exploring in a more detailed way things that are relative to my work, to the work of teaching Pilates.

For my classes, I've asked Dr. Love to tighten the focus of her presentation to exclude things that do not directly have to do with the bones of the spine, pelvis and large joints, the muscles that stabilize and move them, the organs that route directly through the pelvic floor, the organs and muscles of respiration and, of course, the thing we use most in Pilates, the brain and the spinal cord.

I'm going to set out for you what you can expect from this experience and I'm also going to tell you a fool proof way to tell if you can handle it, but first I want to tell you a bit about Bastyr.

Bastyr University is a naturopathic school just north of Seattle, from my studio it's about a 20 minute drive in moving traffic and for the classes I've arranged in April and in August, we'll provide your transportation to and from Bastyr. When I talked to Dr. Love about her willingness to make her lab available to me and my students, she told me that her belief and the philosophy of the University is that everyone who has an interest in cadaver anatomy should have access to a class in a lab - we have bodies and we should have access to bodies.

Her passion for this work and her gift as an educator is extremely impressive. Even though I took her class several years ago I've never forgotten her words, I teach with her in mind every single day and I'm constantly inspired by her way of presenting complex material but in a linear and simple fashion - I try try try to do that in my own teaching.

I'm flat out thrilled to be able to work with her again.

And I think it's great that the philosophy of Bastyr makes it possible for folks like me - uncredentialed, non-matriculated nobodies who happen to love, live and breathe Pilates - to learn what can only be understood by an experience of this nature.

The years I've spent studying anatomy books, all the videos I've watched, all the lectures I've attended - none came within a million miles of what that class meant to me, to my teaching, to my clients and to everything I've done since.

There are things that you can best learn in certain ways, perhaps only learn in certain ways, and this is one of them!

If I recall correctly, the bodies are in the Bastyr lab for 2 years so that means the families are patiently waiting for the return of the remains of their loved ones for a really long time while folks like me can have the experience of a lifetime. I think that's pretty special and, not surprisingly, I will donate my body to science and hope that there is free access to it so others like me, on the fringe but of genuine spirit, intent and desire, can have at it.

I've also been to FAMI, the Functional Anatomy of Movement and Injury, and will compare and contrast the two down below but first, I want to take you through what you can expect if you come to Seattle for this experience. Here's how the cadaver anatomy class works.