El modelo de razonamiento geométrico de Van Hiele

Touch: working with a partner

Sitting in a comfortable position close to your partner: Find your plumb line and establish a secure base of support. Connect your weight to the ground through your pelvis, so electrical impulses and body energies can pass through your structure to the earth.

O Breathe evenly and fully so that your body is responsive. As you work, follow the experience in your own body. If you are touching someone's spine, feel your own spine. Monitor the amount of force and stimulation needed as you work; remember that the more

"active" your touch the more you feel yourself.

O When you finish, bring both you and your partner back to a neutral state; separate your energy connection to your partner by touching the floor or washing your hands. Use the "progression to standing" to come to vertical; have your partner walk at a quick pace; move or talk together to integrate the experience before returning to daily activities.

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PELVIS

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1 he pelvis is a bowl composed of circles, holes and arches. It holds the digestive and reproductive organs and creates a passageway for the birth canal and for elimination of digestive wastes. It also provides paths for the nerves and blood vessels traveling to the lower limbs, and serves as a site of attachment for the many muscles integrating the axial and the lower appendicular skeletons. The pelvic bowl is free-swinging around the two femur heads of the legs, and connects at the back to the sacrum and spine.

It is one of the three primary body weights, aligning with the skull and thorax around a vertical axis for efficient posture. It is a highly mobile structure, constantly responding to activity below and above.

The pelvic girdle is formed of two matched halves, connected posteriorly to the sacrum and anteriorly by the pubic bones. Each half consists of three bones, an ilium, ischium and pubic bone, which fuse together to provide stability at the hip socket, the acetabulum, early in a child's development. The two ilium bones fan into wide arches from the sacrum, forming the bowl in the back; the ischial tuberosities are the bottom "feet" of the pelvis and transfer weight to the chair or floor when sitting; and the pubic bones meet to create a forward thrust, like the prow of a ship, for attachment of the abdominal muscles and fascia. All of the bones follow curved pathways and transfer weight around and through their structures to other bones. There are six moveable joints in the pelvis:

the two sacroiliac joints between the single sacrum and the two ilia, the two hip joints between the two acetabula and their femurs (thigh bones), and the pubic symphysis between the two pubic bones and their disc.

Forgetting

I had a student very interested in body work in a college course. When we got to the exam on the skeleton, she missed every question about the pelvis. When I asked her about this, she said she couldn't remember the names of the bones, couldn't draw the shapes. Later, she told me she had been sexually abused in high school; that she was afraid to articulate her feelings. I asked her if that was why she couldn't remember the names of the bones of the pelvis. She began to realize the connection. When it was time to give final grades, I felt the dilemma of testing. Often what a student can't learn, gets wrong, is the key to their learning.

•

Theatre Director Joseph Chaiken was teaching a workshop. One of the performers from For Colored Girls Who Considered

Suicide When The Rainbow Wasn't Enuf was talking about her experience as an actress. "When lam learning a script with foe," she said, "we always circle the lines and words that I can't remember.

Then we go to work on these areas to unfold my own story within the character.

The blocks are the places where the personal connections will come."

Drawing: Harriet Brickman

"Beached Forms Series"

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For many years I have written my dreams and worked with a Jungian dream analyst.

I was having a series of performance dreams where I would get on stage and forget what I was supposed to do. "It is possible," she said, "that you are ready to forget what you have learned and do your own work."

Together these joints absorb the impact of walking to protect the vital contents of the pelvic bowl. Each acetabulum is composed equally of one third ilium, one third ischium, and one third pubic bone, like a concave pie divided in three pieces. This allows equal force from all three directions of the bowl to pass into the hip socket. The pelvic bowl includes the sacrum, the keystone and the central link between the axial and the lower appendicular skeletons. The many holes in the pelvis allow its lightness, and the curves and moveable joints transfer stresses throughout the structure to neutralize impact. Once again, the mobility of the structure is its stability.

The pelvic floor is a horizontal diaphragm formed of ligaments and muscle tissue. It supports the organs and forms the mobile "bottom" of the pelvis, interweaving the pubis with the ischial tuberosities with the sacrum and coccyx. Maintenance of the tone of the pelvic floor is im-portant for organ support and childbirth. Other horizontal supports through the body which parallel the pelvic diaphragm are the cranial, vocal, and thoracic diaphragms. •

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Pelvis

30 minutes

Lying in constructive rest, hands on your belly:

0 Trace the bones of the pelvis: Starting at the iliac crest below the ribs, walk your fingers forward until you come to the thrust of the pubic bone and the pubic symphysis.

0 Roll on your side: Starting again at the iliac crest, trace the bone back to the sacrum; feel the sacroiliac joint. Massage through the soft tissues of the gluteal muscles to the acetabulum (hip joint), and locate the neck of the femur and the greater trochanter. Continue down the back of the pelvis and locate the ischial tuberosities (the

"sitz" bones), the bones you sit on in a chair. Flex the top leg if necessary, and trace from the sitz bones to the pubic bone between the legs. This is called the ramus of the pubic bone. Roll to the other side and repeat.

O Seated: Rock on your sitz bones to feel their shape against a chair or the floor. Image them as the feet of the pelvis. Roll to the side and feel the space between the sitz bones and the greater trochanter of the leg.

O Return to center and again rock forward and backwards on the sitz bones. Initiate the rocking from the iliac crest; initiate the rocking from the pubic bones; initiate the rocking from the ischial tuberosities (the sitz bones), initiate the rocking from the pelvic floor. Circle the pelvis, imaging swishing water around the inside of the pelvic bowl; reverse directions.

O Seated: Walk on your ischial tuberosities, moving forward in space. Keep the legs relaxed. Reverse directions. Do the same thing, thinking of separating the pelvic halves. Walk forward initiating from the iliac crests. Walk backwards initiating from the ischial tuberosities. Walk forwards initiating from the pubic bones. Walk backwards thinking of the hole.

O Lying on the floor: Roll, initiating movement from the pelvis.

Reverse. Roll, initiating movement from the organs, the contents of the container.

O Standing, legs spread apart comfortably, knees slightly bent:

Swing the bowl of the pelvis between the two femurs, forward and back. Initiate the movement from the sitz bones, from the pubis, then from the iliac crests. Initiate the movement from the sacrum and coccyx of the spine and allow the undulation to travel up to the skull.

O Standing, on one leg: move the pelvis laterally over the top of the stable femur (bending the torso side by moving at the hip joint, not at the waist). This is movement of the proximal bone, the pelvis, over the distal bone, the femur. Return to center. Change legs and move to the other side by excursioning the whole pelvis over the top of the ball of the standing leg. Return. Now stabilize both legs and bend the body forward from the hip joint (not the waist).

Return to vertical, (continues)

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> Draw the pelvis from the lateral view without looking at a diagram.

Use your hands to find the shape of your own pelvis. Draw it from the anterior view. Compare with a dia-gram and draw again if necessary.

Label the parts and the views.

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O Do a dance of the pelvis: move from the arches, holes and curves of the pelvic bones; feel the weight of the pelvis and let the organs move in their bowl.

O Visualization: Lying in constructive rest, paint the inside of the pelvis a color of your choice. Take lots of time to feel all the surfaces of the bones.