Last night I was exhausted at the end of class. My thought was that if I hadn't already paid $2500 for the class, I'd probably not come back. We'd spent the second half of the day, nearly four hours, removing skin from the forms (Gil calls the cadavers "forms"). It was hard physical work, especially for the 6-person team I'm on: our form was well over 6 feet tall, quite broad and heavy, with thick, inflexible skin. We named him Zinc, after a white residue we could see on his skin. I had the idea that we needed to remove all the skin yesterday, so I was working hard to do that, and my focus was on getting it done rather than satisfying my curiosity. It was fun at first, novel, and I enjoyed trying to develop my skill with the scalpel in cutting right at the border between skin and superficial fascia (a.k.a. the adipose layer). But the novelty wore off and I felt exhausted well before the 5:00 quitting time.
At the end of the day, Gil advised us to have a complete change of pace for the evening (he called it a "state change"). He also advised us to spend several minutes gazing intently at a natural form that is different from what we'd been staring at all day, a flower or a tree. I followed both pieces of advice. I found that gazing intently at a flower was very refreshing; I could feel something relax inside me as I did it. It reminded me of the relaxation I felt during the nature scenes that Gil inserted periodically into his dissection videos. As far as state change, I took a shower as soon as I got home, then prepared a spread of wine, cheese, and crackers for me and Z in the patio, where we spent the whole evening.
Today we spent a couple hours debriefing from yesterday and listening to Gil's semi-spontaneous philosophical and anatomical musings, including stuff about how the superficial fascia has a bad rap in our culture to the point where people undergo damaging home "remedies" to reduce it and/or redistribute it. Then we dove into removing the superficial fascia from our form. I enjoyed this more than yesterday's task. It was physically much easier. And it was interesting to try to discover where the superficial fascia ended and the deep fascia (the very thin layer covering the muscles) began. I felt more playful today and less worried about making a mistake.
In the middle of the afternoon, Gil came to our table and did a nearly hour-long lecture/demo on male genitalia, including lengthy remarks about how circumcision just doesn't make any sense at all. It was fascinating to watch the dissection. The lecture, complete with ribald jokes, was a little uncomfortable for me, so I made myself comfortable by continuing to remove fascia from one of the legs while Gil spoke (manual work generally soothes me when I need to listen to anybody at length).
Before Gil's demo, I sliced into the scrotum myself and pulled away the tissue until I'd exposed one of the testicles. This is something I'd always vaguely wanted to do when handling the scrotum of a living human.
Gil then wanted to do a lecture/demo on female genitalia, but, sadly, the two female forms in the room had already had their genitalia accidentally mangled to the point where an exposition of the clitoris was not possible.
I am noticing that my knowledge of what the body looks like on the inside is gradually growing, and this is what I came to the workshop for. I feel happy about that.
My fears about the teamwork being uncomfortable or challenging have not come to fruition. The teamwork is very easy and harmonious. I am enjoying all my classmates. Camaraderie is growing. I've been interacting most with G, an Israeli manual therapist who focuses on the abdomen, and T, a mathematician, ballet dancer, and Pilates teacher from Singapore.
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