Kintsugi

Beauty In The Broken

Kintsugi

The Japanese language has so many words that allude to deep wellsprings of meaning. Kaizen (continuous improvement), shoshin (beginner's mind), and oubaitori (the blossoming of each flower in their own time). One that I've become more and more fond of as I continue my studies of human adaptability is kintsugi. Kintsugi translates to "golden joinery" and is the practice of using gold to mend broken pottery. When a pot become broken instead of throwing the pieces away or repairing it in a way that hides the imperfection, gold is used no only to mend the pot but also highlight the imperfections as it were.

Over my years of helping people heal from injury and pain something has become abundantly clear. On the flip side of what ails us is often where our greatest strength and beauty come from. The places where we mend don't have to be places of weakness, neglect, or shame. Those places can be where we glean the most value. Those experiences can be where we find gold. This truth has exposed itself to me on every level of existence I can think of from the most granular and physical levels of movement and performance all the way to the psychological, emotional, and if you're game for such things, spiritual.

Integral Healing

Early in my career when I steeped in learning about anatomy and physiology, and how to use manual therapy and exercise to manipulate those things, much of the way things were presented was as if there is a known ideal state of symmetry that the human body resides in. As if there's this physical nirvana that can be achieved if the therapist or coach chooses the correct techniques or exercises that the client can be shifted into "balance".

What was often failed to be taken into account was that in the course of this human being's history many problems had been solved to keep that train moving. We are incredibly adaptive organisms with an underpinning of millions of years of evolution that drive our not just our gross behavior that is easily identifiable in the world, but also subtle and deep things that have far reaching effect but are so automatic and effective they often unnoticed unless you know how and where to look closely.

Let me give you a specific example to illustrate what I mean. Both massage therapy clients and students of mine would identify "knots" as areas in the body that needed to be fixed. Knots are in fact, areas of built up collagen, a fibrous protein that contributes to the structural integrity of fascial tissue in the human body. Some of these areas of dense collagen are congenital and then continue to develop as we mature. One area that is easy to identify in this regard is the iliotibial (IT) band which runs on the outside of the thigh from your hip to your knee. Everybody has one and as we walk upright it gets more and more dense because it's being used to transfer force from the hips to the legs. The areas that are not congenital are adaptive. That means your body changed the density of those tissues in response to a stimuli of either great magnitude or of great repetition.

What the heck does that have to do with knots you might ask? What do knots have to do with kintsugi? It's all coming back around. I promise.

When we decide a certain adaptive knot is a problem simply because it exists we say it is wrong for being there and - it's not (I enjoy homonym word play). The questions to be asked are: Why is this here? What functions does it serve? Is it integrated with the other parts of the whole or is it detracting from the overall function of this body? What I realized as I matured in massage therapy was that these tissues did and many times could not be permanently eliminated. At least not in the way I had been taught. Furthermore, doing so would often disrupt the beautifully adaptive mechanism that allowed this person to function. More than that, some of these adaptations were part of what made them good. Sometimes even great.

Changed Is Not Broken

If we can integrate the things that have broken us into the overall structure of our being they can become sources of strength and even more than that, our source of beauty. The place where our own inner beauty can shine through but also a place from which we can better appreciate the beauty in the world around us.

Just as with the body, places of change in the mind does not make them broken. At least not permanently. Just because an experience is difficult or uncomfortable, that does not make it traumatic. Traumatic experience, whether mental or physical, is an event that causes a prolonged interference with adaptive function. Even if the pot has been broken, if the joinery is made of gold and the pot can hold water, leave it alone. There are parts of the health culture currently obsessed with the idea of trauma as the source of all that ills the world.

My friend and modern samurai Paul Sharp and I were talking about this topic just recently in regards to some somatic breath work he'd experienced. The point of this practice was to instigate traumatic memory so that you could then breathe through it. First of all dealing with people's trauma is serious business. If you're not in a position to offer educated and continuous support don't destabilize the software they rely on to move through life. That's like seeing a pot that's been glued together and breaking it again because you think you can glue it better.

Just because something is changed doesn't mean that it's broken.

Knots, Pots, Dishes, and Minds

Regardless of you're talking about pottery, muscles, or the human mind the places we break and change can be great sources of beauty. These compensations and imperfections are what make each one of us, us. In both mind and body. Don't fret too much over the cracks and the seams. Do your best to fill them with gold. Build something newer and even more beautiful than before.

Thanks for reading,

Rob