Dynamic and Anatomic Considerations in the Human Body: Interstitium, Complexity, and Connection – June 2024

Two independent, but related topics, will be introduced in order to refine contemporary concepts of human anatomy and self-organization across all scales of material existence. The first is the newest concept of the human interstitium as comprising fluid channels coursing through all connective tissues of the body allowing for electrical, molecular, and cellular trafficking throughout. These concepts will enhance how we understand bodywide communication networks that may align with cross-cultural concepts of health and healing, such as the mechanisms of acupuncture. Then, basic principles of complexity theory will be described, including concepts of self-organization, emergence, the complementarity of perspective-dependent scales of observation, how the nature of the body’s boundaries are flexible and scale-dependent, and that the body is a functional holarchy rather than a hierarchy. All of these views will be used to further elaborate on the nature of biofields.

Course Objectives:

1. Understand complexity theory as the scientific way to describe and explain the origin, evolution, and self-organization of living systems
2. Analyze living systems according to the simple rules of complexity theory.
3. Understand the anatomy of the human interstitium and how its structures relate to physiologic effects.
4. Understand how the language of complexity and of interstitial anatomy can provide language to bridge cross-cultural approaches to health and healing.

Course Instructor

Neil Theise Author

Neil Theise description