Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72343
BODYREADING THE MERIDIANS through these cardinal lines and creates or maintains twists, the Spiral Line. That line, too, can express substantial differences on its left and right sides. But let's not to get ahead of ourselves; the Lateral Line is our current topic. The Lateral Line runs along the outsides of the body from the outer ankle to the ear, as we see in Image 2. Let us take a brief anatomical tour before we look at the BodyReading issues. Starting from the bottom, the Lateral Line begins—no surprise—with the lateral compartment of the lower leg (Image 3A). This compartment is comprised of two muscles: the peroneus brevis and longus, more recently officially renamed the fibularii, so fibularis longus and brevis are what we will call them here. You can feel this compartment coming down from the head of your fibula just under the lateral knee. This compartment is generally harder and stringier than either the gastrocnemius behind it (part of the Superficial Back Line) or the tibialis anterior in front of it (part of the Superficial Front Line). If you follow it down, you can feel the tendon(s) running behind the fibular malleolus at the ankle. It is difficult to feel both tendons, but they run from under the malleolus to anchor themselves to the bases of the first and fifth metatarsal bones, pulling the metatarsal into the tarsum of the foot and helping to maintain the arches (Image 3B). Lower leg muscles are often described in terms of what they would do if the foot was free, hanging in the air; thus these muscles are named as plantar flexors and everters. But in structural work we must be equally cognizant of what the muscles are doing in reverse, from insertion to origin. So when the foot is planted and weighted, you can see these fibularii muscles as preventing dorsiflexion and inversion. In other words, in daily life Peroneus (Fibularis) longus Peroneus (Fibularis) brevis Peroneus brevis Peroneus longus A The Lateral Lines are out on the body's sides—east and west—and therefore have more leverage to create imbalances in the coronal plane. B The Lateral Line begins with the fibularii muscles occupying the lateral compartment of the lower leg, which arise from the bases of the first and fifth metatarsal bones. 74 massage & bodywork november/december 2011