Tensegrity in Daily Life
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From biology to architecture, from the microfibrils of fascia to furniture, bridges and toys, the concept of tensional integrity as an organizing principle of anything physical—even the universe itself —is inciting curiosity, creativity and intense conversations among fascia researchers, engineers, movement teachers and manual therapists.
Let’s start with Wikipedia’s take on it: “Tensegrity, tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially.”
Guess what? That’s YOU. Your body is a floating compression system.
Your bones float within a medium of tensioned soft tissue.
Sometimes, though, your squish-toy-self gets too squished. Our bodies can collapse with exhaustion or boredom or constrict with effort, urgency or caution. In those instances, our bones more closely abut one another and our soft tissues harden. Modern living with its conveniences has a way of compacting our bodies and confining our perceptions to narrow points of view. It can happen
because you curled up on the couch to watch a long movie.
because hurrying constricts your tissues, making your body smaller. Especially when the hurrying takes place while sitting still in front of a screen.
because it can be uncool or unsafe to own your share of space in public. (Who’dya think you are?)
because you work out while focused on a screen or on a goal. Tight focus—visual or mental—makes your body tight.
All too often a pattern of collapse or compression becomes a habit, a point of view, a way of life.
Luckily, the opposite is also true: the more expanded your perceptions, the more spacious your body architecture becomes. Recall a time when you stood at the top of a mountain and took in the panorama. Recall it with your senses. The mountain air invited full diaphragmatic breathing and perhaps, almost reflexively, your arms spread wide to embrace the sky. At that moment your compression members (bones) were floating more freely than usual within your tensioned fascial network (soft tissues). Moving felt easy and light.
Your body made that change because you tuned into your surroundings. When you cultivate it, perception of what’s going on around you re-organizes your system for better balance and coordination. Your awareness of space outside your body generates more space inside your body so you actually feel bigger, lighter and more agile. Your body becomes less compressed—more tensegral.
I’ve been using the words “perceptual tensegrity” to describe this experience. It enhances your balance when you practice yoga. It activates your core in Pilates. It keeps you from tripping when walking a rambunctious dog.
Discovering the same thing over and over…
I’ve been thinking and writing about perceptual tensegrity for quite a while. My book, Body Mandala, introduces the idea and attempts to help you feel it. Modern life with its 24/7 on-switch and sedentary work routines conspires to erase it. I lose and recover my access to tensegrity awareness every day. But each time I recover my balance between contraction and expansion, life’s inevitable pressures become easier to manage.
Tensegrity to the Rescue
Exhausted after traveling and teaching for three weeks last Fall, I waited in the check-in line at a huge airport. The hubbub of tired travelers, missed connections, lost luggage and cranky children felt like an assault. My body was so heavy that my feet could barely shuffle along the queue. I was a mess.
But I had just spent three weeks teaching tensegrity awareness to others! By activating some “tensegrity triggers” (more about them in a future post), I restored my interior volume. Practicing that sense of being bigger helped me summon enough energy for the long and chaotic trek to the airplane. *
Unsplash: Lance Asper
This had been a real and urgent-feeling situation, not a classroom exercise. Having been so depleted, it was surprising to feel myself gathering strength through “mere” awareness. Like most people I’m accustomed to seeking strength through compression. I can hold myself together like a stone tower, each element pressing down from above to create stability through gravitational balance. This strategy works but it requires energy and will-power, attributes in short supply for me that day.
Tensegrity structures work differently: like suspension bridges, their strength is derived from relationships between compression and tension elements. Living structures, too, are strong, yet light and adaptable. Consider our mammalian cousins or even our younger selves, before our livelihoods made us sedentary.
Finding ways to expand our bodies without effort, to comfortably inhabit our full volumes, might just be the key not only to stamina but to optimal function in general.
*Entering the plane required condensing myself again—there’s zero elbow room in those cabins. Sustaining our fullest selves in the twenty-first century is no easy challenge.
© 2025 Mary Bond
