Tension: What's in a Name?

Even though he’s not a tensegrity, he does depend on balance of tension and compression forces.

Back to School

I feel lucky and excited to be participating in a course offered by Susan Lowell de Solórzano, author of Everything Moves:  How Biotensegrity Informs Human Movement.  As you may know, the topic has fascinated me for several years. Biotensegrity seems to point toward radical revision in how we understand and use our bodies and, I suspect, revision of many other aspects of life.

The tensegrity models being brandished on Instagram, are only hors d'oeuvres.  You’ve probably learned that the wooden sticks represent bones and that the rubber bands between the sticks show how our bones are suspended in soft tissues. This shows that everything in the body is interconnected, intercommunicating and whole.  But we thought we knew that already, so why the model?

In fact, the model is not a representation of the body but rather a metaphor for the interplay between forces of tension and compression.  As an architectural principle the interplay of these forces allows for structures that are light, resilient and strong, very different from structures that until the last hundred years or so depended entirely on compression—one thing in line with another—on gravity holding individual parts together. 

Tensegrities are not gravity-dependent. That is, they don’t fall apart when they’re not planted on the planet.  And neither do biological creatures. For one thing, living beings are not constructed of individual parts the way compressive structures are. Our parts don’t clatter to the ground when we get off balance. We are always and only whole, with no bits and pieces to fall or clatter. The compressing and tensing forces that comprise, contain and enliven us co-exist and even trade roles within that wholeness. Collaboration between the forces lets us shape and re-shape our bodies in response to circumstances. We win Olympic medals for the gravity-defying things our bodies are able to do. (Of course, long walks on the moon are not recommended.  Our structures are not gravity-dependent, but our functions are constrained relative to the earth’s pull and our bodies don’t work well in its absence.) 

It gets complicated..., and complex—as in Complexity Science. For now, though, first things first.

Tension is the First Problem

When I began introducing these ideas, the first stumbling block for many students was negative association with the word “tension”. 

For example, people commonly complain about uncomfortable low back tension, or shoulder, neck or jaw tension.  What we are suffering from, however, is not tension.

The word tension derives from the Latin word tendere, which means “to extend outward, to stretch or draw tight.”  In contemporary usage it means the action of stretching or the condition of being stretched to stiffness or tautness, of having no slack. 

The physical sensation we call tension results from muscular activity sustained for so long that surrounding fascial tissues become immobile through dehydration.  Cock your head to see because of uncorrected astigmatism and eventually you end up with a stiff neck. When we say we feel tension, we may actually have created a zone of compression where it doesn’t belong.

 Balloon Men

Although the wildly dancing fellow in front of your local car wash is not a tensegrity, he is formed from interacting tension and compression forces.  Air pushed into the rubbery “skin” causes it to stretch—to become tensioned.  The expanded fabric pulls inward and resists the outward pushing force of compressed air. Balloon man dances only when tension and compression forces are balanced just right.

When the compressor is turned off, rubbery fabric falls in a heap.  Had there been no tension, there would have been no liveliness, no ecstatic gesturing about the joy of a clean car.  There would have been only hot air.

People’s bodies, too, require a degree of tension in order to move. And “movement’ includes breathing, dancing, knitting, digesting your dinner—everything you do:

All of this is to suggest that a good start towards understanding our bodies as tensegrities is to come to terms with the definition of tension.  As we draw closer to understanding ourselves as biotensegrities, we will encounter many more assumptions about our bodies, assumptions that may be more difficult to revise than a misunderstood word.

© 2026 Mary Bond

 Thank you for reading and sharing!