By Ella Vassallo
Editor’s Note: This month we offer a personal account of the upcoming Embryology class with Giorgia Milne. At first glance, the Embryology class can appear ethereal or even inaccessible. However, the concepts presented in the class relate to all of life, and most anyone can find value in the information presented. Ella Vassallo, a longtime student of Giorgia Milne, offers her viewpoint below.
At first glance embryology may not seem like it holds relevance for anyone except a future doctor. And this may be true of a technical embryology course taught within the constellation of a medical school. But Giorgia Milne’s embryology class cannot be confined to those medical school classes. While it does contain anatomical/physiological information about our embryological stage, it gives us this information as an invitation to view ourselves as ever evolving embryos where the same forces that are at work before conception, at conception and in the weeks following conception, continue to mold us.
In the lineage of the master embryologist Dr. Eric Blechschmidt and Dr. Jaap Van Der Wal, Giorgia follows their phenomenological biodynamic line and draws from her other lineages to add her own flavor of grounded inquisition into the fundamental essence of being a sentient being.
I really appreciated that while she invited an exploration into these questions she did not push an answer. She allowed space for each to swim in their own embryonic ocean.
On a very practical level as an enfleshed being who works with other enfleshed beings, this class gave me an awareness of the kinetic forces evolved in our development. These are the basic forces which continue to act on our skeleton and soft tissue, molding and developing our bodies. This informed and enhanced my relationship with my own body as well as with that of my clients.
An example of what touched me personally at a deeper level was the discussion around our placenta. First she presented the anatomy of the placenta. How it relates to the mother’s anatomy. How it relates to the embryo forming within it. At this intra-uterine stage the placenta is Me. It is not my mother. It is not a third party. It is anatomically Me. It plays specific roles in my development during those aqua-uterine months until physically I shed this part of me at birth. But then the question arose for me: what becomes my new “placenta”? What placenta resources me today? How do I honor the “placenta” I grow out of and shed as I birth myself into new stages?
Like this insight, I could name several discoveries from this workshop which both deeply touched me as a human being and bettered me as a bodywork practitioner. But above all I invite you to have your own unique experience within the safe inquisitive class environment Giorgia creates. This class is relevant to everyone who began their journey on this planet as an embryo.
Ella Vassallo graduated from FSM in 2008. After graduation, she trained in Craniosacral work with Adam Silverberg, Hugh Milne, Steve Schumacher, Leonid Soboleff and Charles Ridley. Although she lives in Gainesville, her work is mostly international. She practices a contemplative, afferent form of biodynamic Craniosacral work. She has been part of Giorgia Milne’s team of class assistants during the last year, and was a student in her embryology class last summer.
