Educational Feature

The Integumentary System

Cognitive

Who Am I: I am your Integumentary System, also known as your skin. My job is to provide your whole body with an outer layer of protection.

Voice of the Integumentary System: I am designed to help you maintain homeostasis. My jobs include the protecting your body’s sensitive inner structures from the outside environment, and your interaction with the environment via sensation. I keep your insides protected from rain and cold. I excrete water, salts, and certain organic compounds, and I secrete sweat, fatty substances, and ions such as sodium ions. I also receive and recognize stimuli that come to you from the world you live in. When exposed to the sun, I produce Vitamin D.

My parts are mostly composed of protein and include the skin, an amazing whole-body coat with specialized receptors designed to communicate information to your nervous system so that in life, you can respond to pain, pleasure, pressure, touch, or temperature. I help you listen and respond to the dangers and the many and constant changes that occur in and around you. My other parts include your nails, hair, sweat glands, and specialized glands such as the mammary glands. More than 100,000 of my hairs grow on your head to keep you insulated from the sun, heat, and cold.

I cover and protect the entire length, width, and depth of your body with two major layers. The epidermis, my outermost coat, protects your sensitive underlying tissues. The dermis, my inner coat, which nourishes the top-coat epidermis, provides mechanical strength to your skin. Like a layer cake, my outer surface, a tarp-like physical barrier, protects you from what is outside including protection from the little microbes you would not want to let in. Below the dermis, my subcutaneous layer carries my nerves and blood supply, as well as adipose (fat) tissue to provide insulation and energy reserves.

Every square inch of me houses about 700 sweat glands, 100 sebaceous-oil glands, and about 21,000 sensors that receive signals of heat and cold, pressure, pain and pleasure. From head-to-toe, I protect you 24 hours a day, whether you are asleep, awake, or aware!

I am the largest organ of your body. The keratin in your cells makes me a watertight veil of protection. Whether I am protecting you from infection, ultraviolet light, or from the tiny microorganisms that could invade you from the outside, I am designed to take care of you.

I am tough and sensitive. I use my Sensory Intelligence to regulate your body temperature. When you get hot, I am the one who keeps you cool. When it is cold, I provide insulation to keep you warm. I make it possible for you to sense life, and adapt to life’s heat and cold, rain and snow. I make sure you do not lose too much water to help keep you hydrated.

I am designed to continually resurface myself for as long as you live. My special intelligence knows exactly where to grow hair and place oil glands so that you are functional. As a life-coat, my personalized semitransparent cover reminds you that you cannot hide anything, for who you are and what you feel and think will always be seen in and through me. Get cold and shiver and you will see me in goose bumps!

Know that my outermost layer, composed of 25 layers of dead flattened cells, desires to be constantly sloughed off. Dry brush me, and you can become more enlightened, “open to the light”. I give you a daily opportunity to renew, rebuild, and be new and different. Receive comfort and touch from my inner surfaces that love to protect what is inside you. Know that underneath, in the parts you cannot see, is the fertile ground and nourishment for the new cells that, every month, seek to emerge into their life, pushing up into the light above.

I am unique as an organ: I come in many colors, infused with pigment to protect me, and you, from ultraviolet light from the sun. My many textures make me adaptable to all kinds of light and environments. I am your royal outer garment, embedded with glands and hair follicles. I am living clothing, with bumps, freckles, wrinkles, ridges, and ranges of color that others see and look at. When you and others look at me, part of who you are is seen.

I love to be touched and dressed, honored with the adornment of colors, textures, and fabrics that make me feel graceful and vibrant. Your spirit, what is unique to you, resides within me, and is protected by my amazingly strong fibrous shell. My fingernails grow 300-400 times faster than your toe nails to help you dig into your dreams.

While I will grow and change, harden and thicken with age, and even become saggy and loose, you can always count on me to protect you. I will keep you warm, hydrated, and protected. Trust in my strength. Trust that I will breathe for you, as I am breathable.

My Gift To You: I am tough and sensitive and make it possible for your whole body to be protected, insulated, and awake to sensations from the outside-in and from the inside-out.

Symbology

Imagine Me As: Visualize me as the perfect weatherproof coat, complete with a life-long solar-powered thermostat lining, sensitive enough to regulate your body’s temperature in hot and cold environments, every day, all day long.

Sensory

In Nia: Become aware of the sensations you feel coming through your skin from the outside in. Listen to the voice of your skin and when it asks to be warmer, accommodate by wrapping up. When it says, ‘Cool me down,’ listen and respond accordingly, like removing clothing. Keep the external environment that you live in healthy. Be aware that unseen toxins cause your skin to work overtime. Sweat to cleanse. Think good thoughts to nurture and nourish. Eat good foods to sustain your life from the inside out. Use natural oils, makeup, and skin products. The bigger the list of ingredients, the bigger the message, ‘Stay away.’ Daily, dry brush your whole body to improve circulation and make way for new cells to surface. Feed the skin’s need for sensation with touch.

The Craft and Techniques you use to keep your Integumentary System healthy are:

• Awareness – Become aware of skin sensation and adapt to the needs and messages coming to you from your skin, hair, and nails.
• Three Planes and Levels – Move through three planes and levels to improve circulation, nourishing your skin.
• Dynamic Ease – Seek the sensation of Dynamic Ease and safely push your edges to sweat, purifying yourself from the inside out.
• Breathe – Breathe deeply and fully and become proactive at cleansing your cells with oxygen, making your skin vibrant and healthy.
• Emotions – Hold nothing in and use your Nia dance to express yourself from the inside out, making use of expression to keep your skin pliable, sensitive, and strong.

When Dancing Through Life: Wear your skin like the coat of a king or queen. Take your coat for a walk in the sunlight and nourish it with the vibrations of nature. Pat your skin dry after showering or bathing and be aware that every pat is an opportunity for you to give love to your skin. Surround yourself with healing sounds, as the vibration of sound will resonate and touch the new cells within you that are pushing up and reaching into the light.

Each Voice of The Body is defined within a Structure made up of the Cognitive, Symbology, and Sensory Awareness aspects. Each aspect is defined by particular elements that impart the scientific components and deeper meanings of the Voice of The Body. Review the Structure to better understand this issue's Voices of the Body.

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