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Leonardo Da Vinci was the 1500 AD World’s Greatest Genius. Da Vinci illustrated a book from the early 1500s called De Divina Proportione. In the book, Da Vinci’s art punctuates Luca Paciolo’s investigation of mathematical proportionality in geometry, architecture, and art. Da Vinci renders his thinking on the proportional nature of humans in The Vitruvian Man. He also articulates the proportional relationship between segments of the body: “the length of the foot is one sixth the height of the body,” he writes. Da Vinci believed nature provides an analogy for the universe and humans, as part of nature, also provide an analogy for the universe. The proportionality of the universe can therefore be mapped onto the human figure.
During the Renaissance, proportionality was evidence of God (capital G). The profundity of belief in the analogy can be seen in the design of cathedrals. Jesus was a physical manifestation of God and the Christian cross was built to accommodate Jesus, who was stretched upon it. The shape of the cross provided the floor plan of traditional cathedrals. As a result, the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are foundational pieces in the physical church, as well as being foundational Catholic doctrine. The cross of the crucifixion and the floor plan of the cathedral represent the Divine Proportion. Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man displays Divine Proportions, and with some imagination looks a bit like a white, European Jesus.
Proportionality and symmetry have been validated through math, science, and religion as ideal. The ‘idealism’ of symmetry manifests in the popular imagination around beauty. For example, the Golden Ratio is used as a psychological, scientific, evolutionary explanation for Halle Berry’s beauty. Halle Berry’s face has ‘ideal’ proportions. Science and the Master Painters of Christian iconography converged at the same conclusion regarding ‘real,’ ideal beauty. A Scientific (capital S) explanation of Halle Berry’s beauty doesn’t make her the reincarnation of Jesus though. Despite canonization within both of these diametric ‘religions’ of faith, the theory of symmetry did not resonate until I lived asymmetry.
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A ruptured Achilles is a profound destabilizer. I learned firsthand that, functionally, symmetry enables a person to walk without a limp or stand without falling over. As my ruptured Achilles heals, I slowly reclaim my life. I began learning to walk a month ago and I am slowly re-learning activities that I once took for granted. I’m still not particularly good at walking.
I also learned firsthand that emotional stability can hinge on physical symmetry. For two weeks in a row, I mentally broke down around yoga. The first week, I broke down before even getting in the car to drive to yoga. The next week, I went to a difficult yoga class and couldn’t do most of it because I was weak from not being able to move for two months: I couldn’t hold a plank or downward dog; my foot began to shake while I attempted to do standing poses; my repaired Achilles beaded with sweat like a humid upper lip. I dropped to my knees, deflated and humiliated, but I couldn’t even do “child’s pose” properly. The resting pose was ‘too hard,’ because my repaired Achilles was still so swollen that I couldn’t fully point my foot. There was discomfort and mild pain when I tried to point my toe and rest my body weight on my shins. Lopsided, forehead on the mat, I broke again.
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On the third attempt at attending a yoga class, I was having a positive class until corpse pose. Then, while attempting to settle into my savasana, the teacher bid the class “find a position where you can be comfortable for a few minutes.” I wiggled in discomfort long after those around me had settled into the pose. No matter how I moved, my feet splayed asymmetrically and my back felt clenched while my shoulders wouldn’t lie flat. No butt adjustment could equalize my body. Just before breaking down for a third time, I instead brought awareness to the fact that after living life on one leg for months, I was asymmetrical. My entire body and equilibrium have altered as a result of one misstep (albeit a misstep so profound that, according to myth, I should be dead).
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My life now features an asymptote at ‘symmetry.’ By stitching the two halves of my life back together through dedicated work, I will approach Original Symmetry, but I will never reach it. Yoga and physical therapy are vehicles carrying me towards an ever-diminishing, imaginary goal. But now I can better see how each pose is goal worth celebrating. With practice, I will find balance in my body, but I will never achieve the balance I had before the rupture.
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As humans age, asymmetry increases. Da Vinci believed the proportionality of the human body provides an analogy for the universe. Insomuch as I agree, there are two facts that seem salient to me.
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No one has perfect physical proportions. The universe is getting older.
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Even Halle Berry isn’t Halle Berry any more.
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I see now that one exercise I haven’t had to quit was the practice of finding comfort in the uncomfortable.
(The sections of this essay represent a reversed Fibonacci Sequence because that sequence is tethered to the purple and Golden Ratio)
