Experience Anatomy

We recently stumbled across an article about an interesting organization in Charlotte, North Carolina and we wanted to stop for a moment and, well, sing its praises.

The organization is called Experience Anatomy. The article was published in The Charlotte Observer.

We’ll just come out and say it—the folks in Charlotte are lucky.

Experience Anatomy opens its doors for surgical training, medical education and research. And, as the article notes, “it also aims to enhance understanding of the human body in ways that textbooks alone cannot achieve for all levels of learners.”

The organization serves healthcare professionals, licensed bodywork experts, yoga teachers, educators, first-responders, and students.

In fact, Experience Anatomy runs a program called Hands-On Human Anatomy and here’s where things get really cool and line up with our belief that it’s never too early to teach human anatomy. The Hands-On Human Anatomy program is for students between eight and 16 years old.

Two words: love it. Check out the quick video here on the specific Hands-On Human Anatomy effort and another here about Experience Anatomy as a whole.

Experience Anatomy was started in 2016 by Jamie Decker, who had a longtime dream of making innovative anatomy resources more accessible. The organization has been in operation since 2016.

Photo by Arthur Lambillotte on Unsplash   

Experience Anatomy provides both cadaveric dissection opportunities as well as the chance to learn using high-quality plastinated specimens, a topic we covered when we chatted with Graham Whiteside of Anatomic Excellence. And, like Whiteside, Decker has rich experience with Gunther von Hagens and his BodyWorld exhibition. At a plastination conference in Toledo, according to the Experience Anatomy website, Decker received a personal invitation from von Hagens to study under his direction at Gubener Plastinate GmbH. “She spent the following three years commuting between Guben and the U.S. to complete an intensive internship that developed and refined her self-efficacy as an anatomist and educator, and significantly extended her knowledge of plastination.”

Experience Anatomy’s outreach and program coordinator, Fauna Moore, was recently featured in a lengthy first-person account in the New York Times. The piece was written by Danielle Friedman and it was at the Charlotte facility that she experienced her first cadaver dissection.

Wrote Friedman, “I have come to appreciate the intricacy and interconnectedness of every muscle, tendon and bone. Spending time with a body that will never move again gave me a new appreciation for my own body’s ability to move. When I got home, I couldn’t wait to go for a run.”

That says it all, does it not?

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