Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the first century BC, wrote that a well built human body fits inside both a circle and a square. Fifteen centuries later, Leonardo da Vinci sat down and drew it.
His Vitruvian Man stands in two poses at once, arms out and legs apart, inside a square that rests on the ground and a circle centred on the navel. The two shapes share a base but not a centre. The square is the material: measurable, physical, built. The circle is the immaterial: breath, energy, the life that animates the frame.
Leonardo's point was that the body only makes sense when you hold both. We named the practice after that drawing because it describes what we try to do every day. We work with the structure, the spine and the joints, knowing the whole person is what we are really caring for.
