What a week we had in Colorado Springs!

Sunday, August 16, 2026

Today, Lydia, Lauri and I are taking a well-earned break after seven full days of teaching movement and anatomy through human dissection at the Institute for Anatomical Research in spectacular Colorado Springs.

We have been staying in a beautiful rental adjacent to The Garden of the Gods, and across the road from the local riding stables (I love the smell of horses in the morning).

This is the fifth lab that the three of us have produced under the KNMLabs banner, and I must say that the level of learning and bonding among participants has never been higher. So many friends, students and colleagues from years past made the trip to Colorado to be with us, in many ways it really felt like coming home.

It's difficult to summarize all the experiences we had, both in and out of the lab, so here's a sample of what happened this week, which you can see depicted in the slideshow below.  Please note that all the humans you will see are living, as we cannot share any cadaver images from the lab:

• 2 days of skilled, detailed work on a more firmly fixed male donor with our advanced dissectors, creating a learning model for our 5-day participants.
• On the second day of our 5-day Layered Exploration, we invited the amazing Gil Hedley in to present a comparative analysis of male and female intimate anatomy, including his always passionate "foreskin speech."
• Day three in lab is always my favorite, in which we go deeply into the diaphragm and respiratory anatomy, with students holding a human heart being massaged by the inflation of the lungs in situ.
• On the evening of day three we gathered for a group dinner at the fantastic Jake and Telly's Greek Taverna in Old Colorado City. We closed the place down with an ouzo toast all around.
• Much interest was directed into the cranial cavity of our male donor, as Lauri skillfully exposed the brain's internal structures.
• Lydia, as always, did amazing work with her scalpel, allowing both donors to be seen in their best light, and with the relevant layers clearly presented.
• The two evening movement sessions, held next door in Coronado High School's storied wrestling room, are always a playful and welcome break for our bodies and minds. They also provide a way to integrate what we've been exploring in the donor forms in the lab.
• Hiking nearby trails at Red Rock Canyon and Garden of the Gods provides ample opportunities for fresh air, exercise, and appreciation of all living things.
• On our final day we got down to skeletal and joint structures, where the internal mechanics of the knee, hip, shoulder, elbow, foot, and spine were clearly demonstrated.
• Feelings always run high at our closing ceremony, during which we say goodbye to our donors, thanking them and their families for the enormous generosity that allows us to do this work. The companionship created during the week spent learning together carries us together into the future.

Prior to making this trip, I was thinking this may be the last dissection lab I would teach. These events are super-expensive to produce, and are never very profitable: lab and material charges scale upwards with the number of participants.  Lauri and Lydia are far more enthusiastic dissectors than I.  As much as I have learned from all the labs I've attended and taught, my preference has always been to be hands-on with the living.

That said, my extremely positive experience over the past week, particularly with our new format of a 2-day advanced preceding the 5-day main lab, makes me think that more and even better labs may be in the future for KNM (Kaminoff, Nemetz, Mann).

What do you think?  Could one of our labs be a bucket-list item for you? We attract adventurous learners from many diverse disciplines. Even if you’ve never held a scalpel, we provide you with all the support and training you need to skillfully immerse yourself in the endlessly amazing world of human anatomy, with an emphasis on movement, breath and yogic application.

We are already fielding questions about when our next lab will be, so you can register your interest by clicking here, or by leaving a comment below.

Looking forward to meeting plenty of you in a lab somewhere!

Leslie

If you have received value from my writing, please consider supporting it by subscribing to my online community. You will gain access to my online courses, monthly Q&A Zoom chats, and hundreds of hours of educational content.