Our normal perception of our surroundings, especially in developed countries, is that we move about inside a spatial cube, a box with length, breadth, and height. This perception is reinforced by the machined flat surfaces upon which we engage our daily activities and the right-angled rooms within which we live and work.
The underlying animal cognitive functions that drive our locomotor reflexes did not evolve to operate within such spaces, but rather within a rough, constantly changing environment made of curves instead of straight lines. We can define our built environment as a tool that enhances the efficiency of our actions. Our built surroundings facilitate utilizing a small fraction of our innate animal potential to do exponentially more work than our recent ancestors. This architecture imprints the impression of normality while we float on a cushion of energy-intensive technologies, assuming that it is fully compatible with our ancestral innate animal competencies (built by us, for us, using unchallenged assumptions).
Here, concepts that more accurately describe the qualities of our built surroundings are discussed, facilitating a conceptual frame of reference that aligns with a more dynamic and holistic engagement of our innate locomotive resources. These concepts may seem abstract and challenging to embody, but they form a cautionary tale about assumptions we may have about “normal” operations within our built environment. It is a long and expensive proposition to modify our urban settings, but it is a personal matter to transform how we operate within these environments – the prerequisite being more accurate reference frames to employ.
THE EARTH SECANT
When we see trees, it is common to think of them as vertical to the ground and perpendicular to other trees. However, the trees 100 miles away are at a distinct angle to these trees as they all point inward to the center of the earth’s mass (~1.5°/100 miles). On the earth’s surface the terms “up” and “down” do not accurately describe the dynamics of the surroundings. The terms “in” and “out” have better utility (from R. Buckminster Fuller).
Technically, what we think of as up/down should be described as “Inward or outward along a Secant coincident with the center of mass of the earth”. This is such a relevant concept that “vertical” is written as “the Earth Secant” in this post.
These up/down terms are ancient in origin, predating the realization that we live on the surface of a ~sphere rather than on a flat plane, in the same way that we still use the terms “sunrise” and “sunset”, implying the sun moves around a stationary earth.
GRAVITY
The conceptual framework we inherited for guiding our actions also predates our current understanding of the involved physics. The concept of gravity we employ, where objects have a natural tendency to attract, originates possibly with Aristotle. If we get into the weeds on gravity, the dominant force acting upon us, we reach for Newton’s work on the subject. Although both concepts are intrinsically accurate, they are incomplete. What we experience as gravity is the ground accelerating us away from the center of mass of the earth. The inertia of our mass opposing this acceleration is what we think of as our weight.
GRAVITY IS OUTWARD THRUST FROM THE CENTER OF EARTH’S MASS
This opposition to acceleration is the dominant feature of our stance and gait patterns. It might help realize this to play with a Smartphone Accelerometer App. After a few minutes of experimentation a realization that what we call gravity is just acceleration emerges. This writer believes that a correct description of our experience of gravity is something like ”translating the Spacetime Geodesic” although they comfortably admit to very little understanding of what this means (see General Relativity). To understand this requires accepting that the flow of space in time is non-laminar.
Time:
We commonly accept that we move forward in time. However, what direction does time come towards us? Although Time is spatially dimensionless we experience the future approaching us through Gravity pushing us outward. We feel the future arriving through the soles of our feet. It might be helpful to think of Gravity as a verb. There is no such thing as instantaneous time (now) – like space it converges on ∞. Gravity is rather a function of time (Spacetime).
Movement Vector:
When we move, our forward motion is a small fraction of the outward motion we experience from gravity. Even a gait of 1 meter/second results in a vector that deviates from “the Earth Secant” by about 5 degrees. It is a fundamental reframe to conceive of our “forward” movement as a slight deviation from this secant. All vectors of animal movement on the surface of the earth are within a cone, the axis of which is the “Earth Sectant” and the apex touching the earth’s surface. Consequently, to move “ahead” at 1 meter/second, ~ 90% of the force expressed opposes our inertia as we move outward.
For example, a car needs to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in ~2.7 seconds (1G) to divert our vector of movement by ~45° (horizontal accel = vertical accel). We dramatically feel the inertia of our mass in this horizontal acceleration, but we functionally and structurally organized to “zero out” outward acceleration when our ancestors evolved to move around on land.
CONCLUSION
These concepts are extremely challenging to integrate into stance and gait patterns and can be lived with for a long time while still discovering and developing new facets of our locomotor system. Said another way, they open pathways to further developing our posture and gait reflexes beyond the opportunities available within an ancestral reference frame. It is hoped that this presentation of these concepts at least challenges some of the implicit assumptions we employ as we stand and move, opening possibilities for extending the adaptive potential of our locomotor system and engaging more dynamically with the center of mass of the earth.
Other posts on this website delve into the specifics of tactics and strategies for activating a broader scope of innate locomotor structural/functional dynamics. Specific posture and gait patterns are not recommended as there are no “one size fits all” solutions, rather the posts expand on the concepts summarized above.
Always be cautious and conservative in your approach to changes, as this is a process of growing both structurally and functionally (neurologically) into enhanced scope.
These posts are recommended:
Outsole: A Functionally Supportive Insole
A Comprehensive Description of Gait
Kinsegrity: Kinetic Tensegrity