The purpose of this book is to use muscular structural integration to implement the physical aspects of biological stainability to the human body
The concept of biological stainability is perhaps the most pressing issue presently facing us as humans, more so than any other point in our species’ existence. For the majority of our existence, we adapted to an environment that was much different to the one we live in today. We evolved into a world where our primary adaptations were biological in regards to our natural environment. We worked as tribal civilizations that would hunt and gather in a cooperative manner within our tribe, while competing with other species for survival. Due to the competition with other species, the slow progressive inclusion of technology would slowly start to influence our biological adaptations. For example: roughly 1 million years ago, man discovered how to use and manipulate fire. This discovery led a human to figure out how to cook meat, which invariably brought about a change in human evolution via the influence of diet. Since the changes at this point in time were still relatively gradual, humans were capable of making effective adaptations with very few negative byproducts. However, in recent times, making these seamless adaptations has proven to be a much more difficult task to accomplish. For example, if we fast track to 100 years ago, the industrial age was in full effect. This brought about a much different culture and environment than anything our species’ previously encountered. With agriculture, automobiles, electricity and other various technologies available to
humans, it changed the scope of how we interact with our environment. Rather than walk, we drive. Rather than eat nutrient dense food, we eat factory farmed food. Rather than react to stressors with motion, we react to stress in stagnation. These are the types of issues most influential to human health at this stage of our existence.
Everything in our reality operates solely under the context of environmental interdependence. As humans living in this environment, we are not exempt from this phenomenon in nature. Even if we were to analyze light, it needs to operate within the confines of a gravity field. It cannot exist in isolation from the rest of its environment. This indicates that all things in the universe, including the human species, are interlinked deeply with their external surroundings. The universe itself runs on a set of rules that all things inhabiting its structure must abide by. When we analyze this from a standpoint of health, the person who can effectively incline their behavior towards the physical rules existing in nature is more likely to emerge as a healthy, adaptable human. The further humans decouple themselves from these natural laws, the more likely it is that they will fall victim to the symptoms of biological inefficiency (pain, illness, injury, etc.). Finding this point of harmony when adapting to the laws of nature is the ultimate guide to attaining a functional body that will perform optimally without pain and most importantly, sustain life for an extended period of time.
To grasp the base point of what efficiency means for our species, we must first
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determine what functionality is relative to human biology. Every organism has a structural foundation written in its DNA. Learning what the foundation is for a human will require us to look back at our ancestral roots so that we can attain a better understanding of where efficiency lies relative to human biology. Only then can we have a starting point when attempting to condition a human towards good health and biological sustainability.
Structurally speaking, before we make a distinction upon what a human being is, we have to understand the causative mechanisms that make humans unique. From what we know through research, it is indicated that we are very closely related to the chimpanzees found in Africa. Although we see a resemblance in looks and behavior, we also see that we are obviously different in a few regards. The main influence that affects these differences are attributed to environment. Around 4-6 million years ago, the woodlands of east Africa were evolving into grasslands. The monkeys living in that transitioning territory dealt with a pressing issue that ended up being a pivotal point in shaping their evolution. For several million years, they lived in a habitat which was full of trees. They would swing from branch to branch (or tree to tree) with very little usage of walking on flat ground, since the trees in their environment were in close proximity to one another. This made movement on flat ground unnecessary. As the climate began to shift and the trees became sparser, the game changed for a portion of those monkeys. This change in environment invariably led certain monkeys from swinging on branches to
eventually walking upright on two feet. For the next few million years, there were several different human hominids who moved in a bipedal fashion as a result of these changes. These hominids were able to evolve their structural path of movement integration and build a center of gravity into their musculoskeletal system (along with all the other systems). Over the course of a few million years, Homo Sapiens became the dominant bipedal human hominid at the top of the food chain due to the process of natural selection. Natural phenomena like this must shape the way we look at conditioning a human if we want them to run on optimal efficiency.
Humans have a biomechanical blueprint primarily catered towards standing and moving in a bipedal fashion (on two feet). Besides breathing, it is quite likely that standing and walking are the most common actions done by humans on a daily basis. This is the foundation we must work around if we expect to come to a definitive conclusion of conditioning a human body towards its biological strengths. Since standing upright is the fundamental element that shapes us as the human species, it has to be the base point of efficiency for any sustainable training system. Through my experience working with all types of individuals young and old, I have found that optimizing the standing position is the root of developing effective movement patterns, which in turn sets the foundation up for a neurologically and physiologically healthy human being. After the standing position has been mastered to its fullest extent, the tasks of bending down to lift, squatting deeply, jumping,
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twisting, and throwing, along with many other bodily actions become streamlined almost automatically. Once this Human Foundation of efficient posture is wired in, the body becomes immediately more adaptable because it is operating efficiently from its biological base point.
Although the importance of posture may be acknowledged by most health/wellness practitioners, most are unaware of what an actual efficient posture is supposed to look like. I would attribute this to the fact that humans are unaware of how out of balance their body is in relation to the adaptations that have been made to the current environment. It is hard to measure one’sowndistortionsonwhat“normality†or “efficiency†are if our perspectives are skewed due to our inability to witness personal shortcomings, even for us health professionals. If we as the professionals are operating out of imbalance, it will become very difficult for us to determine what balance is. To the somewhat educated practitioner, it becomes obvious that there is a disharmony between us as a human species and the way we interact with our environment. To gain a deeper understanding of the crucial mechanisms of why posture is so negatively ingrained in a human body and why it is so unclear what efficient posture is, we will have to delve deeper into the rabbit hole.
All species have lived in scarcity and have made adaptations based on scarcity over a very long period of time. When we analyze the more complex life forms (animals) that have a nervous system, we begin to see that biology physically morphs
to its environment. The stress from living in scarcity becomes the sculptor of an organisms mechanical structure. Stress is the ultimate mechanism behind shaping biology. If we expect to understand why we are so biologically decoupled from our homeostatic and foundational posture as human beings, we will have to examine how we orient to our stressors in scarce environments.
In order for an organism to adapt to anything, it has to do so within the context of the environment in which it inhabits. All organisms must adapt in accordance to a situational stressor, otherwise the organism will eventually go extinct. Neurologically, when natural life stressors affect an organism, it directly sculpts the way that organism will behave.
