The Natural Environment

Humans, like all living organsims depend on both movement and alert stillness to survive, yet we live in a world where natural physical forces impact every object, including our bodies. How does the design of the human body allow us to move in the way we need to?

For most of the time, we need the ability to move around freely and easily, to gather food, work and make a home, but sometimes we need to be able to move quickly in the face of danger. Despite all this, we are still capable of alert stillness, like sitting quietly engrossed in a hobby or good book and finally, resting, in the form of sleep.

In order to live and survive, we must be able to achieve these different types of motion and stillness, but we live in a world where natural physical forces exist. Gravity is a good example of a natural force that affects every living creature and inanimate object on and in the vicinity of earth.

Where gravity acts in a downard direction to keep us in contact with the ground, its' equal and opposite force (ground reaction forces) acts in an upward direction in response to ground contact.

In order for living organsims to attain movement and alert stillness, their bodies must be able to harness these forces and utilise them in a way that enables them to maintain their posture and achieve the motion and stillness they need in order to survive.

For horses, graceful motion on four legs is the key; for birds it is flight, and for humans it is the ability to maintain good posture, strength, stability and motion whilst balanced on two feet.

Interacting with Nature

The design of the human body places our Neuromusculoskeletal structure in charge of controlling natural forces to facilitate balance, motion and alert stillness.

There is no getting around it, neuromusculoskeletal is a big word. In order to understand what it means, we can break it down like so:

• Neuro - of the brain - the Central Nervous System - the information superhighway - transferring messages between all parts of the body
• Musculo - of the muscles - soft tissues attached to the bones which contract and expand in response to messages received from the Nervous system to provide movement
• Skeletal - of the bones - hard tissues to which the soft tissues attach. The joints between each of the bones that form our skeleton allow movement to take place

It is the interaction of these three aspects of the human body that enables us to achieve and maintain posture, strength, stability and motion whilst balanced on two feet.