Tensegral Liveliness

Here is another piece of the mosaic for the inner map of biotensegrity. Again and again I find these nuggets in the video replays of the BiotensegriTea Parties the Biotensegrity Archive hosts every Friday. Why in the records? Because live everything happens too fast to save it and to follow one's own thoughts about it. 

At the last BiotensegriTea Party, I had another real aha moment when Leonid talked about his work* with cerebral palsy** children:

"The worse the physical condition of the children, the closer their performance is to the standard biomechanical model!"

After a moment's thought, I can only confirm that it is the same with horses. Healthy, strong, motoric competent horses move fluidly and powerfully as a unit. The forces flow together in such a way that all parts move forward together harmoniously.

The more mechanical processes you think you see, the worse the performance and usually the health of the horse. The supposed levers and force effects have strange directions, it seems either not to go forward or to be unstoppable. The parts work and swing against each other, against the ground, against the rider, instead of working together towards a goal. 

And anyway, the goal... 

There doesn't seem to be one. The body seems so preoccupied with itself that it doesn't seem to be able to deal with external demands as well. An incline, a decline, mud or stones already bring such a horse to or beyond its limits. 

This means, taken further, that the standard biomechanical model describes pathologies. In a healthy, agile creature, there are no levers and it would be very difficult to describe the movements in mechanical terms.

So we need a better model to do justice to healthy aliveness.  

Oups, that already exists....

Biotensegrity, living tensegrity, tensegral aliveness.

*https://www.abrtherapy.com/

*Infantile cerebral palsy is a permanent disorder of the postural and locomotor system.