Feedback for your structural integrity.

INSIGHT (what we need)

Understanding how our parts work together in a system of connected suspensions can change the way we address pain, posture and progression.

Think back to the time in your weight or movement training when you felt like the world had completely shifted. The postural shift itself may have been physically so tiny; yet everything in your system “clicked” and you were suddenly able to access a level of power or depth that was so effortless compared to what you’d been working towards for so long. What was happening was that you were getting the neural feedback needed for aspects of the body or mind to come into true alignment. Experiences where your mind, body and being fully understands coming together (what is known as the Sanskrit root word for yoga itself – the “yuj” or ‘yoke’ – ploughing every aspect of self in ‘union’). For me, it was like, “how could I have been doing this wrong for the past 5 years?!” Until the next insight comes along…

Personally, one of those monumental shifts was finally integrating what Tom Meyers coined “biotensegrity” (borrowed from the architectural genius of Buckminster Fuller) — or moving beyond our bio mechanical view of the world to understand how our muscles, bones, joints and tissues are suspended in a ‘meat bag’ of tensile forces that pull on each other, causing a chain of referential connectivity across seemingly disparate parts.

Hmmm, so that pain in my hip is because my bunions are all jacked up? 

Something shifts in the way you move when you start living in a body where you constantly sense how your parts work as a dynamic whole. The focus then shifts not to the muscles, bones, joints and tissues, but to the systems that hold them together. I would imagine it’s akin to when artists or musicians start to pay more attention to negative space or silence. Imagining the ether or spaces between parts in the body and mind gives it the ability to ‘expand.’

We lose this sensorial training as we gain more of a cerebral understanding of the body. Biology classrooms and doctor offices have seared the ‘skeleton’ shape of the human body into in our psyches; but there are 3 other full systems (apart from bones and skin) that if you removed all other parts, would still show our human form (fascia, nervous, and lymph). When you relax enough to sense how all these parts sit in suspension, you can begin to feel the flow of energy that moves these various fluids and impulses that move you away from stagnancy and into the dynamism that animates life. Yogis have mapped this energy purely through sensation (not a coincidence that our chakras line up with major glandular systems of the body) and created the asanas to support that energetic flow. 

Not everyone is ready to dedicate their lives to optimizing our mind-body connection (including myself who eventually left yoga teaching and opted for work that involves more time at a desk than on a mat). But becoming aware of these forces also doesn’t have to take 20 years of practice if you speed up the biofeedback mechanism that makes us more aware of them. Similar to sensing perceptive shifts in meditation, feeling into the very subtle interoceptive signals of tensegrity requires a high level of sensitivity.

How might we take tensegrity out of cognitive theory and into sensitive application that bypasses decades of trial and error practice? 

INSPIRATION (what we want)

40 Years of Zen: a biofeedback experience that signals brainwave state changes through electric taps and sounds to let you know you are meditating.

This service has been around for almost two decades itself but still very much prevalent today as one of the most popular biohacking innovations in the field. Dave Asprey has upgraded the service since its earliest days and combined nutrition and supplements to nourish the brain while it gets trained. 

• Cutting edge technology built into a sensory deprivation pod where you sit wired to neural feedback nodes that map and train 8000 different variables.

• Retrain the brain with sounds that mimic neural electrical signals to run more cohesively so that you are optimizing executive function. 

• Bypass decades of meditative training in just days of this program as the practice lets you know “if you’re doing it right” for immediate conditioning. 

• Quickly train your brain to access higher states of consciousness that is personalized to your own brain map as you train alpha, theta, gamma and delta states to achieve your desired goals.

• Participants report massive awareness shifts, Kundalini energy rising, and deep life changing effects as you become more resourceful in choosing and responding to life circumstances. 

INNOVATION (what we wish for)

Calibrate: elevate your movement practice through personalized signaling of correct dynamic alignment.

• Place clearly labeled wireless connected bands and patches on 20 different structural hot spots across the body involved in activated movement (ie. from arches to iliosacral crests to occipital ridges).    

• Calibrate these tabs via app to your bodily measurements (ie. height, weight, age) and desired universal compound movement practice (ie. sun salutation, deadlift, or jogging). 

• Set a time to work through this sequence with the ability to start/stop at any time.

• Tabs will ‘buzz’ if your body is out of alignment So the goal is to move mindfully and buzz-free — recruiting the correct muscles to move in a way to prevent future injury.

• Continue to practice movements so that you hit at least 5 sessions ‘buzz free’ and move on to master other sequences.

• Special ‘sitting’ mode helps support proper seated posture with signals to move every 20 minutes through a 5-minute mindful walking sequence.

• This every day mode also includes extra breath tabs to be placed around the lungs to ensure you are breathing adequately throughout the day.

• The goal is to ween yourself off the device after 2-3 months of practice when movement becomes habitual.

“The body is solid material wrapped around the breath.” ~ Ida Rolf