Born to Walk: Myofascial Efficiency and the Body in Movement

This book presents a version of what can happen when the whole body is allowed to move together. I hesitate to call it “normal,” but it is a pattern that is inherent within most of us—within the lines and grooves, contours and forms of our inherited anatomy. It is the relaxed, repetitive walking that allows our brains to be otherwise occupied, faci

One of the hallmarks of efficient walking is the absence of active muscular contraction, maximizing the recoil efficiency of the fascial tissues; an easy walking pattern should use only around 38 percent of the body’s maximal aerobic capacity.

It is through the combination of gravity and our tissue’s response to our momentum that we can gain practically free energy. By using the body’s movement to stretch elastic tissues, we recruit the captured energy and then recoil the kinetic energy (the energy of motion) to help create a return movement. It is to this mechanism that much of this boo

The main benefit of this arrangement is that the recoil of the fascial tissue is providing essentially free energy. The fascia is stretched by the interaction of the body’s momentum and its interaction with the ground. If the actin and myosin filaments (the sliding elements within the muscle fibers that control contraction) do not allow the muscle

after heel strike, when the system is working to absorb the force of gravity and the ground reaction force—the viscous ground substance will stiffen the tissue and thereby allow the fascial fibers to load more, taking further advantage of the elastic recoil.

The use of the human body as the model for architecture lasted for many centuries. The body was used to inspire architecture, and the inverse was applied as well, with architecture and the idea of bricks and mortar being used to build an understanding of anatomy. Herein lies the problem with our traditional analysis of anatomy.

Vitruvius’s fundamental tenet was that “the power of nature has acted as architect” in biology: universal laws of nature had brought about human anatomy, and so, within our body’s design, we had a map of the macrocosm. The body was literally a minor mundus, a “mini world,” and, thereby, a reflection of the universe. The implication was that the arc

The use of solid elements (bone) and elastic elements (myofascia) requires the presence of a certain amount of prestress. It is the contribution of “tension” that gives the structure “integrity” (and it is the combination of these two words

In the repetitive motions of walking, the inner tuning of our springs is unconscious. Apparently even the spinal cord is rarely involved in controlling the movement—it is the local relationship between the mechanoreceptors in the fascial tissue and the surrounding “adjusters” of the muscles that are in charge. By finding the most efficient level of