Do you remember the segway? They were popular for a minute about ten years ago. I have vague memories of the NYPD riding around on segways in Prospect Park. They never really caught on with the public though Shri Dharma Mitra, a renowned and revered yoga teacher in Manhattan used to cruise around on one.
They were invented by a man named Dean Kamen and released in 2001. They follow a simple engineering principle- lean the control lever forward and you go forward; lean it backwards and you stop. The human body works in the same way. Leaning forward turns your engine on. Watch the Road Runner in the cartoon as he prepares to move- leaning forward turns the engine on.
The psoas major is the main muscle of walking. As you fall through space the brain tells the psoas to swing the back leg forward to stop your imminent fall- over and over and over again.
Most people lean backwards when they walk. This eliminates the natural propulsion built into the human design. We don’t really walk through life we fall through life and the more willingness we have to fall into the abyss and trust that we will always be caught, the more likely that we will move through life in a fully functional way.
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