Wow, what a ride! How did we go from the film Casablanca to What’s Eating Gilbert Grape to Spider-Man?

Also, I like how George RR Martin wrote about vampires in his novel Fevre Dream. His vampires are not created by the blood of another vampire, but his vampires are a species of their own, truly carnivorous humanoids, who procreate through copulation. One of the characters of the book is the archetype of an age old vampire, Damon Julian, hundreds of years old, whose suffering of longevity is so great that it sucks you right into the dark pit that he has in place of a soul. Maybe cuddling with homo sapiens’ inability to cope with more than a few decades of existence is what made Deadpool (2) one of the highest-grossing films ever?

Now, legs. The two things down there that walk us from the living room to the kitchen. Or so they seem when I look at scientific studies about walking.

Enter my latest video series “From The Ground Up” on Youtube [link]. An update on how we think about our legs. Or probably, about ourselves, the deeper we get into this series.

From books and motivational movies I have concluded that a leg (or both) can be cut off and the patient can live just fine, be living very successfully and socially active even. Youtube showed me a radiantly happy person without arms and legs who became a motivational guru and millionaire, loved by everyone.

But that’s not what I have seen in real life.

I’ve traveled through Cambodia and I’ve seen what land mines did to people. And even less spectacularly so, I have learned from my own life, as well as my clients and immediate environment, that even a slight negligence, a minor disturbance in the use of the legs, seemingly insignificant shortcomings of the integration of the legs into the whole self, can have major impacts on the whole self. To use the legs properly, and joyfully, and creatively, can be the difference between someone who still climbs their apple trees in their garden at age 79, and someone who ages fast and falls into disability early.

Amputation and disability is the worst case scenario that would surely bring down most people. I guess only the strongest of the most resilient are able to cope with such loss.

But even less spectacularly so, fascia that does not slide to the best of their ability, even if it is just around the knees or ankles, undifferentiated movements of the arches of the feet or ankles, such seemingly small things, surely overlooked by most professionals and laymen alike, can put the strongest body into disability; and maybe then it’s not only that body that’s disabled, but it’s the soul that’s left in the dark, the soul that does not even know the reason for its suffering, and therefore is suffering the most.

How did we go from dancing wild and free to choreographed to isolated movement strength training?

Video credits:

California Jubilee in “Let’s Twist Again”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggQSspSGU8

Twist, Twist |Beginner|Line Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM_hXVBMm5I

Knee Range of Motion Solutions From The ATG System!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMRPJmkbSVI