Embodying Musclemonk Day 7, 1-7-2025

The discovery of a radical new body part and with it a radical new form of cognition.

This is how to meet the metacrisis head on.

Stage Fright

I am finding that one of the most difficult things about embodying Musclemonk in addition to imposter syndrome is stage fright. I am looking for an improv class to help with that. I am afraid to go public!

The stage that I am preparing for isn’t in the theater. It is a new level of praxis. A full on cognitive revolution. I am afraid to try this in public, only when I am all safe and alone…

I say “Train Like A Bodhisattva.” It’s not hard to do. It just seems to be impossible to do alone.

I would have everything I need if I could just do it by myself. But then I would always be alone. I need to share this with people— not just because it is important and wonderful, but because it literally -means- I can’t be alone any more. This is bigger than one person. The truth flourishes and propagates, the same as life itself.

I am crying out for help. I am trying to build a webpage and create the graphics and edit the citations and record the videos and dub the sound and find an audience and pay the bills and cook and clean and not think about things too much.

I am trying to embody Musclemonk. But I keep floundering. Will this knowledge and more of these epiphanies but there is just so much shit in the way. The ridiculous unsustainability of the world and real threats of violence and the lack of peace and joy and vitality in my environment and my body hurts.

All that is only a part of it. All the choices that I don’t have in my home. The loneliness and the helplessness. It’s hard to deal with and also to be muscle monk. My mission is to save the world with muscle. I’m struggling. I am not perfect already. What Musclemonk has to do in the world isn’t about being perfect.

You know I am trying so hard to do this because I have come to the conclusion that I am a genius (and not a fool) and I am wise (but not crazy). I know that I have a viable theory, a true bold hypothesis. And I am doing this because I think that we’ve all started to understand that the world itself is crazy and we each have to make a fundamental change. It is very hard to walk the line between the world that I can imagine and the world that I live in. I need help. I hope that we all need each other.

It is really impossible to imagine that we could change the economic system using policy and new institutions and computers. It seems overwhelming. Who can we trust? So I have this suggestion instead: revolution starting from within. I have a biomechanical theory of enlightenment that starts in the deepest parts of the body—in a new body part called the deep core.

I believe that what I have figured out is enough to get out of almost any pit I fall onto. I am in quite a pit right now. But the answer is in the pits—literally. The armpit, for example.

(Here is where I go nuts.) The armpit? We are going to save the world with the armpit?

And I am serious.

Here we go.

I have discovered the names of the parts of our body that we can focus on at any time in order to ground and center and stabilize and balance ourselves. You don’t always have to but we can do it anytime that we want. Whenever we need to ground or center ourselves, no matter what the situation, one of these bones will work. And it must be -and is- easy and natural. It is these parts of our body where we can easily set our attention in order to renegotiate trauma, find confidence, and experience ecstasy or epiphany. These are the body parts that were designed for this purpose. Our interoceptive sensory motor system. Follow along and see if it makes sense.

The system has only a handful of bones. Your jaw, scapula, xyphoid process, pubic bone, and big toe. With the exception of the scapula which is in the armpit, all of these bones are located on our center line in a single connected bony system. Each bone is central and prominent. Each is the center of a major mechanical juncture and is located in kind of a pit: an inner, protected area of great, sensitivity, importance and meaning.

These are our sensory stations; each major juncture is also a major sensory station. This is a sensory motor system so it has both sensory and motor elements.

The five bones are at the center of five concavities located at our body’s five major junctures. These concavities, like the armpit, throat, and groin, are the sensory stations of the deep core. They are very fragile and vulnerable because they are concentrations of diverse sensitive tissues and organs. They require safety for their fullest operation. These are the areas in the body where we actively renegotiate trauma.

These five sensory stations are

1. the face/throat area that the jaw is the bony center of.
2. The armpit containing the scapula, a grip shaped bony servomechanism.
3. The diaphragm and the xyphoid process, a kind of switch that moves with the breath.
4. Yhe groin, intersection of a truly holoscopic variety of sensitive systems,
5. And for the soles of the feet the clearly palpable major bony servomechanism or switch is the big toe, which is easily felt to be the dominant part of the tripod of the feet.

These form a single system, a single complex body part, the deep core, located at our axis (with the scapula as a major peripheral).

This is in effect the discovery of a radical new body part and with it a radical new form of cognition.

These 5 subsystems are all our most sensitive body parts and they all are also in combination a single central, continuous system, with the scapula having a major peripheral role. This is our interoceptive or inner sensory motor system. This is the deep inner core. It is a single continuous system. A synergy. It has a mind of its own. It is our interoceptive or inner or postural sensory motor system.

What sensory motor means is that this is a system of bones and muscles that we can feel and move. The sensory motor system is very powerful because it is one of the most basic levels of structure for living organisms. Before anything else, and organism must be able to sense its inner and outer environments and to move in response. The sensory motor system is primal. It is not just a bunch of parts.

The system is based upon a single continuity of muscles, a myofascial synergy, that runs down the axial line of the body. This is integrated and connected both within itself as a self aware system and with everything around it. When we think of the nervous system, for example, we understand it is connected to everything else and that it is also in and of itself distinct from other systems. It has its own operating procedures and identity and patterns of responses. The problem with the complex physiological systems that we usually focus on is that they are objective find. They’re very hard to know from them. This is not the case for the sensory motor system. The deep core myofascial synergy consistsof muscles and connective tissue and bone and is itself a major, continuous system located at our core. It has sufficient complexity to be self-aware and self directing. It is both a group of very powerful subsystems (5) and a single identity.

Because it is the sensory motor system it isvery familiar and perceptible to us on a conscious level. This is not the case for other systems which are much harder to perceive and to interact with. It is not as easy to move and perceive the deep muscular system as it is the superficial muscular system but it is certainly not impossible. Our postural system, it is by definition natural and intuitive. We know it through slower and gentler, more meditative movements.

We can get to know this inner system within ourselves better when we start to think about these bones through musclar activation and simple movements. When we start to become aware of these central and self organizing bones, we form in the mind a more integrated image of the inner self. I like to think of this as a form of animal intelligence.

It’s a theory but it is a bold hypothesis and is easily tested.

These bones are valuable for actually coordinating our movement and posture. When we bring attention into these bones this helps to tone the associated muscles and tissues and in so doing brings better balance to our structure. These bones are not only central but they are also affected by things like chronic stress and trauma or mismatch, resulting in postural collapse.

These are the areas where we need to invest active healing attention. When we start to coordinate our movements and our self-awareness around these major bones and the complex joints they are at the center of, the systems naturally self organize. It is their built in function. By practicing bringing intentionality and muscular activation into the these area and their central bony servomechanisms, we increase both tone and awareness. The system which is self directed and self balancing receives a boost. This is the very simple mechanism behind what I call biomechanical enlightenment.

At the level of movement coordination, biomechanics, when we bring our active attention to these central and most prominent bony switches, the junctures they are at the center of self organize. This can make a big difference over time and happens in exactly the areas in the body where we most commonly experience postural collapse. The areas we have the most trouble with in terms of chronic pain are located at the direct structural opposites of our sensory stations.

This is a complex anatomical argument but experientially is a very simple fact:

1. The muscles of the front of the neck and the jaw balance the muscles of the back of the neck and the skull, that are so often tight from slouching.
2. The deep and dark armpit is hidden below the prominent, superficial shoulder. They are opposites. The shoulder cannot resolve its own problems because it is superficial. This happens in the armpit. The sensory stations are each a kind of “yin” with a directly related bony “yang” and we tend to focus on the yang rather than the yin. The purpose of this theory is to correct that problem.
3. Pain in the low back is balanced by tone and coordination in the low front. In this sense the pelvis resembles a wheelbarrow where it is the smaller wheel in the front that keeps things balanced and steady, not the big handles in the back. We need to keep our attention on the little front wheel, not the big back handles. This is an excellent example of cybernetics, or coordination dynamics, as it plays out in our sensory motor system.
4. I am honestly not sure what to say about the diaphragm. I think in the case of the diaphragm what is happening is when we pay attention to the buttton-like xiphoid process in the space in between the lungs on top and the guts below, it helps it balance both the upper and lower pressurized compartments of the torso. This is actually an extremely important core stabilizing function of the diaphragm.
5. It is very easy to perceive how the big toe is our most powerful and purposeful toe and is palpably dominant in organizing the tripod of the foot. We can easily feel the connection of the big toe with the rest of the deep core system in the groin.
   

I would like to invite you to bring your gifts to a muscle salon and explore this new body part with me. I would like to create synergy with your own efforts to resolve collective trauma, heal our bodies, and to gradually build a culture of Consilience.

I want you to know that I am very real and that a muscle salon is also very real. Let’s be real together.

Contact me with your interest in participating in a salon.