Biomechanical Enlightenment and Physical Homeostasis

Biomechanical Enlightenment and Physical Homeostasis

Why is the motoric anatomy of the proprioceptive system so important?

Physical homeostasis produces a corresponding neural metastability in the brain, beginning with cerebellar function, that shifts the oscillations of the brain to a much higher level of integration and coordination. We can call this biomechanical enlightenment. A transient form of this shift is a common experience in what we might describe as the proprioceptive arts. These would be things like tai chi, yoga, Feldenkrais and other forms of movement meditation focusing on the slow, mild and continuous contractions of the muscles in the postural system, the deep field.

This type of movement generates a tremendous amount of sensory feedback from the fascially ensconced muscle spindles and other free nerve endings of the proprioceptive system. Because the main sensory system of proprioception is the continuous, interconnected bodywide matrix of the deep fascia, self-awareness is a characteristic of the system as a functional unity.

The word proprioception is often mistaken to mean positional awareness but this is quite incorrect and such a phenomenon would be named topoception. Charles Sherrington was very deliberate and careful when he named the things that he discovered. “Proprio-ception” he was very careful to explain refers to the organism’s purest form of awareness of itself, located in the deep field, removed from the influences of the outer environment as much as possible.

In Sherrington’s perceptual model, now universally accepted if rather misunderstood, exteroception refers to the surface field and awareness of the outside through distance receptors like a vision and hearing. Whereas proprioception is self awareness in the deep field, exteroception is other awareness in the surface field. The extremities act on the world around us, reaching out, spreading the body apart, while the postural system is inward directed, holding us together, focused on maintenance of the self.

This is what physical homeostasis means and this is what underpins cerebellar function. Proprioception is the deep field composed only of the organisms muscular actions upon itself, removed from the influences from the outer world, which is the duty ofthe other systems to process. (Interoception, Sherrington was careful to explain, processes elements that enter the body from the outside and as such is part of the surface field.) Maintaining the mechanical stability that forms the core of our structure is the function of proprioception and the definition of physical homeostasis.

The spinal column and its highly sensitive fleshy myofascial musculature, physical homeostasis, is immediately adjacent to its corresponding neural content. The reflexive circuitry and pattern generators of the spinal cord, as well as the brain stem and cerebellum, are the location of proprioceptive higher function or cognition. This system forms the foundation for higher cognitive function in the rest of the brain. Physical homeostasis in the postural system provides the afferent feedback used by the cerebellum to coordinate the higher functions of cognition.

Proprioceptive metastability is at the core of the mind. The path to enlightenment, to a higher state of cerebral function, is ultimately through the body.