Babies Taking Their First Steps

I imagine myself waking up one morning and never having to leave my electronic bed. Next come a selection of pads to clean the hands and face, and to lightly exfoliate to keep skin youthful, followed by an electric toothbrush and edible toothpaste. Robot Joan gives good facials and massages as well. The horizontal computer terminal swings over the bed. When the meeting is over, I order groceries to be delivered later. Robot Joan brings lunch. Back on the computer, I check the children’s schoolwork and plan my work for the afternoon. The children move on to an hour of Game Boy playtime, then virtual soccer. And, when I absolutely need to get out of bed, I press a button and my electronic bed will lift me gently onto my feet so that I do not faint, just like today’s lift chair does. An unlikely scenario? For many, such a lifestyle would be very tempting. We have the option to reverse this tide. By becoming aware of the negative health impacts of these technological blessings and by taking action.

The Thrill Is Gone

We cannot turn back the clock back to the nontechnological past, nor should we want to. But good things never come without consequences. When I was growing up, we would spend summers on Sifnos, a small Greek island in the Aegean. Before electric power arrived, my sister and I would fight every morning over who was to pump rain water collected in the cistern below the house to the metal storage tank on the roof, where the sun provided free heating. We got stronger doing what was fun. With one of these pumps, not only is a family protected from the risk of inadequate rainfall, they also get the bodybuilding benefits of working the pump. She handed her mother a bag of almonds and a nutcracker, not really expecting her to be able to manage the task. The housebound lady took on the challenge. The negative part of this activity was that my cousin could hardly keep up providing her with almonds. Let me assure you that I am not here to tell you to give up your indoor plumbing, your easy chair, or your favorite kitchen gadget. However, my vision of a better world does involve a change in the direction our society is headed. My vision involves daily habits that allow us to use gravity for our benefit, and it changes the way our environment is built to encourage these positive habits.

Keep On Going

In offices, are workers expected to stay seated for hours at a time without leaving their desks? At the hardware store, can you find a good quality leaf rake or snow shovel, or does the store emphasize a selection of power leaf and snow blowers? If you play golf, do you carry your own clubs, or does your course encourage you to use a cart? Look around the supermarket and compare the aisles devoted to frozen dinners and other prepared foods versus the displays of fresh produce and ingredients for cooking from scratch. My vision of a better world through gravity also involves today’s children, who are tomorrow’s adults. In today’s world, where the safety of children is of prime concern, the freedom to walk to school alone, or to play outdoors or in playgrounds on their own, is something many children never experience. Many children ride to school because of mandatory busing. Today, when many of us need some housekeeping or gardening done, we don’t think of involving our children. We think, Who can I hire to do it? Our next generation of adults is growing up headed for the risk zone at an early age. The impact of this trend is too serious to be ignored. It is our responsibility to intervene. It is time to make a change. In their case, it is not a question of relearning how to use gravity. They have never experienced it, so they have to learn from scratch how to use gravity in order to live in it. They have to develop the sensors to sense it and the nerve networks to respond to it.

Day After Day

Through a process of action and feedback, appropriate movements they might make instinctively tell their brain during that critical early period of life to lay down nerve networks. Through trial and error, these networks grow and become programmed until they become coordinated and respond appropriately throughout their adult life. When first born, babies cannot hold their heads up. They need three to four weeks of living in gravity to build up the muscles in the back of the neck to support the head. Meanwhile, their legs have been gaining in strength. At around seven months, babies begin to crawl, which involves using their legs to push their bodies forward at right angles to the pull of gravity. Soon the leg muscles are strong enough to hold the body upright in a standing position, although the baby still needs to hold onto people or furniture for balance. Babies taking their first steps do a lot of tripping and falling, but they soon learn to bend their knees against gravity, picking each foot up high enough to take longer steps and avoid tripping. Then there is no stopping them as they run, hop, jump, tumble, cartwheel, handstand, hang upside down, seemingly with endless energy! We adults have much to learn about how to use the gravity vector by watching children. Nobody teaches a child how to use it. They do it instinctively. They stretch when they wake up, much like cats and dogs. They learn to grasp hold of the weight of a cup and guide it to their mouth. Their peals of laughter and song tell us that play is fun. The variety of activities they choose reflects the many ways the gravity vector works on the body. Sport may continue until development peaks, or maybe development peaks when activity dwindles. Whatever the reason, why not continue to play and have fun throughout adulthood?