The Spring View of the Human Body
The Spring View of the body uses coil springs to describe how the limbs of the human body are formed. It describes one way the limbs of the human body function on a very basic level. Because humans originally evolved from animals, the human body must be positioned on all 4 limbs on the ground like a 4 legged animal in order to describe the Spring View of the body.
In general, the arms and legs of the human body can be described as cylinders. The picture below places a cylinder in back of the leg and another cylinder in front of the arm for comparison. The arms and legs of course have the bumps and depressions caused by their muscles. In spite of this visually irregular surface, the limbs can be treated as the featureless smooth cylinders shown.
This discussion is about the Spring View of the body. It needs to be shown that the cylinders in the previous picture are equivalent to spirally wound springs before the explanation can continue.
A cylinder is either a circle that has been extended perpendicularly along it’s center point, or a cylinder is created by the volume enclosed by a spiral in which all of the coils are the same diameter. To verify the second statement, we first examine some three dimensional coil springs.
The coil springs above are wound in a spiral that looks to be the same diameter as far as can be determined from the picture. If the coil springs are outlined as is done in red in the picture below, the shape is a rectangle.
On the right is a cylindrical flower vase. If we look only at the outline of the vase, we see a rectangular shape. To verify the vase is cylindrical, we look thru the side of the vase at the bottom. The bottom of the vase is a circular shape. Both the bottom of the vase and the coils of the springs are circular. They both present a rectangular profile. Therefore, a spiral in which all the coils are of the same diameter does form a cylinder.
Now that it has been shown that a cylinder is equivalent to a spiral, the cylinders in the picture of the man on all fours can be replaced with coil springs. In the picture below, the coil springs are superimposed over the cylinders.
The coil springs fit within the outline of the cylinders as expected. The picture above was originally used to show that, in general, the arms and legs are cylindrical. If the arms and legs are cylindrical, and a cylinder is formed from a spiral, then the arm and leg cylinders can be replaced by spirals. The picture below shows the coil springs superimposed over the arms and legs of the man. The cylinders remain in the picture for comparative purposes.
The picture above implies that 4 legged animals bounce on their legs in order to move themselves. The bouncing motion is modified for smoothness and efficiency in real life.
There are not real coil springs inside of the human body. If a person examines an Anatomy book, there are no coil spring shaped structures traveling from the chest to the hand or from the buttock to the foot. This does not matter. What matters is that the body can behave as if there is a spiral shaped pattern of fibers in the arms and legs.
A person can verify the presence of these fiber patterns in the body only by going thru the necessary physical practice to change their own body. At some point the training will induce the spiral sensations within them. Only then, with the proof from their own body, will they know for certain that the coil spring shaped structures in the arms and legs do exist.
Until then, a person could look to the world around them for some corroboration for these ideas. For example, there is an animal that is an example of a living coil spring. A snake will form itself into coils at various times in it’s existence.
The behavior of the snake shows that it is possible for a biological structure to behave like a coil spring.
If a person was to examine human culture, they would find that the snake had some importance or the other to most cultures. The ancient people understood that the human body is constructed of biological springs or “snakes”. Chinese martial arts include many references to spirals and snakes. In the picture below, a man is doing a posture from Tai Chi called “Snake Creeps Down”.
