Somatic Physics / Practice Plates

Elemental Vibration

A sequence of body experiments for reading threshold, resonance, damping, phase-lock, and drift through direct sensation.

Earth

Thumbnail illustration for Heel Stick-Slip Recurrence. Heel Stick-Slip Recurrence Sit on the floor with legs extended. Thumbnail illustration for Wall-Contact Hysteresis Loop. Wall-Contact Hysteresis Loop Stand against a wall, heels and back lightly in contact. Map the width of that loop: how far past the contact point you must go to break contact, versus how far back you must come to remake it. Thumbnail illustration for Arm-Drop Overshoot Settle. Arm-Drop Overshoot Settle Lie supine with arms overhead. Map the direction of the overshoot at each segment. Thumbnail illustration for Random Heel-Drop Impulse Response. Random Heel-Drop Impulse Response Lie supine, knees bent. Track the impulse response — how the abdomen, ribs, and left leg react to each drop — and ask whether responses are identical or whether the same impulse evokes different shapes depending on what the body was doing just before. Thumbnail illustration for Knee-Fall Path Reversal. Knee-Fall Path Reversal Lie supine. Repeat at a steady tempo. Thumbnail illustration for Pelvic-Drop Minimal Release. Pelvic-Drop Minimal Release Lie supine, knees bent, and start a slow alternating drop of the knees side to side, period about three seconds, small range. Identify the precise muscle whose release initiates the drop — obliques, quadratus, glute medius — and find the smallest possible release that still... Thumbnail illustration for Head-Circle Apparent Wind. Head-Circle Apparent Wind Sit cross-legged with the spine vertical and let the head start a slow circling motion, no larger than a coin's diameter, at the rate of one circle per two seconds. Identify the two points on the circle where the suboccipital effort drops nearly to zero and the two points... Thumbnail illustration for Tourbillon Torso-Yaw Tremor Map. Tourbillon Torso-Yaw Tremor Map Lie on your side with the lower arm extended above your head and the upper hip stacked, then introduce a slow yaw rotation of the entire torso around its long axis — once every ten seconds, ten degrees in each direction. Map which torso angle most distorts the hand's small... Thumbnail illustration for Prone Pressure-Contour Gradient. Prone Pressure-Contour Gradient Lie prone and mentally draw level curves of pressure on the floor — isolines connecting points of equal contact force. Locate the steepest pressure gradient under your body and track how it migrates as you make minute postural changes. Thumbnail illustration for Wall Fall-and-Catch Hysteresis. Wall Fall-and-Catch Hysteresis Stand and lean very slightly against a wall with one shoulder, then push off into a slow, repeated falling-and-catching pattern away from the wall and back. Map the gap between those two angles.

Water

Air

Thumbnail illustration for Knee-Bend Noise Floor. Knee-Bend Noise Floor Stand and drop into a small, repeated knee bend — a vertical oscillation around mid-height, never going deep. Find that threshold by increasing head amplitude in small steps and noting the precise amplitude at which the knee count first slips. Thumbnail illustration for Foot-to-Skull Resonance Sweep. Foot-to-Skull Resonance Sweep Lie supine, soles of feet on the floor, knees up. Find this resonance peak, name its frequency by counting, and then nudge slightly above and below to map how sharp the peak is — its Q. Thumbnail illustration for Sympathetic Joint Vibration. Sympathetic Joint Vibration Supine, arms by the sides. Locate the second site in the body that begins to vibrate sympathetically without your asking it to — a quiver at the wrist, a flicker at the shoulder, a small motion at the jaw. Thumbnail illustration for Bimanual Beat Secret Coupler. Bimanual Beat Secret Coupler Sit cross-legged or on the floor with hands on the knees. Track the moment your shoulders, jaw, or breath try to phase-lock the two hands together against your intent. Thumbnail illustration for Leg-Loop Standing-Wave Node. Leg-Loop Standing-Wave Node Sit on the floor, knees bent, soles together (a comfortable distance from the perineum). Locate the node of this body-string: it is not the feet but somewhere in the lower abdomen or sacrum. Thumbnail illustration for Slow-Heel-Drag Micro-Jitter Census. Slow-Heel-Drag Micro-Jitter Census Lie supine and slowly drag one heel along the floor toward the buttock, then push it back out, repeating at a near-imperceptible speed. Count the joints producing detectable micro-jitter and rank them by amplitude. Thumbnail illustration for Voluntary-Shiver Damping Map. Voluntary-Shiver Damping Map Lie supine, full body long. Repeat after a few minutes and check whether attention alone has moved any region from one column to the other. Thumbnail illustration for Wall-Pelvis Phase-Lock Ratios. Wall-Pelvis Phase-Lock Ratios Stand against a wall with the back lightly contacting it from sacrum to occiput, and produce small forward-back micro-shifts of the pelvis against the wall surface. Map the integer ratios at which lock occurs (1:1, 1:2, 2:3) and which one feels most thermodynamically stable,... Thumbnail illustration for Neck Ring-Down: Jaw, Tongue, Eyes. Neck Ring-Down: Jaw, Tongue, Eyes Prone, propped on elbows. Count the half-cycles until the head settles. Thumbnail illustration for Calf-Tremor Postural Inversion. Calf-Tremor Postural Inversion Stand with feet hip-width. Detect the postural moment of inversion — the instant when the short-range jitter starts dictating where the head goes — and identify what reorganizes itself one to two seconds after the inversion lands. Thumbnail illustration for Stilled-Leg Tremor Spectrum. Stilled-Leg Tremor Spectrum Lie supine. Thumbnail illustration for Postural Microseism Subtraction. Postural Microseism Subtraction Stand with feet hip-width, weight even. Find the amplitude at which the involuntary sway becomes louder than the voluntary one. Thumbnail illustration for Hum-vs-Silent Sternum Resonance. Hum-vs-Silent Sternum Resonance Sit upright on the floor, spine free. Compare the two sensations and locating the difference: the silent attempt will likely miss the resonance because the cavity's eigenfrequency depends on tissue tone you cannot voluntarily set. Thumbnail illustration for Arm Swing Negative Resonance. Arm Swing Negative Resonance Stand and let your arms hang. Thumbnail illustration for Stepped-Rock Sampling Limit. Stepped-Rock Sampling Limit Sit cross-legged and rock the torso forward and back at roughly one Hz, but deliberately break the cycle into discrete steps — sample-and-hold rather than continuous sweep. Find the step rate at which the discretization becomes invisible to the body — where it phase-locks to... Thumbnail illustration for Quadruped Four-Spring Eigenmode. Quadruped Four-Spring Eigenmode On hands and knees in a stable quadruped, sag the belly slightly and let the spine begin a slow vertical bobbing — not cat-cow shape change, but a quasi-rigid oscillation up and down. Thumbnail illustration for Passive Oscillation Inventory. Passive Oscillation Inventory Lie supine, completely passive, and inventory the involuntary oscillations you can detect: heartbeat in the chest, pulse in the carotid, a tremor in a relaxed quadriceps, the slow rise and fall of the abdomen. Identify the slowest involuntary oscillation, the fastest, and any... Thumbnail illustration for Quadrature-Arm Sternal Node Migration. Quadrature-Arm Sternal Node Migration Supine, arms at sides, set the right arm swinging at the shoulder in small arcs across the floor at a comfortable tempo, then start the left arm at the same tempo but deliberately a quarter-cycle out of phase. Locate the sternal site where the two arms' contributions cancel —... Thumbnail illustration for Bridge-Driven Lumbar Node Sweep. Bridge-Driven Lumbar Node Sweep Lie supine and produce a slow, repeated bridge motion: lifting the pelvis a few centimeters and lowering it on a steady cycle. Determine whether the node — the vertebra that does not move — migrates along the spine with frequency, locks to a single anatomical landmark... Thumbnail illustration for Symmetric Humeral Thoracic Node. Symmetric Humeral Thoracic Node Lie supine, arms abducted to roughly forty-five degrees, and oscillate both arms simultaneously in tiny internal-external rotations of the humerus at the same rate. Locate the node in the upper back: the vertebral level that stays motionless while everything above and below... Thumbnail illustration for Lock-Boundary Arbitration Camp. Lock-Boundary Arbitration Camp Lie supine, knees bent, feet flat. Thumbnail illustration for Foot-to-Pulse Subharmonic Lock. Foot-to-Pulse Subharmonic Lock Lie supine and choose a phase-lock target: the heart rate at the wrist or carotid is a built-in clock. Thumbnail illustration for Finger-to-Shoulder Recruitment Hysteresis. Finger-to-Shoulder Recruitment Hysteresis On your back, arms by your sides, start the smallest possible oscillation in the right hand — a finger curl-uncurl at maybe two cycles per second. Locate the exact frequency at which each joint snaps into the wave, and notice whether you can drop back below that threshold... Thumbnail illustration for Tongue-Press Neck Damping Class. Tongue-Press Neck Damping Class Sit upright. Observe what happens at the atlanto-occipital joint on release: a single settle, or multiple micro-rebounds.

Fire

Space