Gait Analysis Via Wildlife Cam

Image courtesy Amazon.

The wildlife cam I set up to catch images of coyotes instead caught video of my own walk.

Gait analysis (the study of walking patterns) is increasingly being used to diagnose neurodegenerative disorders like dementia and — God forbid this blog post is foreshadowing (God forbid. *Kinehora.) —my gait analysis reveals that, at the very least, I need help. I am suffering from the 2025 human knowledge worker affliction of extreme inelegance*.

My belly sticks out like a pot while my upper back counterbalances as right shoulder-leaning hunch. In my shortened Hobbit-trot of a stride, there is not one moment of confident cat walk or deer stalk. Its all nerves. I walk like my body is a thing that I’m piloting. A submersible tethered to its mothership. Like “Mr. Duffy” who, James Joyce wrote, “lived a short distance from his body.”

Me, in my body, peering out, or Terry Kerby, the head of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, peering through the porthole of a Pisces V research submarine. They are one and the same re: smiling through obvious discomfort with our surroundings. Credit Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

Is everyone so tight? Dang. I know text neck is epidemic. [Enjoy a NIH-funded study while you still can. Also, you can work on having more positive self-talk this study showed, instead of calling yourself a pot-bellied inelegant galoot. Ex: “I am learning to carry myself with the slow delicacy of a West End deer.” I am, actually.

Extreme inelegance is disorder that animals don’t have. There is a cure for us uptight upright apes. It’s practicing moving more like an animal (and less like twelve boop boop beep friends are going to be assigned to me by Mark Zuckerberg). I’ve started learning the Deer Frolics movements of qigong.

[embed]Look at my antlers.

Watchout wildlife cam! Next time I see myself on video of no coyotes I hope it’s ̶r̶e̶f̶o̶r̶m̶e̶d̶ ̶k̶n̶u̶c̶k̶l̶e̶d̶r̶a̶g̶g̶e̶r̶ suburban woodland nymph with balance, slowness, focus, and ease of movement as I move across the landscape of the West End with the foxes, coyotes, and deer.