The Accumulation of Vulnerability

Both spontaneous injuries and chronic degeneration can be the result of the incremental accumulation of vulnerability due to numerous, and often unrecalled, incidents and adversities. 

From an adapted vantage we further adapt, a new configuration integrated into the pre-existing matrix of adaptive changes. Over time this tends to become an adaptive tangle, with all of the adaptive behaviors interdependent. 

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Just as a person who suffers a sudden heart attack has been steadily building toward it, we go through our lives making subtle, silent adaptive reconfigurations that mask our vulnerabilities while contributing to them.  

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A rope that is tangled is not available for use because it is used up by the tangle. When unraveling a tangled rope, you must first locate the free ends and untie the top knot first. Now there is more available rope and less of a knot, and the next underlying knot is now the new top knot.

 

In a similar way, there is an order of operations that works best in resolving the accumulation of neuromuscular complexity. 

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We live with our vulnerabilities all of the time and encounter them randomly 

When we injure ourselves seemingly doing nothing unusual, we might have been pre-stressed for the injury to occur. This can happen suddenly and surprisingly. We just happened to line up two weak links in a stabilization chain.