Everyday Poise: Ambam the Gorilla

There’s a gorilla at a British zoo who walks upright like a human. His name is Ambam, and he’s been all over youtube since he first started walking upright a few years ago. Check out this video:

Ambam strikes me as a very clear picture of the process that humans likely followed in switching from anthropoid (walking on feet and knuckles – like a gorilla) to full bipedal. He’s in the middle of the transition, and so we can learn a lot about our own use by watching him. Let me point out a few specific things that we can see in the video above.

First, check out his standing use (starts about 10 seconds in). If you look closely, you’ll notice that his hips are pressed forward a bit, and he seems to have a little bit of a hollow in his lower back. You can see this in the wrinkles and folds of his skin in the area between his hips and ribs in the back. This is an exaggerated version of a pattern I see in a lot of students, where the hips are pressed forward and the back is collapsed down. My theory on this pattern is that it’s comfortable because we’re basically resting on our bones – pushing the hips forward takes the hip sockets to the end of their range of motion, where they can lock into place, and collapsing down in the back allows the spine and ribs to sort of “sit” on the pelvis. One of the misconceptions that I end up discussing with a lot of students is the idea that releasing tension is not the same thing as letting go of all your muscles. If you actually let go of all your muscles, you’d end up in a puddle on the floor. So to remain upright while letting go of all your muscles, you are forced to rely on your skeletal structure to support you, which puts you into this position of hips pushed forward and back collapsed down. Ambam in this video is a particularly good illustration of this because he has just recently started walking upright. He doesn’t possess the muscle tone necessary to support his back in this upright position, because he hasn’t been doing it long enough to develop that tone. So his body is forced to settle onto its skeleton, giving us that same pattern.

Now let’s look at his walking use (starts about 28 seconds in). He’s a bit pitched forward from the hips (probably a remnant of walking on his knuckles, when his back would be forward from his hips), and he sways side to side a fair amount, but you can really see that his head is leading him forward. His head, neck and back are in a well-coordinated relationship, even when performing a movement that his body has not yet adapted to doing. Alexander would say he has a very clear Primary Control. This slight pitch forward is much more useful for walking, since while in motion he can’t simply rest on his bones. We could even think of this as a slight overcompensation for the collapsing back that he does while standing. What he needs (and what we need as humans) is to find a happy medium between the two.

One last point – when the reporter asks his keeper why he thinks Ambam might have started walking like this, the keeper points to the fact that when Ambam is walking in that footage, he is carrying a log in each hand. The keeper posits that Ambam realized that walking upright allowed him to walk with his hands full, and thus gives him more options for movement and more potential for growth and development. The next time you see a small child learning to stand, pay attention to the intent behind their movements. A few years ago I was visiting with a friend while her young daughter played on the floor. The last time I had seen her, the daughter was at the developmental stage of clambering up to standing, needing to hold on to something to stabilize herself but able to get onto her feet. In this visit, I watched her go into a squat on both feet, and use her leg muscles to bring her up to standing with a deliberation that hadn’t been present on their last visit. But what was the most intriguing about this movement was the obvious intent behind it. She, like Ambam, had a toy in each hand, and clearly wanted to stand up and bring them over to mommy but didn’t want to have to put them down in order to get up. So her leg muscles “plugged in,” and she was able to stand without using her hands. It is this kind of clear intention that is so apparent in babies and young children, and seeing it present in Ambam’s decision to walk upright suggests that this intention may be the driving force behind all major developmental milestones, not just on a personal level, but on an evolutionary level.

Forward and Up! is a Pittsburgh-based private practice offering quality instruction in the Alexander Technique in a positive and supportive environment.