In A Leg to Stand On, neurologist Oliver Sacks recounts his uncanny experiences when he severely tore the quadriceps, tendons, and ligaments in his left leg during a hiking accident. Bedridden for weeks following surgery, he lost all sensation and access to voluntary movement in the leg as it was healing. Even when the cast was removed, he confessed that the left leg “looked and felt uncannily alien – a lifeless replica attached to my body.”
While the surgeons had successfully reconnected and repaired the damaged flesh, Sacks found that “what was disconnected was not merely nerve and muscle but, in consequence of this, the natural and innate unity of body and mind.” His lack of connection to the left leg became acute when, at last, the physical therapists helped him to stand and commanded him to walk.
“How could I stand on a nothing … how could I ‘walk’ when I had forgotten how to walk,” he wondered. Finally, the first step was made artificially, by advancing the leg, cautiously, empirically, “as if operating a robotic contraption.”
Then suddenly, Sacks “remembered walking’s natural, unconscious rhythm and melody. There was an abrupt and absolute leap at this moment, from the awkward, artificial, mechanical walking – of which every step had to be consciously counted, projected, and undertaken – to an unconscious, natural-graceful, musical movement.”
Interestingly, Sacks also uses musical metaphors to describe normal walking. His story illustrates that Laban’s notion of movement harmony captures something about the essence of voluntary movement. Healthy movement is harmonious. As Sacks found when he recovered full use of his leg – there was “no cogitation, no preparation, no deliberation… no ‘trying.’” The idea, the impulse, the action, were all one.”