Across neurodevelopmental reflexes, manual therapy, and tendon-muscle pattern systems, similar whole-body coordinative families recur.
I organize them into four functional bins: anterior/posterior, lateral, rotational, and vertical/axial.
One useful way to understand these bins is through the sensory role of fascia. Emerging fascia research suggests that the body-wide fascial network is not merely passive wrapping, but a richly innervated sensory matrix involved in proprioception, nociception, interoception, and whole-body coordination.
In that sense, these four bins can also be read as recurring ways the fascial web organizes sensation, tension, support, and movement under load.
A simple way to distinguish the bins
Anterior / Posterior: How the body protects, opens, braces, and propels.
Lateral: How the body shifts, leans, and manages one-sided support.
Rotational: How the body turns, spirals, and organizes contralateral movement.
Vertical / Axial: How the body stacks, bears load, rebounds, and organizes against gravity.
Anterior / Posterior
Survival vs Propulsion
Geometric emphasis: Flexion and extension; front-body / back-body dominance. In plain language: this is the body organizing through folding forward, opening backward, or bracing between the two.
Reflex / neuro flavor: Protective flexion, extensor support, withdrawal versus opening. Plainly: the nervous system is deciding whether to curl in, brace up, or move forward with confidence.
Autonomic flavor: Guarding and bracing often become most obvious here. Clinically this zone is often associated with sympathetic load, though not in a strict one-to-one proven way. In everyday terms: this is where stress often becomes visible as clenching, tightening, or over-controlling.
TCM / traditional analogue: Best fit is the anterior/posterior tendon-muscle or sinew-channel relationship, especially where flexion and extension patterns dominate. Put simply: this is the front-versus-back organization of the body’s tension lines.
Manual therapy analogue: Flexion/extension dysfunction patterns; anterior collapse versus posterior bracing. Plainly: the person may either fold and drop forward, or lock and hold from behind.
Likely gait / posture expression: Forward head/chest guard, abdominal gripping, posterior chain over-recruitment, shortened stride, rigid push-off. What it can look like: a body that seems guarded, tight, and more concerned with protection than fluid forward movement.
Lateral
Support vs Shift
Geometric emphasis: Side-bending, weight shift, unilateral support, left-right load management. In plain language: this is how the body manages leaning, side support, and transferring weight from one side to the other.
Reflex / neuro flavor: Lateral stabilization, one-sided shortening versus contralateral lengthening. Plainly: one side grips or shortens while the other side lengthens to keep you upright.
Autonomic flavor: Often linked to compensation, pelvic hike/drop, and side-body holding. The autonomic relationship is present but indirect. In everyday terms: the body often solves the problem by hanging on one side, shifting, or compressing into a familiar support strategy.
TCM / traditional analogue: Best fit is lateral tendon-muscle or myofascial sling organization, especially side-body stabilizing relationships. Put simply: this is the side-wall support system of the body.
Manual therapy analogue: Sidebending patterns, pelvic/listing asymmetries, and frontal-plane compensation. Plainly: the person may tilt, hike, drop, or list to one side in a repeatable way.
Likely gait / posture expression: One hip hangs or hikes, rib-pelvis approximation on one side, Trendelenburg-like bias, asymmetric stance dwell time. What it can look like: a body that lives on one side more than the other.
Rotational
Orient vs Organize
Geometric emphasis: Axial turning, contralateral patterning, spirals, head-trunk dissociation. In plain language: this is the body’s ability to twist, spiral, and turn without losing coordination.
Reflex / neuro flavor: ATNR fits best here: head turn drives ipsilateral extension and contralateral flexion, producing orienting and scanning asymmetry. Plainly: when the head turns, the whole body can get pulled into a one-sided look-and-organize pattern.
Autonomic flavor: Often associated with vigilance, orienting, scanning, and directional bias. In everyday terms: this is the which-way-do-I-turn, track, or attend layer.
TCM / traditional analogue: Closest fit is the oblique or spiral tendon-muscle / sinew-channel relationship, especially where rotation couples with side organization. Put simply: this is the spiral wiring of the body.
Manual therapy analogue: Rotation/sidebending coupling, spiral strain, contralateral sling dysfunction. Plainly: the body may twist as a unit, twist unevenly, or lose the smooth alternation between left and right.
Likely gait / posture expression: Head-led gait, asymmetric arm swing, thorax-pelvis dissociation problems, one-sided propulsion, twist-and-brace walking. What it can look like: the person turns, but the movement is pulled off-center, asymmetrical, or over-braced.
Vertical / Axial
Load vs Rebound
Geometric emphasis: Up-down loading, decompression/compression, anti-gravity support, stacking. In plain language: this is how the body carries itself against gravity.
Reflex / neuro flavor: Righting reactions, postural tone regulation, axial support, global tonic organization. Plainly: this is the body’s central hold-yourself-up system.
Autonomic flavor: Often reflects overall arousal and tone level: collapse, buoyancy, stiffness, rebound capacity. In everyday terms: does the body feel springy and lifted, or compressed and heavy?
TCM / traditional analogue: Better discussed through postural support, wei qi, axial regulation, and whole-body tendon-muscle tensioning than through one single channel. Put simply: this is the body’s overall vertical support and energetic holding field.
Manual therapy analogue: Axial compression/decompression, balanced tension, and whole-body postural support. Plainly: this is less about twisting and more about whether the system stacks, compresses, rebounds, or collapses.
Likely gait / posture expression: Bounce versus collapse, springiness, shock absorption quality, stacked versus compressed posture, and the ability to float over stance. What it can look like: either a body with lift and spring, or one that drops, compresses, and loses buoyancy.