Hi dude,
I haven't read it (and realistically probably won't have time in the foreseeable future), but I do know that all rear net skills support front net skills; that's the fundamental idea of doing things in the right order.

N2 skills like balance particularly help unconscious judgment, emotional stability (N3) and N4/5 organisational skills, so that's going to be very useful for later frontal development and all that follows thereafter. But the thing it will develop first is spatial awareness, orientation and navigation.

Most human senses in urban environments are badly compromised, perhaps the one that's deteriorated most is our onboard GPS which most of us don't even know we're supposed to have. It's a constant source of amusement to me that humanity has spent so much time and energy replacing that natural sense of place and direction with shitloads of machinery while all the other creatures around us just carry on not getting lost :  )
Best,
AR

Sakiro wrote:
Can you explain this exercise a little more? you mean just go around you street and start "exploring" and drawing along you are walking and turn around your body and walk, and turn around your map to work your orientation skills etc?

Yeh, pretty much. Just start by charting the local journeys you make most often, and put in the landmarks as you go. You can count paces if you want to.  Try to head in the direction of the nearest natural landscape. You end up with something like this:
http://www.winnie-the-pooh.kwakkers.com/map.php

And how about Mental rotation exercises? complement this skills too? If the rotation is 2d images trains N2 , and 3d trains N3?

When you are doing 2D exercises you are training up 2D skills, but when you are doing 3D exercises you are training up both 2D and 3D skills. Every network should incorporate all previous skills in relation to its own. “N5” should really be thought of as “N1+N2+N3+N4+N5”. Nobody ever gets this right away  :  )
Best,
AR

Mnemo Wrote:
Here an abstract about the benfits of sign language and chinese characters on spacial memory. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14738343

Yeh I've heard this said of Japanese and other pictographic languages. I can understand the signing languages improving spatial ability because of the link between gesture and meaning (association) but it's harder to see the written language connection because regardless of the language, all our letters are abstract signs with associated meanings. It sounds like the pictographics are closer to core eidetics than Occidental symbols; but not knowing enough about Oriental languages probably mutes my understanding here (but hold onto that word -Oriental)  :  )

And here is a supliment of Magnetite ie. iron ore oxide that, in nature helps most animals orient. They ingest it as a result of diggin for bugs and root. These days we tend to wash our bugs and roots to the idea is that we have less of this substance than we once did. Remarkable verbal coincidence there: orient and ore. Spooky  http://www.naturesalternatives.com/lc/lcmagnetite.html

I don't know why, but nobody ever listens to this: Don't trust any site promoting a product.

This is apparently fabricated nonsense based on notes about one or two species who store intracellular magnetite. There is no evidence I can find of it occurring in humans or of it being linked with our orientation abilities. Iron in ourselves puts the haem in oxyhaemoglobin and is necessary for a lot of things. Iron oxide though is a result of free radical damage to iron by oxygen, and is normally called rust. Why would we want to eat supplementary free radicals?

There's also no evidence that paleolithic dudes didn't wash their bugs & roots -I mean, why wouldn't they? Monkeys do.

There IS a lot of evidence that we can't digest iron supplements at all unless they are colloidal, as is the case with most minerals & vits.

On word coincidence, I wonder why orientation appears to associate with the Orient, with no mention of Occidentation?  Maybe the Orientals had a good reputation for navigation or agility, before the Occidentals sussed it out? Anybody got time to research this?
Best,
AR

Hi dude,
Yes it does, very much so. I originally considered that no similar use was ever made of “Occident” because there was no complementary metaphoric concept (ie, it was unnecessary), but on thinking about it further, there is such a concept. We use “The West”  archetypally to mean a great transition; death of the old and birth of the new, Renewal etc. “Into the West”...has come to mean “Beyond the limits of our sight”; ships passing over the horizon, and “Beyond the Rim” is another rendition.

...so I look up 'occident' and find:
"western part" (of the heavens or earth), from Old French occident (12c.) or directly from Latin occidentem (nominative occidens) "western sky, sunset, part of the sky in which the sun sets," noun use of adjective meaning "setting," from present participle of occidere "fall down, go down".
...Interestingly, the word is connected to 'occasion'  :  )
Best,
AR