Instructional Scaffolding #1

Feeling overwhelmed is akin to falling. When one falls there is a moment of suspension and an act of release, a certain surrender of agency combined with a confrontation with the unknown. The phenomena called the hypnic jerk1, which is the abrupt awakening when one is just on the edge of sleep, produces this feeling. The hypnic jerk, is an echo of our primate past when we spent most of our time in trees and falling meant being eaten. I see gravity as the substantiation of risk.