Movement Research Notes (Vol. 3)
The Hill as the great metaphor for LIFE: when climbing up think down, when falling down think up... in this way we stay humble and grounded when rising and optimistic/hopeful when falling. The peak is not important in itself, but the journey of falling and rising most definitely is. We spend relatively little time AT THE TOP of anything in life. Success is short and trivial. The journey there and back again, however, is crucial!
Endurance as an Inevitability & a Practice: it is an emergent quality than invisibly deepens and enriches one ' s life. Only with observation and awareness do the small habits of resting, recovering, detaching become acknowledged as equal to the 'doing ' itself. As a wise man once said: if you're always a butterfly, then you're never a butterfly.
How many hours are you willing to rest and retreat in order to bring the very best out of yourself?
Dancing & Fighting (the end game): It could be that all physical preparedness, mindfulness, therapy, sleep, nutrition, training etc etc is in service of the ' end games ' of life. AKA, what life is REALLY about. Those games are the (partner) dance and the fight. With competition, and with harmonious connection with another, we experience the truest and most alive essences of all that life has to offer.
Yes... secretly... maybe everyone simply wishes to be dancing or fighting or both.
Walking as the GREAT PERFORMANCE: there is a great saying in Hebrew (that I can't re-find online), taught by the great Ido Portal - it means 'to do it as if God was watching '. When we walk, knowingly or otherwise, it is as if God or Nature or the Universe is watching. It' s a free and very attentive audience that gives everything back to us that we 'd ever need. It' s why I stopped creating performances a couple of years back - I realised that running races, for me, are a more sure-fire way to get the raw experience of being SEEN by the world.
Art as a Fiction that is greater than Reality: a Butoh teacher (now passed) taught me this concept, and it keeps re-finding me. When we lead, facilitate, hold space for others, we are merely attempting to pass time in the best way possible. Ideally it should improve upon the everyday experiences, and be 'better' than what may have spontaneously arrived otherwise.
After all... we, as humans, are mostly creatures of habit. Magic requires discipline, structure and some amount of preparation perhaps...?
States Becoming Traits: quality over quantity // the conscious experience of climbing (or descending) a hill with full attention, of sprinting with full presence, of bring full awareness to a coordination task or a heavy backpack will remain ingrained as a go-to ‘tool’ that we can always return to, and the trait of ‘attention’ will strengthen with each quality experience, no matter how small (eg. the short 15-min workouts are just as important as the 2-hour class or the marathon)
Shadow Careers: what is your life a metaphor for? are you living the ‘shadow’ version of what you ACTUALLY wish to be living? eg. the English teacher that secretly always wanted to write a novel or play herself. Be honest... are you / we doing the more scary thing of going for the real dream? (the biggest fear of all might actually be to succeed!) (Source: The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield)
Being Amateur / Professional: what do those terms mean to you? do you enjoy the perks of being an amateur? or are you seeking to be more professional in what you do? (eg. to earn more money, work with more focus and clarity, scale-up your practice). Deciding which realms of our life we wish to be amateur, and which are professional can help us to practice better and avoid wasted responsibilities and tasks... (Source: Turning Pro, by Steven Pressfield)
Bottoms of the Best Ladders: a wise man once said: ‘it’s better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than halfway up one you don’t’. This has become an important mantra for my life and helps me to trust my bold pursuits, even if I’m not excelling in those areas yet. The right ladder brings humility, growth and the beginner’s mindset / the wrong ladder brings laziness, delusions of grandeur and over-confidence. Aka, let us choose to be students always...
Fundamentals: raising the floor as well as the ceiling // you can never work enough on your fundamentals // when we raise the floor we also raise the ceiling (naturally). These might be: walking/running, meditation, reading, writing/journalling, physical preparedness, dancing/fighting/competing, real food, clean water and plenty of sleep
“you don’t rise to the level of our goals, you fall to the level of your systems”
(James Clear, from Atomic Habits)
“first imitate, then create”
(Stephen King)
Some more sources to move You, I and US forwards:
The War of Art (Steven Pressfield) / Body and Earth (Andrea Olsen) / Activating Cities (circadian.co) / The Axis Syllabus (Frey Faust) / Wanderlust (Rebecca Solnit)
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