Tempory transmission

I had many laughs while having a turn with Jenny today, although I couldn't inhibit reacting on some of her thoughts about thinking. The release we achieved together threw quite off balance, it's still not easy for me to sustain direction/observation when too many new/strange/'wrong' sensations come to awareness. The simple anatomical fact she made me aware of turned out as full on hit. Jenny reminded me that the gluts attach to the lower back (iliac crest). Now as I write this it seems obvious that the forward shift of my hips in the habitual conditions past needed some extra work of the gluteals, and I need to integrate this information the next time I feel 'wobbly'.

During the group work we listened with our hands to different backs while producing sounds. I still wonder whether I will be able to sense another body without conceptualising the information in some visualised way, especially when we are asked to verbalise our observations in some way. I simply need patience to wait will happen after enough repetition.

I went through my self-chosen challenge to present my own poetry, and I'm quite happy that I did. I felt still quite nervous, yet managed not to feel 'stupid' about myself.

Anatomy

I had a turn with Bronwyn which extended yesterdays play with 'space within the head'. She asked me to direct my face away from the lower bottom of my skull. The perception of sensations in my head and neck area starts to get more subtle, yet I still misinterpret how my head moves in the relation to the body.

My legs feel recently quite often 'twisted', I suspect more flexibility and agility of the muscles in the pelvic bowl links to this faulty sensory appreciation. My legs felt a bit sore as well, I wonder whether this relates to the higher position of the unicycle seat.

We continued the exploration of suboccipital muscles, Michael and Alysha talked us through the larynx and pharynx. I got out the tensegrity toy when Jack had some questions indicating a static, building block idea of the structure of our bodies.

OCD

I had a turn with David, after some interesting observations in semi-supine. I still tend to react a lot on enviromental stimuli, but it's getting easier get my focus back. I developed the habit of placing my feet in a position that tends to curve the lower back, when placed closer to the bum I can release much easier into the ground.

I wonder whether I managed to maintain my directions during the turn with David. Talking poses currently a big challenge to me, and I want to get back to work on this more. Kaz reminded me of this in the mini-group we did. I think it wasn't too bad during our book discussion, no sinking feeling this time, and hopefully some audible full stops.

I'm glad we're doing more hands-on, and my fingers seem to get more sensitive. I still want to learn to use the whole hands more, palms, fingers and intention working together. Too many memories and thoughts stray around when I put hands on, looks like I could do with less thought and clearer intention.

I worked for 10 minutes with Alisha in the second turn time. I get a better idea about the diversity of bodies and body pattern, but it's still hard to have an inspiration where to start to work. So I got back to a lot of talking, acutely aware how much I challenged Alisha with working and talking. The way talking is integrated in teaching came up when I was working with Andrea. I explained my experimental plan to her. She didn't understand me, and responded quite disencouraging. I realised that this happened to me some times before during lessons, I certainly have to take of how I verbally interact with students.

Jenny suggested in the final group thinking the brain forward from the skull, with some amazing results. How do I 'think' the brain away from the skull? It seems like (conscious) thoughts are either predominantly conceptual or predominantly visual, but our work seems to create a new class of perceptual engram. Or maybe, just brings us back to the state of playful exploration of physicality before speaking.

More Back

This time I changed my plans myself - when Marigold arrived and had no one to work with, I moved from David to her for my turn. We worked on maintaining the back and using the arms in an integrated way.

I spend most waiting time working with others, first Anne, then Jen and Cal. I like putting my hands on the upper part of the chest. Most 'older' students and teachers move a lot in this area, and tuning into the rhythm of another humans breath satisfy my end-gaining for 'sensation'. I still forget my ordering, however, moving my arms connected gets easier.

We didn't put hands on in the last group, instead we explored crawling. Taking it slow, maintaining an activated back and keeping the weight mainly on the lower limbs allowed nice animal like movement.

Cozy friday

Only four students came in this friday, making this friday a relaxed and productive day at school. Matt did some chairwork with me, before we played around with moving within a monkey. Now, as I begin to understand what the monkey is about, I don't like thinking about monkey anymore (although I haven't found a new word for attitude connected to a monkey).

The second group dealt with table work, providing the pleasant mix of collecting experience of hands-on work with getting plenty of work done on oneself. I still notice the impulse of 'zoning out', but with Matt's help I managed to maintain my directions much better. I become more aware about different 'classes' of stimuli - the stimulus (and connected habits) of the teacher-student situation, of doing a specific procedure (getting into a monkey, sending the hands away from the back), of having a living human being in front of me, of dealing with the emotions arising with different persons.

Trusting the process becomes more and more important for me, yet it feels like the speed of change has increased this term.

Faith healer

Without David, timing goes even more out of the window than usual. I'm still figuring out how to stay more in emotionally laden situations, I might simply experiment with asking the teacher 'to push some buttons'. Penny seemed rather confused what I wanted to work on, but still managed to maintain a nice up in me while working together.

O, how much I'd like to ride the wave of gravity,
Currently it feels more like creeping insanity.
I don't blame distraction,
just habitual reaction.
Yet where is the satisfaction
of some successful direction?
By giving up my strive
I get ready to arrive
in this very moment of time,
tuning into the present's chime.

As long as I stay in motion,
allowing each and every emotion,
the moment is mine
and I feel fine.

I didn't do poetry in the performance session (maybe I should?), but instead got into Alex Harvey's 'Faith healer'. The small audience, only Penny, Jane and Sarah, made it easy to get more expressive while singing. However, unless I find some guitar backing I might as well increase the level of stimulus by more exposure of myself.

Unexpected

AT can teach to react adequately in any situation, much more than getting in and out of a chair, or releasing specific areas while laying in semi-supine. Our reactions are implicitly holistic - although we might only guess as to why a person blushes during a conversation, we can safely assume that the blush is more than a physical phenomenon.

I looked forward to a turn with Ann, but she didn't arrive in time for the quick-ease, and changed the order of turns a bit. I asked her about that, and she offered me a turn either in the break or after school. I reacted a lot when she told me about the change of plans, yet agreed on a later session.

I took me a while to direct my attention away from the change of plans, and towards observing some fellow students while cycling. I had a bit of a table turn with Ferry, so I didn't have to go 'turnless' into the group.

The anatomy session was like so often a mixture between dull facts, nice anecdotes and some group work deepening our topic, muscles of head-neck region. Our group gave examples of misuse while speaking, demonstrating poking the head out to make a point, gasping, and shyly talking towards the ground.

Having a turn after school went against my habits, and it was the first time it happened for me. Ann went with me to the back room, and we spend most time talking in a very insightful way. She reflected on my reactions earlier, and lots of lightbulbs went off in my head. Interactions are driven by intentions. If I manage to keep up my intention while just observing my reaction to emotional stimuli, a 'problematic' situation can have a positive outcome. Brooming emotions under the carpet, or riding blindly their waves just makes matters worse. Like so often, happiness lies in the golden middle.

More tensegrity

School started again with 15 minutes quick-ease, walking into the hands of teachers and older students to get some up on the fly. I worked with Jenny on staying more present throughout my body, but I still can't easily let go of expectations.

The book discussion veered a bit off, without getting too excited. Each of us has an idiosyncratic understanding of Alexander owns writings, which seem to reflect a bit in which phase of the process we are.

I enjoyed the hands-on sessions a lot, although I still don't register too much with my hands. I stand less in my way, though, and my arms certainly move lots easier than during my first explorations. I noticed in Libby's group how much I got used to a specific relation of my hands, playing around with different ways gave me plenty of new insights.

At home, I stumbled across a new idea for a sculpture, a tensegrity icosahedron. It is symmetrical, and stackable (I will have to try this for myself....). I found different examples on the web, and experimented with different methods to assemble the structure. I started off with rubber bands in a variety of configurations, and lots of them got destroyed in the process. At some point it looked like I succeeded...



I managed to tune the model to give it more depth, and nearly collapsed it in the process. I fixed it, and thought about the right length for nylon cords. I had to take care not too overstretch any rubber, which happened just two or three times.



After experimenting with 40cm and 50cm loops, having models collapsing over and over, I prepared 45cm loops, got some unused rubber rings and started over again. Once all nylon cords were attached, I cut the rubber away, and, hooray!, I had a stable model in my hands!



I wanted to stand the model on only two legs, and used magnetic repulsion to keep it balanced. It can swing a few millimeters, blowing against the struts suffices to get it moving for just under a minute or so.

Back on track

As I still don't trust my sensory awareness too much, I didn't really know how well I fared without school and without semi supine. All in all, I think unicycling did a good job in advancing me on my way, although I nearly forgot how much more I gain during a turn when I feel less urged to talk.

The turn with Marigold gave me a good idea about working much more subtle, especially when we moved our hands together. Although my visualisation skills feel quite underdeveloped, my attempts to visualise movement/release/extension work out somehow, and seem to prevent extra effort.

Yoga felt okay. It's getting easier for me to let go of end-gaining, and stay with easy movements, instead of going to and through pain to make the postures look good. We worked with movements from the hip joints, and continued doing so in the group work as well. I'm not too sure how much distance (if any) existed in my body map between sitbones and hip joints, but it certainly increased today. Bending forwards towards a ball felt just wrong after I released my hips more, there's still the strong habit of judging movements by specific tension patterns.

Parts of the brain

A modern genius

While looking for ideas how to 'animate' sculptures, I came across the experiments of Theo Jansen. Fascinating.