A skill for life

In less than two week I will attend my graduation celebration, one week before I'm officially graduated, and definitely while I'm still walking on crutches. The 'smart' goal I set myself, however, seems more and more unachievable. The lack of reason and compassion in man-made laws in this underpopulated corner of the planet means that I might be escorted on crutches to the plane outside the country, but maybe I'll have some magical-mystical recovery until then.

I don't regret to the slightest my decision to become a teacher for Alexander Technique. I learned many things about myself and the human form in general, and how to stay more conscious in a variety of constellations. However, I'm yet skilled enough to handle the uncertainty I'm facing in my immediate future with poise, ease and grace.

Migration belongs to human life since mankind left Africa about 60.000 years ago. Only isolation, either geographically, physically or politically, interferes with the continuation, inspiration and enrichment that comes with human traffic. Looking for a better environment to improve one's life seems like a natural instinct, and, ironically, the country I want to live is founded by migrants. I can't find solace in the fact that almost all 'nations' now thoroughly prevent man's wanderlust. Most goods sold on the global market can commute much more easily than the humans that provide them. GM seeds were allowed to have a lasting impact on the entire Australian biosphere, while a boatful of asylum seekers causes a media panic, 'national security' is in danger.

Of course, I don't claim that migrants have been a welcomed lot throughout history. Yet nowadays the ill effects of incest on our genetic make-up is well established. Diversity contributes to survival, isolation leads mostly to degeneration. Although the fair-skinned mutants within the human race claim superiority,
their survival requires an unsustainable amount of resources. If a joy-ride on a boat goes wrong, depending on the arbitrary place of birth you will either be rescued by heroes, or captured by the military 'defending national borders'.

So taking the advice to redefine my goal makes only little sense to me. Alexander's dream to bring his principles into general education remains far away as long as his profession isn't even particularly recognised by the authorities of his country of birth. When it comes to at least corporate acceptance, the UK seems much further, although I doubt that AT teachers can be trained by self-study via the internet. Australia is a sufficiently small society to create and sustain some drive to improve society, although it will certainly take at least a handful committed people to bring a better use and direction into our society.

Communication and travel allows us to experience this planet as a whole, creating a truly global consciousness. Laws and customs of society evolved much slower than technology progressed, a conundrum imposed on every 'civilisation' throughout history. The selection process for laws ignores evolutionary ideas completely,  and therefor reflects neither what's needed nor what's desired for more overall happiness.

From an evolutionary perspective, the diversity of laws throughout different societies provides plenty of survival strategies. The fascist idea of "One law for all" translates more or less into evolutionary suicide. Most legal system base on fear, instead of being motivated by organising respectful interactions between responsible beings. Knowledge of and adherence to the dominating rule set replaces responsibility in submissive societies, which honor ideas like war heroism and revenge.

As an anarchist, I don't like lawlessness. If this sounds contradictory to you, you might be just ill-informed about the concept of no government. If laws make sense, enforcement is hardly needed, self-regulation provides conformity. And allows for easy adaption to changed circumstances. Organised crime organisations and secret societies operate on a limited yet accepted rule set and survived much longer than most official state-like entity (with maybe the exception of the City of London) or 'nations'.

The attempt to create uniform legal circumstances for corporate operations creates environmental and civil rights nightmares. The lack of transparency hides the corrupt connections between governments and corporations, and in case this anti-social activities become known, the structure of the systems that empowered and instill these behaviours remains unchanged. Intransparent bureaucracy breeds irresponsibility, ignorance and violence. The illusion of democracy in the Western World prevents evolution as mankind as a whole, and just maintains global injustice in unknown dimensions.

While a lot of people have at least sympathy for my desire to live in this country, they seem surprised about how difficult it can be to migrate to their country.  I feel owned by the passport assigned to me by my place of birth, a slave to the nation, chained by taxes and laws restricting personal freedom. I have trouble maintaining my self-esteem when I get reminded that I'm not deemed worthy living in this country. While I have acquired enough local knowledge to devise strategies how to start my teaching here or in another big Australian city, I face the dire perspective to start all over again.

End-gaining

When it comes to a typical 'wrong-doing', end-gaining is the catch-all phrase in the Alexandrian world. 'The ends justify the means' is a commonly used adage and unfortunately often the attitude towards political and societal affairs. Luckily, at least while putting hands on other people, I learned a lot about my end gaining habits. I learned so much that I'm convinced that I can find more end-gaining habits of mine until the day I die.

When Marjorie Fern visited our school, she brought one of my favorite toys with her. It's balls made of hundred of rubbery strings, in bright colours, easy to catch and interesting to feel. I played many games illustrating some of Alexander's ideas, and I like the playful atmosphere created by simple games. When David told me about the workshop with 35 high school kids I immediately thought of using these funny balls.

I went on an internet search after coming home, and the some iterations in my search (from soft and fluffy via stringy to Koosh) I found some Australian online shops offering Koosh balls. Amazingly, these balls were sold as stress reliever, as toys and in a shop for camping gear. The adventure supply shop had the best offer, and so I thought: I want them, I order them. 75mm sounded a bit small to me, but still acceptable, so I typed an order round about $100 in and diligently supplied my credit card details.

I gained my end, the rush of the online shopping experience still exhilarating me a bit. I checked postage and shopping condition, whether encryption was used, but not the actual catalogue of the shop. I compromised already enough, I ignored a better prize offshore, or waiting for sold-out supplies to be restocked. Then I decided to browse the site where I ordered again, finding my way through the idiosyncracies in a mixed bag of online shop.

The choice of products of this camping/hiking/adventure supply outlet surprised me a lot. Only in juggling stores I might have come across the category of 'throwables', and I was stunned by the amount of items listed. Besides Koosh balls, they offer a lot fun things to throw and catch. I caught the item I ordered at the end of the first list, and checked the second page.

OMG, OMFG! Sets of 6! Okay, calm down, let's see what else they offer. 90mm Koosh balls. Oops. Sets of 6. A set of 20 in its own bag. Hmpf. Like in a lot of good shops, if the quantity goes up the prize goes down. A quick calculation makes it obvious to me that I would have ordered totally different if I had checked the range of merchandise first. Bloody end-gainer!

I worked in the computer industry, and know about the finality of electronic transactions. It'll take hours to write an email explaining that something went wrong, to sort out this situation with an better outcome for me by the means of the internet. I think Amazon let's you change orders before they ship them, yet smaller shops even let you order (and pay for) out-of-stock items. A 1-300 number prominently shows on top of the screen, so I inhibit my self-pity about my end-gaining and call their number.

So I explained my stuff-up to Damien, and asked him whether I could change my order. I guess that he pulled up my order on his computer while we were talking. He seemed relieved when I indicated that I happily still order for the same amount, and promised to take care of this within 15 minutes after our call. We chatted for about 10 minutes, and I realised that my end-gained order transformed into another encounter of random friendliness by strangers.

It didn't even take 15 minutes for the email with the changed order, and instead of two dozens Koosh balls I'll now get 30, and some bags to put them in as well. I still have no idea whether the delivery will arrive in time before the workshop, though I'm quite confident. Anyway, I enjoyed the great service this little call brought with it, and gained some interesting and fun insights.

Work in front of computer screens contributed a great deal to my patterns of mis-use, and I still need to remind myself often of my directions not to study my old habits. I researched for at least two hours on the web for this funny thing, interrupted by a unicycle ride to check local stores for something to pick up straight away. Like a hungry hunter I went for the first prey in sight. I fell for my end-gaining habit, but it didn't hurt. I noticed what I did, and so liberated myself from falling for my 'end-gaining has failed' habits as well.

Instead, I reevaluated the situation to improve the outcome. End-gaining often leads to undesirable results, but life goes on anyway. The sooner you detect an end-gaining stuff up, the more chance you've got do less and achieve more. In retrospect, the little unnoticed bits of forgetting my means made me try harder instead of acting smarter. Choosing a different reaction unveiled bits of my personal patterns, and probably made me one percent less end-gaining than before.

Non-doing

My last term at school has started, and David invited Bob Britton to teach for some days in Fitzroy. Like so often, the process of learning brings some strange topsy-turvy encounters with it.

Quite some fellow teacher trainees extended their stay in Beechworth after the AUSTAT conference, so that the school seemed quite empty. On monday, Bob helped us exploring our feet anew, using group exercises (wrong word here, don't know any better right now), images and the skeleton. Without giving any 'fixed' idea about the right place to balance, he led us through exploring different configurations, many obviously less mechanical advantageous than our design allows.

Two things stood out for me on the first day. Going with awareness through 'odd' movements provides plenty of information, and opens up more choices. Especially when the movements very distinctly involve 'too much' and 'too little'. Only balance allows movement in any direction, and balance happens very dynamically. I also noticed the precision and animation in Bob's demonstrations. His eyes moved a lot, without seeming hectic at all, and he embodied the ways to move he was talking about.

I'm not too sure how often I heard and talk about the 'triangle under the foot'. I still crave to talk to Jack and Alysha about some details I gave them incorrect information about. I'm not too sure whether they incorporated this faulty bit of information into their movements, or whether Bob's workshops managed to help them to a more reliable body map. I like triangles, triangulation provide minimal stability for my delicately balanced tensegrity sculptures, but until yesterday my idea about the triangle under the foot didn't make use of the complex structure of our foot.

If we use the heel and the two sesamoid bones under the big toe (distal end of the medial metatarsal to be precise) we balance 'naturally'. The wide base of the heel 'receives' the body weight first, and the transverse arch, build by the bones posterior to the metatarsals, directs the weight towards the big toe. Flat feet often come together with slightly x-shaped legs, that's too much on the inside, too little on the outside. My legs rather tend to an o-shape, too much weight goes to the little toe, too little to the big one.

Although the way my feet touch the ground changed noticeably, I still find myself often 'stuck' to the ground - not too surprising, as I attempt to spread the weight in my foot quite equally towards the big and little toe. Another example that directions allow us to do the 'wrong thing' more efficiently. Incorporating some consolidated information gives me more confidence to experiment more with what happens at the same time in legs and hips.

Todays topic fitted in nicely, having another take on the separation and connection of legs and torso. Bob kept the group engaged and moving, using an iPad to show us some amazing anatomical drawings. The infectious upness carried on into student clinic.

Sanity and dis-ease, Part 2

Simple acts can become insurmountable obstacles when the down habit visits me. Even writing about it surprises me, as I got distracted from the perspective I planned to take for part of sanity and disease. While I have yet to consider whether describing my down habit manages to attenuate it or rather reinforces it, I'll take a step back for a bigger picture.

The distinction between 'mental' and 'physical' health doesn't help overall sanity much. The link between lifestyle and 'physical' ailments has been thoroughly researched, and physical therapies often accompany the treatment of 'mental' diseases. 'Mental' health still carries a stigma with it, Australia seems to train much less 'mental' health professionals than needed to deal with depression, suicide, mass trauma after bushfires, PTSD in returning soldiers and victims of abuse. During immigration you have to report on 'mental illnesses' of yourself and your family, and in one case the DOI wanted to withdraw the visit of doctors because his son has Down syndrome.

Modern psychology does not use any model of sanity, instead diagnoses according to a list of subjectively perceived symptoms. After re-discovering Alexander's set of skills, guided by many helping hands, I trust my instinct to dismiss any approach based on the faithful assumption of Descarte's error.

Commonly used language to name mental diseases sounds rather foul: retarded, stupid, crazy, imbecile.... as if it was more intelligent to override postural mechanisms so persistently to suffer from 'physical' pain. In either case, habits have shaped the entire structure, and the dis-ease of the organism restricts its functionality. If our minds had control over the self, it would simply take a decision to change behaviour.

The embodied memory of unprocessed emotional events remains, with our minds as reactive force to patterns of kinesthetic and chemical stimuli. Once these patterns are released, some narrative explaining the history of this restriction might emerge. Our memory, however, offers less precision than most people assume, and therefore doesn't suit well as tool to change behaviour.

It seems like my journey into the present needs some future involvement of releasing embodied patterns of the past.

Sanity and dis-ease

Jane, who works in a community centre with 'mentally' ill people, gave a series of presentations about the state of art in dealing with this spectrum of dis-ease. At the beginning of the presentation I asked her about modalities that approach 'mental illness' from a holistic perspective, yet my question remains unanswered.

With a lifetime prevalence of 20% depression describes a collection of symptoms that affects or will affect at least four people in the room Jane held her presentation. I remember from my psychology lectures that a success rate of 30% suffices to claim it's worth applying a given therapeutic concept, and I still feel highly confused that electro-convulsive therapy is practiced in the 21st century.

Categorising depression as disease of the mind neglects some very tangible aspects of this phenomenon. The list of symptoms describes mainly subjectively perceived internal states and leaves the structural hallmarks out. An experienced and empathic therapeut most likely uses this snapshot information (of overall posture and movement) for his diagnosis, which fosters the healing process probably more than the methods in the arsenal of modern psychology.

So I followed Alexander's footsteps by ignoring conventional 'wisdom' and explored the 'down' habit in my life. Revisiting episodes from my personal history made me aware that I carry the blues in me already for a long time. And a part of myself certainly accepted this pattern and arranged life situations to 'cure' this condition, maybe even different parts simultaneously with differing choices.

Once I realised that I attempted a variety of strategies as remedy, I could start comparing the efficiency and side effects of my until lately unconscious self cure approaches. Meaningful activity attenuates the sensitivity of the emotional triggers that start the depression train. My desire for interactive activity, however, clashes with the automatic response to certain arousal states.

I lack self-esteem almost entirely when the blues plays, and when I started observing this habit as habit, understanding the pattern in it, I beat myself up even more. My rational faculty can tell me as often as it wants that I neither desire or deserve these highly unproductive downtimes, a cognitive re-appraisal of my situation does hardly release any pattern of habitual tension.

The description Begley and Schwartz gave about one of their OCD patients resonated with me a lot. The down habit of mine acts rather like a vortex than like a simple loop, a highly complex neuro-physiological algorithm with multiple entry points. My sensory amnesia makes progress towards more uptime challenging. Mindfulness only slowly weakens the patterns of the down habit, a part of my whole self demands more attention than available for a healthy balance.

Physical activity like increasing my unicycling and juggling skills, or building sculptures helps at the moment to accept the embodied pattern that interferes with my movement. But how do I transform this debilitating vortex of disconnection?

Hitting the wall

Everything we do changes the environment, with or without consciousness. Everything we think changes ourself, with or without consciousness. Change happens anyway, anytime, albeit our perception of life might ignore this simple truth. Every breath we take slightly shift the balance between oxygen and CO2 in our immediate proximity, simultaneously the same chemical balance within our organism changes.

Once we start observing life from the perspective of permanent change, we can develop a better sense for the quality and direction of change. And we can develop an understanding that 'stable' patterns in our life often indicate obstacles rather than solace.

The direction of change subscribed to by the application of Alexander's principle's has a definite, yet fuzzy direction: Forward and up. If our habit pointed into a different direction, experiencing forward and up literally shifts our perspective. We apply Alexander's principle when we organise activity of our organism in accordance with the evolutionary mechanisms we inherited.

We can find forward and up approximately here and now. When we stay present with what happens within us and around us while we interact with our environment, we move forward and up. Although we are born with the ability to go forward and up, we need to learn to widen our attention to unify intention and action, internal and external sensations.

Whether we like it or not, the relation between head and trunk reflects our embodied attitude in life. A tense neck interferes with incorporating the procedural intelligence embedded in our structure, which means our decision making process uses less information than the total amount the system provides.

When I began learning the Alexander Technique, my attitude in and towards life looked worst than I thought, or would have confessed to. My structure reflected the tension I produced by swinging between defensive and aggressive patterns. Like a slave to my habits and living memory of untransformed trauma of my past I stumbled through my life, skilled in many ways yet without any clear direction.

The observer influences the experiment, states Heisenberg, and once we start to observe our self, we inevitably change our perceptions and consequently our interactions. During my twens, when I innocently moved forward and up, conscious yet with limited knowledge, I experimented systematically with ideas to 'blow my mind'. I learned to use my self as laboratory, and enjoyed most results of serendipitous interactions with other people.

I understood somehow the pattern character of human behaviour and thinking, yet only in a disconnected, disembodied way. Scrutinising, analysing, dis- and reassembling, discarding, creating my own thinking patterns became for some months or even years a hobby of mine.

As I understand it now, this strategy helped me dealing with the unresolved trauma I carried with me. It didn't resolve it, nor did it prevent the inevitable side effects of an embodied flight, fight or freeze response. It made me a 'functional' member of society, financially relatively independent yet somehow unhappy.

I didn't care too much about the pattern of unhappiness that evolved over the years. I consider it as part of the up and downs in life, and stopped wondering about the weeks of my life I felt unable to do more than absolutely necessary, waiting to wake up again in anticipation instead of dread. Which so far, always happened.

At some point, I started observing this pattern more closely, and noticed its detrimental influence of my use. At its heart, the habits connected to my depressed states fulfil the desire to escape from the present moment, using my life energy to keep a trauma vortex active.

Knowing more about the nature of the depressive phases of my life doesn't make them go away yet. It became easier to step back to become observer, and to stop judging myself. I felt a bit shocked when I went through the self diagnosis for depression and anxiety some month ago for the second time, and noticed how my answer had changed. I don't take a self diagnosis too serious, mainly because these tests ignore mostly the wholeness of our existence and experience.

We have identified the enemy, and it is us. I gave up the fight, and accepted the current co-existence of self-destructive and self-healing patterns. Now I need to find a way to get the embodied pattern that harm me transformed. A small step for a quantum, a leap for the ego.

Little things with big impact

Every environment you visit on a regular basis becomes co-creator of habits. Even before I started learning Alexander Technique, I had developed a kind of sense for the new (and some of the typical) ways of interaction in serendipitous situations.

Going to school certainly fosters new habits, and usually you will encounter a schedule or timetables as frame to attach various new behaviour patterns to. Luckily, David's school for Alexander Studies prevents 'over-habitualisation' by inviting one or two 'master teachers' per term, interrupting the routine and offering fresh perspectives.

Cathy Madden visits our school at the moment, for the third time while I study there. I still remember some of her observation from prior visits. She reminded me to use my clavicles when I move my arm, she encouraged me to investigate my speech patterns by switching between German and English, and besides that provided a great example of applying AT when she worked with our group.

I felt quite elated and 'ready for action' after both days of Cathy's weekend workshop, although I didn't seem to have advanced much. However, just by attending the workshop I surrounded myself by a nurturing, positive environment with the opportunity to learn more about a different approach to teach the technique.

Cathy knows well the typical Alexander lingo, yet she doesn't bring up such terms unless requested to. Her language keeps simple, and with questions gentler than a lot of AT teachers hand she elicits useful information from the student.

She picked up on my habit of stating a lot of things in directly and indirectly negative ways, by noticing a shortening when airing bits of negativity. I had a great learning moment when I observed this pattern in another student, and Cathy's elegant way to reframe the students desire in positive terms. Even without Cathy's explicit reminder my understanding of this pattern grew, and confirmed the usefulness of simply observing a good teacher in action.

I missed the opportunity to ask her to help me teaching until today, and still needed to convince myself that I wanted to get up and do it. I had a positive intent how to approach the situation, but noticed that I lost my coordination pretty fast. More precisely, when I wanted to speak more activity than needed happened. Cathy stopped me and put her hands on, while I had my next go in talking to my student.

I could not figure out what I did in this critical moment, and Cathy went on to explain bits about the mechanics of voice production. She noticed that I pulled my tongue back to produce sounds, so she simply asked me first to hum, and then to speak trusting that I don't need to do this.

I guess I must have looked quite surprised when I played around with a new pathway to make some noise. All of a sudden, the tiny movement my tongue made stood out sufficiently to allow me to let go of it, to reorganise myself so that I have a new plan I can follow when I want to speak.

I wonder what else I do with my tongue, yet it seems blindingly obvious that additional tension in my tongue affects my neck, and therefore my entire coordination. Playing around with speaking still feels odd. Allowing my tongue to do less seems to reactivate saliva production, and sometimes I get the impression that my speech gets a bit slurry.

The tiny bit of information about me pulling my tongue back to 'prepare' for sound production took an entire mountain off my chest. At some point of my journey of learning the technique I came across the fact that I did something extra to speak. Not knowing what but noticing that 'I did it again' became a relatively steady source of frustration, and contributed to the diffuse perception of my social awkwardness.

Besides observance, guidance with our hands, verbal explanations we teach AT by applying its principles, using subconscious mechanisms to model freedom in activity. My concern about dis-coordinating myself while speaking slowly dissolves, and I look forward using my voice in a new way.

Walking down memory lane

People have a variety of reasons to 'go on holiday'. They go to relax from their often stressful jobs, to see areas they have an interest in, they might get dragged along by their partners or sometimes just travel to impress their neighbours, friends and acquaintances.

I decided to fly halfway around the globe when I heard that my niece gave birth to a new member of the family. However, as I don't go Germany too frequently, I included visits to other relatives and friends in my itinerary.

Now, at the end of my 'holiday', I realised how tired I feel after cruising around, catching up in person with a lot of people I haven't seen for at least two years. Even more, as I embarked on a path of change with my Alexander Technique teacher trainer, this five weeks abroad turned into a sometimes bewildering experience.

Our habits build up quite randomly unless we learn to become aware of them, so obviously family and friends that surrounded us for a long time have a big part in shaping the ways we react to our environment. Before I started learning the technique, I slowly extended my comfort zone by changing the places I worked and lived in, challenging myself to adapt to new environments and forging new friendships.

Even before the trip into my personal history, I realised how much of a pattern this moving from place to place looked like. I was searching for something, without knowing for what, and getting used to become quite unhappy in the process. Nevertheless, I always found glimpses of happiness where ever I went. I also carried some old habits with me around the world, and picked up new ones where ever I stayed for a longer period of time.

This time, I noticed some distinct periods of my personal development, linked to the people and places I spend my time with. I revisited my unhappiness with big business while staying with friends who gave me the strength and motivation to survive in the pool of sharks called Frankfurt. I became son again when staying with my mother, loving and caring uncle for my niece, desperate yet hopeful brother, nerd, anarchist, rebel, lunatic, ex-lover or friend for others.

I could see more clearly how I acted and behaved in my past, and how much this past shaped the ways I encountered friends and family when I saw them again. By reliving some past habits, I detected some of the patterns in it, and could let them go.

I got myself deliberately into the grip of my past, but with a lot more presence than before.

Besides enjoying seeing a fresh human being, my niece's baby, I wanted to find some more direction for my future. I had some vague ideas what I wanted to do after my training, and had the desire to gain clarity what I can and want to do. Amazingly, with little effort, I managed to find what I was looking for, although it still means to continue working a lot towards my next target.

If you have ever experienced wholeness, even a tiny glimpse of it, freedom of movement changes its meaning radically. Yes, muscle tension indicates the restriction we impose unto ourselves, and physiological and psychological knowledge hints at the places where these restriction hide. Yet, we move continuously, either on the trodden path of our habits or on new paths. What we have done or do often disguises how we do things, whether we move from dead end to dead end or choose a direction at another crossroad. At the end, every road leads to Rome, anyway.

When in Rome, act like Romans. While I spend my time on this journey into my past, I knew suddenly how many Romans I met already, and how few of them seem to inhabit this planet. Rome wasn't build in one day, which makes it easy to spot the looney, sorry, spot the Romans among us.

Enough of proverbial wizdom for now. Freedom in thought and action certainly fits better into narratives than into the dominating binary, black and white thinking, which seems overly popular in our times. In the past, when something or someone (mostly my ego) brought me down, I tried to get comfortable with it. Now, forward and up brings me back to the path, and opens perspectives I never imagined.

The unknown remains unknown. But without wanting to build my future, I can only get caught in the prisons others built for me. Golden cages failed to make my ego happy, while my self gained happiness even in failure. The simplicity of life amazes me more and more.

grey autumn day

learning to walk again,

learning to talk again,

feeling old and unknown pain,

always rewiring my brain.

a moment cannot be captured,

but you can open up to it.

if the connection is ruptured,

you can still open up to it.

with leaving behind certainty,

i can only win more clarity,

and with tender loving care

receive what's really there.

destruction, nurture and creation

keep the wheel of life in motion.

Research and development

Exhibiting my tensegrity sculptures on the Arts Market in Fitzroy turned into an interesting experience, another opportunity to learn to fail with grace. Christian placed me between a woman selling rings and pendants made of molten glass and a soon to be physiotherapist who enjoys designing his own apparel.

My car was packed with masses of sculptures lying on each other, I was surprised that nothing got entangled and only two towers disintegrated beyond immediate repair. After I met with Christian, I carried the display boxes to my little square, and started carrying a selection of my sculptures over.

My first stall appeared in a rather raw style - I want to cover the boxes the next time, and without any price tags the commercial availability wasn't too apparent. All in all, the display was a bit overloaded as well, not too mention the fact that the wind toppled some of the towers over in regular intervals.

There weren't too many visitors on this Mother's day, so I had plenty of opportunities to chat with my neighbours. I hope that a little bit more investment to display my tensegrities better is needed, and I think I just found my entry level product - a collapsible icosahedron.

A name can help as well - Alexander Tensegrities, Can touch this!, Lenny Golightly... Would be good to find a muse to come up with a name.

Challenges

Without David, and with one teacher less than planned for, the day started a bit disorganised. Libby got a bit upset, which luckily didn't affect the quality of her hands while giving me a turn. Using AT, she regained her calm, and prevented getting overwhelmed by the challenge to improvise the daily program.

During the presentation of Frank Pierce Jones research I had the opportunity to stay directed, although I wanted to react a lot to one students disruptive behaviour during the start of my part. I slowed down, refocused on my notes, yet had no idea about my use for the rest of my presentation.

However, when Martin asked me about my plans after graduation, I noticed how much this topic can discoordinate myself. Applying the technique to my tendency to get the blues has changed me, yet it's hard to call this an improvement. I noticed how much effort it takes to ignore depressive episodes, and how well established the neural pathways to pull me down are. From the perspective of 'befriending myself' this is valuable, yet not pleasant information. Developing a sense of self-worth in a life situation where I'm not 'worthy' enough to stay in the country of my liking, challenges me maybe above my capacity.

If anything, I learned that not putting hands on today made it tougher to stay directed. I recognise more triggers of my habits, yet I'm rather craving for more 'uptime' than material to analyse.

Change in routine

David informed me via email that I had to go to the Body-Mind Centre instead of the school in Fitzroy, so I took the opportunity for an adrenaline-laden unicycle ride to the CBD. Although I walked most of the last part, Jenny noticed at the start of my turn that my legs were still pedalling. It seems like quite a habit to pull myself down in a lot of interactions, especially in talking. It's still difficult to remind myself of the directions before acting, and feels a bit odd. Nevertheless, I manage much better my habitual response to 'feeling wrong', and allowing myself to integrate certain levels of discomfort without actively ignoring them.

I noticed as well that my hands work more in a 'teaching' way, yet only while I take of myself to a decent degree. I got more patient with myself, and when no movement happens, I rather renew my directions and explicitly release arms and shoulders a bit more. I worked a lot with Stephen today. It was great to experiment a lot, both of us knowing to expect little and helping each other to stay present.

We discussed the chapter of CCCI in which FM describes the procedure to put hands on the back of the chair, perfectly suited to go through this as practical part of our group work. One of the pseudo-hinges along my spine became very discomforted during the process. I wonder whether I was trying too hard, or activated some underused part of muscles around and of the trapezius. It seems to be the part from which I pull my shoulders in place, and potentially bend the spine back (or even to one side) at the same time.

While during some earlier table turns 'non-local' effects (release happening far away from a teacher's hands) provided me with a rather distracting stimulus, I integrate more of the whole body into this kind of sensations now. While Sharon gave me a turn, I noticed a lot of up coming from my feet. Her hands prevented me from pulling down to 'feel out' what was happening, instead I stayed with the nice sensation in my legs and Sharons hands on my head. My limbs can still connect a bit better into this awareness. At least I know now much better what I'm doing with parts of my body, without 'sinking' into them at the same time.

I'd still call my whole-body-image quite hazy, yet it is definitely less fragmented and gets more familiar. I got now a better idea when I'm grounded. I'm sure some experiences on the unicycle had a 'skyhooked' quality. The next step will be to become more centered / aware of my center, connecting heaven and earth. Or so.

A sculpture per day keeps the blues away

Since I managed to have sufficient amounts of building material around, I feel a daily urge to build something new. During the Easter break I explored a variety of spherical shapes, after successfully constructing a bucky-ball out of 90 struts. I spend some time to paint 30 of them black, they now point to the 12 pentagons of the structure.

I realised that most spheres can be constructed by chiral twisting of all edges ending in each vertex, thereby stellating it. The cube's eight vertices nicely triangulate, the stellated octahedron opens into squares. Let's go through the shapes I build so far. Tensul, x-module, stellated tetrahedron, icosahedron, prism, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron as sphere and as 10 strut tensegrity, vector equilibrium, truncated icosahedron (the bucky ball with 90 struts), icosahedral sphere (frequ.

So I went through all five Platonic 'solids' which as tensegrity unveil their spacious, airy qualities. I still try to get my head around the fact that the dodecahedron is the dual of the icosahedron, and what kind of truncation of the icosahedron constitutes the typical 30 strut sphere. Yet the actual geometry is still of second concern, although I notice how much embodied knowledge of this archetypal geometrical shapes I acquired.

The increasing size of projects made the craft aspect of this infatuation of mine more apparent. Preparing struts and strings usually takes much more time than actual assembly, and precision simplifies it, while lack of it might make assembly impossible. And while I at first started off very end-gaining, concerned about spectacular results, I begin to enjoy the sensual aspect much more. Finding more efficient ways to process individual yet similar pieces of bamboo, cutting it to length, smoothening the cut marks and sawing small groove with similar depth, cutting and knotting strings or elastic cord to similar length, became an opportunity to observe myself in activity.

When I succeeded more often in having a feel for the construction of structures, my focus shifted towards the use of colours. Besides the transparent elastic cords I have three colours for the nylon available. However, with the abundance of structures being mainly bamboo or oak coloured, with sprinkles of pink, orange or yellow string, I got a bit bored. After finishing the 90strut sphere, I noticed that 30 struts could be coloured to make the pentagons stand out more.

Using a sharpie to blacken the strut took some time, it turned into an interesting challenge. Bits of the bamboo structure remain, and it has a matte finish. It's not a deep, consistent black, but I'm quite happy with the combination of the variety of bright bamboo struts and blackish ones.

The next go on colour happened when the stellated cube collapsed after falling from the sky. I had non-toxic red paint and some brushes picked up in a $2 shop. I thought threading the struts between two strings could make painting easier, but the struts kept slipping out, and I had to roll them around a lot to cover all parts.

Painting the struts with a brush probably takes even longer than with the sharpie, and I left out the tips which wasn't a good idea. I tried string to hold the struts together again for applying spray paint, with similar messy results. My favorite method for now is cutting some rubber band as connecting string - it worked quite well, though I still have to take care to go all over the struts to avoid blank spots.

The spray paint leaves a quite glossy finish, and thus very slippery grooves. When recycling one of the first failed attempts to build an octahedron, about four build attempts slipped out of my fingers before making the last two connections. When I finally made it to the last connection, I had to find out the hard way that the tendons were about 5mm too short - one strut split due to too much tension.

I want to use more than one strut colour to bring out more of the structural aspects. The octahedron can be build with two colours in varying patterns, I still have to find out whether I need three or five colour for icosahedral shapes. Colour requires more planning, at least when drying time is involved. From imitating shapes I saw on pictures, I developed to a stage where I can start combining the various shapes in organic ways, and easily build regular polyhedra. I still have some far reaching ideas about materials I want to use, yet colour introduces already another dimension.

I still wonder how healthy and wholesome my artistic ventures are. So far I manage to lay down in semi-supine when I lost focus or noticed pain during the repetitive bits. I certainly spend less hours idling on the internet while working on sculptures. and it's much easier to observe my use in this new activity. A lot of thoughts and internet activities now focus on materials for the next generation of sculptures, while human anatomy still seems far away.

The satisfaction about finished objects and the process of getting there became a sort of meditative pleasure. I failed often, yet each failure offered just a chance the reconsider the means of the creation process. Without any 'dead line', and the knowledge that I have more than enough material for the upcoming market stall, waiting a day or two before an idea is materialised doesn't matter anymore.

After getting proficient at some of the necessary hands-on skills, my curiosity can drive the exploration into colour, shape and movement. Colour enhances the aesthetic value a great deal, transforms the natural aspect of bamboo into something virtual. RGB will look great on models that map into three colours, as might black, red and yellow do.

Explosion of shapes

Showing the photos around to have a selection for the arts market application motivated me to build some more. And I noticed how useful especially the repetitive parts of the building process turn out for my Alexander study.

I found my preferred strut material for now, and got plenty of this as well as variations, so whenever I feel like working a new shape out I can go ahead. Well, I avoid the noisy bits during night time, that's when I can sit back, explore the different aches in various parts of my body, and reflect my experiences.

42 unfinished

I built my first structures using an online 3d animation for tensegrity objects, and there were still some objects that challenged me to handle with my own hands. I watched the animation of an octahedron unfolding into a tensegrity structure over and over, planning the stages of construction for an object with 12 struts.

Cutting the cord to length and knotting into loops and tendons posed the monotonous challenge before getting the octahedron together. I started ambitiously using elastic cord at first, but after some accidents changed over to nylon. An octahedron has six corners, which open into squares for the tensegrity. 12 tendons pull along the original vertexes. A zigzag line of force connects the opposing corners of opposing squares; all the squares show the same chirality.

Seeing a 3d animation on a two-dimensional monitor helps a lot, but it doesn't prevent me from mixing up left and right. It took me hours to develop a decent build strategy that worked without additional hands (i used some small clamps, thinking about some improvement of these little helpers).

The puzzle consists of 12 struts, 12 strings with knots at their ends as tendons, 6 strings knotted into a loop for the corner squares. Starting with the 'bottom' square, four struts connects in a clockwise (or counter-clockwise, if you wish so) to all squares but the opposing square. The struts coming from the 'bottom' and from the 'top' make up the 'left' and 'right' corners of the 'middle' row of squares, which are laterally connected with struts coming from 'bottom' of one square to the top of the adjacent square. All struts join their square with the same chirality. Simple, innit?

42 unfinished lying

Although I don't plan to rebuild '42' at any later stage, I salvaged this accidental creation later with some additional tendons. I guess my difficulties to build this structure at all might relate to the 'technical' error in its construction. 42 has 4 clockwise squares and 2 two counterclockwise squares. When pushed on the left turning corners, the structure nicely compresses, but there's little resistance when other corners get pushed in, all in all it resembles rather an egg than any Platonian Solid.

It took me late into the night to have the sculpture together, and I needed to re-attach some of the tendon to prevent struts from touching. Still, when no strut touched each other anymore, it still looked and behaved somehow wrong. The next day I noticed the mixed chirality, and yet another day later four stabilising tendons gave it its final shape.

42

I had the puzzle nearly finished, just a minor mixup in chirality, so it shouldn't be a problem to do it again, or so I thought. I tried to remember the successful build strategy from the night before to do a proper octahedron, yet it felt more like I repeated some of the typical mistakes of the day before. Usually sawing the grooves is the most unpleasant part of this projects, with familiar tensegrity objects I have figured working build strategies, but this time finding the right sequence took considerable time.

WIth a lot of breaks in between I finished the next miss in building an octahedron. It's not even a tensegrity, some of the struts touch, and its easy to tune into a floppy shape. I wonder whether to keep it, or to reuse the material for the 'real' thing.

Twisted X's

WIth the current abundance of material for struts, I started preparing 20-30 at the same time, 24 were gone now for the octahedron attempts, so I prepared the next bunch. Another chance to experiment with the easiest movements for my repetitive task, and to look out for body feedback during a new task. Precision makes life so much easier- although it's not too difficult to replace a strut in a larger model, in the build phase a failed component usually means back to the start.

At least I still I had an idea how to build this structure now, had analysed some of my prior mishaps, and started to understand more of the dynamics of the octahedron. I found a sequence for connecting struts and strings that needs only little external support and can take a bit of handling without disintegrating, cutting and knotting strings to well-known length happened nearly by itself.

Anti-Octa (counterclockwise stellated octahedron)

The third object with 12 struts, 12 tendons and 6 loops finally turned out as octahedron. Strike! Like with my first attempts with the x-module, I persisted through a series of failures until found a decent way of building. Connecting the tendons the right way meant as well that the structure started stabilizing itself to a certain degree before it was finished. Now I've got another model that can do with rough handling, the symmetry distributes impact easily, as an accidental 2 metre drop proved.

Once I connected struts and strings in the way I wanted to in order to build an octahedron, I had a better understanding about the difficulties of this process. The right sequence provided relative ease, so I wanted to do it again. I checked the clock before I prepared the strings, I still had enough struts, carefully studied Anti-Octa to build the clockwise turning equivalent.

Counterclockwise and clockwise stellated octahedrons

After 50 minutes without great difficulties the sculpture was finished. Another beast tamed. Left and right turning octa's connect nicely in the triangles created by three parallel struts. When I get bored I might be tempted to build a high-riser, although I surely need some extra tendons for vertical stability.

Different turning octahedron joined at a triangular face

I felt ready for the next challenge, using the experiences gained to tackle the cube. I had a first go just after I finished 42, but settled for building a real octahedron first before moving to the next structure. The cube has eight corner, that span into triangles for the tensegrity, and 12 connecting tendons. The model needed a bit of tuning, but this time I succeeded with the first attempt.

Even as tensegrity the inherent instability of the cubic shape becomes apparent. I might be able to balance it on one corner, which is much easier with an octahedron. However, it offers ample space in its center and looks very airy even when sitting on four corners.

Slice o'Dice (Stellated Cube)

12 struts seemed no longer a challenge, two new shapes belong now to my tensegrity alphabet, So why not have a go at the trigonal prism? Six triangular loops connecting nine strut and 9 tendons. I solved this puzzle as well on the first go. I averaged a bit the tendon length. The model doesn't balance on all corners, yet provides a wide basis when placed on three corners (for a beam). Now I need to make up my mind whether to go metal or bigger, hanging some of the structures on a string provides some good stability test and maybe some durabilty test as well.

69 (Trigonal prism, balanced on one corner)

intermezzo

As it feels like a bit of SAD is looming, I started considering marketing my tensegrity hobby a bit more, got myself busy building more models and taking some photos. First step will be to get accepted for a stall at an arts market, and then I hope hours of haggling will follow. Naming the sculptures provided quite some fun, let's see what happens next.

Concept X (Simple X-module)

Scarab (Icosahedron with two two tensuls)

Scarab

Crossed Over

North Tower (Three tensuls)

South Tower (Three tensuls)

Evil Twins (Two joined stellated tetrahedrons)

Spherical Hysterical (Thirty strut frequency 2 sphere)

Hope (stellated tetrahedron)

Amarita (stellated tetrahedron)

Victory

Peghead (Tensul joined with icosahedron)

(

21st Century (stellated tetrahedron with kite frame joined)

Monsternsegrity (5 X-modules held up by two tensuls)

Tough call

I distracted myself from the more and more 'official' uncertainty of my future by working on contact juggling with Matt. Actually, I hardly touched the ball in the turn with him, but instead scrutinized the way I move my arms to play with the ball. As long as I don't get lazy and complacent, juggling and unicycling offer awesome opportunities to improve my use, and get more into the idea of the 'unified field of attention'.

I hardly managed to find someone to work with in the rest of the turn time, somehow I managed to start working with those students who just were about to have a turn with Kaz, first Sharon, then Briar. I noticed some familiar pattern of thought arising while idling, luckily Rossi asked me to help her a bit while she gave a table turn to Amanda.

Libby's writing and research session turned into a bit of Kindergarten. Tony and Ana stopped Libby nearly after each sentence, often just to ask about the exact things that she just said, or wanting to know pretty much unknowable things. The continuous interruptions stretched our sessions out a lot, so that there was no time for some practical work left.

Back home, I notice much I need more debriefing and exchange about our work - frustration and aggression rear their ugly heads again, and I can hardly concentrate on more constructive thoughts. I don't like the idea of organising another intercontinental move, and I have no inspiration where to go after my time in Australia, and how to organise setting up a practise in an entirely new environment. I was aware that making a living as AT teacher won't be a piece of cake, starting over somewhere else looks at the moment like an insurmountable task.

Yet all that desperation won't help to tackle this task, nevertheless I realise how familiar the Don Quixote role seems to me, triggering lots of habitual unproductive coping patterns. Striving for sanity in a mad world doesn't feel like getting into the flow of life, but rather like swimming against the stream. Especially as I don't have any reliable support here, or any positive outlet for all the (self) destructive thoughts whirling through my mind. Well, I gotta keep breathing.

Taking it slow

I had a chance to jump the queue for our turns, and opted for a table turn with Jenny. I guess I'm tempted at the moment to try hard, so I used the opportunity to slow down and observe. Jenny helped me to release my shoulders quite thoroughly, and I noticed in better detail the connection of my arms into my torso, as well as some habits I acquired while lying on the table. My eyes were fixed a lot of the time, and I pushed my head a tad into the books. When I started observing Jenny, I managed to inhibit this tendencies, and rather started wondering about where she was looking while working with me.

By staying aware of the things I just found out, I learned as well about my tendency to fix my legs on the table. Once I allowed them to slightly balance, I could extend my observation a bit more to my whole body. Instead of wallowing in the release for a longer time on the table, I asked Jenny to lift me off the table, and was surprised about the ease in this movement.

I played a bit with my CJ ball, but then asked Briar, who was next to me in semi-supine, whether I could work with her. Table work on the floor is very challenging, but I was tempted to play with John Appleton's alligator imagery. I don't know whether asking student to imagine things works by distraction, it certainly helps for a more light-hearted approach. I hardly zoned out, and rather stayed with the idea of a good contact with my hands.

The book session got me a bit over-active, yet I managed to stay directed during most of my comments. However, I want to reduce my input a bit - I still get carried away sometimes, especially when we're talking about FM's sociological ideas.

The hands-on group with Jenny challenged me a lot, taking heads from the back of a chair. Having both thumbs directing through the skull and the fingers lightly under the jaw suits group sessions well, and seems less intrusive than one hand unders the jaw and one on the back of the head.

In the second group we explored the changes in tonus of the torso when thinking about different weight distribution in the feet. There's certainly the danger of internalizing while becoming aware of our feet, however, seeing an x-ray showing the relation between calcaneus, patella, tibia and fibula reminded me that our weight arrives in front of the heel and can spread over the entire foot.

More tensegrity

Before I muster the task to relate tensegrity to AT, I continue with some experiences I made while building this airy structures. Iron hooks on dowels offer plenty of constructive freedom, as well as the opportunity to install additional tendons in tower structures easily, however, with strut lengths between 15 and 30 cm they seem like an overkill.

To cut down on material costs, and for aesthetic reasons, I switched to grooved bamboo skewers. It's possible to saw a groove even in 3mm skewers, however, it seems like 10 to 15 cm is the maximal length to build solid models. Otherwise the tendons can easier tear the groove apart, or bend the skewer.

Building an icosahedron with 6 struts comes relatively easy, at least with elastic cord which isn't too tense. The stellated tetrahedron (or Snelson tetrahedron) is a bit more challenging. The photo above shows my first approach, fixing three strut ends with a rubber band into their corner of the tetrahedron, attaching the corner triangles, the connecting tendons, and finally, cutting the rubber bands to 'explode' the structure into shape.



The photo above shows a stellated tetrahedron (secured with tape instead of rubber bands), just before it gets liberated from struts forced into touching. Although I deployed this method plenty of times, it felt a bit cumbersome and wasteful to me (tape needs to be really tight to withstand the increasing (over) tension of the model, and many rubber bands were cut and later found in unexpected places).

While playing with different tower constellations, I noticed the nice compatibility between the triangular faces of the stellated tetrahedron and tensuls (minimal tensegrity structures). The 6-level tower I used for my presentation uses stellated tetras as base and top, connected by four tensuls in line. In a Snelson tetrahedron, each corner has the same chirality, I'm quite sure though that I managed to build stable structures with at least one corner out of sync. The corner fixing method does not prevent having the beams meet in the wrong order, elastic cord saved me from starting over from scratch many times.

What if I started with a skewed tensul (small base, large top loop) and extended it to a stellated tetrahedron?


I used nylon (orange) for the surplus connections, and elastic cord for the final structure. Placed on one tip, three struts touch the ground, and three float freely. The end of each ground-touching strut is part of the remaining three corner triangles, so I threaded the elastic cord underneath the nylon cord that secured the temporary tensul. The choice of materials made my life easier - the elastic cords wedged nicely into the grooves without slipping out by themselves (or gravity, or clumsiness on my side).



The tensul provided enough stability to connect the floating beams easily. I had ample opportunity to check that all corners had the same chirality, and then decided to turn the structure around to attach the final tendons. I had to unhook the tensul tendons, which turned out quite easy. The final three tendons had to go underneath the tensul tendons and top triangle. This was a bit more fiddly, yet I encountered no total collapse with the need to start over.



Inspired by the ease of constructing a formerly hard to tackle structure I prepared more struts for the same structure with opposite chirality throughout. Sawing six skewers to size and cutting twelve grooves is the 'mind-numbing' aspect, a great opportunity to stay directed. Precision is a key to tensegrity structures, although there is also a bit room for improvisation. The small diameter makes precision inevitable - having a structure collapse due to a badly crafted groove is not on my list of goals.

I made a game out of the 'boring' part, asking for a 'creamy' quality of the hand guiding the Dremel tool. Although I still appreciate having spare material around, I seem to mess up less and less material. I begin to trust more the inherent qualities of tensegrity models. For one thing, tossing them around accidentally hardly ever decomposed them, and it's straight forward to replace single tendons after the build is complete.

I decided to make my two stellated bamboo tetrahedrons a combination of nylon and elastic cord. Not only do they have opposing chirality, one has elastic triangles, the other elastic tendons, and nylon for the other tension element.



Building this models felt fast and simple, yet there might be a further improvement: If tendons and tension loops have different colours, it's easy to pre-thread all connections underneath the temporary tensul tendons, which then can be simply lifted off once everything is in place.

I didn't stop there, though. With enough material, time and obsession at my hands I started researching the web and came across Snelsons X-module. The photos provided me with an idea how to construct this structure, and another remarkable site offers a java applet that helps finding the lengths for all the tendons.

The Snelson model has only one central tendon (which certainly works with fixed tendon lengths and heavy struts), yet two tendons offer more stability when moved around, and don't depend on gravity and the ground to provide a second tension vector.



Colour the different cord lengths made the assembly a piece of cake, checking the cord lengths after knotting them was my quality assurance measure. The need for a second central tendon was already apparent when I built the above model. Depending on the relation of cord lengths and the viewing angle, the name 'x-module' becomes very obvious.



After finishing the first x-module, I noticed to my surprise that I rebuild a structure that puzzled me for some days when I built it first. On of the 'ugliest' model still remaining in my collection is a 4 strut tensegrity, and I rather kept it as 3d model if I ever wanted to recreate it than for any spectator value. When I started building the X-module, I had no idea that I would end up with something familiar, another indication how confusing it sometimes is to imagine all aspects of a 3d tensegrity structure from photos.

The second surprise belongs to the structural category. You have, more or less, two pairs of x-shaped beams perpendicular to each other. WIth only the tendon shown in the photos for Snelson's structure, my model stayed quite flat. Attaching the second tendon moved the entire structure perpendicular to this tendon. I wonder how this affects a series of connected x-modules, I found some plans for a tower, yet I haven't managed to decode the cord lengths info I need.

After exploring different 'base' moduls - tensuls, stellated tetrahedron, x-module, icosahedron - I get more curious about towers. Craig still recalls my visual demonstration of 'any part affects/reverberates throughout the entire structure', and I want to have some more video of tensegrities in motion. Building a x-module tower looks like an interesting challenge, I hope my trustworthy bamboo won't break under the load.

Surprise

I had a great turn with Jane, who gave me the opportunity to put hand on her. By doing less, I managed to get her easily in and out of the chair, although I had to inhibit my surprise over the ways we were moving. All that ease remains hard to grasp, yet I could clearly notice the change in thinking when working with her.

Before I had a chance to catch with the reading for today, David asked me to give Jeanine a table turn. She's looking for a school to become AT teacher, a graduated contact juggler and circus skill teacher expanding her toolkit. I managed to lengthen her a bit on the table, and her rotary cuffs released a bit, yet her use looks impressive already, and her observation skills stunned me as well.

I had little clue about her background while working with her, when she had a look at my CJing she came up straight away with real useful tips and observations.

So much I'd like to write more, my computer reacts currently much slower than a serially connected real VT100 terminal. So kann ich net arbeite! Time to order new hardware, before the wait drives me mad.

A restart alleviated the tardy behaviour, yet the order is out, in a day or two I have my new hardware. I hope the increased working speed will allow me to balance my screen work with building more tensegrity models. Rossi asked me whether she could buy one of the models from my workshop. I think I will raise the prize from today's offer to a coffee with company, it's still a fair deal.

Tensegrity

David offered me the opportunity to do my tensegrity workshop during our school's residential. This meant that my car was heavily loaded with plenty of light objects, sensory overload by having a variety of models was part of my plan.

I got so much used to have tensegrity models in my lounge that I nearly forgot the awe they inspire quite often on first sight. Martin hardly couldn't keep his hands off them while driving to Maitripa, and I knew that the strategy of using them as attention grabber would make the presentation part much easier.

I arranged plenty of the smaller and simpler models on the table next to the stage area, the tower and the larger sphere standing next to me. The mind map I made half a year ago laid on a table close by as well, yet I think I used it only a couple of times.



I wasn't tempted to rehearse the presentation, yet I took the chance to work in front of the group with Michael Shellshear on my nervousness about it. He helped me defining a clear goal, and suggested to have a clear beginning, middle part and end for the presentation. Finding a SMART goal wasn't easy, tensegrity offers so many ideas and connections to the work, and of course, eagerly end-gaining as I can be, I wanted to put a lot information into the workshop.

My idea was it to give the participants a more embodied understanding of tensegrity, and to learn more about the qualities of such systems in general. Yet Michael steered me into finding a single quality as focus - bounciness. I'm pretty sure he set some anchors when working with me, although I couldn't consciously describe them.



I started off with a short explanation of the origin of the term, letting my admiration for Buckminster Fuller shining through. I used the metaphor 'island of compression in a sea of tension' to describe the discontinuity of compression (we're no stack of bricks, although some people's thinking is sometimes as flexible as one).

I used to model with a similar structure, but with different tension material (rubber, ie very flexible and nylon ie very tense) to give the participants the first opportunity to play. The models nicely demonstrate expansion and contraction in all dimensions, and squeezing and pulling made the difference in mobility depending on the pretension level (golgi, I hear ya calling) obvious.

I felt quite calm and collected, the adrenaline didn't throw me off but kept me moving confidently. Before I could lose the interest of my audience by the technicalities of the minimal tensegrity system (tensul), making pauses in the verbal part allowed questions, so I could navigate along the mindmap in response to my audience.

The fun started for me when I explained the teamwork task, the 'middle' part of the workshop. I demonstrated the total collapse of a tensul from a box shape into a hodge podge of strings and sticks, and asked the participants to do the same with the models I handed them before.

I had no idea how long it would take the groups to get the models back together, I still consider even a tensul quite a challenging 3d puzzle. I could kick back a bit, observe the attempts of rebuilding with plenty of space to offer help and answer questions. The first team to succeed were Rossi and Jenny, proudly claiming to have won this friendly 'competition'. Yet, instead of simply bragging about this victory they continued to explore kinestically their little toys, while the other teams by and by caught up.

In the two presentations I held no team failed in the end, although some needed to start over a couple of times (you can connect the materials I gave them to a boxy shape which isn't a real tensul). The task kept the participants engaged and interested, and the success yielded many smiles of accomplishment.

This made it easy to get to end part of the workshop. Playing with the tensuls brought up some questions, and offered me the chance to relate the tensegrity idea to anatomy and AT work. Well, I might have stressed the similarities I suspect a bit more, but I guess I will do this workshop again. The questions were interesting, and especially the demonstrations with the shroom-tower model seems to work very well.

I took Carina's suggestion to ask everyone for a single bit they learned in that workshop, and noticed that I achieved my goal - transforming the term 'tensegrity' from a learned-sounding expression to a more lively concept.

However, in retrospect areas for improvement become more apparent. Bounciness, the initial goal, was left out a bit. I realised at home that some of models can be thrown around quite a bit without falling apart, I might use a sphere model for some contact juggling like acts, with some deliberate drops to show the bounce. Now I need to find a good backdrop to shoot some videos of models in movement (the hall I held the workshop with its beautiful Buddha statue would have been ace for that).

Luckily Ana took the photos you can see here, pictures can often tell so much more than words.