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?

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.

Wholeness

Cathy did a bit of quick-ease to start today's session, and then demonstrated her way to give an introduction, in this case directed towards IT workers. I really enjoyed watching her in action, as she definately walks her talk. She stressed the importance to relate to her audience, choosing examples that are easy to follow along. Also, she didn't use her hands until the participants started experimenting themselves.

Using a simple movement to demonstrate the difference between a deliberately distorted head-neck relationsship involves the participants, gives the teacher plenty of opportunity to observe pattern, and gives the participants the experience of choosing 'the easier way' themselves, without anything else but a change in thinking.

The getting involved part continued. Split up in groups we had the task to solve a puzzle, putting a spine together. Again, Cathy could observe our use while we did this, but we could enjoy 'playing' with essential knowledge, in this case the structure and curvature of the spine.

After the break I had the pleasure of improving my CJing with Cathy's help. I clearly remembered the observation about my immobile clavicles, and they still don't move too much. I learned CJ with some strong habits, as my shoulder girdle gets freeer I need to clarify my intent. It's a good chance to observe how much time I still waste with feeling/checking it out.

Her answer to Jim's question that reaffirmed the body-mind split stunned me: Whole. Pause. This part of the job seems really tricky, guiding a student's language and thinking towards wholeness, without disregarding their inquiries. A lot of my questions during the process of learning the work evaporated into meaninglessness with the trust in wholeness, yet this paradigm seems quite foreign to many.

Performance

During the turn with Jenny we detected a funny pattern: By releasing my wrists more my shoulders came undone, and my back lengthened. Interesting to find out how complex something like moving wrists can end up to be.

We did a re-briefing of Vivien's visit in the first group, and especially Tony aired his criticism extensively. Maria did her best to defend her, and appreciated the emotional experience Vivien put her through.

I forgot my lyrics sheet, which made performing a difficult task. Nevertheless I made some progress, the sound of my voice changed a lot in my 15 minutes of fame/shame. I have to remember to bring my camera with me,