During my turn with Margaret I discovered an interesting detail of my faulty sensory appreciation. I was convinced that I moved my shoulders back in certain situations, while I was in fact arching backwards from the thoracic spine. I felt an inner fight starting when I inhibited this movement, and humbled by the discovery of this blind spot in my body map.
I did a bit of chair work with Amanda, looking for more sensitivity in my hands. I get a better idea which parts are moving and which are held, although still fuzzy. It's hard to distinguish who is doing the holding, just being present still happens only for some short moments.
The discussion of this weeks reading with Vivien turned into pure pleasure. Although FM's writings are far from easy, she embodied an amazingly subtle understanding of his words, and guided us through some important aspects of the text.
Vivien then went with the large groups through spirals and hands on the back of the chair, another pleasure to observe.
Back home, another stimulus was waiting for me - preparing the kit for a skype interview. Just after I send Robert Rickover an email to negotiate a time for it, the disk of my laptop stalled (and hasn't been accessible since). I had already tested the bluetooth headset, and even with 64k the sound quality was okay.
A lot of anger about faulty technology surfaced temporarily, yet I inhibited going on a ride with them, and started thinking about alternatives. I can go online with my MiniMac and even with my phone, there must be another way...
I decided to upgrade Skype first, and then connect the head set. But even five tries to connect to skype failed - wrong network settings. I found a symbian version of skype and gave that a go. However, although I have a keyboard on the phone, I couldn't access the underscore character (_), so I had no chance of typing in my user name...
There's luckily the option to sign up for an account in the skype client, so I simply created a new account and, voila, I connected without problem. I checked all the gear with a call to the 'echo' facility, the sound isn't too good unfortunately. Anyway, that's at least one working solution, although probably not really suitable for recording.
I guess it takes some computing power to digitize voice, wrap it into nice packets, send it over the network, all the while receiving data and decoding it. I remembered using the old version of skype, so I downgraded and indeed, I could log on again. I don't remember what I used as microphone, so I went ahead and connected the head set.
Optimistically, I made a test call, and was shocked to hear the external speakers. I checked the settings, and chose the headset for in- and output. I spoke after the beep, but on the replay I just heard the lovely voice explaining the test. Bummer. My MiniMac hasn't got built-in bluetooth... which provides me with another option: getting a new blue-tooth dongle. Although I can see the device and receive data, it simply ignores all input, maybe, after all, my bluetooth keyboard isn't broken.
So instead of spending maybe 15 minutes to get skype up and running in good quality, I spend about three hours fiddling around with suboptimal solutions. Even though I got a fallback solution, I notice how much the stimulus 'fixing a computer problem' reactivates the habits I cultivated as IT specialist. What a prize to pay for the bit of flow when finding solutions provided a pleasurable challenge.
Right now, while I can't even reset the headset to be used with the phone, I can observe a lot of useless mental chatters from similar situations in the past. At least, I added some more time (and money) to remove potential blue tooth errors - and had another nice unicycle trip instead of cursing technology.
On the other hand, I notice how much I got back into the habit of surfing while watching telly. Maybe it's good to separate these time killers again, especially as there's lots of 'habitual' programming with most TV content. Another aspect of not using the laptop is the climate - the study heats up a lot. Back to basics, back to books.
Tuesday, February 9
Friday, February 5
An interesting week
After an exciting and exhausting week fridays offer less stimuli and a more intimate atmosphere. Libby did all the turns and the group work. She spend quite some time talking me through the directions. I'm working again to get rid of my sensory amnesia, which might make me forget my directions.
We didn't do any debriefing for Vivien Mackie's visit in the school yet, most likely because Vivien will stay a bit longer in school. Like always, the performance session turned out to be entertaining and enlightening, and I'm glad that I got up to perform.
Libby went with us through some essential body mapping, with the idea of a plumb line from the A-O joint though shoulder, hips, knees, ankles (or rather, symmetrically around this line). Feeling the curvature of the spine on each other offered a great opportunity to explore the uniqueness and differences of the human body.
It seemed like all of us enjoyed the task of talking each other through semi-supine. We had quite different approaches. Sharon and I focused on the 'wholeness' of semi-supine, renewing directions several times before lying down, and exploring movement (a bit like dart procedures). Ana, Carsten and Stephen focused more on imagery to help release of tension.
We didn't do any debriefing for Vivien Mackie's visit in the school yet, most likely because Vivien will stay a bit longer in school. Like always, the performance session turned out to be entertaining and enlightening, and I'm glad that I got up to perform.
Libby went with us through some essential body mapping, with the idea of a plumb line from the A-O joint though shoulder, hips, knees, ankles (or rather, symmetrically around this line). Feeling the curvature of the spine on each other offered a great opportunity to explore the uniqueness and differences of the human body.
It seemed like all of us enjoyed the task of talking each other through semi-supine. We had quite different approaches. Sharon and I focused on the 'wholeness' of semi-supine, renewing directions several times before lying down, and exploring movement (a bit like dart procedures). Ana, Carsten and Stephen focused more on imagery to help release of tension.
Tuesday, February 2
Sensory appreciation
Before I had a turn with Jenny, Carina worked for 10 minutes on the table with me. I noticed some holding in front of my hip joints, connected to my idea of 'free neck'. It might be part of the pattern to 'park' myself in positions. Jenny's hands helped a lot to find out about some aspects of my faulty sensory appreciation.
I wanted to do some chair work with Carsten, but after a few tries we ended up talking. I asked him to feel his weight and describe where it goes, and he insisted that FM didn't want us to feel. Of course, FM subscribes not to trust our sensory appreciation. Restoring reliable sensory appreciation as an end is certainly not FM's idea either, yet I think it's indispensable for a prospective teacher to overcome sensory amnesia to a large degree.
I wonder if I did this in a similar manner like Duncan in some of my private lessons. Carsten seemed to want the hands-on part, but I didn't to manage to prevent him from going internal. During our conversation his mind still engaged a lot, yet he seemed a bit more present.
In a way, I explored already the topic for the reading: the evolutionary influence of sensory appreciation. I think the of concept of 'sensory amnesia' (borrowed from somatics) offers a better accessable term to introduce the sad state of skewed perception. Alexander's language seems out of time, however, maybe the strange terminology encourages inquiry.
Briar, who just started this term, stumbled over the classic 'means-whereby'. I tried to explain the difference with the difference between 'what' and 'how'. AT doesn't care too much about the 'what', Chyna's as AT high heel guru exemplifies this convincingly. Inhibition allows us to choose the 'how', one of the core skills taught to bring more consciousness into our daily life.
We looked at writing in Matt's group. I was surprised how tense my wrists felt when writing. I have faint, kind of unpleasant memories of learning to write, and I never really had a 'nice' hand writing. Awesome area to explore some of the older habits I acquired.
In Jenny's group I became more aware of the influence of speaking while putting hands on. It became a less big stimulus for me to put hands on, now I can get back to organise my intent beforehand.
I wanted to do some chair work with Carsten, but after a few tries we ended up talking. I asked him to feel his weight and describe where it goes, and he insisted that FM didn't want us to feel. Of course, FM subscribes not to trust our sensory appreciation. Restoring reliable sensory appreciation as an end is certainly not FM's idea either, yet I think it's indispensable for a prospective teacher to overcome sensory amnesia to a large degree.
I wonder if I did this in a similar manner like Duncan in some of my private lessons. Carsten seemed to want the hands-on part, but I didn't to manage to prevent him from going internal. During our conversation his mind still engaged a lot, yet he seemed a bit more present.
In a way, I explored already the topic for the reading: the evolutionary influence of sensory appreciation. I think the of concept of 'sensory amnesia' (borrowed from somatics) offers a better accessable term to introduce the sad state of skewed perception. Alexander's language seems out of time, however, maybe the strange terminology encourages inquiry.
Briar, who just started this term, stumbled over the classic 'means-whereby'. I tried to explain the difference with the difference between 'what' and 'how'. AT doesn't care too much about the 'what', Chyna's as AT high heel guru exemplifies this convincingly. Inhibition allows us to choose the 'how', one of the core skills taught to bring more consciousness into our daily life.
We looked at writing in Matt's group. I was surprised how tense my wrists felt when writing. I have faint, kind of unpleasant memories of learning to write, and I never really had a 'nice' hand writing. Awesome area to explore some of the older habits I acquired.
In Jenny's group I became more aware of the influence of speaking while putting hands on. It became a less big stimulus for me to put hands on, now I can get back to organise my intent beforehand.
Monday, February 1
Back to school
The unicycling training paid out, I arrived quite relaxed at school. I enjoyed Margarets hands during my first turn, being happily wrong again yet more precise in my directions. I had about 10 minutes semi-supine before, just enough to get settled back into school again.
I'm going to experiment with Philip Pawley's idea for semi-supine quickies: Just a few minutes, yet with some extra awareness of the whole process and directing from getting down to the floor until standing again. I wanted to get my hands on again, so I skipped this good resolve today.
While working with Carina I noticed some of my bad habits flashing in front of my inner eye in moments of inhibition. Although my arms feel much better connected than ever, I still can easily forget my hands (not really a useful thing while putting hands-on).
I could pick up some of her movement habits, and helped her releasing some extra tension. Jack volunteered for the next session, and I got more confident with my hands. However, I need to order a bit more what I'm doing when putting hands on, I tend to forget about my left arm.
That's the good thing about the group classes. Jenny has an amazing way to work with us while putting hands on, very precisely pointing out the extra bits we don't need. And of course, directing us the same time.
I'm going to experiment with Philip Pawley's idea for semi-supine quickies: Just a few minutes, yet with some extra awareness of the whole process and directing from getting down to the floor until standing again. I wanted to get my hands on again, so I skipped this good resolve today.
While working with Carina I noticed some of my bad habits flashing in front of my inner eye in moments of inhibition. Although my arms feel much better connected than ever, I still can easily forget my hands (not really a useful thing while putting hands-on).
I could pick up some of her movement habits, and helped her releasing some extra tension. Jack volunteered for the next session, and I got more confident with my hands. However, I need to order a bit more what I'm doing when putting hands on, I tend to forget about my left arm.
That's the good thing about the group classes. Jenny has an amazing way to work with us while putting hands on, very precisely pointing out the extra bits we don't need. And of course, directing us the same time.
Saturday, January 30
Evolving Meme
When our habits have grown strong,
changing them just feels really wrong.
somehow, we reached our end -
is there any need to mend?
If only pain keeps us alive,
existence becomes a strife,
we have fallen from grace,
caught in the daily rat race.
All it needs is the penny to drop,
learning gradually to say stop.
The new ways will be unknown,
it's good to have them shown.
And with a little bit more connection
we can shape this planet's resurrection.
When our habits have grown strong,
changing them just feels really wrong.
somehow, we reached our end -
is there any need to mend?
If only pain keeps us alive,
existence becomes a strife,
we have fallen from grace,
caught in the daily rat race.
All it needs is the penny to drop,
learning gradually to say stop.
The new ways will be unknown,
it's good to have them shown.
And with a little bit more connection
we can shape this planet's resurrection.
Wednesday, December 9
Proof of concept
If I had to earn money with some of my leisure time projects, I certainly would need to learn to do better estimates of the time involved. About a week after I prepared all the struts needed for my first geodesic dome, I dared to attempt another proof of concept.
I spend about two hours to make sure that each and every strut retains in the connector, gaffer taping the ends to prevent slipping. I hoped that as long as the structure remained connected, I could assemble it entirely. To my surprise, it worked out well, just the idea to document the build failed.
Next time, I rather trust that I hardly notice the camera working on a minute interval. After 14 minutes I wondered whether the camera worked as desired, and stopped the sequence incidentally... however, it took me somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes to get the structure up, and about 20 minutes to deconstruct the frame again.
Although the hose connectors don't stabilise the structure much during assembly, once everything is in place it feels quite sturdy. I could carry the structure around easily, but I certainly have to skip the idea of decent door opening. If it becomes a shelter, I rather climb through a lower triangle than endangering structural integrity.
Pegging down, probably already at a very early state, might be a good idea as well. I wish a had a tarp around, or better some house wrap, to test the integrity with a bit of wind and a skin. The surface area doesn't seem to big, though I want to have quite a snug cover, repeating the shape of the frame. I can't really say whether I want to trust it even with skin as a shelter, but I'm more than curious to cover it decently.
While I managed to do my directions in some of the various dull stages of this project, I happily forgot about directing today. Yet all the crawling around, squatting and bending has left no pain, the only thing I notice is more exposure to midday sun. Any dome project will offer plenty of opportunity to apply the technique - heaps of repetitive tasks, most of them unfamiliar, so there's heap of opportunity to stop and reason about the means-whereby.
That doesn't in any way mean that I spend much time thinking about the means. It's hard to tell how much end-gaining was involved - I remember being calm and collected most of the time, having time for a chat with a curious passer-by. I felt primed for success, with the absence of real set-backs (two rods slipped out before during the assembly of the final pentagon) not too much exhilaration did express.
I enjoyed some minutes sitting in the shade of the tree in the middle of some sacred geometry I materialised in my neighborhood. Without a skin, a dome provides a space that seems sheltered and open at the same time. an amazing experience.
I couldn't really stand up in it, the apex was about 165 cms (rough estimation, not measured), which means that in 2v dome the radius approximates the height quite well. So as long as I don't tackle the stability problem (or the strut length), it's rather a personal shelter than a communal space.
The next challenge is finding some clever material for the skin and testing the stability under wind... Still haven't found a shop that sells Tyvek, and shelling out $90 for some other house wrap doesn't tempt me yet. I need about 30 sqm's for the skin and ground cloth, with about 10% waste included.
It has been an amazing adventure so far. From building smaller models to go large-scale, dealing with all the set-backs on the way, finding flaws and eliminating them. I know it's still a long way into my own dome home, yet it's feasible.
I spend about two hours to make sure that each and every strut retains in the connector, gaffer taping the ends to prevent slipping. I hoped that as long as the structure remained connected, I could assemble it entirely. To my surprise, it worked out well, just the idea to document the build failed.
Next time, I rather trust that I hardly notice the camera working on a minute interval. After 14 minutes I wondered whether the camera worked as desired, and stopped the sequence incidentally... however, it took me somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes to get the structure up, and about 20 minutes to deconstruct the frame again.
Although the hose connectors don't stabilise the structure much during assembly, once everything is in place it feels quite sturdy. I could carry the structure around easily, but I certainly have to skip the idea of decent door opening. If it becomes a shelter, I rather climb through a lower triangle than endangering structural integrity.
Pegging down, probably already at a very early state, might be a good idea as well. I wish a had a tarp around, or better some house wrap, to test the integrity with a bit of wind and a skin. The surface area doesn't seem to big, though I want to have quite a snug cover, repeating the shape of the frame. I can't really say whether I want to trust it even with skin as a shelter, but I'm more than curious to cover it decently.
While I managed to do my directions in some of the various dull stages of this project, I happily forgot about directing today. Yet all the crawling around, squatting and bending has left no pain, the only thing I notice is more exposure to midday sun. Any dome project will offer plenty of opportunity to apply the technique - heaps of repetitive tasks, most of them unfamiliar, so there's heap of opportunity to stop and reason about the means-whereby.
That doesn't in any way mean that I spend much time thinking about the means. It's hard to tell how much end-gaining was involved - I remember being calm and collected most of the time, having time for a chat with a curious passer-by. I felt primed for success, with the absence of real set-backs (two rods slipped out before during the assembly of the final pentagon) not too much exhilaration did express.
I enjoyed some minutes sitting in the shade of the tree in the middle of some sacred geometry I materialised in my neighborhood. Without a skin, a dome provides a space that seems sheltered and open at the same time. an amazing experience.
I couldn't really stand up in it, the apex was about 165 cms (rough estimation, not measured), which means that in 2v dome the radius approximates the height quite well. So as long as I don't tackle the stability problem (or the strut length), it's rather a personal shelter than a communal space.
The next challenge is finding some clever material for the skin and testing the stability under wind... Still haven't found a shop that sells Tyvek, and shelling out $90 for some other house wrap doesn't tempt me yet. I need about 30 sqm's for the skin and ground cloth, with about 10% waste included.
It has been an amazing adventure so far. From building smaller models to go large-scale, dealing with all the set-backs on the way, finding flaws and eliminating them. I know it's still a long way into my own dome home, yet it's feasible.
Wednesday, December 2
Free serving
I managed to forget setting my alarm, without breakfast and a bit of a haste I arrived about half an hour late in school. Although 'being late' used to be one my personal no-nos, I still did the few things I wanted to do, and laid down on a table for semi-supine, instead of being worried and apologetic about my mishap.
Jen's student didn't arrive in time, and so she asked to work with me. Her hands helped me release a lot excess tension in my legs, and connect me a bit more from head to toe. I returned to the table soon, and then Carina worked with my shoulders and head, while first Ria and then David gave her a bit more up. What a great start into the day.
The turn with Bronwyn gave me the opportunity to experience a more consistent up in walking, although I had a hard time inhibiting my desire to feel out the ease I noticed. Without embodying ideas they literally cannot make sense, and a good amount of continuity and repetition is usually needed to achieve this.
Ann's anatomy class had some sad undertone, it was her last visit as regular anatomy teacher. We studied gait again, playing around with different ideas of bad use while walking. Entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
Jen's student didn't arrive in time, and so she asked to work with me. Her hands helped me release a lot excess tension in my legs, and connect me a bit more from head to toe. I returned to the table soon, and then Carina worked with my shoulders and head, while first Ria and then David gave her a bit more up. What a great start into the day.
The turn with Bronwyn gave me the opportunity to experience a more consistent up in walking, although I had a hard time inhibiting my desire to feel out the ease I noticed. Without embodying ideas they literally cannot make sense, and a good amount of continuity and repetition is usually needed to achieve this.
Ann's anatomy class had some sad undertone, it was her last visit as regular anatomy teacher. We studied gait again, playing around with different ideas of bad use while walking. Entertaining and enlightening at the same time.
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