Yesterday I ran into an interesting controversy about thinking. There is a definite desire in some people to 'stop thinking', but I suggested that you will have to be dead to achieve this. Luckily, we moved onto a different topic instead of getting into a senseless debate.
I define 'thought' as specific, repeatable nervous system pattern that accompanies muscular movement. In this way I presume that the activity of the autonomous nervous system is 'thinking' as well. This very technical definition allows me to avoid consciousness for a moment, and it also implies the peaceful coexistence of simultaneous thoughts. Ornamental decorations in mosques can give you an idea of the complexity of thinking in any given moment, a variety of interwoven patterns creating a whole. To make this analogy closer to experiental reality, you will have to animate the ornament.
Fractal imagery suits also well to represent the intrinsic combination of order and chaos. We don't need to be aware of our life-preserving patterns like heart beat or breathing, yet we don't gain any advantage by labelling those processes 'non-thought'.
In terms of Alexander Technique, meddling with breathing or heart beat would have been most likely called 'interference' by the master himself, and in most cases rightly so. People do all sort of things when you ask them 'to take a deep breath', imposing 'conscious' thoughts how to take a deep breath over the 'unconscious' thought deriving from the carbon monoxide level in the blood.
I admit, this extensive definition of 'thinking' contradicts the cultural habit to link 'consciousness' or 'awareness' to thought. Usually the verbalizing part of the neuronal fireworks is considered 'thinking'. Following this idea strictly, music and other art forms would be thoughtless.
Experience always exceeds any verbal description of it. The words I type here are not only shaped by the verbalizing faculty of my brain, but at the same time i have to breath, keep myself upright and move my fingers over the keyboard. The quality of the last three 'thoughts' influences immediately the quality of the 'verbal output' or consciously verbalizing thinking.
Stopping to think from this perspective means death. Stopping the internal dialogue is how I understand the desire to 'stop to think', and from my experiences as not too persistent meditator I can easily empathize with this desire. As much as I can consciously release the tension in my neck, I can consciously release the tension created by holding onto thoughts I become aware of, but those skills need to be learned.
This might sound like pure semantics. This broad definition of thinking would require additional considerations about the level of awareness/consciousness involved in different thoughts, however, it still would make 'stopping to think' equal to sudden death. Inhibition might not be the best suited word to decribe how not to get caught in habitual loops of our verbalizing faculty, it works for me as long as I haven't found a better one.
Thursday, November 26
Thursday, November 19
Taming the beast
One peculiar thing about Alexander Technique you cannot 'do' it. Do whatever you like. When you observe yourself in doing, apply the means-whereby while doing, you're using the skills Alexander Technique teaches.
However, having an excellent MacDonald style teacher in the school can look a bit like one can 'do the technique'. Nili's directions are precise and efficient, and we went through a lot of 'traditional' approaches like chair work, table work, hands on the back of a chair, monkey, lunge and finally the whispered aah.
Just watching Nili made it easy to give myself directions and keep myself up, the increased amount of 'uptime' might have led to the bit of discomfort between my shoulder blades. Or maybe just my bad use while taming a beast, namely a biggish tensegrity sphere.
I found in a cheap shop decorative bamboo struts with a nice dark red colour, together with some Sisal garden string. I build a lot of 6-strut symmetrical tensegrities lately, with a variety of connection methods and tension elements, so I started off with 50 cm rods and about 120 cm string. Sawing the grooves with the Dremel becomes more and more routine, although I find myself often crouched over the work piece.
I experimented with tying the strings to the rod, and making loops with knots to slide the ends through. This would save me sawing 60 grooves into the 30 elements, for the prize of 120 knots. A lot of repetitive activity, a great challenge to consider how to do it easiest. I was eager enough to prepare all elements before the assembly, a strategy I changed soon.
Some of the loops were too big, there wasn't enough tension on the strings, and the ends could slide around. The beautiful idea of easy reusability didn't work out. Back to grooves. The next attempt used sisal strings, but as some of it ripped too easy under tension I went back to nylon line.
I cut the strings so that they had nearly no slack - this might work with more elastic strings, but after about 15 struts it became obvious that it rather break than bend into a sphere. As there is no way of lengthening too short strings, the next set of strings needed preparing. To break the monotony of preparing everything at once, I prepared 5 struts at a time (there's six building stages requiring each time 5 struts).
The first two attempts were still too long, and I waited a day without doing anything before I went with the final approach. The water balloons I used to prevent the strings from sliding were easier to attach than the rubber ring wrapping I used most of time. Unfortunately, they came as easily of again.
The youtube video that inspired me in first place shows an assembly within about five minutes. I spend already the third afternoon and still wasn't sure if everything would fall into place. As the waterballoon failed as security, I looped the string once around the strut before using a rubber band wrapper. I must have started building a sphere at least a dozen times, I know now how to connect the elements with maybe referring to one of the models. I wouldn't be surprised to rediscover the build pattern as weaving pattern.
The skewer model gained stability after stage 4, it get itself balanced on five struts as dome. I got fairly confident when I managed to move the model from its gymball 'mould' onto its own feet. The sculpture rolled in elliptical shape on the floor, I leaned with my body against it to attach the remaining struts. I assembled the final five struts as a pentagon, and carefully slid it into the still wobbly dome.
The pentagon needed 10 connections, after attaching half of them I could turn the model around and do the last connections. I even dared to leave them unsecured. The model flattened still a bit, so I removed some of rubber wrappers and looped previously unlooped connections, decreasing the overall string length slightly thus increasing the tension.
I wouldn't roll it downhill now, but it hangs nicely on a single hook on the wall. Tuning was fairly easy, so I might remove the remaining security rubbers for an overall fine tuning. For now, I rather keep it untouched for some time to see whether it tends to undo itself.
However, having an excellent MacDonald style teacher in the school can look a bit like one can 'do the technique'. Nili's directions are precise and efficient, and we went through a lot of 'traditional' approaches like chair work, table work, hands on the back of a chair, monkey, lunge and finally the whispered aah.
Just watching Nili made it easy to give myself directions and keep myself up, the increased amount of 'uptime' might have led to the bit of discomfort between my shoulder blades. Or maybe just my bad use while taming a beast, namely a biggish tensegrity sphere.
I found in a cheap shop decorative bamboo struts with a nice dark red colour, together with some Sisal garden string. I build a lot of 6-strut symmetrical tensegrities lately, with a variety of connection methods and tension elements, so I started off with 50 cm rods and about 120 cm string. Sawing the grooves with the Dremel becomes more and more routine, although I find myself often crouched over the work piece.
I experimented with tying the strings to the rod, and making loops with knots to slide the ends through. This would save me sawing 60 grooves into the 30 elements, for the prize of 120 knots. A lot of repetitive activity, a great challenge to consider how to do it easiest. I was eager enough to prepare all elements before the assembly, a strategy I changed soon.
Some of the loops were too big, there wasn't enough tension on the strings, and the ends could slide around. The beautiful idea of easy reusability didn't work out. Back to grooves. The next attempt used sisal strings, but as some of it ripped too easy under tension I went back to nylon line.
I cut the strings so that they had nearly no slack - this might work with more elastic strings, but after about 15 struts it became obvious that it rather break than bend into a sphere. As there is no way of lengthening too short strings, the next set of strings needed preparing. To break the monotony of preparing everything at once, I prepared 5 struts at a time (there's six building stages requiring each time 5 struts).
The first two attempts were still too long, and I waited a day without doing anything before I went with the final approach. The water balloons I used to prevent the strings from sliding were easier to attach than the rubber ring wrapping I used most of time. Unfortunately, they came as easily of again.
The youtube video that inspired me in first place shows an assembly within about five minutes. I spend already the third afternoon and still wasn't sure if everything would fall into place. As the waterballoon failed as security, I looped the string once around the strut before using a rubber band wrapper. I must have started building a sphere at least a dozen times, I know now how to connect the elements with maybe referring to one of the models. I wouldn't be surprised to rediscover the build pattern as weaving pattern.
The skewer model gained stability after stage 4, it get itself balanced on five struts as dome. I got fairly confident when I managed to move the model from its gymball 'mould' onto its own feet. The sculpture rolled in elliptical shape on the floor, I leaned with my body against it to attach the remaining struts. I assembled the final five struts as a pentagon, and carefully slid it into the still wobbly dome.
The pentagon needed 10 connections, after attaching half of them I could turn the model around and do the last connections. I even dared to leave them unsecured. The model flattened still a bit, so I removed some of rubber wrappers and looped previously unlooped connections, decreasing the overall string length slightly thus increasing the tension.
I wouldn't roll it downhill now, but it hangs nicely on a single hook on the wall. Tuning was fairly easy, so I might remove the remaining security rubbers for an overall fine tuning. For now, I rather keep it untouched for some time to see whether it tends to undo itself.
Monday, November 9
That's it, that's it!
For the next two weeks Nili Bassan visits our school, but I had a good chance to apply the technique even before then. Last night my world map fell off the wall, taking down no less than five tensegrity sculptures with it. Naturally, or so it seems, my latest project, a 30-strut sphere, unfolded again.
So I exercised patience, delayed my desire for a quick fix, and went to school. The turn with Jenny eased me a lot, and her idea to feel amused rather than irrated by the asymmetrical way of using my body helped with this a lot.
The hands-on group with Jenny offered more interesting experiences. I worked with Alysha, and surprised myself by a mixture of old doing habits and some surprisingly effective directing.
In Nili's group I partnered up with Jane Azul, continuing basically where we left off with Jenny. I got quite nervous when Nili came to work with us, however, I picked up some valuable information of some of the 'extra' I put in when putting hands on.
So I exercised patience, delayed my desire for a quick fix, and went to school. The turn with Jenny eased me a lot, and her idea to feel amused rather than irrated by the asymmetrical way of using my body helped with this a lot.
The hands-on group with Jenny offered more interesting experiences. I worked with Alysha, and surprised myself by a mixture of old doing habits and some surprisingly effective directing.
In Nili's group I partnered up with Jane Azul, continuing basically where we left off with Jenny. I got quite nervous when Nili came to work with us, however, I picked up some valuable information of some of the 'extra' I put in when putting hands on.
Saturday, November 7
Spherical hysterical
The transformation from sticks and strings into three dimensional structures still stuns me. And provides me with ample opportunity to learn about my end-gaining tendencies.
Producing the elements required to build this airy structures meant that I had to some repetitive activities with a specific target in mind: precision. I noticed that especially the flexibility of the tension elements provides some leeway for the measurements, having quite uniform elements simply eases construction.
With a closer look you can see rubber band along the compression elements, I used those to prevent the nylon string from slipping out of the grooves. The model was quite sturdy yet bouncy, and I decided to take the 'safety rubber' off. At some point my ambitions backfired, and sphere flattened into a sheet. Bummer.
The construction of the sphere was quite straight forward, but I realised that not all the grooves were narrow enough to hold the string in place, I delayed the next construction attempt until better tools arrived.
It took only a week until a set of diamond blades arrived, and instead of using 6mm wooden dowels I took some large bamboo skewers. Again, I had to manufacture more than 30 identical elements to build my sphere, this time using transparent elastic string as tension element.
It took two or three attempts, and a bowl to provide some initial curvature to build this model, and this time it remained stable after removing any rubber band used to prevent slipping. It even survived inserting a balloon on the inside, to provide some more photographic attraction.
The balloon decided its fate. I build a small tensegrity base for the sphere, and took some photos on the outside, utilizing sunlight.
Slight gusts were sufficient to get the sphere rolling off its base, and I when placed the sculpure in front of the next backdrop a gust dropped it to the pavement, where it collapsed. Well, I got it together once, and I already have the next idea how to tackle my string slipping out of groove problem can be handled. At least, I got into the habit of taking photos of the finishing stages of my tensegrity before I do further experiments or 'improvements' with them.
Producing the elements required to build this airy structures meant that I had to some repetitive activities with a specific target in mind: precision. I noticed that especially the flexibility of the tension elements provides some leeway for the measurements, having quite uniform elements simply eases construction.
With a closer look you can see rubber band along the compression elements, I used those to prevent the nylon string from slipping out of the grooves. The model was quite sturdy yet bouncy, and I decided to take the 'safety rubber' off. At some point my ambitions backfired, and sphere flattened into a sheet. Bummer.
The construction of the sphere was quite straight forward, but I realised that not all the grooves were narrow enough to hold the string in place, I delayed the next construction attempt until better tools arrived.
It took only a week until a set of diamond blades arrived, and instead of using 6mm wooden dowels I took some large bamboo skewers. Again, I had to manufacture more than 30 identical elements to build my sphere, this time using transparent elastic string as tension element.
It took two or three attempts, and a bowl to provide some initial curvature to build this model, and this time it remained stable after removing any rubber band used to prevent slipping. It even survived inserting a balloon on the inside, to provide some more photographic attraction.
The balloon decided its fate. I build a small tensegrity base for the sphere, and took some photos on the outside, utilizing sunlight.
Slight gusts were sufficient to get the sphere rolling off its base, and I when placed the sculpure in front of the next backdrop a gust dropped it to the pavement, where it collapsed. Well, I got it together once, and I already have the next idea how to tackle my string slipping out of groove problem can be handled. At least, I got into the habit of taking photos of the finishing stages of my tensegrity before I do further experiments or 'improvements' with them.
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