I've been round and round with a million different ideas in my head, ways to begin expressing the perspective and understanding that's been coming. Where to begin? Who's going to hear it first: the golfer, the runner, the weekend warrior with a bad back, or maybe the massage therapists, or holistic health practitioners. Or law enforcement. Or business. Or Universities. Or the retiree with too many years of compensating for the dings and dents of a life lived well.

Different contexts, different messages; and yet it's all the same story.

Bottom line: I see things. No, not ghosts or spirits, anything like that. I see what people are missing, what they need to be whole, to be re-membered. Almost always, it's missing context. A lost sense of where gravity really travels through the body, over-focusing on building strength without learning how to move, trying to fix chemistry without a structure that can maintain it. It's a long list.

Our culture has mastered isolation and refinement of knowledge until it is nearly meaningless to everyday life. We know so much about so much, and yet live as if it wasn't there..... Nutrition, Psychology, Physics... Does knowing what a healthy diet is, modify your behavior? Not usually. It's a very rare person that moves as if physics really applied to their body.

It's not the information, it's how we go about thinking, or moving; how we interact with our environment. We don't realize what the whole picture looks like. With the right context, we can take information and recognize its functional or instrumental value: what does this mean to me, standing here, this moment? We can bring it inside so that it becomes a living part of us, something that informs our experience continuously.

Seeing context clearly also resolves many clashes between differing perspectives: alternative and allopathic medicine, different religious systems, schools of scientific thought.

There's this theory and that theory, and then there's how the critter works.

                                       --Deane Juhan

We're all looking at similar pictures; what lenses (or blinders) do we use to filter our perception? (And yes, the nervous system does a lot of filtering all the time.) Looking at a common focal point from different angles can help us see our subject, and each other's perspective more clearly. Learning directly from another's perspective, or a tug of war over whose language is "better"?

The best part? Everything's got context. Can't get away from it. What I'm talking about here, it doesn't compete or override anything. It sees how they fit, how they inform each other, and us, of the larger picture.

Informing is not the same as delivering information. Inform is derived from the verb to form. When you inform me, you form me. You enlarge that which makes me most human: what I know. I am, to some degree, authored by you.

                                        --Doc Searls

Anyway, that seems to be my strength: to see this and that and the other, how they relate and show us something about the world, about living.

My goal: to express this, to share this with the world (yes, as much of it as I can!)

Who should I be talking to?

May 14th at 7pm

aikido students:free, others:$10

It's been quiet on the outside, but very busy backstage here. The next few weeks will see a bunch of new projects and ideas getting out there for you to see. My friend and client Dr. Kevin Ross-Emery has a new podcast site: Web of Light. I've been spending quite a bit of time over there lately, doing some very fun interviews. We get into rolfing, systema, and a bit about body and spirit. Go check it out!

At first blush, it seems a no-brainer; who wouldn't want more range of motion, circulation, and all else that is promised? Just one problem: it usually doesn't deliver (especially when done as commonly taught in the US).

From a mechanistic point of view, it seems to make sense; if we want it longer, just pull on it a while, and it will eventually get there. Some more enlightened approaches attempt to fool the nervous system into allowing more length through distraction or use of the agonist/antagonist reflex.

These both miss the main point: How did we get here? Why is the tension, the limitation there in the first place? The body is far more than a lump of tissue, or a twitching mass of reflexes. There is very complex orchestration going on all the time. There is always a reason for things to be the way they are structurally. We may not ever find out what it is, and we don't always need to; we need to assume that there is one, or we will be fighting the body we are trying to change.

Instead of dictating what needs to be different: "longer here, more relaxed there!", I prefer to ask the body how it might accomplish what it is already doing, without restricting itself in this or that particular way. To be clearer: demand (but do not force) action and support in a direction or manner on the edge or slightly beyond the current natural range[see more on ranges]. Over time, the body will learn to expand its range of possible action and stability, and include the new range. (The skill of expansion is worth its weight in gold, as well...)

I'll use myself as an example. I've had a classic case of tight hamstrings most of my life (not awful, but limiting). Rolfing, stretching, martial arts, yoga, and dance all had some effect (Rolfing by far the most) but still the issue was there. In learning squats Systema[link]-style (vertical spine), and some of the other near-the-ground movement drills, I have far more freedom in my hips and thighs than ever before in my life.

These movements demand that I support myself and act through my joints, at odd and end-of-range angles and rotations. I never stretch; I merely move. It is not an instantaneous process, but the benefits are wide and lasting. I haven't increased my range of movement but my range of action; the intelligence and resilience of that whole area has increased.

Stretch yourself by expanding your capability to respond. That is something worth working for.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." -Charles Darwin

Truly natural movement, such that comes from our hindbrain unrestricted is considered the exception, superlative, the domain of the gifted and experts only.

There is another way; it is possible to teach the deeper motor centers more directly. Many coaches and teachers know this at a gut level, but are limited: by lack of specific and expressive language, and thorough knowledge of what is needed experientially to create the desired result. (Teachers need both the logical understanding and the knowledge of how to evoke the desired response. It's easy to get confused at that point.)