What you see is (not) what you get
What you see is (not) what you get. Our reality is virtual, built on semantics, filtered by psyches, and mediated by associations.
This is old hat for the Vedic philosophy, where our perceptions will always be hidden behind the veil of maya, illusion. And for the Jewish mystics as well - the Hebrew word for world, Olam, is more aptly translated with an association of the mystery, what is hidden, what cannot be seen. And Bertrand Russell says as much in the Problems of Philosophy - we cannot see things as they are; we project a visual idea onto the objective world, but that is a subjective experience, not inherent to reality itself. If all three of these are pointing at the same truth, that we cannot witness an objective reality, then there is a curious plot twist: whatever we imagine reality to truly be, it cannot be, because we’ve imagined it as thus.
The question is not “is this real?”. The question is - what does it mean to you?
We limit ourselves to thinking of as real that which reflects light. But our relationships, the systems that surround us like some mycelial network, our semantics… all are real. More real than the philosopher’s archetypal table, which turns into a chair when I sit on it. One becomes two, two becomes none.
What you see is always more or less than what there is.
At the Edge
When you’re going to the edge, whichever edge, the edge of reason and sanity, or of weightshift and balance… what defines the moment is the quality of attention. You can afford no lapse in concentration, no hubris to lure you beyond the base of support.
To stay sane, to keep balance as you flirt with madness and falling... this is how poets live, but it’s how we all realize the moment.
Why do you think we return to these places, over and over?
Where do you think the mystery and paradox of creativity is born? All life is an improvisation, but we’re asleep to that fact 99% of the time - making it feel like anything but. We live for the other 1% - when we realize, oh shit, I have no idea what’s coming next. Of course, we never knew what was coming next, we all just fall for the statistical anomaly of a seemingly persisting state of things. Pattern recognition is the boon of humanity, and the curse.
So it’s up to us as a society to find the edges, to constantly generate pattern interruption.
What system are you?
Bodies organized into somatotypes… that’s old-hat. Lesser known, but more interesting… which “system” dominates? The same Dr. Sheldon who gave us endo/meso/ecto- morph gave us also viscero/somato/cerebro- tonia.
- Viscerotonia: focused on the digestive system, enjoyment of the processes of the human body.
- Somatotonia: focused on the musculoskeletal system, there is a need for physical exertion
- Cerebrotonia: focused on the nervous system, hungry for intellectual/mental stimulation
In the way psychology describes them, they are all defined by their excesses - viscerotonia is nearly synonymous with gluttony and hedonism, cerebrotonia with being stuck in the head, somatotonia with aggressiveness.
But there’s a way of inverting this pathologizing and revealing insight… What happens when you bring these three into balance?
A movement practice has the effect of balancing these dispositions. In the right balance, there is doing / thinking / being. Action, reflection, stillness. You are the athlete, thriving in the exertion of fighting, improvisation, competition. You are the philosopher, sitting back to reflect on all of it, recalibrating and mapping the territory. You are the yogi, able to sit and enjoy the processes of the body.
You’re disposed to one? Run towards the others. The neurotic cerebrotonic doesn’t need to read another book… maybe s/he can learn to sit, simply sit (no, not a book in hand). The meathead somatotonic doesn’t need, maybe, to hit another PR… maybe you can steal a book from the cerebrotonic. And the relaxed viscerotonic - go lift something heavy, for god’s sake.
Long has philosophy looked to resolve our nature, with conceptions such as the tripartite soul, or mind-body dualism, or four humors. The Greeks did it, the Ayurverdic did this, every psychological “-ism” does it, statistical analyses attempt to identify them… This is just one way to “slice and dice” (as Ido describes it). What an incredibly useful tool, if only we understand its applications and limitations.
Adaptation
After a day or a week of performing a task, it’s not too surprising to see some improvement in performance of the selfsame task. But that improvement isn’t the real deal - all that happened was familiarization.
This is the same phenomenon as the “practice effect” that haunts researchers - the tests they use are often enough to produce improvements on the tests themselves, but without a change in the true trait of interest (the thing the test was supposed to point at - for example, using an IQ test to measure intelligence, or a computer test to quantify “memory”).
You see a better score on the test not because you actually improved in some fundamental way, but because you are familiarized with the task. And if you simply wait a short period of time, maybe a few hours or days, the familiarization effect is dissipated. This is important from two angles - one, the task is not the trait, and also, that there is a spectrum of adaptation. Let us deal with the latter.
Spectrum of Adaptation
A heuristic that might be useful for conceptualizing the spectrum of adaptations is the range of biological actions that organisms manifest in response to environmental changes from A) homeo-/allo- stasis through B) acclimatization to C) true adaptation (evolution).
Allostasis is the organism maintaining/returning to homeostasis - maintaining a normal range of fluctuation within a specific environment, by rapid and short-term responses. In the biological sphere that this most literally refers to, these effects are mediated by the nervous and endocrine systems.
For example, when I run, the the body releases hormones that break apart stored glucose so as to maintain metabolism (which is driven regulated by pH levels, a major factor in homeostasis).
But we can use allostasis to understand the practice effect: a psychological readiness for the task, because the task is anticipated. Sit me in front of a computer test, and my fingers prime to type. Tell me to expect a math question, and I shift, in an intuitive fashion, to a mental mode ready to calculate. It’s not that before and after the state of readiness, that I am different in a fundamental way.
Acclimatization points at reversible but more lasting changes in response to changes of environment (and not only typical changes WITHIN the environment). The changes revert when the environment reverts. In the most literal sense, we acclimate to temperature, light, pressure, etc, and for durations however long the environment is changed.
But we can also be said to acclimate to psycho-social factors, for example, from the shift from a rural to an urban environment (or vice versa). This biological phenomenon allows us to explore new environments. For example, I move to the mountains where oxygen pressure is reduced, so my body increases red blood cell count allowing me to improve oxygen transport.
In terms of the familiarization effect, if I perform a task sufficient times, something inside of me changes to be better prepared for subsequent exposures to the task. But remove me from the environment, and the effect is lost. In a way, I cannot be said to have truly changed.
The most long-lasting of changes are genetic in nature, in the form of evolution. If a group of organisms is placed in a new environment over generations, those that have acclimated the best will be naturally selected for, and through principles of inheritance and evolution, the next generation will have a greater proportion and magnitude of such traits. These traits in the newer generations will be much more hard-coded than any of the acclimatization-type effects.
We can further boil down the three coordinates in the seemingly linear spectrum of adaptation as follows
Allostasis - factors within the environment changed, but the environment is fundamentally the same.
Acclimatization - the environment itself changed, but not permanently, producing reversible effects.
Growth - the environment changed permanently, and created survival pressure that drove genetic change in the species, such that more long-term changes occurred.
There is a gray area between acclimatization and evolution… and the adaptation I want is THERE (let cultural evolution take responsibility for improving the practice of future generations!). As I go into a practice, I want it to change me, so that I can move along to the next step in my evolution, but not lose what I gained. I neither intend to revert to my prior environment nor stay in the current. So what can I take with me?
If I was looking ahead, hopefully I anticipated what traits I would wish to have further down the line, as my environment changed… and for the unpredictable changes, hopefully I found some traits that prepared me for chaos as well. So an intelligence is required as I chart my course.
But I must also consider - I shouldn’t want any overly-permanent change… again, looking down the line, I must expect that any adaptation now could hurt me eventually, in some other environment. Hence species go extinct… (and yet, neither should I toe the water too carefully, in fear)
So there is something beyond acclimatization that I want: put me in the new environment, let me transform, and let me take the transformation with me to the next environment. Thus I can continue to grow, to evolve.
10 Years With Ido Portal
It will soon be 10 years (October) since we fortuitously discovered Ido Portal's work through his "Self-Dominance" video. At the time, he had a blog from which he began to create an incredible resource (even in today's over-saturated world, one of the best online resources you can turn to is simply an old blog).
We were immediately obsessed. When he began to use the blog to share carefully designed and multi-tiered workouts, we participated religiously. We joined his forum in which we would discuss progress and concepts related to movement (I'll always prefer a good forum to social media…).
Around this time, Ido came to the U.S., so I (Sean) traveled to Boston to take a few classes. What gold we were exposed to then, one decade ago, that goes unrivaled by any handbalance workshop you go to anywhere else today.
In Boston, I got a chance to talk more with Ido, discover he loves dirty jokes ("feels good, looks bad"…), and to realize I needed to go much further. So I continued with coaching, and began attending his bigger seminars and events - Upper Body Strength, a week-long Movement Camp in Berlin…
And the snowball continued. For our wedding honeymoon, we melted down all our gifts and used them to travel to Singapore for another Movement Camp. We hosted the first Movement-X in the United States here in Miami.
Eventually, the reality of the situation had to be confronted - we're clearly not going away, so we might as well get as cozy as possible. We joined Ido's mentorship program.Now I get a chance to travel to assist in workshops, we're meeting with Ido throughout the year, he's guided us in the opening of our space, and he provides critical feedback for our classes. He's sharing a vision with us; we're humbled to work alongside the vanguard.
Every step of the way, he reveals a little more of the big picture - there's always a slight discomfort, some growing pains, and as we move past them, we see the logical progression. There's an incredible element of design in Ido's work, but also in his philosophy - nothing is patched together, there are no seams. Intense, prolonged, and persistent thought was clearly invested in the evolution of a philosophy that continues to grow, swallowing everything in its path.
Ido Portal Mentorship