Practice Through Movement

Any activity can be practiced. But to have a practice implies something else.

This is what happens when the chef, or the musician, or the carpenter,  discovers that the way they work on their craft can do more than produce food, songs, or a chair.

There is a transformation of the person, beneath the technical layer.

Like digging to the center of the earth from any point on the surface, all of these practices, whether culinary, musical, physical… at a certain depth, they all converge on the same point: SELF-practice.

And for us, movement practice is not just the practice of movement… but practice through movement.

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What does it mean for a practice to transform us?

It means that the way we work on the activity does more than just improve the activity. The activity, the technique, the skill - these are like the clothes we wear. But self-practice means working on the body underneath them.

In our classes, for example, we are working on kicks, various handstand entries, rhythm.

We can practice these things, and acquire a new kick, handstand entry, or rhythmic phrase.

But we can practice them in another way, using the kick to improve our dynamic balance, the handstand entry to improve how we shift weight, and the rhythmic phrase to improve our attention.

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The transformation of how we move is not a given.

We do strength work, but strain our backs picking the baby up from the back seat of the car. We work on our mobility, but somehow feel stiff and strained.

To work on something doesn’t mean WE will change in any substantial way. One of the saddest examples I can think of is the forgetful mnemonist.

I saw it first in myself: all the things I worked on, didn’t penetrate the surface, didn’t transform me. I felt less like an omnipotent mover, and more like a bag of tricks. More tricks than the average bear, but qualitatively no different.

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This made me re-evaluate HOW I was practicing. Through the indispensable guidance of my teacher Ido, I began to realize what was keeping me at the surface - at the levels of my attention, my intention, my orientation.

And I began to ask myself: Who do I need to be, in order to be who I wish to become?