"Movility" (beyond "Position-fetishism")
(Disclaimer: the term "movility" here is used tongue in cheek, and is definitely not intended as a lexical solution.)
Evolution doesn’t stop as you go from flexibility to mobility.
The ability to actually move into, out of and around a position, not just in one or two scenarios but within a variety of scenarios, from a variety of other positions, across a variety of speeds, etc, is a higher level yet (shall we say… “movility”).
This perspective is less about the position itself, and more about what it connects to. You don’t get there by hyper-focusing on the element itself, by sitting and precisely articulating a single joint or pattern over and over… instead, you need to actually connect the pieces, and with variety.
You need to attack the position not as a "bridge" (a stretch of territory between two other territories), or as an "island", but as a flexible "nexus", capable of closing and opening in any direction, at any time, for any purpose. In a way, this de-emphasizes the position, and puts the attention on the system as a whole.
This is uncomfortable for us. We're so attentive to the party tricks that we've become accustomed to looking for the obvious, and what's more obvious than a snapshot in time? What's easier to see than the position held? To see the contortionist achieve a position and hold it just long enough that our eyes can digest the most easily digestible of movement characteristics, and then move on, before the banality of position-fetishism rises to the surface of our consciousness.
The higher level is to blend...
not just to toss some ingredients together into a salad, but to homogenize a mixture, so that nothing seems separate. By destroying the acting philosophy of the party trick, and instead looking after the quality of the connectiveness. Here, we don't see contortionism, but instead breakdancers, capoeiristas and traceurs. (But as Guatarri/Deleuze point out regarding any evolved form, these are quick to calcify and devolve).
While mobility work can be great for addressing weak links, often the weak link (from the perspective of the big picture) isn't the mobility itself, but the connecting of the pieces. Because this sits one-plus conceptual level(s) above mobility work, it's a bit more complex and ends up neglected - there are too many gray zones. It's easy to create one or two connections to a position, but how do we OWN the position- connecting it to everything else?
This idea means we need to go beyond the muscular and connective tissue components; it's not enough to think in terms of the chassis here. Instead, we go to the wet-ware - the basal ganglia and cerebellum, to the movement pattern processing functions, where context defines what we look for, and what opportunities we can carve out from the scenario.
And then, when you've gotten to this layer, it's necessary to make the jump again. To integrate one level above…
This kind of approach shows up in a movement practice, but NOT in a mobility practice. Don’t get stuck combining a “mobility” practice and a “strength” practice and an “acrobatic” practice… Become the unified field phenomenon - evolve into a movement practice.
Interviewed by "Back | Pain | Movement"
Sean was recently interviewed by “Back | Pain | Movement” (Simon Schmidt) - talking about pain, movement, psychology, democratizing science, observations from our movement community and teaching in Miami, and personal own background (bulk of the pain discussion comes up at the end - around 38:50).
Link: .iTunesShoutEngine
For those intrigued by pain, we’re almost done with the pain map/resource that will provide the blueprint for changing the relationship to pain
"Just Move" documentary about Ido Portal
Republic of Movement had the opportunity to attend the London premiere of “Just Move”, a documentary about our teacher Ido Portal, movement practice, and movement culture. We received permission to screen the documentary in our movement facility, and facilitated a guided discussion afterwards.
In “Just Move”, Brian attempts to clarify the movement perspective that Ido has been exploring for decades, a seemingly intractable nebulous cloud of paradoxes. He does this, not by trying to disentangle it in one strong yank of a thread, but by visiting it from various angles, stepping around and looking for different entry points.
By it's nature, there is no way to capture this perspective as a whole in a single documentary - by picking some facets to focus on, others remain unrevealed. But this is also the ONLY way to approach the ideas contained… by walking around continuously, taking on new angles, revealing more and more.
Ido mentioned in the Q&A - there are various forms of documenting, citing the book as a very limited form. Documentary film also has limitations. The camera points in one direction, but not in another. Moreover, it can never point to itself, and the mere act of pointing at all has an effect on the context (even when it is the fly on the wall).
Brian had no easy task - not only is the perspective complex, the practice itself is constantly changing. How do you take an honest/authentic snapshot of a practice that changes? Especially when observers are so quick to categorize based on first impression? Hopefully, observers do not walk away from this documentary thinking “ah, now I understand”. You have a better understanding, thanks to the meticulous probing of Brian. But keep in mind - you see parts, from one perspective. The practice consists not only of other parts, but those parts will inevitably change into parts that subsequently change again.
The impossibility of completely capturing this movement perspective into a neat little package should never stop us from attempting to describe it. The alternative is to stop speaking entirely, which yields nothing. Most of us, in the face of a complex phenomenon, choose to walk away, to leave it undescribed, because the task is overwhelming and impossible. But there is something else - the joy, the Sissyphian struggle as mentioned in this documentary, of mapping a cloud, exploring from new angles, discovering new territories, and enjoying the journey… isn’t that what life is?
Watch “Just Move” as well as the Q&A that followed at londonreal.tv/
Reconciling generalization and specialization in a movement practice
The dilemma of specialization versus generalization arises frequently for the mover. The French monk Sertillanges, in a 1920 treatise, addressed this dilemma in the context of prescriptions for intellectual work. Although the text is referring to academic and intellectual material, it seems particularly relevant to projects we take on as movers.
He begins by describing the importance of generalization - “you must follow various paths awhile in order to get the sense of their meeting points; you must try the ground in many directions in order to come up at the deep places.”
But then he believes you must change hats: “Having done that, if you turn your whole attention to digging in the center, the apparent limitation is to the advantage of the whole space, the bottom of the hole reveals the whole sky. When one knows something thoroughly, provided one has some inkling of the rest, this rest in its full extent gains by the probing of the depths. All abysses resemble one another, and all foundations have communicating passages” (That is, by digging deep into one topic, Sertillanges believed that general/universal truths could be revealed.)
He then continues to defend this particular brand of depth - “True knowledge lies in depth rather than in superficial extent. We must always sacrifice extent to penetration, for the reason that extent in itself is nothing, and that penetration, introducing us to the central point of observed facts, gives us the substance of what an interminable pursuit sought to discover”
And so he concludes: “We must keep from specialization as long as our aim is to become cultivated [wo]men, and, as far as concerns those to whom these pages are addressed, superior [wo]men, but we must specialize anew when we aim at being men with a function, and producing something useful.”
Superficially, it could seem that Sertillanges contradicts himself. But actually, he argues for alternating between depth and breadth in a way that is rather elusive. His brand of depth is not that of the specialist; it involves drawing connections across ideas as one digs deep. And as one plumbs the depths and emerges out the “bottom of the hole”, with the sky revealed you can explore again. There is something beautiful in this idea of oscillating between two approaches, but with one state of mind…Given the common misconception of a movement practice as a mish-mash of disciplines, these ideas could prove particularly useful within the movement culture…
Blind in hindsight: phrenology and modern science
Modern science owes a debt of gratitude to phrenology for laying down the theoretical groundwork that opened the door to modern neuroscience… yet phrenology is maligned as a poster boy for bad science. Its history reveals some truths we would stand to benefit from recognizing: our cultural ignorance of how science progresses, of what is “scientific”, and the convenience of rewriting history, are all part of this story.
Phrenology: the story
Phrenology is thought of as feeling for bumps on the head to predict personality and intellectual capacity. Even Wikipedia, which we take to be an objective and grounded source of information, fails to provide the real history.Phrenology is the brain-child (haha) of Franz Joseph Gall, who believed boldly against the mainstream that the brain is not a homogenous unit, but consists of subsystems. Gall also believed in the malleability of the skull and the relationship between size and activity of nervous tissue, and this resulted in a secondary principle of phrenology, that mental faculties correlate with the size of brain regions.More notably, phrenologists sought to prove, against the mainstream, that the brain is the seat of the mind.Phrenology is now, as it was in the 19th century , considered a pseudoscience. But “pseudoscience” is a specious term, easy to support in retrospect, often wielded to support popular dogmas. Bechtel and Richardson, in a philosophical/historical text of science (“Discovering Complexity”), describe the appellation “pseudoscience” as a “rhetorical flourish designed to enforce a particular point of view - an ideologically conservative view in particular”. In this case, the conservative and popular viewpoint of the time was that the mind was essentially unexaminable.
Blind in hindsight: rewriting history in search of whipping boys
Early opposition to phrenology was based on anti-materialist and antispeculative movements. Opposition was not because phrenology was non-empirical; indeed, phrenology WAS empirical, though not experimental.Prior to phrenology, Cartesian notion of cognition suggested that the brain was an inert transmission device for the soul to the physical realm. In addition, the Cartesian model viewed the brain as a homogenous unit. Phrenology led the attack against this Cartesian idea of a spiritual source of cognition and a homogenous brain, and introduced the idea that the brain consists of centers subserving specific functions.Phrenologists were mocked for their contrarian ideas, now widely accepted, that the brain consists of discrete parts responsible for different faculties. This perspective was elaborated upon by the two celebrated scientists Pierre-Paul Broca and Carl Wernicke, providing us ultimately with the theoretical groundwork that opened up modern neuroscience."We eat the breadcrumbs" of phrenology, but refuse to pay homage.
Social ignorance of science: what does it mean to be “scientific"?
The denigration of phrenology reveals something about our society. We mock the phrenologists… because phrenologists made predictions that were proven false.Yet in this, phrenologists are no different than any other (accomplished) scientists. The notoriety and association with pseudoscience reveal something disturbing about the human condition - our fear of failure. Yet failure sits at the heart of scientific progress. So we laugh and rewrite history, instead of realizing that this very line of inquiry brought us the basic insight responsible for how we understand the brain…In the end, the only thing wrong with phrenology was that it was parts of it were proven wrong; the process of generating the theory of phrenology actually reflects the true scientific spirit. Like all scientific beliefs, true and false, it has been used to support absurd and even unethical ideas, and had a large share of dogmatic and unscrupulous adherents. But to claim that phrenology is a pseudoscience is to do a major disservice to history and the scientific spirit.It is sad to see how capable we are of rewriting history to maintain our indignation for failure in science. Science flourishes through failure, and our condemnation of failures reveals two major things about us as humans: the rejection of progressive thinking by experts, and the susceptibility of the masses to the experts (burn the pedestals).
Decide for yourself...
See the principles of phrenology below, and see if it sounds like pseudoscience to you...1. The brain is the organ of the mind2. The brain is not a homogenous unity, but an aggregate of mental organs with specific functions3. The cerebral organs are topographically localized4. Other things being equal, the relative size of any particular mental organ is indicative of the power or strength of that organ5. Since the skull ossifies over the brain during infant development, external craniological means could be used to diagnose the internal states of the mental charactersTo introduce against the mainstream, and subsequently normalize 3 major principles (at the cost of 2 wrong ones) is a better track record than most scientists will hope for. And even that regions can grow as a function of use (for example, the hippocampus is larger in London cab drivers, due to a higher demand of spatial orientation).We need to come, as individuals and as a society, to nurture the scientific spirit, the tolerance for our own and other’s failures in their lines of inquiry. Of course, this doesn’t mean persisting in a failed direction, but even then, there is something to be said for persistence when confronted with contradictory evidence…