1. School children participate in a mass yoga session during the third day of 21st International Kite Festival at Sabarmati Riverfront in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, 11 January 2011.
2. Thousands of people take part in a mass yoga class conducted at an Art of Living Centre in India. 12 December 2006.
3. A demonstration in Beijing's Tai Temple Square marked the resumption of mandatory exercises for Chinese workers. 11 August 2010
4. &5 Thousands of people took a group Yoga class in New York City's Central Park. 22 June 2010

Practice is thought, in action.

– Barbara Radice

week 3

Your eyes are full of language.

A little bit of eyeball movement for this week prompted by my joining Instagram. I don't need more excuses to stare at my various screens so I'm a little annoyed with myself...

Overtime I will be giving you a few simple exercises for your eyes, but for now lets keep it simple and ask yourself this; What was the last horizon you set your sights on?

The muscles in your eyes will change shape in response to focusing on what’s in front of them. A computer screen, for example, will prompt the reflexive behavior of the eye to hold the position of your lens. Now those lensballs were made for seeing near and far and if you don't use them you loose them so...

1. LOOK AWAY FROM YOUR SCREEN, I'm presuming so do forgive me if you are gazing at something else, to something as far of in the distance as you can as many times as you remember throughout the day.

2. If remembering is not your thing then add this nifty little programme, Time Out, to your computer to remind you to take eye breaks

3. Send me a picture of the next horizon you see.I like pictures.

With thanks Katy Bowman and Ruth White for enabling me to see a little better with all your advice.

Saturday Cartoon

why slow movement builds coordination

"There are several excellent reasons to use slow and gentle movement as a means to develop coordination. Probably the most interesting reason (I’ll start with that one) is based on an obscure principle called the Weber Fechner rule. The Weber Fechner rule describes the relationship between the magnitude of a particular stimulus and the brain’s ability to sense differences in the amount of the stimulus. The basic rule is that as you increase the stimulus, the ability to tell a difference in the amount of the stimulus decreases. This is a very common sense idea. Imagine you are in a dark room with only one candle lit. It will be very easy to sense the difference when one additional candle is lit. But if you are in a room with two hundred candles, you will have no idea when an extra candle comes on.

This rule works for all varieties of sensory perception, including sensations of muscular effort. So, imagine you are holding a one pound potato in your hand while blindfolded. If a fly landed on the weight you would not know the difference, but if a little bird landed you would know. Now imagine holding a fifty pound potato. You wouldn’t be able to feel the little bird landing. It would have to be an eagle. The point is that when you increase the weight from one pound to fifty pounds, you become about fifty times less sensitive to changes in the amount of muscular force you are using to lift the weight.

Why do we care? Because if you want to make your movement more efficient, you have to be aware of when you are working too hard. If you slow down and thereby increase your ability to sense differences in muscular effort level, you increase the brain’s ability to sense and correct any potential excess and unnecessary effort. Imagine that every time you try to extend the hip, you are at the same time slightly contracting the hip flexors instead of relaxing them. This means that your muscles are cross-motivated – the flexors are fighting the extensors a little in their effort to extend the leg, making them work harder. You will be much better able to sense and inhibit this inefficient co-contraction by moving very slowly and easily. By contrast, if you move fast and hard, you will never be able to sense and correct the problem."

--Todd Hargrove (extract from a blog post, read the rest on his very informative blog here)

home play

and some homework...
Choose a normal daily activity like taking  a walk or cooking dinner and first try to do it while consistently contracting your core. Then let it go and let your core do its normal pre-conscious thing where it responds to and participates in whole body movement. What do you notice?

Best Practice

“Best Practice” is a letter to oneself. A pseudo-dream where reassurances and self taught coping mechanisms intersect a shuffle of memories. It is an adventure of self care, by cartoonist and painter Joshua Jarrett.

(via The Rumpus)

models of learning

The computational model (of learning movement) is the idea that the brain controls the body, or 'tells' the body what to do, so the brain becomes a passive respondent to the brain when carrying out an intention. 

The Embodied model is the idea that the brain is only a small part of the 'control' of movement. Embodied movement is a constant conversation between inner and outer sensory output through our nervous systems. So when you have an intention, the body carries it out.

Just so you know, I'm learning to teach based more on the embodied approach, focusing on instructing feelings rather then instructing people how to literally place their bodies. It's my intention when teaching that I help make clear movement patterns in peoples bodies and provide tools to map and make those patterns useful, rather then teach 'poses'. It is taking ALOT of undoing of the things I thought I knew. Chaos : )

Balance Beam

solid moves and good music to boot...Enjoy!

Balance Beam Basics

take pride in your details, practice them with gratitude...

dream studio space!

Practice everywhere!

(gif found here)

Muay Thai

96 BOXING CLUB from Jérôme de Gerlache on Vimeo.

"Everything in life takes time. Time to practice."

Preparation

Wrist preparations.
 These are golden!

keep it simple

After each exhalation there is a yawning release that happens in the body, right through to the palms of the hands and down to the soles of the feet. You just have to let it happen.

It's not about doing, but letting these tiny little messages travel as far as the hands and as far as the feet allowing you to feel fully in contact with the ground.

(Source: Daniel Minnick)

Laia Arguelles

Practice yesterday was a gentle swim, some underwater shape making and a long float in the sunshine. My ears are still full of water...

Images by Laia Arguelles.

"As we work, we use the form as a guide. It is something we work with, not something you learn to show off.
The form is a process that serves you, not an adornment you bring back to hang on your wall."

-- Chungliang Al Huang

Contaminated

“What’s it like to fall in your thirties?” my friend Scott asked after seeing one of my clumsy skate pics. “Like, really fall.”

Terrible. Exhilarating.

Read Getting back on the skateboard by Nick Courage on your coffee/tea/gin break this morning.

(Found at goldlionaz)