Republic of Movement

Movement classes in Wynwood, Miami. Taught by Ido Portal students.

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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.

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Movement Practice

It would seem that the only way to practice movement is through specific disciplines – gymnastics, dance, fighting, fitness (god forbid), etc. But there is another way – broader, more general, and connecting the dots, exploring the space between the disciplines. That’s what we’re after: we want to create a practice around movement itself. It appeals to us, because that’s who we are, people pulled in by big pictures.

But movement is an incomprehensibly large universe, and we run into problems, dilemmas and obstacles. Lack of clarity, lack of community, lack of process. Not knowing where to start, what to aim for, who to practice with, when to shift gears, etc.

There IS an approach, a way to navigate the chaos… for those who understand the importance of a process and who believe it’s worth the work and effort to transform their physicality. IF you come to learn, you will walk away understanding more and more of this complex subject of movement.

Nobody walks in knowing what’s going on. But the longer you stick around, the more and more you realize how little you understand, and the more space you make for yourself for real growth.

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Intersubjectivity

1+1 !=  2.

Intersubjectivity, the relationship between two people, appears soft. It arises from a fundamentally feminist social philosophy. And yet, like the archetypal feminine quality, it is the source of the “objectivity” of objects, the “hardness” of facts. Without the layer of intersubjectivity, there is no way of establishing objective truth. It is in the space of the intersubjective that the objective can be born/e. (There is something, at least at the Jungian level, to the idea of two polar ends being drawn inexorably together, defining one another, and supporting each other. Our minds are not meant to consider two things that give birth to one another, it defies the intuitions of the temporal lobe, it breaks the cerebellum’s regular beat and rhythm. And yet, if two things gave birth to one another, are they not one?)

When applying the somatic layer to corporal dialogue, intersubjectivity cannot be ignored. In this intersection (or perhaps “specialized application”), defined fundamentally by touch and depending on a certain lightness (per Weber’s law regarding sensitivity), the agent/patient dichotomy becomes less practical. Both are searching for something through haptic feedback – neurological activation patterns, musculoskeletofascial connections, biomechanical vectors of forces. 

Touch doesn’t always mediate corporal dialogue. But when it does, the I-Thou, the intersubjective, become defining characteristics. Given the importance of intersubjectivity to philosophy, psychology, social theory, how odd that it is neglected in our physicality. Or that… physicality is neglected in considerations of the intersubjective. 
#dyad #intersubjectivity #ithou #corporaldialogue #philosophy #socialtheory #touch #somatic 

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Don’t Get Lost in The Tricks

The pursuit of tricks and skills is an inevitable dead end. It’s an absolute guarantee – if you orient yourself towards the acquisition of skills and results AS SUCH, you will run into the wall of emptiness and exhaustion. It’s critical, for longevity, but also FOR THE PRESENT MOMENT, that you approach the subject as part of a bigger picture, with an eye towards growing in relation to that subject. No amount of standing on your hands will produce growth. No amount of ANYTHING will produce growth. It’s in the connection, the spaces between the THINGS, that growth comes.

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The pursuit of tricks and skills is an inevitable dead end. It’s an absolute guarantee – if you orient yourself towards the acquisition of skills and results AS SUCH, you will run into the wall of emptiness and exhaustion. It’s critical, for longevity, but also FOR THE PRESENT MOMENT, that you approach the subject as part of a bigger picture, with an eye towards growing in relation to that subject. No amount of standing on your hands will produce growth. No amount of ANYTHING will produce growth. It’s in the connection, the spaces between the THINGS, that growth comes. #existentialcrisis #idoportal #movement #miami #movementculture #wynwood #dade #gym #miamimovementculture #305 #handstand #onearmhandstand

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Human Operating System Update 5.96.a/Z

Features include

  • Fixes a known problem with balance
  • Provides new coordination features
  • Introduces support for haptic-stick interface.

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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 (a specialized application of Ido Portal’s “content/container”), 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.