Being a Good Partner (Movement Culture)

When engaged in partner work, it is common enough that one is the agent, and the other the patient. That is, one seems to be doing “the work” while the other provides the context for practicing. One component that must differentiate our practice and our culture, that we must install to be truly rarefied, is to bring quality to that dynamic. And one of the most difficult aspects of cultivating such a high level of partner work is the attention and focus of the agent. 

When working in the role of agent, we should be bringing maximum focus to the task of giving our partner the situational challenges they need for true growth, which entails a balance between accessibility and challenge. An unyielding internal monologue: “What does my partner need from me? What degree of challenge do they need to continue growing? What should I be doing differently?” It is an unrelenting process of recalculating, recalibrating. There is no rest between sets for the good partner. 

Why obsess over this? Why not just enjoy the turn when it is mine, and rest in between, take a mental breather? 

Because the next step of the journey necessitates that I have a developed partner! Only when my partner improves with me does that next journey become available. there is a realm of possibility which opens up only when I have a partner who has developed, and the same goes at a larger scale - when the entire community has matured. 

(And, another reason, for those who read what lies between parantheses… if we have this practices in our lives to give us a space to explore all aspects of mind/body/movement, to engage whatever that higher order phenomenon entails and allows us the joy of chewing on and dealing with… the challenge of being a good partner is no different. We want to be good at everything we do… even at the 1-degree-abstracted, 2nd order level of “how I am in relation to others”)