practice meets philosophy.
Practice meets Philosophy,
Meets life, meets training, meets wisdom, meets medicine…
What good does the known serve?
The linear, the straight line, the step by step, to follow.
It holds a purpose, in the right moments.
But it may not be enough.
A quote from my teachers, Fighting Monkey Practice:
“Any training forms are good
but exceptional are those
that support our biological system
beyond survival and fitness.
Taking you on a journey
to enhance your viability,
communication and hence improve
your quality of living”
We need to return home in moments, so we are not in the uncomfortable too long. We cannot always lost, as this will also cause damage. The same as stress, we want to dance into moments of stress to test our qualities and our systems, but we do not want to live in constant stress. Maybe telomere length will shorten and systems will degrade.
But we MUST dance in the unpredictability and the unknown more often than we do. It is here that we may discover something new, something that births new life, a new experience, a new joy, something we did not know was there before.
So can we ask ourselves the question… How often do I allow myself to move away from static protocols, rigid training and explore the unknown to enhance my systems viability in complex situations?
If we can better handle this pressure that represents the nature of life, the more we will have the capacity to improve our quality and depth of living.
The world is complex, simple yet not easy to navigate. It is unpredictable, unknown, powerful and we must acknowledge this with humility. To not think we can outsmart it with strength, by breaking it down, compartmentalising things, isolating components, breaking everything apart so it’s easy to understand and becomes known. So it all fits in a perfect box that we can wrap with a ribbon.
Boxes and straight lines will not be found in nature.
There you will find spirals, like how our DNA is coded,
There you will find waves, like the deep ocean currents and tides,
There you will find seasons, like the colour in the leaves on the branches of trees, like energy levels and emotions,
There you find acceptance, who we are right now is perfect without comparison,
There you will find death and rebirth, like how we must remain open to new ways of thinking and new beliefs,
There you will find circles, the same representation of everything being interconnected.
Boxes and straight lines will not be found in nature.
So then my teacher Jozef would ask the question…
“How do we train if we do not know what tomorrow brings?”
“How would you train for the olympics if you didn’t know what sports would be selected for competition?”
You would practice how to dance, how to improvise, how to throw, how to jump, how to land,
How to wrestle, how to box, how to stand, how to meditate, how to sprint, how to breath efficiently, how to rotate with power, how to build endurance, how run long distances, how to shoot a basketball, how to play soccer, the list goes on…
You would need to practice in such a way that touches all of these areas and brings alive so many qualities in our movement vocabulary.
We would need rhythm, coordination, partner games, unpredictability, complex situations, joint health and mobility, adaptability, the ability to problem solve while maintaining a quality of movement and the ability to handle stress.
We need our practice to create better communication systems, better coordination, rhythm and adaptability paired with integrity and stability, so that it gives us the capacity to live our lives under the unpredictable conditions. To continue to observe ourselves, understand ourselves and therefore continue learning, with a child-like curiosity that allows us to love life more.
Can we invite our structure into unique positions?
Can we dance more with a fluid system?
Can we enhance our ability to wave, bend, pump, rise and fall?
Like the ocean, like water, it’s our nature,
Can we squeeze and rotate?
Creating synovial fluid to massage our joints and nourish our internal connections,
So we age with grace.
What happens to a stagnant pond?
Mould, moss, build up, it gets dirty, there’s no health and vitality,
This is how we treat our bodies.
Straight lines, thrashing ourselves,
“we have to be sore” then it is good,
It has to hurt, we have to grind, we find something that works, so we stick to it for years,
We don’t change, we become stuck, the gap shrinks and shrinks,
Habits and patterns form physically and psychologically.
We ache more, we wake up stiff, we sit more, we are depleted.
We need more play, we need more curiosity,
We need more meaning, we need more passion,
We need more joy and we need more fun,
We need more energy, we need more stillness,
How well do our internal systems work under pressure?
Under the pressure and state of change that is life,
We need to stay creative,
We need to stay adaptive,
We need to be able to thrive.
I want know what this sparks within you.
Maybe there is a different way to live our lives with more freedom, more energy, a bigger smile, a louder laugh, more love.
Who knows… there’s no one way, see if you can find it.
Love, Oliver x