practice

Yoga as a Purely Physical Practice

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Chris Davis   It’s been odd, getting into yoga. I started doing this because I first saw people much older than me who could still MOVE beautifully, with a level of strength and control that I didn’t understand. I realized that I was looking for something physical that I could age with, instead of giving […]

PE is not Sport

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Alex Sporticus   “PE is not Sport.” A proclamation that I’ve written on social media and announced to others as a means of educating their ignorance. Those who often talk about the subject, but do not teach it, tend to view sport and physical education as the same. I’ve exclaimed “PE is not Sport” consistently […]

Should You Copy?

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Christian Paev   The role mOdel Should you copy? Can you not copy? What do you get by copying? What can you not get by copying? And the really important one: Could you develop yourself mainly through copying other people’s techniques, routines, practices? I copy to test, to play, to acknowledge, to express admiration, to […]

Red, Black, & White Paths

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Dare Carrasquillo (Sohei)   “An Ode to ming/ Charles, my teacher.”   1.Red path talk: the red path is ruthless. It demands honesty beyond human preferences. The red path teaches by taking away, it is a path of conflict, of friction, of constant pressures. Most of us only have some red path leaning, some have […]

‘Til the Mud Settles and the Water is Clear

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Chris Davis   The question is: “Do you have the patience to wait ’til your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving ’til the right action arises by itself?” That’s from the Tao Te Ching — which I’d like to pretend to have studied closely, but no, I just ran across […]

Expectations & Experience

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Craig Mallett     One of the things I run into a lot while teaching are loaded expectations. It’s when we have a preconceived idea of how it’s all meant to go, and are looking for some sort of specific experience from the training. It’s a very normal starting point, but If this escalates, it […]

Axis of the Praxis

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Christian Paev   My job is to teach physical practices that create conditions for positive changes in people. Positive to me means – more feeling, more awareness, clarity and choices. First of all, it is important to understand why we need the practice at all, and then to understand how to practice. The need for […]

When Your Only Company Is a Mirror and Music

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Nadia Genois   I had recently promised myself to create more opportunities to dance, improvise, to have these moments that are generally revitalizing but that too often escape me because of fatigue or laziness. Yet it is a pleasure that I have discovered in recent years, to improvise to give yourself permission to be in […]

Holistic & Honing

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Amelia Chan   One word that got thrown around a lot in the early 2000’s was “holistic”. The official definition of “holistic” is “characterized by the belief that the parts of something are interconnected and can be explained only by reference to the whole.” The trend was very much about doing things that were supposed […]

Daily Practice Creates Friction

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Ramon Castellanos   Long term practice carves pathways in the being that previously did not exist. This is not always comfortable. This is not about chasing discomfort, or making yourself uncomfortable on purpose. Any practice (and the act of practice itself), done with heart and integrity will eventually cause friction. Heat. Cooking. Flames. Death. Rebirth. […]

Integration = Expression

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Christian Paev   Pursuing different positions of the body without having a field of integration is like learning many interesting words in a foreign language.. But let’s never say it. It is an absolutely necessary part of development, but why does it remain there? I am trying to study body language so that I can […]

An Adaptable Practice

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Ramon Castellanos   I want to invite you to not have an excessive loyalty to the predetermined idea of what you’re going to do when you show up to practice. A lot of us we might have a mental notion of what we’re going to do, and or even a schedule, and a program that […]

The Bad & The Best

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Alex Sporticus   A couple of weeks ago, Edutopia published an article entitled 5 Fun Gym Games to Get Kids Moving. I found the subsequent commentary on the article, mainly via Twitter, absolutely fascinating. Whilst I could understand many of the points made from a range of perspectives, the conversations around the article made me consider how I’ve changed my thinking […]

Keys to Longevity

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Craig Mallett   Cultivation and longevity are not simple matters of “do this one trick and all your problems go away”. Like cultivating a garden, it takes regular attending to, and a slow understanding of context that means rules shift and change depending on circumstances. We can have guidelines, but there are no “if x, […]

What to Do, What to Do

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Christian Paev   Ever wonder why changing disciplines, practices, exercises, methods, people around us, teachers, circumstances…. in the end we end up with almost the same internal result? Random hopping between different topics at work is scattered wandering, but not a channeled strategic approach. Figuratively speaking, we drive the same car on different roads – […]

Guest Post #8 – A Spectrum of Efficiency

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Nicole Uno   Parts of a Whole Strategies along the spectrum of efficiency The point of efficiency is to do more, with less effort. Whether it’s moving faster, moving more weight, moving pain-free, or moving through bigger ranges of motion- it all requires the same parts working together as a whole. A team that quite […]