IIRC the first time this was demonstrated to me it didn’t come with any instructions about tensing or holding, just ‘Don’t let me bend your arm’, exactly the language you used with your wife. But people vary widely in somatic skills and how they interpret verbal instructions; I definitely interpreted it as ‘tense your arm really hard’ and that’s probably why the beam / firehose visualization helped.
Makes me think the same is likely true of religious beliefs—they help address a range of common mental mistakes but for each particular mistake there are people who have learned not to make them using some other process. e.g. “Inshallah” helps neurotic people cut off unhelpful rumination, whereas low neuroticism people just don’t need it.
But people vary widely in somatic skills and how they interpret verbal instructions;
Yeah, that’s why I actually ran the test. It’s also why I used my wife as a test subject rather than one of the guys at jiu jitsu for example. My wife is definitely on the “less aware of how to use her body” side, so the fact that she got it right is more meaningful.
I definitely interpreted it as ‘tense your arm really hard’ and that’s probably why the beam / firehose visualization helped.
I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but it’s worth noting that the cues on how to interpret things can be subtle, and the fact that they’re being led in a certain way can really easily slide under people’s radar even while they simultaneously notice the cues and respond to them.
For example, if I wanted to tell my wife to tense her arm without telling her to tense her arm, I could have said “You’re going to hold your arm out like this and not let me bend it”—showing her a tense arm. Or I could have been more subtle and just kept a sub-noteworthy amount of tension throughout my body, and when I went to grab her wrist, grabbed it in a rigid fashion. This all suggests “this is how we resist things” without ever having to say it.
I’m not saying that Akido practitioners are deliberately misleading, just that people tend to nonverbally communicate in ways that convey their perspective, whatever that perspective may be. This tends to happen whether they realize it or not, and indeed whether they want it or not. For example, when my daughter was.. I think three, she watched a show explicitly intended to help kids not be afraid to get their shots. The thing is, she was already not afraid to get her shots and had actually thrown a tantrum because she could only get one flu shot the previous year. But as a result of watching that show, she picked up the creators’ actual beliefs of “Shots are scary, but they shouldn’t be so we’re supposed to insist they’re fine”—and the show had the exact opposite effect from intended. It turns out, insisting “You shouldn’t be afraid” isn’t very compelling when you simultaneously demonstrate that you’re coming from a place of fear—even if you never admit to the latter out loud.
The way I held myself when telling my wife to not let me bend her arm was relaxed, only contracting the muscles that had a specific purpose. I don’t recall if I demonstrated with my own arm, but if I did it was loose. When I held her wrist, I’m sure it was loose, etc. I don’t mean to suggest that people don’t unintentionally get confused into ineffective responses—that definitely happens a lot. I just mean that IME a lot of the time all it takes is not buying into it oneself, and that the confusions persist in large part because they’re actively upheld by the people giving instructions.
thanks for running the test!
IIRC the first time this was demonstrated to me it didn’t come with any instructions about tensing or holding, just ‘Don’t let me bend your arm’, exactly the language you used with your wife. But people vary widely in somatic skills and how they interpret verbal instructions; I definitely interpreted it as ‘tense your arm really hard’ and that’s probably why the beam / firehose visualization helped.
Makes me think the same is likely true of religious beliefs—they help address a range of common mental mistakes but for each particular mistake there are people who have learned not to make them using some other process. e.g. “Inshallah” helps neurotic people cut off unhelpful rumination, whereas low neuroticism people just don’t need it.
Yeah, that’s why I actually ran the test. It’s also why I used my wife as a test subject rather than one of the guys at jiu jitsu for example. My wife is definitely on the “less aware of how to use her body” side, so the fact that she got it right is more meaningful.
I wasn’t there so I can’t say, but it’s worth noting that the cues on how to interpret things can be subtle, and the fact that they’re being led in a certain way can really easily slide under people’s radar even while they simultaneously notice the cues and respond to them.
For example, if I wanted to tell my wife to tense her arm without telling her to tense her arm, I could have said “You’re going to hold your arm out like this and not let me bend it”—showing her a tense arm. Or I could have been more subtle and just kept a sub-noteworthy amount of tension throughout my body, and when I went to grab her wrist, grabbed it in a rigid fashion. This all suggests “this is how we resist things” without ever having to say it.
I’m not saying that Akido practitioners are deliberately misleading, just that people tend to nonverbally communicate in ways that convey their perspective, whatever that perspective may be. This tends to happen whether they realize it or not, and indeed whether they want it or not. For example, when my daughter was.. I think three, she watched a show explicitly intended to help kids not be afraid to get their shots. The thing is, she was already not afraid to get her shots and had actually thrown a tantrum because she could only get one flu shot the previous year. But as a result of watching that show, she picked up the creators’ actual beliefs of “Shots are scary, but they shouldn’t be so we’re supposed to insist they’re fine”—and the show had the exact opposite effect from intended. It turns out, insisting “You shouldn’t be afraid” isn’t very compelling when you simultaneously demonstrate that you’re coming from a place of fear—even if you never admit to the latter out loud.
The way I held myself when telling my wife to not let me bend her arm was relaxed, only contracting the muscles that had a specific purpose. I don’t recall if I demonstrated with my own arm, but if I did it was loose. When I held her wrist, I’m sure it was loose, etc. I don’t mean to suggest that people don’t unintentionally get confused into ineffective responses—that definitely happens a lot. I just mean that IME a lot of the time all it takes is not buying into it oneself, and that the confusions persist in large part because they’re actively upheld by the people giving instructions.