The bigger problem I find is that many instructors simply lack a meaningful language to communicate movement precisely, and have no idea that their terms are just labels they use for what they, perhaps, can visually assimilate.
I don’t think that language is the main issue. Words point to places. If you don’t understand where they point than language doesn’t help.
The author of the linked Alexander blog also says that he repeated the words for years without understanding what they mean. I don’t have direct experience with Alexanders technique and it’s vocabulary but I can immediately understand what he’s talking about because I have the underlying concept.
The more I learn the more I get the feeling that most of my Salsa teachers don’t get it and that includes people who did a 3-year Bachelor in “dancing on stage”.
Around a year one of them was for a month in the US and when she came back she had the insight that “intention forward” was very important for the girls to do. She told them this repeatedly. Two months later all the girls in the course are much more tense. It was pretty messed up and she didn’t change something about the way she taught.
Given my understanding of the effort it takes I have little optimism that academics who have never been taught how to move get movement at a level to effectively study it. It’s quite depressing ;)
On the plus side it seem to me like understanding movement helps me to get rid from a medical issue that doctors told me would never go away. My right shoulder used to be higher than my left.
After my first: “Now, I move properly. If I move forward I move up, if I move backwards I move down” it went away in a day.
Unfortunately it came back as my attention wasn’t anymore on it. 2 weeks ago I learned something new and now the shoulder are at the same height again and the strategy takes less effort. It seems like the arms have to go in the other direction. If the body goes up, the arms go down. If the body goes down the arms go up.
It feels very right that way but unfortunately I don’t expect that most readers will understand what I mean with up and down.
Good eye. I find it hard to assimilate a movement and translate it into concepts just from looking at it.
I’m not sure that the eye is the main problem. It feels much more kinesthetic.
If I wanted to speculate maybe about having mirror neurons that pick up the pattern.
I have to really break it down and focus on component pieces.
Unfortunately breaking things down doesn’t actually work. A movement intention to move up, is something different when you break it down to look what all individual parts are doing.
It took me quite a while to learn that breaking things down doesn’t help and that it’s often useful to just focus on one movement. It’s not hard because it’s complicated. It’s hard because it’s simple.
It took me quite a while to learn the lesson. If you break down a movement it’s not whole anymore. Natural movement is not about trying to do 5 different components at the same time.
Maybe you have to learn the components to then “forget” them to focus on the whole. I’m not sure. A teacher told my on that subject “Simplicity is the distillate of complexity.”
What is the name of the broader category of the thing you two are discussing here? I feel like I am missing out on something that looks like a whole discipline, like a 18th century person reading a treatise of nuclear physics: some words are vaguely familiar, but not clue what the whole thing is and is about.
Thomas Hanna gave the discipline the name Somatics. A more broad term would be body work.
Apart from that both buybuydandavis have years of experience with partner dancing and how most dancing instructors are’t that great.
Unfortunately somatics never really succeeded in establishing itself as a socially respected field. Thomas Hanna died early in a car crash. Dying in a car crash is quite ironic for a guy who thought he solved half of the problem of aging.
Nuclear physics has the advantage that it can have formal definition and if you don’t understand something at least you know where the terms is defined and how you could make up for your lack of understanding if you put in enough effort.
Somatics at the moment doesn’t have that property. Words like “move in the upwards direction” might seem familiar on first glance but the point to a deeper concept.
You also have a different people who try to make up their own vocabulary and no unified field.
Related fields are fascia and kinesiology. Both of them have textbooks published by academic publishers.
The field of fascia is interesting because it seems to be making progress.
Anatomy Trains with is a Fascia book for example tells me that oxytocin makes fascia contract. Fascia contraction does have an effect on posture. When it comes to the permanent bad body posture of depressives that’s locked into fascia.
At present those are isolated facts, but I think there hope that research will connect them together.
I don’t think that language is the main issue. Words point to places. If you don’t understand where they point than language doesn’t help.
The author of the linked Alexander blog also says that he repeated the words for years without understanding what they mean. I don’t have direct experience with Alexanders technique and it’s vocabulary but I can immediately understand what he’s talking about because I have the underlying concept.
The more I learn the more I get the feeling that most of my Salsa teachers don’t get it and that includes people who did a 3-year Bachelor in “dancing on stage”.
Around a year one of them was for a month in the US and when she came back she had the insight that “intention forward” was very important for the girls to do. She told them this repeatedly. Two months later all the girls in the course are much more tense. It was pretty messed up and she didn’t change something about the way she taught.
Given my understanding of the effort it takes I have little optimism that academics who have never been taught how to move get movement at a level to effectively study it. It’s quite depressing ;)
On the plus side it seem to me like understanding movement helps me to get rid from a medical issue that doctors told me would never go away. My right shoulder used to be higher than my left. After my first: “Now, I move properly. If I move forward I move up, if I move backwards I move down” it went away in a day.
Unfortunately it came back as my attention wasn’t anymore on it. 2 weeks ago I learned something new and now the shoulder are at the same height again and the strategy takes less effort. It seems like the arms have to go in the other direction. If the body goes up, the arms go down. If the body goes down the arms go up.
It feels very right that way but unfortunately I don’t expect that most readers will understand what I mean with up and down.
I’m not sure that the eye is the main problem. It feels much more kinesthetic. If I wanted to speculate maybe about having mirror neurons that pick up the pattern.
Unfortunately breaking things down doesn’t actually work. A movement intention to move up, is something different when you break it down to look what all individual parts are doing.
It took me quite a while to learn that breaking things down doesn’t help and that it’s often useful to just focus on one movement. It’s not hard because it’s complicated. It’s hard because it’s simple.
It took me quite a while to learn the lesson. If you break down a movement it’s not whole anymore. Natural movement is not about trying to do 5 different components at the same time.
Maybe you have to learn the components to then “forget” them to focus on the whole. I’m not sure. A teacher told my on that subject “Simplicity is the distillate of complexity.”
What is the name of the broader category of the thing you two are discussing here? I feel like I am missing out on something that looks like a whole discipline, like a 18th century person reading a treatise of nuclear physics: some words are vaguely familiar, but not clue what the whole thing is and is about.
Thomas Hanna gave the discipline the name Somatics. A more broad term would be body work.
Apart from that both buybuydandavis have years of experience with partner dancing and how most dancing instructors are’t that great.
Unfortunately somatics never really succeeded in establishing itself as a socially respected field. Thomas Hanna died early in a car crash. Dying in a car crash is quite ironic for a guy who thought he solved half of the problem of aging.
Nuclear physics has the advantage that it can have formal definition and if you don’t understand something at least you know where the terms is defined and how you could make up for your lack of understanding if you put in enough effort.
Somatics at the moment doesn’t have that property. Words like “move in the upwards direction” might seem familiar on first glance but the point to a deeper concept. You also have a different people who try to make up their own vocabulary and no unified field.
Related fields are fascia and kinesiology. Both of them have textbooks published by academic publishers. The field of fascia is interesting because it seems to be making progress.
Anatomy Trains with is a Fascia book for example tells me that oxytocin makes fascia contract. Fascia contraction does have an effect on posture. When it comes to the permanent bad body posture of depressives that’s locked into fascia. At present those are isolated facts, but I think there hope that research will connect them together.