Where do you look up things?

Growing up, from baby to toddler to child, one day there comes this question: „Where do you look up things?” Because clearly at some point parents and uncles and aunts have outlived their usefulness. And vice versa, anyone who figured out how to pay for their mortgages and juggle family, jobs, hobbies and friends successfully, has not much room left to answer a constant stream of „Why?”, „What is this?”, „What if?”.

I grew up without the Internet. However, at the time we had books, and my father’s book shelves did nicely. We had a big medical book with two foldable maps of the body and its organs, which could explain all diseases and their remedies. We had one big book for civil law, where I looked up whether or not I am allowed to use my shortcut across our neighbour’s garden (law books are a disappointment, really). And we had a big Encyclopedia printed in sans-serif, with color pictures. I liked the sheer size of the thing, and the smooth white coating. Next to this modern Encyclopedia we had the 24 volume edition of Der Brockhaus. Not as fun, and far less pleasant to flip through, but a must have for any educated middle class family. And then there were hundreds of books on psychology, philosophy, self-improvement, self-help, cooking, and history.

Growing up, from child to young adult, one day there come these questions: „Who decides what goes into an Encyclopedia? What into a Newspaper?” Because clearly it can’t contain everything, and certainly not every viewpoint. And why are some people put into a more favourable light than others?

Who would choose to do cardio?

How does rice make people fat? I don’t know. A normal person with a normal energy burn of 2000 kcal per day would have to eat a minimum of 1,5 kg (3.3 lbs) of steamed rice per day to merely maintain their body weight from rice alone. That’s 10 bowls of steamed rice. That’s a whole lot of rice. One bowl of steamed rice has more calories than two bananas, but less than one donut.

But of course nobody is asking, „How does rice make people fat?” It’s considered a silly question.

Here’s another question nobody is asking: „How does Feldenkrais make people fit?” I don’t know either. A normal person burns approximately 80 kcal at rest, and 220 kcal when walking. And I would put Feldenkrais somewhere in between resting and walking. More on the resting side probably.

Not all movement is fitness.

However, Moshé Feldenkrais’ teachings can be used to improve ability. It can take a person from being unable to do cardio all the way to being able to do cardio.

If suddenly on the menu, who would chose to do cardio?

I would.

Closing the word gap

„The evidence shows that the difference between children who get bedtime stories and those who don’t, the difference in their life chances, is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t.” – from the book The Enchanted Hour by Meghan Cox Gurdon

There’s several studies about this topic. And they come to the conclusion that there’s a difference in the amount of words different children are exposed to. And that that difference makes a significant difference in their life chances. Some studies put that „word gap” at 3 million words, others at 30 million. And their predictions in life chances sound equally dramatic.

I can’t say how many million (or billion) words I’m behind. When I was two years old my parents had to give me away for a couple of months. My uncle and aunt had a big house with a big garden. It was a safe place. But there was not much time to attend to me, both my aunt and my uncle were very busy in their jobs. Most of the time I was alone. Therefore there were not many words spoken to me. At that time the world moved far away from me, as if there was an invisible wall between me and everyone else. I was living and floating inside a double-walled bubble. Nobody thought anything of it. Later, as a teenager, I simply was the one who didn’t speak much. And later, as an adult, I became a Software Engineer and finally wasn’t blamed anymore for being socially distant, different. I didn’t think of it anything either.

Only many years later this bubble started to disappear again, around the year 2000. At that time I was 26 years old. With the help of many seminars, journeys, and encounters, over a period of 12+ years I learned to connect again.

I discovered the book The Enchanted Hour by Meghan Cox Gurdon in mid December 2020. It was referenced in a blog post somewhere. The title of the book seemed strange to me at first, but after having read the first couple of chapters I understood. The Enchanted Hour. It’s the time of story telling and conversations between parents and children. It made sense. A time of magic, enchanted hours.

After having finished the first chapters of that book I made a big change to my life: I switched from reading in silence to reading out loud.

After a week of daily reading out loud (for one to two hours per day) I started to be able to question our compulsory schooling system on a whole new level. Common practices like studying seated, motionless, and in silence, as well as „Speed Reading”, that is priding oneself of „reading” several dozens of books per month, suddenly turned from being a display of supreme accomplishment and intellectual superiority into a sign of being at least partially traumatised, or having been indoctrinated into an oppressive system.

After a month of reading aloud non-fiction in the English language I decided to improve my own native tongue, German language. I read aloud the recent autobiography of the famous German entertainer Thomas Gottschalk. I enjoyed it wildly at first. I even purchased his audiobook to compare my reading to his. Much to my shame I have to admit, because here we have someone with billions of spoken words under his belt.

Close to the end of his book, after about 8 hours of reading aloud, I discovered its „german-ness”. My original plan was to continue with his previous autobiography, but found something better: my own language, Austrian German. I found a fabulous author, Wolf Haas, and read out loud through his first novel Die Auferstehung der Toten. I felt more grounded, more filled with meaning and purpose, and „having arrived at something” with my new reading practice.

On a side-note: I’m Screen Mirroring Apple Books from my iPhone onto my living room’s TV screen. This means less strain on my eyes, I don’t have to hold a device in front of my face,  and I can walk up and down gesturing wildly while articulating the more dramatic passages.

I was trying to read Watching the English by Kate Fox for years already, but had problems with focusing and understanding her humorous and well versed phrasing. In merely two months of reading aloud I went from stuttering from sentence to sentence to being able to read her chapters fluently. Of course not in the correct English English, but fluently nonetheless.

I did some math: All volumes of Harry Potter add up to 1,084,170 words. At the moment I’m giving Steven Fry the honour to read them to me. „We” are already at the last chapter of The Philosophers Stone. Looking forward to hear what happens next, and who „The man with two faces” really is.

Wikipedia says about the Word Gap, ”The average child in a professional family hears 2,153 words per waking hour, the average child in a working-class family hears 1,251 words per hour, and an average child in a welfare family only 616 words per hour. In four years an average child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, an average child in a working-class family 26 million words, and an average child in a welfare family 13 million words.”

45 million words in 4 years, that’s 11+ million words per year.

I’m still trying to figure out how to arrive at a staggering 2,153 words per waking hour. It almost seems like looking at Elon Musk’s wealth, and trying to figure out how to get there.

Reading this blog post, you have read 1,025 words.

Hopefully not in total silence.

Noticing & Naming

One of my earliest reading experiences was with the book „Pony, Bear, and Apple Tree”. For me this was a scary, strange looking book. Most notably it was missing a whole lot of words. However, my mother was able to read it just fine, as if all the words were all there. I completely failed to wrap my head around how she did it. I recommend you read the following paragraph out loud:

In a big garden there was a big 🌳. On the tree lived a 🐛.  The 🐛 liked to eat 🍃 and 🍎🍎. One day the 🐛 turned into a beautiful 🦋.

This kind of story. However, in Sigrid Heuck’s children book the drawings were not emoticons that fit in snuggly. Instead, the drawings were big, colourful blobs, outside of the text flow. For me they just did not look part of the story; took me years to figure it out.

An important part of language acquisition is the ability to identify and name things: „Look! A bird!”, „Look! A bird with black feathers!”, „Look! A crow watching another crow cracking a nut!”

Soon we will not only identify the obvious, but start to notice concepts and stories: „It’s not Santa Claus who brings the presents, it’s my parents.” With experience the symbols and discoveries become more and more complex, and by understanding them they turn into inroads leading to highly complex sciences such as Chemistry and Physics.

In sports we also noticed and named a whole lot of things. The 14 parts of a tennis racket are these: the beam, the bumper guard, the butt, the butt cap, the dampeners, the grip, the grommet, the handle, the head, the rim, the rubber collar, the shaft, the strings, and the throat.

Also in Tennis, we have the Serve, the Forehand, the Backhand, the Volley, the Lob and the Slice, and a few more that are all well defined. Given the right trainer this can be taught seriously enough to turn pleasure into nightmare.

In Skateboarding we have the Ollie, the Kick-flip, the Pop-Shuvit, the Heel-Flip, the Manual, and… in this sport every list of tricks is officially incomplete. It’s in the nature of Skateboarding that skaters invent new tricks all the time – and match them to their own style.

What is the movement sequence for?

I do think that it’s possible to take a movement lesson that was originally taught over 45 minutes and condense it down to a five minute refresher sequence. Just like a two hour long feature film can be condensed down to a two minutes trailer – approved for all audiences. And clearly: both formats not only have their  right to exist, but also their place, time, and preferred audience.

We just need to be clear about this one question: What is the movement sequence for?

Then we can answer accordingly.

Everyone has their own rhythm

„In the performance arts, rhythm is the timing of events on a human scale; of musical sounds and silences that occur over time, of the steps of a dance, or the meter of spoken language and poetry. ” – from Wikipedia

Youtube is run by Google. Google knows who is watching my videos. And Google tells me this: 0 % of my viewers are 17 years of age or younger. Google tells me that my viewers are distributed evenly over five age groups: 18-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+, and they are mainly from these countries: US, UK, Germany, Canada, India, Australia, Netherlands.

Some of my viewers work in big companies, some even run big companies. Some of my viewers are senior citizens. Some are dancers and artists. Some are pain-free and into fitness and sports, and some are burdened by chronic pain.

Some have an urge to move, to push things forward. For them a forty minutes long lesson seems too long. Others love to dive deep into long lessons, and wouldn’t mind dedicating even an hour and a half.

Some lie down on the floor and immediately spontaneous, playful patterns and movements start to emerge, from deep within. Others can’t quite get into the art, and fall asleep as soon as they’re down on the ground.

That’s why I serve a buffet, with all dishes and condiments produced to the best of my knowledge. I encourage to remember the movements and play with them ad libitum.

In music ad libitum means to play the passage in free time rather than in strict or metronomic tempo, to improvise a melodic line fitting the general structure, to omit an instrument part (such as a nonessential accompaniment), to play a passage an arbitrary number of times. In nutritional studies, it denotes providing free access to feed or water, thereby allowing the animal to self-regulate intake according to its biological needs. In drama and performance arts it is used to describe individual moments during live theatre when an actor speaks through their character using words not found in the play’s text. In film, the term usually refers to the interpolation of unscripted material in an otherwise scripted performance.” – from Wikipedia

Make it a conversation

With 17 I had a skiing accident. My first session at the local Physical Therapy studio took barely 20 minutes. The therapist was cute. That’s the best I can say about the whole thing. She was neatly dressed in white, had great skin, a scent of vanilla. The session itself felt like I’m being processed in a factory. Afterwards the receptionist gave me a sheet of paper with exercises on it. Black and white Xerox. Hardly recognisable photos. Six of them. Only one of the exercises was something the therapist did with me. Barely any text. Gladly. Because the text was not helpful at all.

My thoughts back then: „So here we have exercises so dumb that it only requires a few badly xeroxed photos to explain them.”

A conversation-based therapy session is different. In a conversation one human guides another human through a series of movements, concepts, ideas. She asks questions. Responds, thinks, suggests, replies. At times broad, at times specific. At times vague, at times direct. A good conversation respects both viewpoints, the therapists’ and the clients’. A therapy session can be a conversation. A text can lead to a conversation.