My apartment’s door snapped shut behind me, I strolled down the hallway, reached out to press the button to call the elevator to floor number 22 and noticed: this is all without obstacles. The floor is flat. I took the elevator down to Basement, drove my motor scooter for 10 minutes on level streets through easy traffic. There was one step to climb from parking to the entrance of the coffee shop, and one semi-heavy glass door to push open.

I noticed that I’m constantly required to do hand-eye coordination and thousands of manipulations with my hands, like handling a tube of tooth-paste and a tooth-brush, turning keys, fishing out my wallet from my laptop bag, separating notes of paper money, unwrapping and sticking a straw into my iced tea and fishing out peach slices with a spoon, typing on a keyboard.

Contrariwise, there’s no such challenges for the whole self. No walls no trees no ropes to climb, no stairs up stairs down, the spiral staircases property to historical locations long past, like Hampstead and Covent Garden underground station in London, no ducking under low arched ceilings, no creeping no crawling, no swimming no jumping. The body, the whole self, held useless, unchallenged, nothing to learn here, numb and dumb.

Burdened yes, with endless sitting, walking on level ground, sprinkled with intense, short sprints of sports, and then some more sitting. Topped off with sleeping like a bronze statue cast into a mattress of Memory Foam.

Oops, that came out sounding pretty negative, wasn’t my intention at all. Maybe I’ll order another Trà Đào, peach iced tea. I wonder if I have to get up and walk all the way to the nearby counter for ordering, or if I can use the coffee shop’s app to do in-house ordering. I sit at table number 3.

Short videos. Less time to make, less time to watch. I can produce a video in less than two days and it can be watched in less than 4 minutes. The best this, the best that. How to fix the back for good, the neck in seconds. Worst exercise for this, instant relief for that. “Attention span is down below 3 minutes,” concluded my mother after she has read some main stream media’s article that praised short cooking videos on Tik Tok. Learn how to cook mussels in tomato and wine broth in less than 2 minutes.

In an attempt to bring my Youtube stats back to where they were five years ago I created a row of short videos myself, throughout the month of April. Two kinds: trailers to longer videos, and select movement combinations that can create perceivable differences. Youtube’s artificial intelligence noticed and sent me a message: “Your hard work has paid off! Publishing more videos contributed to your channel getting more views than usual.”

Youtube AI even estimated my April’s revenue to be almost double the usual 150something USD I make per month from Youtube.

I’ll have to continue to make short videos. I need to adapt to the times that are changing. This is what I teach, the ability to adapt to an ever changing environment. To thrive, whatever the initial conditions. The ability to do well, whatever hand we have been served. I need to adapt to Youtube’s algorithm in order to reach more viewers, in order to gain more patrons, in order to be able to do more, to be able to start more ambitious and resource intense projects, and develop as a teacher.

This morning I practiced to one of my longer videos, 25 minutes. Title: Tremendously helpful shoulder movements. I felt like the pauses could have been a tad bit longer. I didn’t look at the time when I clicked, but would I have clicked on a 25 minutes video? I was surprised how fast it was over though. I had to giggle at my own comments sometimes. I felt good. I felt alive and well. Three more minutes would have been nice.

I noticed stronger improvements above the 20 minutes mark, something I don’t get from 1 to 3 minutes videos of “The best this”, “The perfect that”, “A fix for whatever”. I think somatic education is like sports, or art. Dance, painting, playing an instrument, singing, crochet. Good things take time. For sure I will continue to make longer videos for myself and for my patrons. We’re worth it. Thank you for watching, and sharing.

I have to revise my verdict. It takes me almost half a day to do a simple 2-3 minutes video, just for the editing, and even longer if I create one from scratch. Short videos totally disrupt my life and make me chase my tail like a cartoon dog. They clutter  up my productivity schedule on which I’m always behind to begin with.

In turn, Youtube does not seem too care to deeply about my efforts. After an initial Hooray comes a Meh, a drop in views and earnings. I sympathise with my fellow Youtubers who have been doing short videos consistently for years, and yet they only get a couple of dozens of views on their videos. I guess I may count myself lucky to get a couple of thousands of views in total on any of my newer videos.

View counts. What a curse. I’m a teacher and creative first, and then I’m not a marketeer, not a SEO specialist and not a business guy. “Hire your weakness”, they say. As if I was a business guy.

On the upside creating a 2-3 minutes video is a bit like writing a blog post: it seems to help me think, find and solve problems of thinking, teaching, naming, categorising. It’s like a spotlight that draws my attention and improves my … well I guess it must be good for at least something. Maybe short videos are a key to unlock some hidden potential? Making me a better teacher? Nah, Hm, Njiah, maybe?

For a while now I struggled with my reading practice from screens. I’ve found myself reading shorter and shorter stories, texts, paragraphs, sentences. But I believe to have maintained my ability to know trouble when I see it coming for me.

So I took my chances and went to a bookstore I’ve been visiting unsuccessfully twice already. Not too many bookstores with books in English language here in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. And for sure I am a very picky reader. This time I came out victoriously, with the first volume of A Song Of Ice And Fire, A Game Of Thrones.

I wasn’t aware of how many words I didn’t know. But I shouldn’t worry, because I’m reading for volume. Extensive reading, as psycholinguist Stephen Krashen recommended it for improving ones command of a language. Nevertheless I found myself the Collins English Dictionary on the app store, for € 6,99 as a one time payment. What a great find! Here’s to the old days where you could buy a dictionary and own it, rather than having to pay a subscription to be allowed to keep it on your shelves. Another victory.

It took a couple of hundred pages – but reading was pleasant – for my ability to imagine and to picture scenes to start to come back. I noticed, quite surprised. It’s not as vivid yet as I recall from my childhood, decades past, but scenes started to come alive, and some of the character’s features started to take form in my imagination, and the book’s text started to disappear. It’s getting better with every day, with every page and every chapter. In turn, I haven’t opened the Netflix app in a fortnight, and my Youtube Screen Time on my iPhone plummeted down to a measly 7 minutes per day.

When I was two thirds into the book I went back to the bookstore for more. The shelves had been rearranged. I gasped. I hurried trough the foreign language section. Eyes left, right, almost frantically. At last a sigh of relief. However, A Clash Of Kings had dirt marks on all sides of the textblock (the top-edge, bottom-edge, and fore-edge) from having been pushed around on the shelves. “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die. There is no middle ground”, Queen Cersei said to Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, Hand of the King. I spotted a whole, unopened box with the complete series on the top of a shelf, and decided to buy it, even though I already owned the first volume. Let’s see what adventures their adventures will hold for me, let’s see through those thousand lives.

Just to illustrate my point and zoom into the topic quickly: I’m sitting in one of my favourite coffee shops, I just finished two long emails, and I’m now watching chocolate croissants being made, right in front of me:

The very well trained and skilled worker has been preparing the dough and is now cutting and rolling the pastry, he’s lining the finished rolls up on a big plate.

I want to sort our movements into categories and then assign them percentages. But what categories are there? And how much is of what?

How many of our movements are to achieve a task? Movements for work (like rolling chocolate croissants), cardio, hygiene, commute, communication (pointing, gesturing, facial expressions etc), …

How many of our movements are about fidgeting? Small, involuntary movements to keep the nervous system running in good condition, and to burn extra calories directly from glycogen. Movements like playing with the fingers, swinging an arm or a leg for no apparent reason, to scratch ourselves, play with an item in our hands, movements to push fluids in passive systems around, like the lymphatic system or macrophages beneath the skin. Wiggling, swinging, swaying, all the involuntary, automatic movements we do to keep joints well hydrated and to maintain a basic range of motion for each of them.

How much of a percentage are movements of life support, like breathing and the heart beat?

And then the category I want to get at, how much is movement learning?  Actually, what is it, what is movement learning?

How much of our time are we dedicating to what? How could we identify and measure that somewhat comprehensively? And does it matter?

Did I draw this correctly? Is the part of movement learning the smallest? Is it really? And if it is, would that be a good or a bad thing?

Interesting comment on Youtube, from Fred F. on a video about squatting down to sit on a chair. “It is amazing that, when one is young, these movements are so natural and one would not give it a second thought how they are done. It is only when one is old and have mobility issues, or when recovered from injuries, that one has to re-train the brain about how they are done.”

Two things come to mind. First of all, heaven forbid, but if you happen to see some children, observe (oh noes!) how they sit down and get up from chairs, and how they are sitting. You will probably soon realise that sitting down and getting back up and sitting itself is not a problem of old age alone.

Yet, I agree, probably none of these children is questioning authority and the dynamics of chairs and sitting, too much. I have as a child, and it worried me down to my core to have been left alone with these questions. But then, I was not your regular child. I did second guess my teachers, every single one of them, and despised every minute that I had been (sort of) locked up in these classrooms and had to sit on their despicable chairs and their ugly benches. Nevertheless I served 18 years of schooling. Not the smartest kid on the block, am I.

Secondly: culture. It is the role of culture to teach us. Children should learn the basics of movement from their parents and chosen role models. Just like the asian squat is performed perfectly, each and every time stunningly beautiful by the adult Vietnamese living in Vietnam, and learned by their children just as well. It should be the same for standing, walking, running, sitting down, and getting up, and all the other things we can and must do in a certain culture (Swimming maybe? Diving? Climbing on rocks? Whistling?) We shouldn’t have to think about how to do it. It should just happen on its own, it should be perfect as it is, and we should be free to focus on the content of life, on the things we do, rather than how to hold ourselves up without wrecking our biomechanical properties to pieces.

Yet, our culture is broken. How many percent of adults suffer from back pain, knee pain, have less than ideal dynamics? And the children of our culture now learn just that, as members of our culture they grow up to face the exact same challenges.

Unless, and here’s the beauty of it, we question, we second guess, we experiment, we try, study and learn. We become aware, create options, and thus overcome, evolve, improve, knowingly.

Many Feldenkrais classes start with lying on the back. This position is  not only for resting, but a reference we can come back to during and after class. In this position we compare how our perception has changed, or notice areas with more or less tension… maybe the shoulders are feeling more flat and relaxed, or one leg feels longer and that side of the pelvis warm and soft… maybe that’s because there’s less tension, or maybe that’s because of a better circulation of blood, improved microcirculation, or maybe something else. And of course we’re always open to make unexpected discoveries, in a good sense.

So, yesterday, when I was lying down to do some moving around, I came to lie down on my front side and was wondering, “Why on the back?” Maybe I should start a class with lying on the front side, chose the front side as home position and reference, and then do movements while lying on the back. Do all the movements on the back, and return to the front side during and after class for rest and reference. What would that teach us? What would be the benefits?