Brilliant comedic demonstration of why my Nei Gong practice for a year was "learning to stand without freaking out" before I advanced to "slowly step side to side," & why Feldenkrais builds so slowly up to "stand up from the ground":
Most meditation & yoga instruction is approximately this bad.
The bit where he "stabilizes" his legs with his arms is a perfect parody of the kind of developmental cope Feldenkrais describes in "The Potent Self."
Feeling a bit conflicted about sharing this because it could also be seen as mocking people who actually have problems standing & walking. But for real most of us have problems analogous to this on some frontier.
What it looks like to actually be helpful to someone with motor control deficits:
I can easily imagine someone thinking that the sharting joke goes too far, but actually in my standing practice anal & genital dearmoring was a big deal and could easily have led to temporary continence disruptions in someone who'd superficially appeared similarly functional.
The joke is that actually we're all that guy in some way.
I never used my arms to pick up my legs, but I've definitely been tempted to lean on my legs in some standing asanas, and I've used the wrong hip flexors to pick up my legs while walking.
If I were working with someone who was actually at the level in the video I'd see whether they could do gendle rocking while squatting, or extended-limb walking on all fours, and increment from there. If not, I'd actually start them from lying down and using one limb at a time.
But if someone gets mad about this I'll understand
*gentle

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Ben Hoffman

Ben Hoffman Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @ben_r_hoffman

13 Nov
@meditationstuff @reasonisfun I actually can't see it, and the Taoism thing in the other major thread-branch is my *sincere* attempt to steelman it:
@meditationstuff @reasonisfun If that is right, then either the Hegelianism hypothesis follows or I'm making a wrong inference.
@meditationstuff @reasonisfun Otherwise, it seems to me that either you ought to actually dismiss me as too stupid to engage with, or try to explain to me the other game (or point me to an explanation).
Read 4 tweets
12 Nov
The history of "convictions" is interesting - as I understand it (please correct if wrong), Christians popularized it to refer to dogma about sin, meaning condemnations. Later expansion to mean any belief is consistent with the assumption that pinning things down is for blaming.
In German, Schuld means debt, blame, sin, fault. Like karma (which as far as I can tell literally means causality), something you want to be free of. When memory is for tax collection, only forgetting frees and all anticipation constraints are convictions.
The term "epistemic" shares a root with πίστις, meaning "belief" and generally rendered in translations of the Christian Bible as "faith."
Read 9 tweets
23 Aug
Ate a bunch of butter topped with raw honey and salt yesterday, and I feel just fine today. Increasingly impressed by @bulletproofexec, who seems to hold an unusual posture with respect to health that involves just orienting towards value, not picking sides.
Paleo / low-carb / carnivore cluster is biased towards hunter-gatherer autonomy, against agricultural norms and social control, macho, individualistic. Vegan / puritan / low-fat / Kellogg cluster ends up promoting rules that favor people with compliant metabolism.
Butter is very clearly an agricultural food, but has the desirable performance and health attributes that the *logic* of paleo/keto/carnivore points towards. Honey violates crude versions of this logic but empirically is just good. Noticing both as good requires equipoise.
Read 19 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!