I thought about it the other day in a context outside of training and martial arts, but it made me want to write about it again here.
Bagua Zhang has a very simple view of movement -
What you can do going forward you can do in reverse, closing or opening, clockwise or anti clockwise, big and small.
You get the picture. It's all about an idea and then it's opposites.
The fun part is when you realize that any human movement holds within it many different 'opposites'.
Take for example a simple shuffle step forward off a left lead in San-ti (left hand high, right low).
The opposite could be a shuffle step back to where you started. It could also be a right lead San-ti shuffle step forward ... or back. It could be a left lead shuffle step with right hand high and left low, or same reversed hands with right lead, or backwards with same.
And that's just one, single, moving part - pushing off the back leg and resetting.
Why is this useful? Because if you can only see in binary, your affordances are very limited.
The obvious 'opposite' is not always the most useful one to use in reaction to a stimulus, though by default this tends to be what we do - Push directly back against an opposing force.
It should be remembered that the more parts that are involved in the original frame (right hand, left hand, right foot, left foot etc), the more parts can become 'others' in the one labeled 'opposite'.
In even more complex systems, like people, where opposites can be physical, but also situational, psychological, and time related (now/not now).
Confrontation. Conversation. Conflict. Reverse. Inverse. Adverse. It's all relationship. What's the opposite? What's the opposition?
Precision of understanding the situation at hand is key, but just as important is a generous space left un-named for those 'opposites' that may in fact not be opposites at all.
10 comments:
"-see in binary -"? Define, please.
1 or Zero
"The obvious 'opposite' is not always the most useful one to use in reaction to a stimulus"
Is that not the nature of reaction as opposed to response? Reaction as in every action having an equal and opposite reaction... A response being something that changes the the relationship between the interrelating parts...
;) in thelanguage we often use the words interchangeably. Through the meaning are quite different. I have to make the effort to not slip but using the different words has helped.me.express the ideas more easily to those Im working with.
Yes.
Thanks, that would be more scientifically accurate ... though I would say in a more holistic model, reaction is not always equal and opposite - I can react with surprise to you jumping out from behind the door and saying Boo!
Though that could just as easily be called my response also.
Fair... Though I would say that in that case your being "surprised" was my intended reaction from you. If you di'd.something I didn't expect or intended I would called that a response.
Semantics I know. But given how much we end up using words to convey ideas and concepts, an important one...
Not trying to be obtuse because I agree that precision in language i important, but I do not think 'intent' has anything to do with whether the response is a reaction.
Also, in physics, the phrase is 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction' Newton, right?
Anyway, would that not really mean that the reaction to me moving my body through space is that the space moves in equal measure in the opposite direction?
Can this concept be transferred to psychological or trained responses/reactions to stimulus?
In the end we can certainly agree that it's about communicating the message we want others to hear (oh look, relationship again :-)) ... and that precision of language is important to doing that. However, what you say and what others hear can often have nothing to do with using the best words. And perhaps that's when science has to become art ...?
"Not trying to be obtuse because I agree that precision in language i important, but I do not think 'intent' has anything to do with whether the response is a reaction."
I know, my "response" was not perfect... I guess when I say intent, I mean that in the boo-jump example the boo intends to make the other jump, the jump being the reaction to a surprise. The ability to respond, ie, do something unexpected, that improves ones situation.
My understanding of the rule, is that also when a force acts upon an object, the object also reacts back, along the lines of the harder I punch their had, the harder their head hits my punch.
As to it be of use in training, isn't that in part behind Rorys Operant conditioning and Kasey has talked about action-RNot trying to be obtuse because I agree that precision in language i important, but I do not think 'intent' has anything to do with whether the response is a reaction -reaction or Response.
As tot he words I agree, though the notion of best words is important, but what is best will be context specific, I see them both as models and tools, the right model and the right tool to solve the problem. Then again with most communication, at least in person not being verbal....
Thinking of ideas such as signal to Noise and various models of communication...
it's part of the appeal... the ongoing hunt for not only the doing oneself but the passing on...
8 gate to 2nd powerr. Bagua 8gates as in tui na massage, front right shoulder is supported by back left of hip.
8 gates of upper and lower back express invariably in infinitely simple opposite and complementing compensatory structural reliance, physiologous mechanically dynamic.
8 gate to 2nd power_64 classic
You surprise, i freeze (hide), posture, fight, run, or settle in my bones in my upper 4 gate and lower 4 gate.
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