Book Day 22: Skill issues in relationships, working out
This piece by Cate Hall made me think about skill issues today.
this quote in particular:
There is a relevant concept from Alexander Technique that I love, “faulty sensory appreciation,” which I learned about from Michael Ashcroft. The concept is that habitual tension distorts your sensory impressions—rigid stillness via bodily tension starts to feel like “good posture,” whereas relaxed uprightness feels strange, to the extent you might feel like your back is at a weird angle when you’re actually standing up tall. The right way feels like the wrong way. Apparently, this is demonstrated by having Alexander students lie in a position where your legs tell you that you shouldn’t be able to stand up — and then the instructor says, “by the way, you can stand up from here,” and you do.
the way I see it a little bit is everybody has areas in which they kind of “pop” or “run out of steam” or “run out of bandwidth” quicker than others, with less internal resources to “make more bandwidth.” (Perhaps there is a tie-in here with PoLR in Socionics). And then people have kind of funny reactions in those domains. I have a feeling that an inability to “imagine the body as having more bandwidth” is part of the blocker there for people.
this relates to trauma sometimes
Was thinking tonight also that some kinds of “seeing proof” can be “basically impossible” if one cannot imagine a body state for themselves in which “the proof lands and creates some kind of ease”
For example, “proof of safety” or “proof of love” or “proof of commitment” that a person may want may actually be outside their sphere of imagination in the moment such that they cannot get it.
like if someone literally cannot imagine a certain kind of safety in their body, there is no place for proof of that safety to land, and any convergence of that feeling of safety from proof kind of wiggles away
and so they can’t have what they want most.
For these reasons I think everybody in serious relationships should have some kinds of somatic practice
yoga, jiu jitsu, dancing,
beat saber
wii fit, tennis
hiking
whatever you want
I think “creating new wells of bandwidth and imagination” that you and your partner can use when you both inevitably grow is really important
I used to tell people, i dont want to get married until we are in super good shape. “If we cant make a commitment to be super hot for the wedding, what else will we not for each other.”
I dont know how intense an ethos that is. But part of it for me always was, “will we do something, together, that feels uncomfortable for both of us, but is objectively a good result, and keep track of the good result together”
i think there is something about starting a marriage healthy, and accomplishing what you say you want, doing what you say, both of you doing what you say you want to do
i think there is an additional element also of doing it together, and accomplishing a shared goal together