Tag: caitlin pontrella

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M: Reflection on Movement & Self-Discovery (Joy, Power, Purpose, Privilege, and more)

Why Move?

On Movement & The Discovery of Authentic Self

Movement & Play is an antidote to most of the personal suffering that human beings experience. On some deep level almost everyone feels insecure, afraid, separated, isolated, and unsure of his or her own authenticity and value.

Unstructured play or movement for the sake of movement is a highly authentic form of self expression.  By setting our own challenges and seeking our own solutions we engage in a very deep and personal form of self-empowerment and honest communication.  It may take a long time to move without fear of judgement, unknowing preconception, or need for external feedback, but ultimately this process of discovering your movement and creating and exploring your body is one that leads to an truly honest understanding and expression of self.

Through long term movement and in overcoming our challenges we release ourselves from our insecurities.  The universal nature of movement as a fundamental human activity helps break down barriers of isolation, for all need and participate in movement on some level.

Movement reaffirms our sense of individuality while welcoming us into a larger global community.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Physical & Psychological Health

It goes without saying that there are serious psychological benefits to integrating movement into your everyday life.  Movement releases chemicals and hormones that positively impact your mental state.  It also of course positively impacts your body.

Physical Intelligence.

Movement is a path to physical intelligence: being able to use your body in any scenario effectively.  You fine tune the various senses and abilities, from balance to explosive power generation.  Your body is like an intelligent machine, and the more frequently you use it, the better you get at handling it.

Upkeep of the Vessel.

Take care of your body; You only receive one body in this life. Your body is kind of like a car. The longer you have it, the more miles you put on it, the more worn out it will become. It is of the utmost importance that you take care of it to the best of your ability, by putting in good fuel, winterizing it correctly, repairing parts as needed.

You only get one body in this life. It is your responsibility to take care of it. Your body is the vessel of your soul; the more healthy the vessel, the better off the soul.   We move to keep the vessel healthy, and in turn the soul happy.

Privilege

If you have the use of your body, you have the responsibility to use it. Do not be so frivolous to take advantage of a privilege you have been given. Not everyone has the use of their limbs.

Social Development

Movement, especially in the form of play with others, is an amazing medium through which to explore and develop a social identity.  Movement with others will begin to reveal to you your own insecurities and fears, as well as your personal strengths and confidence.  Social movement allows you to explore different fantasies, as well as test out various versions of potential interactions.  You are allowed, within the safe space of play, to explore who you are.

Joy

I move because it brings me joy.  Movement is one of the greatest pleasures, the use of our human bodies. It can be as satisfying as physical intimacy, as pleasurable as difficult mental puzzle, as gratifying as any great pleasure in the world.

Movement is joyous because movement is primal. It is essential to our human nature. To move is to return to that primal nature, to tap into some larger, historical energy that spans time & space. Everyone moves, before and after.  Movement is apart of culture, society, our history as human beings.

Movement is joyous because it is mine. No one can take movement away from me. Even if I had to sit still, I move. My spirit moves.  

Power

I move because it makes me feel powerful. The task of facing an obstacle, creating a strategy, testing that strategy over a course of time, refining, retesting, and ultimately overcoming (in one way or another)… this kind of mental and physical endurance to achieve a physical goal. I love it. It makes me feel like I can accomplish anything I set my body and mind to.  

Movement is one of the most all consuming and providing sources of power. Through movement, I am capable of anything. In Movement I am as capable as the next human being; nothing can hold me back. I don’t need a degree, I don’t need past experience. Everyone comes to the table with everything they need to excel and achieve human greatness: their bodies and their minds.

And you don’t need to necessarily have full or healthful function of either of those things in order to derive the power that comes through play. Again, the truest form of power in movement is the setting and achieving of personal goals, the realization that you are capable!

POWER.

Purpose

One of my favorite quotes from Marcus Aurelius goes as follows:

“In the morning, when you rise unwillingly, remember this thought: I am rising to perform the work of a human being. Why am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the very thing for which I exist? Or have I been made for this; to lie in my bed-clothes and to keep myself warm?”

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M: On the Self x2

What is the ‘self’? Characteristics, features, qualities. How do we find or lose it? How do we measure its authenticity in a world of unoriginality? Do we even need it? When and why? (functioning in society, for enlightenment, etc). IF we have it and discard it, what remains?

Response:

In my previous messy post, I discussed self as a sum of our values & needs. Values are a reflection of our beliefs and assumptions of the world and our selves. Needs are things we’ve identified as paths to happiness (sometimes accurate, othertimes not).  To retain a healthy sense of self is to find your ‘kinetic’ self, your ‘fluid’ self–self as a process rather than a thing.

The Static Self

The ‘static’ self is a reflection of a lifetime of collected beliefs and conclusions, not just about the world but also ourselves.  These beliefs, in the form of values and needs, become fixtures in our lives, organizing systems for all new experiences and information we encounter.  It takes all new information and fits it into existing values/belief systems or it discards it.

We become trapped by our own perceptions, values, needs, knowledge, etc, as these things become increasingly fixed and static. The path to happiness becomes more narrow, it’s definition more exacting. Through the deep cultivation of convictions, we in fact create our own self-destruction.

Authenticity

To personally examine and consciously choose each of your values and beliefs: Free yourself from your conceptions of the world in order to turn around and actually examine them.  Reject blind acceptance. Reject unquestioned cultural assimilation.  You may find after your examinations that those beliefs are still true for you, but without that personal examination you will ultimately lack authenticity. Your ideas are not your own, they are functional transplants pending eventual failure: Because you did not create them yourself, you can not evolve them, you can not truly understand them.

Self-evaluation and re-creation is critical to being able to evolve those ideas later and stay authentically you.

Stability, Usefulness, and the Static Self

Does static self have a place?  Static self in some ways is useful, at least as a way to interface with others.  While your true self may be fluid and kinetic; changing under the surface, prehaps this turbulance is too much for those in society to deal with.  Perhaps the ‘Static Self’ – a curated representation of who you are–is what we need in order to function in a highly developed society.

Static Self is when you earmark a point in your life, a version of yourself (complete with beliefs, values, needs), and present and re-present that version to the world. We all do this. We all become an image or a set of ideas/beliefs/behaviors to our loved ones, our families, our colleauges, etc. And sometimes, they do it to us. They capture an image in their heads of who we are, and we are condemned to it until they capitulate.

It doesn’t have to be this way, but it is easier, no? Humans crave stability. But the spiritual journey is one of great uncertainty. We need to find a balance to operate in society & to continue on our inner path at the same time.

So, I will leverage a series of static selfs against society for my ambitions, but with my most intimate of relationships I will strive to be my true self; a fluid human being in a state of constant growth and turmoil. I am a boiling sea, I am full of active tectonic plates, shifting, moaning, groaning, crunching, crushing: With my most intimate, I wish for them to be apart of the storm, an ally, a partner. I wish for them to push the plates, heat the water, agitate the storm. I wish for them to stand me up, to cool me off, to hold my hand.

Honesty, Ritual, & The Static Self

The Static Self is in many ways a dishonest representation of your current state. But the Static Self provides a sense of stability and a place of reference from which others in your life can interface. 

For those undergoing great shifts, the static self is a way to avoid scaring people off.  Most people in this world only have their static selfs, with minor variations, and can not comprehend rapid emotional and inner change.They do not depart on any deep spiritual journey–or will not until later in life.  

This is perhaps why rituals are very important in society. Coming of age, getting married, moving out, moving around, entering and ending a relationship, starting, leaving a new job, etc.  These pivotal movements are places where society accepts radical change in someones Static Self. So for most who do have a sense of fluid self, they save making a public shift until these periods.

Cultural Rituals are critical for the survival of the Static Self. Ugh could write too much on this. Skip.

What happens when we discard self?

This is one of the many enlightenments in life. Perhaps that process of defining self each day–the evaluation of values and needs–is a process of hacking away at the unessential.

If we can eliminate all superfluous needs–to need nothing for happiness–means, our day to day requires very little difficult choice.  When our values are robust and elastic, and our needs are minimal, Happiness is an ease to achieve. Happiness comes from within.

Without needs, the self ceases to exist, the ego ceases to exist. 

I honestly don’t know.

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Our First Apartment

An iron-barred
plant-laden window,
guarded by the Buddha,
gating out the world.

Cold sunlight
on warm wooden floors
scratched up by a table
built for building a community
together.

Teacups.
Boardgames.
Blankets from your sister.
Books.
So many books
color coded and marked up,
separating you from me and here from
there
and

A couch you hated, and
the art.

Bay windows and
the bedroom walls
soaked with words
from whispered conversations
that drew us
deep
into the night and
into each other.

I didn’t realize it,
when we first moved in.

I swear,
It didn’t look like a battleground.

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M: On Measuring Athletic Success

Success is not measured in terms of team, or wins. Success is measured by how much the individual enjoys the experience.

  • In the football model the individual trains diligently and receives instructions from the coaches, and the reward is in the teams victory, if it should have one, and in the discipline the individual receives.
  • In parkour, skateboarding, or rollerblading the focus is not on competition, so the goal is not to win, and the concept of training becomes obsolete. The reward is in the enjoyment the individual derives from the act of skating and in the camaraderie of the lifestyle.
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M: On Happiness & Success

People place too much weight upon the expectations of others.  They make decisions and choices based on a vision of success someone else has defined for them.

And of course, I think it is hard sometimes to identify your own goals, and your own purpose, free from the influence of the voices of others.  We’ve been conditioned all our lives to listen to the voices of others.  We have been told, since childhood, what the looks and measures of success are.

Have you graduated college? How much money are you making?  How much power?  Are you recongized by others for your accomplishments?  Do you have a happy marriage–are you married at all?  Do you have children? One? Two?  Do you have a big house and a backyard and some dogs?  Do you have two cars? Can you take two vacations a year? 

It starts when you’re younger and grows up with you, in you.  And then you are an adult and you find that you undervalue happiness and overvalue this predefined notion of success.  

You’ll choose a job that makes others happy, jealous, proud–your parents, your peers, your ex’s and so forth.  You tie yourself down, settle in before you’re ready, because its expected. 

You never stop and ask yourself–what is success–for me?  What is happiness, for me?

So my advice is to step back.  Your unhappiness and anxiety in your life, with your decisions, are usually a product of trying to meet someone elses expectations & ideals.  Figure out what will make you happy–and make that your goal, your standard of success.

You still got to work to live, but if you’re not happy–well, youre wasting your only life.  Happiness should not be ‘optional’ to success.

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2013.07.12 On Making Plans and Anxiety

Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.

— President Dwight D. Eisenhower

This.

I am starting to recognize planning or, really, lack thereof, is one of the larger sources of anxiety in my life.  Most of us like to make plans, set up lists of things that need to happen, or create scenarios of how a certain event should go.  Back in January I decided I would drive all the way down to Texas (from NYC) and back over the course of 2 weeks to attend an event.  The weeks leading up, I planned the shit out of this journey.  I figured out sleeping accommodations, best routes, places to eat, people and sights to see.  I planned and planned in hopes of making my journey as smooth as possible.

However, planning, or over-planning, in my case, worked to my detriment. I created absolute-scenarios, with no wiggle room, what-if backups, and built-in flexibility.  We departed NYC a lot later than we were supposed to (3 days late in fact).  To me, I thought eh not too bad, we can make that through… But when over the journey we decided to detour through Georgia to pick up another person, got stopped by the police in Tennessee, couldn’t make it to our sleeping arrangements in time, and had our tires wear too thin, I slipped in to full blown anxiety mode.

This is the place you never want to get.  You never want to let your well-intentioned planning to lead to ultimate emotional disaster.  This trip ended up being significantly more stressful than I wanted and I ended up spending a lot of time worrying and not enough time enjoying myself. 

But planning, when done right, should only increase the opportunity to enjoy without worry.  There just so happens to be the right way to plan and the wrong.  Here are my tips to making great plans that will reduce your stress and keep you flexible:

1. Write down what you want to do and why

Did you want to take a trip to texas?  Meet for drinks? Build a business?  Audition for a choir? Get a passing grade on that upcoming test?  Write clearly what your ultimate goal/plan/end is.  This will give you a good foundation to return to.

Let’s use my trip for an example.  I want to drive down to Texas to attend the Parkour Event in San Antonio because I have a little extra money, want to see different parts of the country.  Plus I would love to have an adventure with Jesse.

2. Write down your fantasy-scenario, but only with the necessities.

Here you get to daydream a bit.  Play out the event from now until finish.  What is your most ideal way of seeing things pan out?  However, don’t go in to too much detail.  Just hit the big ones. 

I dreamt that the ride down to texas would be leisurely.  We would leave with a week+ of time before the event, arrive at my friends house in Ohio, check out the city, and sleep there a night, we would then drive down to another friend in Kansas, and then finally in to San Antonio.  Back up we’d go up the East coast, stopping in South Carolina to see my Aunt and then DC to see my best friend, and finally back to NYC.

Sounds lovely right?  And in this broad stroke I didn’t include all the extra stops I’d need, the things I’d want to do in each city–I left the little details to the wind.  This ensures you don’t build play-by-play expectations (which 100% of the time fail to live up) and keeps you flexible!

3. If-This, Then-This

Now look at your broad stroke and start playing devils advocate.  What if something goes wrong?  What if you get sick and can’t study for three days/nights?  What if your car breaks down?  What if your major investor suddenly falls through?

If-This, Then-This’s are alternate scenarios you build, visualizations you engage in, that allow you to say… if this happens, then this is what we will do.  It is a great way to build flexibility in to your plans.  The more flexible you are, the less stress it will be when things go wrong.

I should have said, if we can’t make it to ohio on time, then find a hotel nearby where we are and tell my friend ill see her soon.  if we can’t make it to ohio at all because we are behind schedule, then we will pass through it briefly (stopping to see a few cool pieces of architecture) and sleep in a different down miles away.

Seems like a stupid exercise, but the more scenarios you can visualize and deal with before they occur, the more relaxed and capable you will be when dealing with them in the future.

4. Establish your Boundaries and non-negotiables

This final step is so important.  Do you need to eat by 9pm?  Do you need to visit Ohio?  Do you need to be partnered up with Acme Adventures Ltd?  

The final step in this process is figuring out what your absolutes are.  What must you do in order to ensure your happiness and success in this scenario?  If not seeing your friend in ohio is going to ruin your entire trip, then make it a priority–make your if-this, then-thats cater to ensuring that you do make it to ohio, sleep over at her house, and see all the amazing architecures that the city has to offer.

And Finally, breathe.

If you get to the point where you still feel overwhelmed, sometimes just stepping back and away is the best thing you can do.  Take a deep breath, a nap if necessary, and revisit the issue.

Planning is a tool to help you deal with complex situations.  When done correctly, planning will keep you cool and calm in a headache of situation, planning will reduce your worry and keep you focused, planning will help you figure out your next steps.  It makes you a more effective problem solver, a more efficient and productive worker, and a more relaxed and flexible traveler!

The trick is to never be finished with your planning.  Never come to an end and say, ‘Ah-ha! this is it! This is the final plan!’  You should never have a single, finalized plan that needs to be followed to the T ….for as they say, if it can go wrong, it will.  Just keep flexible and let your ‘plan’ be in actuality a big deck of cards that you can pick and choose from as your situation changes.

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M: Anxiety, Discontent, Alone-ness

He was consumed by an anxiety that he could never live up to what he had been, could never succeed in expressing, with hints, or still less with explicit words, and perhaps not even with his thoughts, the fullness he knew he had reached. – Difficult Loves by Italo Calvino

If this is not perhaps a perfect reflection of the nature of my anxiety, then I know not what could be.  It is a subtle anxiety, a dark passenger.  It is an old lover that, in those quiet moments, slips in to your bed to ravish you while your guard is down.  It is the scent you can never remove, it is a second skin.  It is a shadow that grows in the light and consumes in the dark.

This anxiety of never being understood–never being able to make yourself understood.  The anxiety of being ever-alone.  And it is an ache that is greater than any pain known to man.  The aching of the soul.  Desiring.  Longing.  Longing to find company, to find conversation, to find a familiar face–to find someone with the same demons, with the same weight. 

My soul, my self; I am consumed.  I wish I could describe what it is I feel.  A heavy fog in my mind, rendering me unable to see clear.  A pressure within my chest, and that feeling of sinking in to the earth.  The dissolution of any emotion-for better or worse.  The dissolution of all things I recognized and identified with.  The dissolution of identity.

I eat more, I sleep more, I fuck more.  The delights of a slim diet, the discipline of limited sleep, even the desires of making love—they have been drained and degraded. Passionate kisses are nothing more than skin on skin.  I lay beneath the bodies of my lovers, eyes clutched shut, forcing myself to focus–focus on the sex, on the motion of his body, the pace of his breath… focus on anything but the growing distance, anything but the emptiness of it all, anything but the ugliness of the act.

The ugliness of the act.

Perhaps I should withdraw from sex then, you say, but the exile from human touch does nothing but irritates my already frustrated soul.

I need to wake up but I don’t know how.  I need my skin to start feeling the blood flowing beneath it again.  I need to shrug off this sleep my body has slipped in to.  But how?  But how?

I grow discontent.

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R: Perfection of the Mind

According to Rene Descartes the perfection of the mind is found in three things:

1. Promptitude of thought– Thought that reacts to the immediate situation, that can be formed and dismissed without any great hesitation, that can be analytical and critical and yet at the same time be vulnerable to the spontaneity that only great minds can offer.

2. Clearness and distinctness of imagination – Not strictly speaking originality but the ability to think beyond that which is presented to you, beyond the tangible answers and things of pure clarity.  To be able to ask those questions which are most vital, even if they are questions of nonsense and banality–for sometimes it is a question that seems so simple, so plain, so uninspired and unproviding, that can reward us with the most breadth and depth of understanding (given we pursue the ends of such questions with such fervor and depth, given we overturn every possibility, and glance up every tree and down every root, branch, and leaf, given we sleep not in the search for such answers. given we have resolve enough to see the question through whatever unexpected, obstructing paths and discoveries that are to be hand, that we have resolve enough to reach the ultimate resolution untainted by cowardice or indecision.)

3. Fullness and readiness of memory – To be able to recall that which has happened, to be able to retain more, and then to be able to exert and extract the fundamental lessons provided at the core of each memory. 

This is what makes a great mind.

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M: On Academia and Free Thinking

Academia poses a huge danger to true intellect. In university, students consume information, process it, memorize it, and take it as absolute truth. If humans in the past did this, we would perhaps still think we are the center of the universe. If Einstein did this, we would never have calculus.  we are in danger today of brain-death. People are susceptible to believing everything they read if it is printed in a book, if a professor teaches it in a classroom. 

We fail to realize that nothing is absolute, nothing is final. this is why academia is a danger to true intellect. Students get in to the habit of blind acceptance, for they are taught to trust and worship every word that slips from the mouths of their professors.  students aren’t asked to question or to challenge what they read and hear, but process it, compare it, rewrite it–rather than invent something of their own, something critical and examined. 

And this habit, of reprocessing, of letting others do the real thinking, leaks out in to their daily lives. They define love by the spectacles and exhibitions that Hollywood produces, through emulating television stars, they develop loose morals and lack principles, they desensualize and devalue sex, they degrade the value of relationships-romantic and platonic.  Academia needs to shift before it destroys our minds.