Working in Movement

Among the things I kind of know now but didn't know then:

When you're explaining something to somebody and they don't get it, that's not their problem, it's your problem; When someone's explaining something to you and you're not getting it, it's not your problem, it's their problem. [Laws of Conversation on Ongoing]

Earlier I wrote about EyeToy, an add on for PlayStation 2 that lets you use whole body actions to control the action on the video game apprearing on your TV set. Now MacIntosh users who have the iSight webcam plugged into their firewire ports can do the same. Toysite is software that installs on the Mac and includes 9 games, some of which can be played with others over a broadband connection. Looks like it might be fun. Here's an article describing it in more depth.

It would be great to learn how these things work and how to set up new games and other learning situations. This is potentially a very rich learning environment for all sorts of things, movement education among them.

If you've ever been surprised by an unexpected loud noise, you've experienced the startle response. Your shoulders come up, neck forward, head back and down, abdominal muscles tighten mightily, hands clench, etc. (Here's a picture). Somehow, your nervous system has prepared you for flight or flight, all in less than 75 milliseconds. Pretty fast. And that's good, provided there really is a threat to fight or flee from.

But the problem, as I wrote about in Taking Moshe to the Movies way back in 1995, is that this bodily startle response pattern can hold on and on and on way after the initial stimulus. This body pattern of stress and anxiety can cause lots of problems if it's held when not needed. "Choking" during athletic performance is one unwanted consequence. The pattern also shows up in folks with excess responses to anxiety; Startle response in people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a good in depth look at how the pattern operates in PTSD.

The bottom line here is the unnecessary startle response pattern hinders how we perform activities, compared with the times when we don't have it. But to do something about it, we have to recognize that we are in it first. Then, various movement education tools can helpful in releasing it, at least temporarily. I'll be exploring this in more detail in the future.