Month: August 2014

Endurance 耐力

Endurance art – ‘based on an aesthetic of choosing and willing’, by Thomas McEvilley in Art in the Dark.

Practices of The Abramovic Method

1. Writing my name as slow as possible.

I planned to take 30 minutes to write my name but ended up I only took 10 minutes to finish it. It was hard to take care of the speed where sometimes I wrote slower sometimes faster. It was inconsistent.

I think of 3 things while practising this exercise:

1. Body oppression and disciplinary

My way of thinking the word oppress in this exercise might be different or wrong.

I can feel the oppression in the body while trying to break our natural way of doing something, changing the speed into extremely slow. Feeling the tension and the painfulness of the muscle. Forcing my body to do something unusual. At the same time, forcing myself to concentrate doing the exercise within certain time period. This is exhausting both mentally and physically. Discipline myself in time management while writing my name, and the discipline of following the rules of the tasks.

 

2. Time & Slowness.

A quote about slowness:

 

3. Self-observation.

I always observe the muscles and the movement of my fingers, my arm, my shoulder and my back almost all the time while I was writing my name. I kept concentrate on my writing and sometimes this concentration made me feel dizzy. I tried to observe the time and speed of my writing. Kept asking myself, am I slow enough?

 

My thought:

As a human, we always repeat and practice certain movement or exercise in order to reach certain goal. The process contain certain discipline and usually it is tiring, painful and suffering. For example athletes, in order to be good they need a significant amount of time of training. Same goes to artists, good practices and studies are important. When the artist understand his/her own body, able to control it and discipline it, then his/her body can create works that normal people cannot. Therefore, all this methods are very helpful for an artist body and mind training. As what Michel Foucault mentioned in The Control of Activity, there are 3 great methods which are:

1. establish rhythms  √

2. impose particular occupations

3. regulate the cycles of repetition.  √

 

Second Exercise: Counting rice

This is the result.

I spent about 25 minutes to finished calculate this much of rice which the total of 964 if I was not mistaken.

This was a trial for me so I did not put too much rice on the paper.

I did not struggle or feel torturing while doing this exercise, compare to the writing my own name as slow as possible. Maybe because I do not need to take care of the speed of doing this exercise and my goal was to finish calculate the rice. It was simple for me.

---

 

 

My Daily Practice (a suggestion)

With what I have practiced for Somatic Investigation, I have developed a simple daily practice for myself. The aim is to create a process or journey of concentration.

Step 1. Start with breathing exercise/breathing meditation.

To slowly get into altered state, gather the chi and energy in the body. Feel the separation from myself with the busy city.

I spent a 10 minutes doing the breathing exercise. As usual, I feel painfulness on my back. At the last 2 minutes I drop my body forward in order to reduce the pain but continue breathing.

Step 2. Walking Exercise

Choose a space to walk back and forth for about 10 minutes together with an even breathing. This is to warming up the body and move the concentration on whole body for Step 3.

I inhaled when I walk forward and exhaled when I walk back to another side of my room. The way I breath changed from time to time. After about 1 minutes, my body got the pattern of walking. The movements of legs and body become more smooth, constant speed and more organised. I kept telling myself to stay focus and do not think of other things but to maintain that constancy was hard.

Step 3. Trance Dance (climax).

Choose a music with clear and constant beat. Start a trance dance exercise without anyone disturbing for 15 minutes. Put the focus on whole body and feel release.

After the walking exercise, I builded up my energy into more powerful and aggressive one. My focus changed and my movements got bigger and faster which I need to follow the beat of the music and try to release my body. My breathing became harder and my heartbeat got faster. To maintain the energy and the continuity were not easy.

Step 4. Drink half glass of water as slow as possible.

This is to cool down the body and mind. A total contrast with the trance dance practice.

After the tiring exercises, I was thirsty and my mouth was dry. A glass of water will be best for me, but the task is to drink the water as slow as possible which I have to control my mouth and throat not to swallow the water fast. I never think of controlling my throat movement, I felt a bit awkward doing this. I stood straight while drinking that half glass of water because I imagined that the water could flow all the way down from my mouth to my toes and nourish every single cell in my body. I felt relax and comfortable. The energy that I project out during trance dance slowly gathered back into my body. Everything slow down just like what happened during Step 1.

Step 5. Write my name as slow as possible.

After cool down the body and mind, I have to gather back the concentration on my fingers and pen. Focusing on something very small which contrast with all the previous exercises.

In this exercise, I had to shift my concentration on the tips of the pencil and  the small movements of my fingers, controlling the speed, time and my breathing. Discipline my mind to stay focus and control.

For me, to do such a small task it needs much more energy to stay focus. This is the hardness of this exercise.

 

My aim of the whole practice is to create a flow of energy and having my body in control in different ways. From a very minimum movement and slow breathing to a medium speed walking then a very energetic trance dance. Cooling down myself with drinking  a half glass of water slowly then shift to a very small point of concentration. I observed the changes of different concentration and discipline of my body. It was very interesting.

---

 

 

Some interesting points from the articles:

• female body in pain is ‘dialogical’.
• Abramovic used body to manifest sources of conflict and suffering.
• ‘a woman must imagine herself to be male or imagine herself as men imagine her.’
• use of pain to enter a trance state.

Holotropic Breathwork

 

 

 

Holotropic Breathwork is a practice developed by Stanislav Grof & Christina Grof, which uses breathing and other elements to reach non-ordinary states of consciousness (NOSC) in order to have self-exploration and healing.

There methods include 5 elements which is intensified breaathing, group process, advocative music, focused body work/energy release work and expressive drawing/mandala drawing.

The practice always in a group and people is separate into pair. Usually one is doing the exercise(breather) and another one ‘sitter’ have to give attention to the breather. Sitter is allow to assists the breather but not interfere.

History

Holotropic Breathwork was developed by Stanislov Grof and Christine Grof during the 1970s and 1980s. But the early stages of the development happened in late 1960s. Stanislov became an investigator in clinical study of the possible therapeutic potential of a psychedelic drug. He found that many subjects entered a ‘nonordinary state’ which was indistinguishable from those describe in the ancient mystical traditions and spiritual philosophies of the East.

In 1967, Dr. Grof came to the United States to continue his research He became an Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University and the Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center in Baltimore, Maryland. Out of his friendships with the founders of humanistic psychology, Abraham Maslow and Anthony Sutich, they started a new discipline called “Transpersonal Psychology.” This form of psychology addresses experiences which are outside the boundaries of our body and personal identity.

During this time, Dr. Grof began to develop his map of human experiences in nonordinary states. This included sensory, biographical, perinatal, and transpersonal experiences. In addition, Dr. Grof developed the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs) of the birth process (BPM1-BPM4) and the an theory on the association between traumas in experienced nonordinary states call Condensed Experiences (COEX).

In 1974, after ten years of yoga practice (including Hatha Yoga and Siddha Yoga/Kundalini Yoga), Christina Grof experienced what might be called a “Kunalini Awakening” (a sudden experience of life-force energy and change in consciousness) during a meditation period led by a Siddha Yoga Master from South India. This led to a roller coaster of emotional experiences over the next year. In 1975, Christina Grof was referred to Dr. Stan Grof who helped her by staying with the emotions and moving through them.

In the late 1970s, Stan & Christina Grof got together in California and began to develop Holotropic Breathwork. Dr. Grof knew from his scientific research that transformation can occur in nonordinary states of consciousness and that the most powerful technique of inducing nonordinary states was psychedelic substances. (Psychedelic plant substances have been used in many cultures to induce nonordinary states and transformation.) However, Dr. Grof also knew that such substances involve serious risks. Therefore, the Grofs developed a safe and effective way of using one’s own breath to induce nonordinary states of consciousness.

In 1980, Christina Grof founded the Spiritual Emergence Network (SEN) to help the many individuals who, like her, are struggling or had become stuck with their own inner transformation.

In the early 1980s, Stan and Christina Grof travelled all over the world conducting workshops and giving lectures related to Holotropic Breathwork and Transpersonal Psychology. By 1987 they had developed their first structured training program. Between 1987 and 1994 the Grofs facilitated Holotropic Breathwork Sessions for more than 25,000 people.