Apr 23 2013: Reuven and Agustinus and others - yes, I wonder if Wolpert has properly familiarized himself with the study of movement from other related fields? Does Wolpert know about F.M. Alexander's work?
It was Frederick Matthias Alexander (pre-1900) who gave Moshé Feldenkrais explanations for his ideas after Feldenkrais was a student of F.M. Alexander's. The Alexander Technique uses a means to study movement that is much more in keeping with Wolpert's investigations - because it deals with movement performance in the context of momentary reactions. (Rather than something like yoga that is done at a separate time that is supposed to influence body mechanics in general, A.T. is meant to be used as a process to improve qualities in the context of action.)
For instance, that force tends to escalate depending on the brain's perceptual conclusions; this is described in Alexander's special terms as "Debauched sensory appreciation." The remedy to reduce "signal feedback noise" in Wolpert's terms (used in both Feldenkrais and Alexander's work) is to slow experiments to a crawl so specific influences can be sorted out.
In Alexander's work there's an additional strategy of 'tricking" the habit to relinquish control in the use of "inhibition." There's also the practice of re-training precursive brain activity (called " Directions" or "giving orders") to refresh the sub-conscious movement preparation that happens previous to the awareness of choices being made to make a movement. (We have only 1/64th of a second to interrupt or re-direct this unconscious movement preparation. Measured by MRI is that humans have "Free Won't" - not free will.)
Oct 10 2012: Nice tip, Anne Oneill!
The success or failure of your apparent dominance or lack of dominance would be determined by how the way you appear matches your social standing and social expectations.
For instance, being a tall woman in my era (I grew to 6 ft. born in mid-1950s) put me in the situation of getting noticed when I'd walk into a room. Being tall was the first thing many people commented about, so I had to have a reply ready to the question of "how tall are you?" As a young person, I learned to make myself appear less threatening and calculating by letting all my breath out before I talked to make it seem as if I wasn't planning ahead at what I said. (Later that was a habit I worked to eliminate!) I hated intimidating others, but that's how people acted around me. So I had to learn to deal with it.
I had a friend who was a very athletic, short and round person who loved to dance. People were amused to watch him dance just because he looked funny and incongruous while doing it; sort of like an animated Michelin-man thug.
Everyone in some ways has to deal with these repercussions of matching or disappointing the expectations of their culture. Anywhere we do not match social expectations of who we appear to be contrasted with who we feel we are inside - there are going to be issues.
So I believe that social "tags" of what behaviors mean to our culture are more important than the dominant ancient physical displays in our culture. Certainly primal physical factors are working underneath our ability to sense or admit them, but overlaid and more obvious are the symbolic social meanings that we've been sold.
For instance, nature wants people to get fat as an expression of natural success. But now, fat people aren't considered attractive in our culture anymore. Our culture "sold us" on the benefits of being slim. Being fat is now a sign of someone not being able to move around and exert themselves. That's why my energetic, round dancing friend was so amusing.
Oct 10 2012: I see this is a list of the many reasons why someone wouldn't want to be recognized as "powerful." The complications of displaying power poses can result in having to spar with the other powerful characters who will be jockeying for position. Men tend to spar out of a respect for ideas. An aggressive challenge that 'tests' for dominance is a social activity among men that women commonly misunderstand.
Perhaps combining with body language some education about linguistic mannerisms? (recommend Deborah Tannen's books about power and control in the workplace.) There was a bit of discussion in Tannen's series of books about the effects of changing your speaking mannerisms and how it might affect the way people react and respond to you. Making some fundamental changes to body language would also similarly apply to changes in self image.
Dec 15 2011: Nice question.
I thought the most interesting point that was covered in the talk, aside from the "noise" factor, was the unreliability of effort - that the brain underestimates the force it's applying. People by design "don't know their own strength." So we're naturally engineered to overuse effort. This implies that we need a means to under-use our sense of effort. I can remember an old game of "pickup sticks" or Jenko that would be a fun demonstration of this.
Most fun is using the format of delivering the scientific fact, and then doing an experiment demonstrating how this fact is operating in one's own movements - than having kids figure out how they could use this information personally. Did you know that your sense of internal directional movement in space and relative effort to make it is relative - although it feels like absolute truth? Repeat a motion enough, and the sense that you're doing it disappears.
Studying the process of how we train ourselves to establish routines and habits (and to be free of them) is covered in the field of Alexander Technique. A.T. offers a means to revise muscle memory, after it's established that is a sort of Operating Manual for bodily movement.
Also studying animal training would be a fun place to start too - perhaps via the old experiments of a human impersonating the animal who gets trained to do odd things by a fledgling trainer - from an old book called "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor.
Sep 15 2011: Hi Tanya Rae - There are many expressions of that abstract idea. Here are a few quick practical ideas: someone could write a book about comparative religions; someone could participate in a "peace through personal meetups" like SERVAS or Couchsurfing - both are hospitality networks. Someone could do a travel journal writing about cultures they would visit; someone could translate books they believe already express the commonality of cultural beliefs; someone could video people's stories about families worldwide; someone could travel to do interviews on one, same question world-wide.
Learning thinking skills helps everyone understand how many ways there are to express an interest or goal. Defining a "touch-stone" is key to expressing an abstract desire and realizing how a dream-come-true could really happen.
Sep 15 2011: Glad for your interest, Terry! It's gratifying being an Angel in what I can manage, (for me, it's the meaning of my last name.) Do you know about www.kickstarter.com for attracting Angels?
1. Such as: Mr. Natural, who invented a reverse-engineered jazz theory music course and a short-hand for music notation; Jacques Kelly, consciousness changer; Michael Miley, researcher of unusual ideas and phenomena; Dennis Rivers, communication enhancer; Barbara Sher, the Grandma of coaching; Bill Wesley, microtonal instrument designer, another sailor who's gone around the world a few times, a past life reader, a healer by sound, an animal psychic, a World Cafe questioner...and many more.
2. Check out http://www.performanceshool.com for some interesting articles on how to learn the Alexander Technique without a teacher - from some of my colleagues who have continued the work of our teacher, an amazing original thinker, Marj Barstow. I'm working on an e-book too...
3. Perhaps I would write a handbook or series of videos on how to turn your own small town into a real community & how to start your own small town phone book.
4. Loosely arranging improvisational music and performance: http://www.franis.org/out4improv/ Actually, this is the one I'd probably like to do the most. It is also the one that needs the most help because it's the most original - like nothing you've seen before.
5. Selling a patch repair material, a guild for contractors that's also a gallery portfolio, various info stuff such as ideas about scheduling for senior care to attract nicer caretakers, advice on how to make money painting murals, tele-workshops on creativity and thinking skills, youtube videos on little tips like how to grow your hair long, how to juggle, hitchhiking for women, tiny art books that are almost greeting cards, learning to be a graphic recorder...(Of course, this list goes on as the ideas continue...)
Aug 25 2011: Hi Terry - it's a kick to read all the 161 comments so far! Actually, I've had a list like this for awhile, with many completions crossed off. Currently...
1. Figure out a way to feature conversations about what is so interesting about all the closet geniuses I know. I want to help them get the recognition they deserve before they die, (a couple of them who have invented amazing innovations should be talking on TED.)
2. Innovate a effective means to teach Alexander Technique without using hands-on - by web cam perhaps. Or maybe just teach more classes.
3. I lived in Bolinas, CA for thirty years, and I think that I can create another ride like that somewhere else, using my experience there as a template for creating a real, live community...(as opposed to an "intentional" community.) But I don't know where exactly.
4. Popularize my dream invention of outlining improvisational performance - ongoing: out4improv Probably, I can't even imagine how fun that would be.
5. Figure out passive income ways to offer the benefits of my experience and observations to more people, so I can continue doing projects indefinitely and making them available to those who find them useful.
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A reply on Talk: Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains
It was Frederick Matthias Alexander (pre-1900) who gave Moshé Feldenkrais explanations for his ideas after Feldenkrais was a student of F.M. Alexander's. The Alexander Technique uses a means to study movement that is much more in keeping with Wolpert's investigations - because it deals with movement performance in the context of momentary reactions. (Rather than something like yoga that is done at a separate time that is supposed to influence body mechanics in general, A.T. is meant to be used as a process to improve qualities in the context of action.)
For instance, that force tends to escalate depending on the brain's perceptual conclusions; this is described in Alexander's special terms as "Debauched sensory appreciation." The remedy to reduce "signal feedback noise" in Wolpert's terms (used in both Feldenkrais and Alexander's work) is to slow experiments to a crawl so specific influences can be sorted out.
In Alexander's work there's an additional strategy of 'tricking" the habit to relinquish control in the use of "inhibition." There's also the practice of re-training precursive brain activity (called " Directions" or "giving orders") to refresh the sub-conscious movement preparation that happens previous to the awareness of choices being made to make a movement. (We have only 1/64th of a second to interrupt or re-direct this unconscious movement preparation. Measured by MRI is that humans have "Free Won't" - not free will.)
A comment on Conversation: Are one of the reason that more people who are tall -or large- are more successful than not due to primal reasons?
The success or failure of your apparent dominance or lack of dominance would be determined by how the way you appear matches your social standing and social expectations.
For instance, being a tall woman in my era (I grew to 6 ft. born in mid-1950s) put me in the situation of getting noticed when I'd walk into a room. Being tall was the first thing many people commented about, so I had to have a reply ready to the question of "how tall are you?" As a young person, I learned to make myself appear less threatening and calculating by letting all my breath out before I talked to make it seem as if I wasn't planning ahead at what I said. (Later that was a habit I worked to eliminate!) I hated intimidating others, but that's how people acted around me. So I had to learn to deal with it.
I had a friend who was a very athletic, short and round person who loved to dance. People were amused to watch him dance just because he looked funny and incongruous while doing it; sort of like an animated Michelin-man thug.
Everyone in some ways has to deal with these repercussions of matching or disappointing the expectations of their culture. Anywhere we do not match social expectations of who we appear to be contrasted with who we feel we are inside - there are going to be issues.
So I believe that social "tags" of what behaviors mean to our culture are more important than the dominant ancient physical displays in our culture. Certainly primal physical factors are working underneath our ability to sense or admit them, but overlaid and more obvious are the symbolic social meanings that we've been sold.
For instance, nature wants people to get fat as an expression of natural success. But now, fat people aren't considered attractive in our culture anymore. Our culture "sold us" on the benefits of being slim. Being fat is now a sign of someone not being able to move around and exert themselves. That's why my energetic, round dancing friend was so amusing.
A reply on Conversation: Why not make power poses the way you behave all the time?
Perhaps combining with body language some education about linguistic mannerisms? (recommend Deborah Tannen's books about power and control in the workplace.) There was a bit of discussion in Tannen's series of books about the effects of changing your speaking mannerisms and how it might affect the way people react and respond to you. Making some fundamental changes to body language would also similarly apply to changes in self image.
A comment on Conversation: How can we take this science and use it to help children/people learn to move more efficiently/effectively in their world?
I thought the most interesting point that was covered in the talk, aside from the "noise" factor, was the unreliability of effort - that the brain underestimates the force it's applying. People by design "don't know their own strength." So we're naturally engineered to overuse effort. This implies that we need a means to under-use our sense of effort. I can remember an old game of "pickup sticks" or Jenko that would be a fun demonstration of this.
Most fun is using the format of delivering the scientific fact, and then doing an experiment demonstrating how this fact is operating in one's own movements - than having kids figure out how they could use this information personally. Did you know that your sense of internal directional movement in space and relative effort to make it is relative - although it feels like absolute truth? Repeat a motion enough, and the sense that you're doing it disappears.
Studying the process of how we train ourselves to establish routines and habits (and to be free of them) is covered in the field of Alexander Technique. A.T. offers a means to revise muscle memory, after it's established that is a sort of Operating Manual for bodily movement.
Also studying animal training would be a fun place to start too - perhaps via the old experiments of a human impersonating the animal who gets trained to do odd things by a fledgling trainer - from an old book called "Don't Shoot the Dog" by Karen Pryor.
A reply on Conversation: WHAT IF your top 5 personal ideas met collaborative action, write here. A TED BUCKET LIST of ideas worth spreading w/ angels in the wings.
Learning thinking skills helps everyone understand how many ways there are to express an interest or goal. Defining a "touch-stone" is key to expressing an abstract desire and realizing how a dream-come-true could really happen.
A reply on Conversation: WHAT IF your top 5 personal ideas met collaborative action, write here. A TED BUCKET LIST of ideas worth spreading w/ angels in the wings.
1. Such as: Mr. Natural, who invented a reverse-engineered jazz theory music course and a short-hand for music notation; Jacques Kelly, consciousness changer; Michael Miley, researcher of unusual ideas and phenomena; Dennis Rivers, communication enhancer; Barbara Sher, the Grandma of coaching; Bill Wesley, microtonal instrument designer, another sailor who's gone around the world a few times, a past life reader, a healer by sound, an animal psychic, a World Cafe questioner...and many more.
2. Check out http://www.performanceshool.com for some interesting articles on how to learn the Alexander Technique without a teacher - from some of my colleagues who have continued the work of our teacher, an amazing original thinker, Marj Barstow. I'm working on an e-book too...
3. Perhaps I would write a handbook or series of videos on how to turn your own small town into a real community & how to start your own small town phone book.
4. Loosely arranging improvisational music and performance: http://www.franis.org/out4improv/ Actually, this is the one I'd probably like to do the most. It is also the one that needs the most help because it's the most original - like nothing you've seen before.
5. Selling a patch repair material, a guild for contractors that's also a gallery portfolio, various info stuff such as ideas about scheduling for senior care to attract nicer caretakers, advice on how to make money painting murals, tele-workshops on creativity and thinking skills, youtube videos on little tips like how to grow your hair long, how to juggle, hitchhiking for women, tiny art books that are almost greeting cards, learning to be a graphic recorder...(Of course, this list goes on as the ideas continue...)
A comment on Conversation: WHAT IF your top 5 personal ideas met collaborative action, write here. A TED BUCKET LIST of ideas worth spreading w/ angels in the wings.
1. Figure out a way to feature conversations about what is so interesting about all the closet geniuses I know. I want to help them get the recognition they deserve before they die, (a couple of them who have invented amazing innovations should be talking on TED.)
2. Innovate a effective means to teach Alexander Technique without using hands-on - by web cam perhaps. Or maybe just teach more classes.
3. I lived in Bolinas, CA for thirty years, and I think that I can create another ride like that somewhere else, using my experience there as a template for creating a real, live community...(as opposed to an "intentional" community.) But I don't know where exactly.
4. Popularize my dream invention of outlining improvisational performance - ongoing: out4improv Probably, I can't even imagine how fun that would be.
5. Figure out passive income ways to offer the benefits of my experience and observations to more people, so I can continue doing projects indefinitely and making them available to those who find them useful.