https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=orpqXNw3R0w
Welcome everyone to another voices with for Vicky. I am here with Ethan Chia and to my key. Probably mispronounce this. And I’m very excited about this. Ethan and I have been had a couple of conversations we’ve been trying to get coordinate things, because I’m really interested in seeing some of how is embodied ecology of practices work. And we finally got things synced up, and we’re going to make it work. So I’m going to turn things over to the two of you, and just talk me through. I’ll raise my left hand. If I want to intervene and ask a question. Yeah, so we are here introducing TMAT. So TMAT stands for the Integrative Approach and Methodology of Active Transformation. And this kind of how we call our ecology of practices which started as a performance training thing because I, my background is in theater, I come as a theater director. You come as a dancer, actress, performer. And so it’s mostly us figuring out how do we do that thing better. And then, obviously I stumbled upon your work, Jon, and then it became, wow, this could do more than that. So it seems to have very, very specific links all the way back historically, but also now like cognitively, how these practices actually affect our cognition in very, very complex and interesting ways. So that’s kind of where I’m coming from. Do you want to share a little bit about where you’re coming from with this? I feel that I’ve been always like past few years, I’ve been feeling that this method could be more than a former practice. And then I’ve been bringing that into relationship for years and years. And then I feel that your encountering with Jon made it really like, made the language. And therefore we could build this method into more broader applicable. Yeah, and accessibility as well. Yeah. So, yeah, before that was very locked into just making the art thing. And then Tamaki really pushed for this to grow up. So TMF as a whole focuses on four very, very specific cognitive mechanics. And these are what I call very loosely the heads of TMF. So we have meta cognition, which is one, in other words, the relationship with the mind to its processes. Mind and body is interoception. And that came out of me looking at the work of Bessel van der Kolk and trauma informed practices. Then there is Jung’s transcendent function or active imagination, which is the mind reconciling itself in like a very, very specific, recursive way. And understanding its own processes on a much higher level. And then most recently, thanks to the dialogue OS course that I was on with Taylor for 13 weeks, transjective rationality has come in as head in the sense that how the mind interacts with its environment socially. But also being able to shift in and out of the subjective and the and the objective and thank you for lending the word transjective in your talk with Jonathan Rusen, which is where that sort of popped up. And so it’s, it’s kind of moved itself into a place where there are certain focuses. So some of the physical practices obviously are very interactive in terms of building that competency. But what we’re looking at is how those competencies can start to be accepted into other areas. Right, right. So, so cool. We think it is, but we hope it is interesting. So, I will just start by showing like a few videos of some of the practices that we do. And I think you will find some of these familiar but also unfamiliar in ways that I hope are interesting. In the sense that we have our small research group as part of our company. We’ve been working with the Singapore branch here to try and innovate some of these exercises and take them in directions which we hope are more facilitative of that accepted cognition. And then we are going to Indonesia. Next month to try this out on that end and try and get that input right that cultural context. So, I will share my screen. Can you see it, actually. Yeah, yeah. Great. Okay. Cool. So this is an example of one of our animal forms exercises. So, the animal forms are basically a kind of meshing between calisthenic exercises. Obviously yoga is in there as well. And there’s a lot of influence from people like the portal, the movement culture. Very fascinating. But the thing that we are doing here is that, so I’m on the left most side, one of our research friends, Ben is in the middle and Tamaki is obviously on the right. So the way the animal forms are built is that there is a set form that’s the one that I’m doing is the basic form. But within the basic form, there is what we call a play point. And that’s a part of the form itself which needs improvisation. So you’re going to stay around in that kind of like you’re jazzing on a chord for a little while. Right, right, right, right, right. And so Ben is doing is trying to accept that play point and trying to embody qualities that he is experiencing subjectively. Ah, I see. I see. So how he’s feeling changes the form, right, how he does. So then what Tamaki is doing, sorry, go ahead. Yeah. So there’s like a, there’s a skeletal core form that you sort of memorize, and then there are points where you can improvise on it and try to get it more embodied and enacted in that specific situation. Do I understand you correctly? Yes. Yes. So it’s so imagine this like in the basic form, the attention is completely interoceptive, I’m trying to see whether or not I’m using the right muscles I’m activating the right muscle groups, I’m trying to notice if this connects me to some kind of associations, some kind of memory. Right. And then when it starts to get to the second level where Ben was at, then it’s about opening up to the rest of the world, using the eyes for attention, using the body as a seeing mechanism. Right and saying, Okay, so you’ll notice that the things that are causing him to change are things that he’s noticing his environment. Oh, I see. So you the core is interoceptive, but the play point is you’re doing you’re doing the enacted connections to your environment. Ah, no Tamaki is really amazing. Tamaki has taken it to the advanced form. And the advanced form is where that quality starts to break the form and I suppose the invitation is then how far can you break the thing while still doing the thing? Right, right, right. Yes. And then, do you want, I think I want to privilege the participatory knowing here in terms of what’s that like for you? While I was doing that, I was feeling the quality of like snake like quality. And that makes me see the world different, like the kind of the quality of the world changes, like when my body changes, the world that I perceive changes. Okay, so you you you take on through participatory knowing a particular identity, imaginarily, and then that changes your perspectival knowing of your environment. And then in the movement you’re exploring that that particular perspectival knowing is that they’re getting it. Yeah, so that like loops. So the world that I’m perceiving is changing, therefore, that sensory also changes. So that is the thing that make my world may change. And there is like constant feedback. Oh, I love this. I love this. This is amazing. She’s adjusting her salience landscaping as the thing is, which is really amazing. So, obviously, there are there’s more than one, there are five animal forms in total. And this is like, you know, it has this sort of passive health benefits and all that sort of stuff. But I want to I want to say this that I think we’re trying to address this issue where and this is my, my my issue with traditional practices. And in relation to metacrisis at the moment, is that a lot of the wisdom practices that have thousands of years of history suffer from being either or, or usually all three, disembodied, decontextualized, and objectified. Right. Right. This is the issue. This is the issue that I’m trying to address with is that it’s one thing to I mean, the action is the same. You know, you can you can break this down and you know, people who have a lot more experience in movement practices than I do, will be able to feed into like, okay, well, how to optimize it. But this is kind of is trying to bridge that gap is trying to use the body to bridge into the way that we Oh, okay. So, okay. I’m doing, I’m doing the, I don’t know, you saw the talk, my Cambridge talk at rationality and ritual, and I’m doing all this work on on ritual knowing the kind of knowing that one acquired through rich, what you’re doing. And I mean, this is a compliment is a proper ritual. And here’s the thing, there’s two sides in this ongoing and very healthy debate within the sort of cog side of ritual. One group says no what you need to be doing. The knowing in ritual comes from evolving the ritual and what you’re doing is constantly evolving the ritual, so you improve the fittedness. The other group says no no the rituals like a masterpiece, and you don’t change it. Instead you try to change to conform to a masterpiece that represents sort of the peak of human performance. And then most people more recently, like show break and myself say no no it’s actually both. It’s actually you’re trying to do both together. And I, and I, so that’s exactly the tension, you’re talking about right there right there, and you’re and you’re trying to find that that sweet spot of optimal gripping between those two, those two different kinds of constraints. That’s very very cool. That’s very very cool. This is the thing that like these animal forms are a relatively new iteration. We didn’t use to do them this way. We used to do them as like, like a vocabulary of movement, would you call it that? You know I mean so you have certain moves. It was more transitional. So, so, so that you mean that the, when you say transitional what do you mean? Transitional meaning that like it’s just like the point to hit and the process was quite free. Ah yes yes yes. Yes, but because of our recent foray into Qigong, basically we’re finding that, okay, what if we took a different approach to it. What if it was that the form itself, the order itself has a defined chaos within it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And then we allow that to open. Yeah, yeah, that’s what I mean. You’re trying to like, here’s, here’s the set part, the masterpiece, and you have to conform to it. And then there’s space within it in which you can make it conform to you, and then you get the reciprocal opening going between the two. That’s beautiful. That’s really beautiful. So, Ben the next thing that I want to show you is, because we have talked about this in our last chat and it got you excited so I want to, I want to make good on this. It’s the push hands exercise. Right. So are you able to see that? Yeah. Great. Yeah. Okay. So push hands is very simple. Yep. Eyes closed. And what and they’re just keeping wrist contact. But you know, you know the handshake thing that we’ve evolved to do. Yeah. So everything that’s happening in there, sensing temperature, sensing little moves, the, you, please describe what your experience of push hands is. What are you sensing for? Because I realized I was about to jump into it. It’s really hard to explain, to be honest. I am sensing, like, literally the between point of my partner and myself. I am not, I am not trying for my partner to be in my world. And I also I’m not trying to enter into my partner’s world. We are like, searching the point where we can co-create. Yes. Yes. Yes. And there is like just nice amount of tension. Yes. But it’s not too strong. It’s not too soft. This optimal tension. On the procedural end, it’s that this, you see this change in direction. No one person is leading that. So if Ben is, if Ben is pushing even just a little bit, right, Tamachang can release that and then it becomes the move. Right. Yeah. And then the other way is also true. So we’re trying to then, that’s level one. Level two is where they’re starting to move and change hands. Level three, we start to introduce points of contact. So the idea is that any one person can attack when an impulse to do so hits. And the objective is to dodge. But you dodge by feeling where they are going with the body. It’s very like it’s implicit pattern recognition. Yeah. I did something like this. I did back when I returned to the source, we have two hands and you’re doing it with two hands. And what you have to do is find the opening where you can gently caress the face of your partner. Are you doing the eyes open or eyes closed? That is eyes open. Does it open? So when you’re doing this, is it all eyes open all the time? Yes, yes. But because you have two hands, you’re really, you have to really be in your opponent partner has two hands. Like you can’t go into Cartesian calculation space. It’s too fast. You have to get the, you have to, yeah, like Tomaschi said, you have to get where you’re feeling what’s in the in between zone. I was doing it. David Fuller was there. He was, he was there filming, while we were there, we were filming a documentary about me and my work. And so he was there and we were doing this and at first I was, it was very easy for me. And then he said, he said, Oh, I had this insight. He said, as long as I was trying to touch your face, you were just knocking me aside easily and touching my face. But he said, instead, when I opened up a space and tried to feel how you were coming into it. Then I was able to, right. So he, he, he, he went from focusing on my face, and he couldn’t do the practice. I was just moving his hands aside, touching his face every like second or two. And he got, he did get better. And he said, because what he did is he opens his awareness up into a receptive space and he was receiving how my hands were coming in. And so he had that moment where he shifted his perspectival knowing, and then he suddenly got much better in the practice. It’s the, it’s the soft focusing right where like you’re not hyper focusing into something specifically, because that shifts too quickly. And even with the eyes, I was teaching because I’m teaching them Tai Chi when I was there. It’s called tiger eyes. Right. So you’re a tiger scanning the forest you don’t fix on any one point, because you don’t know where the prey might be. So you’re doing this constant sensitizing flow, looking for things that are traces and signification of where there might be something that is worthy of longer attention. Yes, right. That’s kind of what I think this is, this is kind of what I’m trying to get. So, yeah, it feels very similar, like just watching it like I do this to the idea that I’ve done this the closed hands, push hands sticky hands. So I know what you’re talking about. This is very cool. Yeah, you’re right. This is very, very cool. So, at first, at first I noticed, like you’re staying center line, and then you start to rotation comes in, and then you start to move. So do you take students through that progression, like, like step by step by step I see. Yes, until it gets to this point. And so, this is this level for right where it starts to become a grapple and starts to move itself into an intersubjective space. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here, one person goes, I move. The other person says, I allow. And the thing that’s being allowed. And this is often a very very subtle distinction to make, but it’s not to do the same thing as the other person is to allow. Cool. Yeah, so we were doing this at return to the source, but we added an extra dimension. So you’re doing this the dance, and you and you and you’re trying to, like, you’re trying to flow with each other and like like you’re talking about, but you’re also doing parkour around the environment. So like there’s, there’s logs and trees, and you’re, you’re flowing over that right. And so the dance also incorporates the, the topography of the environment. Yes, and then, but here, here is introducing an extra element, which is relationship. So, when the person says I allow, I think the invitation that I often phrase it is, whatever you feel the other person wants to do, support that as best you can. Right, right, right, right. And so the relationship is emergent. That’s the thing that we’re allowing. That’s so cool. That’s so cool. I find it interesting about, like, the white year cup what you’re what you’re moving to, and what was happening at return to the source, very convergent from very independent sources. I think that points to something deep happening there. Yeah, something very deep. Always you see what else is coming. So these are what we call like first like first year exercises. They are relatively basic. Not in a, not in a derogatory sense. But the thing that there’s my talk at Cambridge there. Me in the suit. Your interest is being reviewed. The algorithm has given me away. Okay. And so this one is what we call key motion so key motions is based on this. One of the one of the formula is very fundamental part of Chico is the decoupling of the mind from the breath, and the recoupling of the body with the breath. So I’m not doing the breathing. I’m letting the body do the breathing for me. Right, right. Right. Right. Right. So key motions is an is a kind of version of that, except that is isolated specific part so we’re doing the spine, right do that with the arms, the legs, and then we introduce our voice work, which instantly is the same thing that sound is just breath with vibration. Yes, yes, yes. So you will see how much I start to progress through these into monologues. And I’m privileged with a sound here. Beautiful. Is on the sound right. Yeah. So we begin with an unformed sound and then we move into like phonetics. Right. So now taking into words. Oh, So now starting to evolve those into phrases. So this is so cool. How long does it take to learn how to do that. Depends how fast the person breaks the guest all. Yeah. How long did it take you. When did I start to do it, because it was like developed to three years ago I think we started working on this. Because this is a lot of is inspired by a link letters Kristen link letters work, you can read a book, freeing the natural voice. It’s amazing. So it’s very, very anatomically precise. In Kobe, we were doing it already, which means like an hour, an year. Yes. One year. Oh yeah, I truly about yeah, about one year because it takes a long time to decouple the, the rational mind from the sound that is making But what this, this doesn’t mean anything, but it does. Actually, yes. Yeah. So we’re trying not to not to fall too quickly into the propositional space. Come. What is can you just translate a little bit what you were talking about with in Japanese. Before you enter full body monologues. Immediately before I was talking about the world of leg. And what it’s doing to me. And then I was mentioning about hand world while I am in the world of leg. My world of my arm is being ignored. No. And, like, even though I am mentioning about the hand, still needing to focus on my leg world is feels frustrating or something like that. Right, right. Like feels weird or dissociative. Yes. No wonder you felt frustrated. So, um, can you talk about how you see the four dimensions. You mentioned earlier the metacognitive etc. how they are showing up in these practices. Right. Okay, so here as say okay if we’re doing. If we were doing just key motions, for example. Right. It’s very interactive. Yeah. But at the same time, interoception is based on metacognition. You have to have some metacognitive faculty to be able to observe yourself observing the body. Right. So, if that’s occurring at the same time, then now I can start to train my metacognition, what I call like the pilot consciousness or the instrumental consciousness to step outside and go like, okay, this is just a shape that my body is in. And this is the thing that I often offer as a as an invitation to participants like you’re doing animal forms, it’s just a shape that your body is in. You’re doing key motions, it’s just a shape that your body is in. So, start to take a look at, eh, how is my mind reacting to this? Right. Okay, it’s reacting to some kind of pain or fatigue. Okay, now if I have to make some sort of sound, in order to not get locked up in trying to make sense with the words I’m saying, and instead the invitation is to just make an unformed sound. What’s this block? Why can’t I just go, ah, ah, ah, and just use my body to make the sound? That’s the thing we want to see. That is the thing that we’re trying to do a transparency opacity shift to say, right? Right, right, right, right, right, right. Now if I can just unlock my tension here, ah, oh, now I have a procedural means of activating that thing, which wasn’t there before. Right, right, I see that, I see that. Yeah, so then what’s going to start to happen is, and this is, we get into the pedagogical aspects of monologues a little bit here, but it always begins with, after you make the unformed sound, we’re moving towards phonetics, as it’s going to start to get towards, people are going to get really propositional. Right, so it’s like, okay, just name what you see, what catches your attention, wall, wall white, light, light, light, light, ah, raise, why, close my eyes, open again. So it’s literally, it’s kind of like what Steve March is doing with the, what was it, feeling, saying, something like that. Right, but it’s, you’re trying to tie in the world to the sound making. Right, right, right. And then trusting that, okay, if I turn that into phrases, that’s going to open up something. I don’t know what that is, but it’s going to pop it open. And is that where the sort of rational transjectivity is coming in? Oh, okay, I was a surprise, but so, we have been doing our own experiments on circling, and we do what we call somatic circling, which is, you’re physically embodying the other person, the entirety of the time. And that becomes a part of the conversation. So, for example, like, if I’m doing this, I’m noticing how much tension there is here, and it puts me into a very, like, I don’t know, I feel like leaning back quite a lot. I don’t know what this is, but this becomes part of the intersubjective. Right, right, right, right. And we do it with the whole body. So, this is where I think Tiamat for me is really, it baffles me, but we start to layer these practices. And I’ll show you an example of the layering of practices. Right. Where the monologues in our, in the last observation that we did, the monologues, which Tamaki will go into, with a group, they would somatically circle her, it creates an object, or some point of interest to talk about, which we can then do a D-ologues about. Excellent. Oh, I want to, do you have a film of this? Yeah, I have one more thing to get through before I get to this layering of practices. Oh, I shouldn’t have interrupted. Keep going. Thank you, Raitt, I did for you. Okay, so I want to show you another practice that we do, which is an embodied contemplative practice, somewhat derivatively named Axio Divina. So it’s not from a book, I mean it is from a book, we still take the source, but it’s in action, as opposed to in imagination. So it has the same procedure as Lexio. Right. Right. Except that whatever is most salient and resonant to you, okay, you stand up, and then we do that expressively. Not imaginative. Expressively. Right. And then trying to hold that state, and see what’s it like to embody that in my current environment. Oh. And you’ll see you’ll see Tomachan doing it. It’s kind of cool. Can I pause for a sec. Yes, of course. So I was teaching one of the instructors that returned to the source Lexio. And when I said imaginal, he didn’t just, he didn’t just do it mentally. He started actually enacting the imagery that was coming up for him. He was doing, he was reading from the Tao Tze Chen, and he was, and the thing that grabbed him was darkness within darkness and he started doing this, and then he saw this, and then he folded in, and he started doing the expressive enacting spontaneously. Axio Divina. And this also has like similarities with things like the Michael Chekhov method and psychological gesture. I come from the Grotowski School of Actor training. So the whole, the sense of the psychophysical is very very much rooted in TMA and what we do. So here, Tomachan, you are, Tomachan, you’re basically there’s some image has come up out of the text for you and now you’re translating it into motion. Do I understand it correctly? Oh, I’m going to add this in right away. Because I find myself doing that spontaneously anyways. What are you reading, Ababa? The Sutra from Buddhism. From when you were in the temple? Do you teach people basic lexio first, and then take them into actio divina? Is that what you do? Excellent, excellent. This is an amazing bridging practice, but layering is fantastic. So has my work sort of helped you think about this and put it together? Is that, is that the, has that been happening for you? All of your meditation practices, so all the way from straight through to prasana and beyond, forms most of the metacognitive training because we need meditation practice and contemplation practice. The way it bridges into everything else is what I’m contributing in terms of like, how do we alter the meditative practices and contemplative practices. There is the one that we added, which was, I think it was the Chakra Shambhala mantra. I think that’s what it’s called, which Jung had talked about in a lecture at University of Switzerland, I think. No, Zurich. And that’s been really, really interesting in terms of… never mind. I will leave this for later because then we’re getting into the aspects of Delph and Park’s work. Oh yes. So this is the third part of Axio. So is that sense of like, what’s it like to embody this? Yes. And then now I’ve asked what is this disclosing for you? Yes. I don’t know. That was so cool. What happened to you the day after you did this? In between, like, how do I talk about that state where in between asleep and awake? Oh, yeah. Yeah, there is that state, right? Yeah, yeah. While I was in that state, there was a voice that came to me that, look at yourself from higher space. Right, right. You are feeling sleepy, but you are feeling sleepy because you are seeing from yourself. You were to see it from higher perspective and then the sleepiness does not matter. You know that you have things to do after you think to do. And you know that waking up is the only choice. I didn’t feel sleepy anymore. Well, that answers the question I was going to raise because like what part of the end part, like you’re doing a lot of evocation and provocation, but like the third part is like invocation. How are you invoking the sage that wrote the text? But that’s how it came to you. It came to you like this voice from the outside. That’s fantastic. So while I was in Axio, there was still like a question about what is this text doing to me? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The actual disclosure or maybe there is still more, but it emerged with this voice as a voice. I am so impressed and grateful that what you’re doing and like what you’re integrating from your practice with my work and like taking it in such a powerful direction. This is so cool. I’m personally super grateful for your work. We’ve been watching Awakening from the Meaning Crisis these past few days. I don’t know, the amount of conciliance for me is bizarre. But this is my sort of like my own sort of wanting to check the biases. It’s like I have to make sure that there is enough plausibility. And so when I hear more so than just necessarily speaking about it with the two of you, it’s like when I hear that Rafe is doing very similar things. Very similar. Very similar. Yep, exactly. Very similar. You want to see some somatic circling? Yes. I think this is a really cool idea. I come back to that and then come back to where I am today. So it’s like… I now feel very grateful for this practice. And now I’m sensing this like how much enjoyment I feel from actually being embodied. It’s like, oh, this is kind of cute. Indulge in it. I feel like there’s a sense of indulgence here now. A little bit. I mean like I’m enjoying like letting myself go into this. Also, like I really what you said to me really landed about the body, how I’m actually emulating the body because I felt that like not just left or right, but even like sometimes even direction of attention when somebody is speaking. And yes, I may be using the body, the right leg, the correct leg, the correct hand. Oh, I’m going to add this in too. Should I like follow her head or should I look at Ethan? You know, you get me? Should I follow the attention or should I follow the mechanical? You get me? Yeah. And that’s something that also kind of creates that sense of… I don’t even know what sense is it. It’s just that sense of confusion. What’s very alive for me is the… What’s very alive and very resonant is this sense of confusion of being only able to look at something and all of its minute details. And because you see so much, you don’t know what’s the correct context to follow. Yeah. Okay. That lends to me a lot. The context, multiple context. There’s the meta-context and then there’s also like that mini-context. What’s that? That affects how I direct my attention. What’s alive for me is actually kind of resistance to imitate that semantically. And I feel… Since it’s not a circling, it’s organic circling, so… Once I try to pick up one person and then imitate and then resonate and then to actually stay with that person and then to change and then to semantically and then next… I feel like I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what I’m feeling. I feel so dissociated from myself. And also there’s language things, so there’s a lot of focus required and then those are constantly shifting. I was like, maybe I’m not going to do that. But still, some gestures, I will keep it to embody the visual and as a symbol and understand the symbolic meaning of what this person means and embody, but not embodying for myself and visualizing. I am recognizing by imitating, mirroring you and Edwin, I’m recognizing a sense of deeper understanding in the processing of information that is happening that I’m trying to work on, on a constant basis. What I notice is a comfort in the outward hand movements used to explain and build relationship with as a strategy to integrate information inside the body. And I’m feeling quite grateful and comfortable in mirroring the two here. That was amazing. Are we still there? I’m not getting your sound for some reason. Yes. Oh, there you are. That was amazing. Yeah, I can see. So we just before I went away we did another circling into the logos, we can workshop, and that’s automatic circling with would be just fit right in. So I can see how you’ve taken work that guys done and I’ve done and you’ve integrated. I’d like permission to use that semantic circling within my practice, and with what I teach people. So if that’s excellent, excellent. So that’s great. Thank you for sharing that that’s fantastic. Do you. So I have the videos do you also have any instructional material. I’d like to learn how to do some of this is, especially the animal forms that the animal forms that well, the animal forms the actual, and the somatic or really really the other one I can’t seem like getting, it would take too long. But, like, but the axial and the somatic I think I could get to fairly quickly. I’d also like to, you know, invest some time, maybe learning a bit of around at least one or two of the animal forms, because I could integrate that with my Tai Chi practice and that would be astonishing. So, I don’t know, I’m just copied. I think I copied the chat stuff. The layering of practices is the fifth video. Okay. Now, here’s the thing about the layering of practices. At the core of it, that there always has to in TMF always beginning with a diagnostic exercise to test fluency. And that’s called playground. And so the instructions for for leading playground and document I sent you the over email. But the playground is basically where you can experiment with acceptation. Oh, I see. Enter it through push hands you can enter it through animal forms you can enter it after having done axial. You can get into that and then do somatic circling from there. Last video was like 26 minutes and you get to watch how much and then go through, go through this I mean playground itself is it’s an actor cognition. All it is, is do a physical activity. Notice that your mind is doing its own thing. Recognize that it changes change of physical action according to the mind at the same time. Right. Right. So try and match what’s happening in the mind with what’s happening in the body. And so, from there it’s like, well, okay, now we’re starting to get a sense of the, or what patterns are occurring in the way that I behave on the playground. Okay. This is, and this is, I want to talk about this in relation to agent arena relationship, because it’s really important. I, we’ve noticed quite a lot that, you know, when we do a workshop when I when I do a workshop in in countries. There’s always, there’s always going to be a mix of locals and as much as five to midnight is concerned we bring in. The foreign participants are in an alien arena. Yeah, those with the language, they don’t know what they’re doing is very little agency, as far as the consensus of, sir. But in the playground what’s happening is that there is an opportunity to co create an arena and reclaim said agency. Right. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. So, now within that frame though, it’s like, okay, if the, if the agency that is being reclaimed is like, all right. It’s only social, it’s between here and here and what is being made around us. How are we going to take this and exact it into the real world. Now one will argue. I think I’m trying to do some research into that, that it has much more to do with the flow state. It has much more to do with increasing the likelihood to access flow on demand at will. Yeah, yeah, that’s that. Yeah, that lands for me. That seems very theoretically plausible at least prima facie. Yes, yes. Probably flow, but you’re, the way you’re opening it up, it’s flow for transfer so it’s not going to stay just in this context, you’re going to get it in a shape that’s going to like percolate through the psyche and permeate through people’s lives. And so it’s taking on ritual flow, not just sort of local flow. Right. I’m trying. What I’m trying to get at is I’m trying to figure out what are the differences between when you flow in a video game. When I’m locked there. And when I’m flowing in Tai Chi, and right in it. I can see it percolating through my psyche and showing up in different parts of my life. That’s, that’s what I mean by ritual flow, as opposed to local flow. Yes, but here’s the thing, John, I propose to you that there is a there is a relationship between the two and that relationship meets in performance so performance exactly exactly. And that’s the ritual. Yes. So, okay, it lets I want I want to just lay a little bit of historical context for this. It’s like, if you’re, if we imagine the, the, the shaman right which is basically Richard Shatner’s work, ritual leads the performance grows all the way from ritual. Ritual does not happen in isolation. It happens in context to a collective. Yes. So what is happening to the brain when that performance is occurring. And even today, at like, you know, probably about 8pm, some actor somewhere is performing something. Right. Now that means whatever the genre is, whether it’s a dance or it’s a naturalistic performance, I’m having a heated scene. Okay, I’m experiencing this welling up of emotion, I want to kill the person who is performing as my husband. But I also do need to know and my light is there in five seconds. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there is a very profound balance that’s occurring between the instrumental consciousness and the affective consciousness. Those two things cannot cancel each other out, they have to be an optimal grip with each other. So, and there’s a ton of literature on this. On performance being an auto state of consciousness. Yes. Can you send me some of that literature, because I’ve done. It’s wow the synchronicity, because there was, there was one of the instructors that returned to the source was coming out of, and also one of the one of the students coming out of a kind of a theater background. And, and, and, you know, and I’ve been reading on ritual and Victor Turner who got as the book theater and ritual, all about the connection. And so, if you can send me some of that literature about theater altered state and theater and ritual because I’m thinking that theater work is one of the domains that should be included in any ecology of practices. The reason why this is important is I’m going to Vermont in a couple weeks, and we’re getting a lot of the leaders of the emerging communities and we’re trying to figure out what a meta curriculum for any colleges to practice what kind of things should it include properly. And this time the stuff you’re talking about here the bridging the layering. So, send me some of that literature, I was distracted, not completely while you were talking a couple minutes ago, because I was just making sure I got some of the stuff you sent me. Because I, but yes, I may, because this is so, so exciting. So I just, I interrupted but I wanted to give you just another sense of the conciliance that’s happening around all of this. I want to reply to that conciliance by giving a lot of context here and I know part of that has to do with the fact that if we were to understand, say performance from an Asian context, which is where obviously I come from, right, there is a great, great, great tradition of performance incorporating all kinds of physical practices and spiritual practices and wisdom practices. Yes. It would take Japanese no theater for example it is not separate from Buddhism and Confucianism and Shintoism. In fact, historically, performers, actors in particular, have a spiritual civic function. That civic function seems to be, my theory is to propose a contextualized event from which collective wisdom can be gleaned. Yes. And so, okay, so fine, if we let’s just, let’s just put that context aside and boil it back down to mechanics again. Literature has, there is literature out there and I will also include this in the package that I will send you, that actors have been shown to have very high rates of metacognitive introspection accuracy. Yes. So, they’re much able to sense specifically where the body is. So, okay, well, well and good, let’s leave that aside. Now when it comes to talk about consciousness and talk about the grasping of the self. Okay. What is an actor doing? And Ben has been really, really instrumental in this. He has shown that he practices all the meditation and all the TMA and everything, right. He started to get spontaneous effigies, mental effigies in his mind, which is able to propose and say, okay, I’m going to go on stage. I’m going to meditate first. I will create Shunyata, what he calls Shunyata and I’ll send you with reflections as well. I will create Shunyata. Shunyata gives me a sense of peace and calm. Okay. And then I can manifest a space and an archer with the red bow and that gives me focus to do something. He’s invoking active imagination in the form of the intrasubjective. And I’ve recently started working with an artist who has DID. And we’ve been, I’ve been circling all of his personalities. Just for the audience. Just for the audience. Sorry, friend, just say what DID is, please. Dissociative identity disorder. We used to think of it as multiple personality disorder, but as far as I’m, it’s not causing his, it’s not causing him dysfunction. It’s not destroying his life. But this is particularly confluent with the Chakra Shambhala meditation, which I knew get that name right. That Yung was talking about where you divide up your, your thinking faculty, sensing faculty, feeling faculty, perceptive faculty, and then you have a council. A council between these aspects of self is the intrasubjective as opposed to the intersubjective. Yes. Yes. Yes. So when we were, we were mapping out, when we were mapping out Tiamat in terms of its practices, and I believe I have this here, which I can also share. I can also share. It’s a bit like, I’m still, I’m still making sure that it’s like not so ugly. I’ll pretty it up. But this is what that looks like. Okay, so this is a map of the exercises that we have at the moment. I haven’t put in their progressions. But you see this, where am I? Exo-Divina animal forms. So these are your basic practices. They go into the middle. Going here, Chakra Shambhala is here. I would propose that in terms of dealing with what is the construction of the self is that, okay, we’re saying that the self has one identity by normativity. Yes. Tricky. Because the actor has to be able to cognitively portion out a part of it and go, you please activate from 8 to 10 p.m. on a Friday night with 15-minute intermission in between, and I will take you on board and to do that safely. Yes, yes. With the accurate cognitive scaffolding and reframing. So once we can get into an intersubjective dialogue, we have, we start to look at it in terms of meta maps for TMS. So I think between meta cognition and transjective rationality, Ken Wilber’s work in integral theory is a wonderful meta map. We have meta cognition, interception, which is something that we use called principles of presence. So it’s either you’re moving or you’re being moved inside or outside, taking space, not taking space. And it’s just a framing device for one to take a look and go, what do I consider being moved? What do I consider moving? Please send me all of this material. Yes, I will. Now, the thing is that we have, I also have a map for the interoception and active imagination, which I’m working on right on the next tab. But here, between the transjective rationality and the active imagination, between the intrasubjective space and the transjective space with the world and everything, we’re talking, or at least I’m theorizing that we should be moving towards the building for somebody else through this ecology of practices, an autopoetic pantheon. Yes, yeah. It’s a personal mythological myth. Yes, yes. Because it’s just the way that they operate themselves metaphysically on a personal level. Yeah, yeah. So, I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. I think that’s the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This works out. This integrates with some of the stuff I’ve done in IFS, but in internal family systems theory, and especially not Rafe, Rafe’s work on ally work, which is amazing. And also some of the work I’ve been doing, scholastic work on ancient theurgia. This maps in perfectly. This has been so cool. So, yeah, like I said, a few minutes ago, I was trying to make sure I got the… But send me all the links you sent in the chat. Send me everything. Send me everything you got, because I want to know it. And I want to make use of it. I want to reflect on it. I want to talk to both of you again. This has been, I think, a really interesting conversation. I think it’s been a really interesting conversation. I want to talk to you both of you again. This has been, I think, just an amazing… This is so exciting. Oh my gosh. So… John, wait, wait, wait, wait. Sorry. I’ve got one more thing to show you. I’ve got one more thing. Oh, sorry. Okay, yeah. And it has nothing to do with TPMAT. Well, not completely. But the question is, what are we going to do with this? So, Tamasha and I got married two months ago. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. And this, we are planning on getting a house and building a family, as we always do. I am working with a couple of the guys from the Dialogue OS group, Clayton and Sam. Yeah. And we have found a place in Japan. Right. On this… It used to be active, okay? It’s called Dragon Lord Gorge. Dragon Lord Gorge. And there’s an old inn that is on sale there. So we’re thinking of purchasing that inn to create a research center for art and wisdom cultivation. Wow. I’ve spoken to Alexandra about it also, because she’s doing a similar project in Peru. I think someone’s doing it in the Netherlands. Yes. Yes. This is so exciting, people taking my work and doing this stuff with it. I mean, my gosh. That’s the place. Oh, wow. I mean, the hotel is fine. Like the hotel is fine. It’s got 20 rooms. And it’s like, it’s 20 rooms for people to come in and stay. We’ll live there as well. But where it is positioned is this place called Nikko. Can you give me a bit of history about Nikko? Because you know it better than I do. You know that. So Nikko is where Buddhism was born in Japan. Bukai was there. It’s a hot spring hotspot. Even the emperor of Japan marked that as his spiritual place for rejuvenation. These waterfalls are about 15 minutes away. By foot. And so we’re going to be taking this place probably about like end of this year. And we are building in a TMET training course. That’s for one year. It’s a hybrid course. We’re going to have apprenticeships in traditional craft. So specifically carpentry, flower arrangement and cuisine. Flower arrangement and what was that? Dress code. Flower arrangement, dress code, carpentry and what was it called? Banquet culinary cuisine. I’m working on the deck now. There’s so much work to do. There’s so much work to do. But yeah. Then we’ll have drop-in events as well. So like circling weekends, etc. I would love to involve you and Guy and whoever else to be able to come into conferences. Yes. workshops for like a week, a couple of weeks. It’s up in the mountains away from the city in Tochigi, which is where Tamachan is from. Yeah, that’s happening. First of all, thank you. I will talk to Guy and Chris and we will probably take you up on this. I might like to take at least somehow. I’d like to take some of the TMAT training at some point with you. And if as this goes forward, since this will be on the video, send me information and I will promote it. I’ll broadcast it on all of my platforms and talk about it. We’ll have you on again. Yeah, definitely want to support this work. This is thrilling and fascinating. This looks amazing. And I want to do whatever I can to help you get it up and get it becoming auto poetic and taking on a life of its own and really seeking out what it needs in order to keep going. So you’ve got my support on this. This is really exciting and interesting stuff. So, so cool. So, so cool. I was about to give you the last word for but that’s a very good last word. So that works out perfectly. Yeah, send me send me all the material you’re going to send. And for this video, send me anything as soon as you can, please. Any links you want me to put into the notes, because I’d like to upload this for, you know, the Friday of this week. And that would be that would be great. You really, really impressed me. Really, really cool stuff. Like this is this is exactly what I’m talking about, like in spades, and again, and what rave does is, and the conciliance between them. There’s, there’s important differences, but profound similarities and it was just. Yeah, and you’ve convinced me, both what happened to me at return of the source and this, there has to be a theatrical ritual domain that for any good ecology, you know, you can’t do that. For any good ecology of practices. I’m now convinced of this as just central. So thank you for reinforcing that I’m going to take that into, into the Vermont conference. Thank you, John. So this has been wonderful. And like I said, please send me whatever, whatever notes you have, and we’re all going to talk again. This is one of a series of voices with for Vicky, we’re going to have this has been so, so utterly thrilling and encouraging and engendering of hope. The fact is, so many people are doing like this extremely talented and sophisticated right creation participatory creation of, you know, profound ecologies of practices. That’s great. Really, really, really great. What I’d like to do next time. Once, once people have seen this, and it’s shift and have a discussion about the metacognitive spirituality. This is called the cognitive spirituality domains, you touched on, bring them into sharper focus and then turn them on. How are they responding to the meeting crisis. That’s what I propose we do our second conversation on. Yeah, actually I think the other day I was watching a couple of weeks ago I was watching your talk with John’s on Kim. Yes, on on magic, and the mechanics of it so I think as a practitioner, as a practice researcher first of all, it has to move itself into the procedural somehow. Yes, it can’t remain in the, in the propositional space it doesn’t work that way. Um, I think I also want to talk to Greg, just because like Greg Eric is his work is crazy influential also. Oh, okay, so, so it would be great, perhaps for the initial one. But let’s, okay, let’s do two things. Yeah, no, no, no, what we’ll do is we’ll do a second one, like I proposed to the two of you, and then we will do it, maybe a third one with you and I and Greg. If you want to come, you’re invited, and I’ll set that up to just send me an email I’ll link you with Greg and we’ll make it happen. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you so very much.