Review: The Movement Experience 2015

Review: The Movement Experience 2015

"So you're sitting on George Street...sipping your tasty beverage, and THIS guy walks passed!" - Ido Portal* 

Over the last few weeks of this summer I have had the good fortune of attending both the Sydney Movement-X and Corset workshops of the Ido Portal method, put on by Ido and his senior students.  

I have been following his work online for a while and have great respect for all he is doing with the movement culture. I had met a number of his students, who impressed me with their abilities and outlook on physical cultivation and movement. After meeting him personally two New Year's back in the slightly odd way (foraging for food in the NSW bush), I was eager to experience his method at workshop level.

Ido is one of the few living examples of the Epictetus quote 'Do not explain your philosophy, embody it' that I have met - though he can explain his philosophy impeccably as well!

I would consider him an 'Expert Generalist', though he interestingly stated at the Corset workshop that he thinks the age of polymath is largely over due to the now huge complexity of the human knowledge base.  His expression for the new expert generalism is 'unique fingerprint'...and if these workshops are anything to go by, he's crafting an amazing fingerprint.

As my good friend Craig pointed out in his review of the workshops on Facebook, Ido may not be the best at gymnastics or bodyweight strength feats (though he's pretty damn good at them), but he has the 'soft connectiveness of an internal martial artist', high but not contortion level flexibility, amazing agility, speed, explosiveness, rhythm, great physical acting skills, reaction time - and a whole host of kinesthetic intelligences and proprioceptive 'corporeal communication'** skills that defy pinning down with language, but are perceptible in person.  He lives his own phrase "1 + 1 + 1 = 17!"

It was this gestalt and the experiencing of what being high level (but not specialized) across a large number of movement fields looks and feels like, that was one of the deepest lessons for me personally.  

On a more specific level it was not the stuff that people usually emphasize with his work that I found the most insightful.  For me, it was the Kinetic Koans section of the Movement X that blew me away. 

To find a skill-set missing from my own practice and teaching, that so well fits with what I am personally trying to accomplish with my own method - this was the biggest revelation for me of both workshops, and I am very grateful to Ido and associates for the exposure to this gap.  

As a teacher, it is wise to consider the value of this aspect when attending workshops: am I just pouring more the same concepts in, or am I going to people who can empty my cup - clear out some redundant information, spark re-alignment with the principle of shoshin, make you question and come back to things from a different angle.  It is essential to have people who do this if you are a teacher (of movement or otherwise). 

The Corset workshop was great on a number of levels, and my love and fascinating with all things soft tissue re-modelling, flexibility and suppleness training of all types made this a pleasure to attend, and to do it with so many of my friends and peers was a bonus.

I had seen a number of the exercises before, but got some new ones to play with, too.   If I can get 3-5 new exercises to really work on from a workshop I consider it a success, and I definitely got more than that. Seeing Ido's perspective on the exercises I was familiar with was more insightful, still.  Highly interesting for me was the relating of his research into western and eastern methods, real life examples and protocol discussion level of this workshop. 

Seeing his example, and the examples of his assisting teacher's (Odelia and Summer), along with the information presented was fascinating. There is a lot I can use here. I am very much looking forward to taking it back to the laboratory and mixing it in with the methods I already practice. Time for hard training.

So, I now have a lot of new movement nutrition and different protocols to chew on and re-integrate..which is what one should look for in a workshop experience.
As I said, for my own growth as a teacher I seek out people to work with who at the deeper levels are similar in approach, but on a methodological level challenge and spark renewal. 

A final note.. there is a certain type of fire in an individual who lives totally (100%) for their art.  It is very rare to see this, sadly, and it is very inspiring to see an someone who is in the same field as you in this state. 

At a level where he could easily sit back and rest on his laurels, he is still as passionate an explorer of movement as ever.  He was relating his tales of his recent study trip to China to a small number of us at the end of the Corset with the flavor of 'keeping the question alive is more important than finding an answer' - what a note to end on!   As I said elsewhere, an honour and a pleasure to see the artist at work.  Looking forward to more in the future.  

D

"Walk into a freezer, kick someone in the face. That's the mobility you need. That's the mobility life demands!"  - Ido Portal

*The gym we did Movement-X in was on (one of the) George St, and Ido was having coffee on it and people watching.  He caricatured some of this when he was doing the locomotion section, and fuck it was funny (and insightful at the same time)!   For a week afterwards I kept getting Ido's voice popping up in my head: "So you're sitting on George Street...sipping your tasty beverage, and THIS guy walks passed!"  Ido is a funny bastard. Genuinely, really funny! I think, perhaps, some of the confusion people have with him is they cannot perceive when he is joking and when he is being serious. 

** The name of workshop Ido used to put on. What a great title for a workshop!