Becoming and Artist

Lately I've had a desire to learn how to draw. This comes about when I'm trying to do an animation or an illustration for a course or article. The problem I'm having is that I don't think I know how to draw and therefore have to acquire a new skill set or sets that will accumulate to my knowing how to draw.
My Rolfing studio in Longmont has white boards all over where I can draw, make notes to myself, illustrate a point to a client. I even painted 70 sf (that's 7 feet by 10 feet) of one wall with whiteboard paint so I can draw on it. I framed this area of the wall with Japanese style Shoji panels
so it looks like you're looking through to the wall. I can draw little things on the wall like a landscape and when I don't like it I just erase it. An ever changing picture.
I also project things onto this during classes--like a horse--and point out, by drawing on the image, places where I see something of interest.
The problem I've had though is that I still think that I need to acquire something to be able to be an artist. What I forget is that there's the art that seems to add to something, like drawing or painting, and that which removes or uncovers the art, like sculpting in marble.
It's this later type of art that we practice in our body therapy work. We look at our client and "see" that there are things--adhesions, holding patterns...--that if removed the art form of the body will change.
There's a poet who writes his poetry by blacking out the words in a newspaper that he doesn't need for the poem. This is what we do, in our work. Don't you think?

Lifting Weights

I've been involved in an exercise program called Crossfit for a few months now. It started with my son, who's been doing it for a couple of years, convincing me to get involved. He's been my "coach" since he's taken weight lifting classes in school and was a TA for the instructor. But now that he's gone off to college I had to find someone else to be the coach.
To start off with CrossFit you go through a series of classes which introduce you to the exercises that are used. It's all free weights, no machines allowed, and pullups, pushups, squats... Each with their requirements for precision in how they are executed. It is dependent on the coach to assure that one learns how to perform these with precision, so you don't get hurt.
What I have found is that the language or jargon if you will, is very specific and associated with an ability to perform atheletically at a high level. For instance the Squat has a very precise set of requirements to be a CrossFit Squat: chest up, lumbar curve, tibia perpendicular to the ankle... If you aren't doing it this way, it's not a squat. Squat has a precise definition.
Our work with body's also has a vocabulary that is precise. The proper use of our precise vocabulary is one way that we can tell if one of our colleagues is well trained or educated. Becoming familiar with our vocabulary takes effort, that's what learning or education is; the expenditure of effort to acquire some new skill or knowledge. Once we've acquired the knowledge or skill its application requires much less effort.

Pushing a Rope and more Collection

When I was in engineering school to become an electronics engineer, we had a joke about mechanical engineering that the only thing you needed know about it was "you don't push a rope...".
This week I decided to re-arrange my horse paddock so that the gate to get out was closer to the manure pile. My son has left for college which means that I have picked up all of his chores as well as mine which has doubled my manure moving time. So, being the inventive type I decided that the gate being closer to the manure's final destination would save me time. I also had 20 tons of pee gravel delivered for the paddock and needed to open it so I could get the tractor in.
My ordeal was pretty simple: disassemble the panels, re-arrange them and re-assemble them. No big deal except the 12 foot long panels are pretty heavy and the ground isn't flat.
By now you're thinking what the heck does this have to do with collection? Here it is; the panels hook together with one panel having a fixed prong (male) on the bottom and a "U" shaped bolt the moves up and down on the top, while the other panel has two receptacles for these (female) that are fixed. What you do is pick up the the panel with the receptacle and drop it down over the prong on the other and then position the "U" shaped bolt over the top receptacle and drop it to connect the two panels. The problem is that when the ground is dropping away from the connection it's not easy to position the top attachments without raising the end that's dropping away. Easy enough when there's two people working on the problem, one lines things up while the other lifts the other end up so they come together. So you go from this ----|/---- to this ---||--- the right side needs to come up in this example.
What I found was it was impossible for me to be able to lift the weight of the panel by pulling from one end such that the other end came up. But this is what we are expected to believe happens in the "top line" theory of collection. The front of the horse is lifted from the rear by the back muscles.
I'm going to build a model of this theory and test the amount of force required. Of course I could just do the math, if I remembered how.