Tuning into Rhythms

Humans are constantly bombarded with more information than our brains can process, leading us to filter out much of it unconsciously. Our bodies, including our brains, act as gatekeepers on a need-to-know basis. Without this filtering, focusing would probably be much much harder, as we would be overwhelmed by the flood of data. Thus, we don't perceive everything, even if sometimes we think we do.

What we tune into is largely determined by our patterns of awareness. We gather specific information from our senses and translate it into patterns. or rhythms, of perception.These rhythms are shaped by personal, social, environmental, and biological factors, among others. The layers of rhythms we can tune into are endless and complex. It's fascinating to realize that different people may witness the same event but perceive very different realities.

The well-known attention experiment by Daniel Simons is a perfect case in point. As Simons notes, "This form of invisibility depends not on the limits of the eye, but on the limits of the mind. We consciously see only a small subset of our visual world, and when our attention is focused on one thing, we fail to notice other, unexpected things around us—including those we might want to see."

"This demonstration is much like a good magic trick," Simons continued. "A magician can lead the audience to think he's going to make the ball disappear with one method, and while people watch for that technique, he uses a different one. In both cases, the effect capitalizes on what people expect to see, demonstrating that we often miss what we don't expect."

Our brains are built to manage the flow of information this way. However, research is finding there are ways to broaden our attention 'bank account' through relaxation practices. I would argue that training your sensory and movement skills, exploring new and unknown rhythms, may also help broaden our capacities for awareness.

Understanding that we see only a fraction of the world around us has profound implications. It reminds us of the subjective nature of reality and highlights the unique way each person interprets their surroundings. Understanding this, we can always try to grow our sensory awareness, perhaps emphasizing empathy and a sense of imagination, physically experiencing new things, taking deep breaths, and on occasion remembering that "not everything is always as it seems." It never hurt to ask, "What other rhythms might be possible to perceive?"

References

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/but-did-you-see-the-gorilla-the-problem-with-inattentional-blindness-17339778/

https://kids.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frym.2017.00023

https://www.livescience.com/6727-invisible-gorilla-test-shows-notice.html)

Falling Forward

“A gesture, be it a leap, turn, run, fall, or walk, is only as beautiful, as powerful, as eloquent as its inner source. .Purify, magnify, and make noble that source. You stand naked and revealed. Who are you? What are you? Who, what do you want to be? What is your spiritual caliber?”
José Limón

January 12th was the 112 anniversary of Jose Limon’s birth. Since the introduction of the Limon technique in college, not only was I taken with the exuberance and playfulness of dancing his movements, but even more with his conceptual philosophy, because it seemed to be an ideal representation of moving forward in most aspects of life. It’s of the stuff of what makes us human, distilled down to a repetitive cycle, carried out in infinite ways, yet remaining as monumental or mundane as need be to the movement and efforts we experience over and over in a single step: We rise (one foot up) We fall (one foot down). We stabilize (standing even). Repeat.

This is what we do. In one way or another, we carry on

Mark Willis and Elise Drew León of the Limón Dance Company performing at the Joyce Theater in Manhattan.Credit...Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

Conceptually the image of life and movement as a fall and recovery - a rhythm, a wave, that single step forward - that has stayed with me throughout my life. Here’s a bit more about Jose Limon’s technique directly from Jose Limon Dance Foundation website.

The Limón technique is based upon the movement style and philosophy of theater developed by modern dance pioneers, Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. In the early 1930s, both Weidman and Humphrey developed a dance vocabulary that worked in opposition to the strict rules of classical ballet. Their intention was twofold: to demonstrate human emotions in a less stylized manner than ballet; and to incorporate in their work the natural movement patterns of the body and its relation to gravity. Limón further developed their ideas for his own work and technique.

The Limón technique is divided among various physical extremes: fall and recovery, rebound, weight, suspension, succession and isolation. These ideas can be illustrated in the way a dancer uses the floor as a place from which to rise, return to and then rise from again. The way a dancer explores the range of movement between the one extreme of freedom from gravity and the other of falling into it; for example, the moment of suspension just as the body is at the top of a leap, and the moment the body had fallen completely back to the earth. There are many words and ideas that are immediately associated with the Limón technique, i.e. its humanism, its use of breath, musicality, lyricism and its dramatic qualities; however, the overwhelming consensus is that through the movement is always demonstrated some physical expression of the human spirit.