Hard Work & Doing Nothing

maxi.jpg

18th of February 2019

I have trained the whole day, six days per week for several years, leaving home early in the morning, coming back late at night, taking a nap in the park or during the winter in my car, eating lunch while driving, steering with my knee. I have done a third handstand session of the day at 11:00 pm in the night. Blah Blah Blah. Until I realized this is all very nice and important for me, I love training hard, but I also understood that this was fitting precisely into the Zeitgeist of "hard work all time, progress progress progress". So my practice evolved, I looked for what do we really need? Progress? It has many sides and needs to be investigated. The practice has evolved to "nothing", which has become one of my favorite words. I practice acting from not acting, doing from not doing. Step out of the hamster wheel and do nothing.

There is a lot to do - there is nothing to do. And the whole scale in between.

I contemplate Blaise Pascal's quote for many years:

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." The picture is showing Maxi doing nothing at a recent "Physical & Cognitive Practices Intensive" in the school.

Joseph Bartz