Was ist Movement? (EN Subs)

Hier wird ein Problem besprochen.

About the english translation available via subtitles:

the problem discussed doesn't work in the same way in English than in other languages because I refer the difference between using the English word "movement" vs. the German equivalent "Bewegung". But I think it's still possible to get the point.

Transcript:

Hello, here we are again, me and the excavator, it’s kind of either off or on, I don’t really know, he’s standing around, we’ll see, maybe it’ll come and join us.

This video is about a linguistic, semantic, conceptual blablabla, etcetera problem basically an error of thinking. And the tag line is “what is Movement”? And the true tag line is the usage of the english term “Movement”.

What is “Movement”? I already told you, it’s a term, aha! So we have an umbrella term, and certain other terms fit under it. We’ll look at some of these other terms, for example “human movement”. Then there’s another term, “training”, and now I can connect that with “human movement” and get “human movement training” or “movement training for humans” or something like that. And then, at a much later time really, comes the connection with the term method, when a method or multiple methods have sprung out of a methodical procedure. And this is, as mentioned, much later on the timeline that starts with the thought “ah, I want to train human movement”.
So, now we get to the issue: the use of the english term “Movement” in german. Firstly, why do we use the english term? It has with the sources to do. The major source of this contemporary form of training, the generalistic, holistic, wide-ranging movement training is Ido, who sort of… “created” this philosophy of training, which is a complicated word to use, since one could always argue along the lines of “something like that has always been around and there’s nothing new about it, wha wha wha wha wha”.

But really, we have to look to Ido when it comes to this contemporary approach to human movement, since he is the “Vordenker”, the first from whom it stems. Of course we can go, this and this and this person did it before, but none of those people have produced this kind of massive training culture that we have today. So, the source communicates in English, meaning the original source, and thus much of the terminology is in English. And the problem that thus arises, really a problem that Ido has always faced and still faces, is that there’s sort of this idea of wide-ranging human movement training, and this generates questions: “But how? How do i do it? Is human movement, is this term not too large, making it impossible to train it all?”.
From there, from this realization, I get closer and closer to a methodical procedure, and from the methodical procedure the method arises, which in Idos case over time got the name Ido Portal Method, by his students. And it’s really much more elegant, when discussing these terminological things, to say, there’s the term movement or movement training, and then there’s different methods based on the concept of holistic human movement. And over time, more and more people are interacting with this concept, and there are people who create their own methods, or people who use other peoples’ methods, or people who simply say “hey, I learned from this person and that’s the method I use.” And in that regard, Idos’ method is definitely the most used.

And basically, when I use the english term “Movement” in german, it’s not clear, what I mean by it. What is clear is that it’s thus a trap, or a “workaround” - now I can’t think of the german word for workaround, haha, oh well, funny that I use an english word instead of something german - I work around the problem of saying “we do movement training” by using this more abstract English term “Movement” or just saying “movement”, using quotation marks, thus placing it along other distinct methods of training like for example Yoga or Crossfit or whatever, making it another training form to be listed.
As in when someone is listing training forms: yeah, what can I do in terms of training: you could do Crossfit, you could do Movement could do Yoga. Boom. Now comes the question: “Hey wait a minute, why is Movement in that list?”, when I say, you could do Yoga, Movement, Crossfit, the problem becomes much clearer: “hä? That doesn’t fit in there”, since Yoga and Crossfit are elements of the concept grouping movement.
Meaning I have the umbrella term, and then other terms under it. Okay, that means, what could I do? I could say I do a certain method, like Yoga following the “Wakalaka method” - maybe that exists, I don’t know - and in the Wakalaka Method, one does holistic movement training, and then add to that list Crossfit, that would work, it fits, I can do that.

To use “Movement”, the english term, is problematic though, since there’s no, well firstly there’s no method called “Movement”, no one calls their method “Movement”, but the people call what they do “Movement”, thereby referring to a certain training method, that the Vordenker - ah, nothing comes up here, but one could technically make is so, that a link to my video “Vordenkleistung” pops up so one can click that - there are Vordenker that have made it so that the community that does this holistic movement training train in a certain way, which sort of creates a method from itself, since the masses will base their view on the Vordenker. So if Vordenker Hans does climbing and Hiphop the whole time, and says that these are somehow the most important things in “Movement” training, if he’s a major Vordenker, the people will start climbing and dancing hiphop a lot, thus sort of creating a method since the people all do that and so on and so forth, bla bla bla, I think it’s pretty clear what I’m trying to say.

Naturally, now the problem is that I don’t really question the terminology when I simply say “ah okay, there one does that and that, and that’s what I’ll do”. I sort of turn off my own thinking.
The problem is, that the terminology of the holistic movement training so massive is, that one, or one two three people can’t fully comprehend it. It’s the same as with all big problems one is confronted with, like for example “what is Insight?” or “what is Meaning?” or “what should I do?” and so on and so forth. These are questions that can’t be answered, and thus there are so many people throughout human history, who have occupied themselves with these terms - or not really terms, rather these questions - who have occupied themselves with these questions and all found different solutions and blablablablabla.
The same is happening with the concept of holistic human movement training, which is still the contemporary approach, that has only been around for such a short time, that it will evolve a lot over time. And when one looks at what was going on several years ago, where all the people just did handstands and rings, and at what is happening now, it’s definitely changed.
Meaning, there are no fixed methods at the time, the methods are rather dynamic and they should stay dynamic, since large terms need dynamic methods, which is the problem with such fixed things as Yoga, where through history people have added things and so on and so forth, like for example, uh, what’s his face, BKS Iyengar, who noticed “ah, these old yoga things, these original yoga things are based on the assumption that one starts doing it at eight years old, so if I want to explain yoga to these western people who have different hip structures and so on, I have to change the method, I need to be more dynamic and can’t rely on some thousand year old texts, but rather I have to start thinking a bit myself.
So, and that is naturally the same with new topics like the ones we’re discussing here. It’ll always face problems and so on and so forth.

I’ll return to the actual problem: the use of the English term “Movement”, that means not facing, that I’m not facing the actual problem. This has something to do with people trying to frame it, trying to give it clear boundaries. The people who do such a training, who do it in public spaces and not just at home, all know that they’ll regularly be asked “what are you doing there?”, and that it’s difficult to find an answer that’s only a sentence long. Like, I could say “i’m training human movement with a generalist aspiration.” Boom, and basically that is what we do, pretty well defined.
But it’s too little for the people, then they ask "Huh? But what sport is it then?” Yeah, it’s not really a sport, what we do doesn’t fall under that category sports, we might perform certain sports in our training, but when I zoom out, then I see that it’s not a sport, but rather I might be training in certain sports. Like when I do BJJ or something. People want something to hold onto though. Often a name is enough. So if someone asks “what are you doing?”, one can also answer “yeah, this is the Knovi Method”. Yes, for example, this is the Knovi Method, developed by Yithzak Knovi, a jewish philosopher and circus acrobat from 1950, he only lived for one year, 1950, and uhm… it’s a bit awkward to laugh at ones own jokes, but unfortunately it often happens to me. So Yithzak Knovi, yes, I can tell someone that and they’ll be satisfied: “Ah, Izak Knovi Method, sweet!”, but if I say “it has no name, we do generalistic movement training, we do holistic movement training”, then people are disappointed, they almost blow a fuse. You’ll see the alarm go off “oh oh oh, red alert! I can’t categorize this. I can’t, I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO PLACE THIS in my head”. And, äh, then the people usually walk away, they just leave and are, I don’t know, dissatisfied or save themselves from the situation by walking away and then blablablabla. For this reason I always say it’ll take a while to grasp what we’re doing, and this workaround of using the english term “Movement” makes it so that I don’t necessarily have to deal with the real problem, being “what is human movement then? How do I train it?” and so on and so forth.
It’s an unanswerable question, or maybe it can be answered but never satisfyingly answered, one always has to ask follow up questions “Am I not an error? Isn’t it erroneous what I’m doing now? Isn’t it incomplete? Mustn’t I additionally do something else?” and so on. It’s the problem one faces, one is never, one is not done. It simply always continues, and thus it’s completely erroneous to say “we are doing “Movement”, because that makes it sound like “Oh “MOVEMENT”, I see, I know precisely what that is”.
I thus shut down the thought work, the philosophical work that I have to do completely and create something that’s no different from Crossfit or Zumba or whatever. It falls into these categories, where I can simply see “what does one do there? Then I’ll do that too”.
So.
Good.

Ah, the excavator is on a break. I’m too late with shooting the video, he probably finished fairly early. If I’d been fifteen minutes earlier, one could probably have seen him still. He’ll politely wait until he can wake me up really early again tomorrow.

Good. Is there more to say?
There’s lots to say, but I think I’ve made my point. Let’s summarize: We occupy ourselves with movement.
We occupy ourselves with human movement, with the possibilities we have of moving ourselves or being moved.
Then we look at what such a training looks like, what a sensible, reasonable training like that would look like.
Then, in time, we can start working more methodically, and thus a method might develop.
That’s the dangerous moment. The moment when a method crystallizes is the dangerous moment. The problem: if I use the term “Movement”, I thereby sort of imply a certain training method. Because the English term, or rather, the fact that us Germans organize things in a way that when an English term is used, it represents something, it’s not simply a translation of a German term, because if it was I wouldn’t need to use it. It would be absurd to say, “Ich mache Movement”, it’s as if I’d say “I’m going to the Kühlschrank” instead of “I’m going to the fridge”. Maybe talking like that is really cool in Prenzlauer Berg, but it’s still absurd.
That means, when I use the English term, I always imply something, being that this term means something specific and has less to do with the regular term, with the open term, the German term “Bewegung”.

So. Good. Nice. I and this plant thank you for watching, and, uhm, that’s it.
Bye.

2017-11-08

Joseph Bartz