In my understanding, the taijitu shows complementary opposites that create a whole. Unlike Aristotle, who insists that every 'thing' is itself and not its opposite, Daoist philosophy perceives every 'thing' as composite of opposing principles. Yin represents the structure, the space in which events can unfold, Yang stands for the active component, the time and energy that bring movement to a structure.
Yin contains a bit of yang, and vice versa. We can imagine zooming into the dots in the taijitu, just to discover another taijitu hidden in there, like exploring a Mandelbrot set. The longer we observe, the more details about the yin and yang aspects of an event become apparent. While Aristotelian based philosophy likes to analyse by separation and isolation, Daoist thinking works more iterative and fractal to gain knowledge.
FM Alexander's ideas about human life, health and movement come closer to the Asian understanding of the universe than his contemporary Western scientific perspective. The term 'psycho-physical unity' FM used to describe humans as whole self is a kind of verbal taijitu, re-unifying the body-mind separation popularised by Rene Descartes.
FM postulated that it's possible to diagnose many disease mainly on the basis of the postural habits, and the ways individuals moved. By observing the whole human being, he was able to infer specifics without the use of technology. FM used his highly trained sense of touch.looking for disharmonies in the way a person reacted to gravity, and taught his students how to re-organise their balancing reflexes.
Whenever we move (and we move constantly until we die), two aspects of movement cooperate to reach our target. The yin aspect of movement is our permanent response to gravity, maintaining our shape in habitual, 'normal' ways. While lounging on the couch and watching a movie, we simply activate the coordination for 'relaxed sitting' and morph into the shape we associate with this idea.
We still blink and breathe, pet the cat or scratch any itchy spot without spending too much attention on the way we do this. If we reach for the remote control, the yang aspect of movement comes into play. Turning our head to look for the remote, bringing our torso in a position that brings it into reach, grasping it, all of this bits of the intention 'getting the remote control' require some more complex coordination of muscular activity.
Luckily, we don't need to bother about the details of controlling specific muscles. We spend a lot of time learning to move ourselves through life in this multi-sensorial tensegrity structure called body. Once we get into problems with our body, investigating these details might provide a path to a bit more sanity.
Most exercises focus on the yang aspect of movement - we strengthen muscles by repetition in the gym, or play sports which require some level of coordination. Modalities like Pilates, Yoga or Qi Gong consider more the yin aspect of movement. By slowing down the voluntary movement and bringing attention to it the dynamic quality of balancing can be experienced.
As long as we don't bother investigating the way in which keep ourself upright, we do in the way we have learned it, no matter how cumbersome that might be. On autopilot, we're going along the path of what feels 'normal', and that applies for both aspects of movement. Once we start exploring movement again like we did it as children, we can reconnect to the sense of aliveness arising from experiencing one's body in activity.
Often, we more are interested in results than the qualities needed to achieve a goal. Any of our voluntary activities happens with our uprighting strategies active in the background. The yin of movement consists of more than our mere musculo-skeletal structure, it contains as well all of the fascia, and basically the entire memory of our embodied existence up to right now.
Sitting slouched in school, carrying a heavy backpack on the shoulder, all those childhood habits can leave traces into seniority. Unless we start organising our movement and equilibrium in different, more efficient ways, producing less strain on ourself, our habits have the power to harm us.
When we learn a new motor skill we have a variety of choices to do so. We might observe someone with the skills we want to acquire, follow their verbal instructions what to do and what not to do, we can get guided by touch through parts or all of the movement, or a combination of the above together with those methods I forgot.
Juggling exemplifies the interdependency of yin (strategies to balance in standing) and yang (coordinating arms and hands to maintain a desire juggling pattern) parts of the movement. The beauty of the basic juggling pattern lies in its simplicity: left and right hand do exactly the same in a steady rhythm. The beast of juggling hides in the fact that we have a favorite hand, and are simply hardly used to do the same thing with both hands.
The first step usually involves learning to throw the ball from one hand to the other, in an arc about head height in front of the body. Any juggling rhythm needs its pauses, the basic one means that only one object is airborne most of the time. Throwing and catching integrate into one movement, the pause allows to decides which pattern comes next. Before we can choose between patterns, we still need to learn the basic pattern first, sorry for getting a bit ahead of myself.
Getting ahead of oneself, however, most likely happens in this process. Which provides us with ample opportunity to question our attitude towards acquiring a new skill. Our 'attitude', in the literal sense of the word, tells the observer a lot about our way of being in the world. I was quite baffled about the precise and valuable observations a professional juggler shared about my ways of juggling, and I'm still grateful for the valuable hints about my juggling and how to improve it.
Whatever we do, starts with the way we organise our body towards the challenge of gravity. In an ideal world, our shoulder girdle rests nicely on our ribs, allowing our arms to dangle slightly towards the front of the body, palm opposing the anatomical position, facing backwards. If the alignment of hip and shoulder joints allow the spine to expand, the arms can move freely, supported by the extensor muscles along the back of our body.
In most cases, there will be lots of movement than doesn't really contribute to the simple task of throwing a ball in an arc in front of the body. Most likely, the movement reflects our basic balancing strategies and ideas about how our body looks like and functions. The yang part of the movement (juggling) starts from the yin part, our postural habits, and interacts with it throughout the execution.
Feeling out of balance happens to many beginning Alexander Technique students. It's easy to develop the habit of 'posturing' - deliberately maintaining a specific shape independent of its efficiency. We associate subconsciously the relation of the center of gravity of head and body with 'uprightness', and move the bones with muscular effort to maintain this relation automatically. If this relation changes, we feel 'out of balance'. This is the crucial moment, which allows us to observe how we try to regain our perceived stability.
Often we realise how little we consciously know about the location of our joints, and how our subconscious body map makes movement more effortful than necessary. That's a humbling experience, at least in my case, as I tended to go full speed ahead often in unhealthy directions.
So even before we start throwing anything, we can apply the principles of the Alexander Technique to investigate the yin and yang of juggling. How do we 'ready' ourselves for the task, can we keep our attention on the movement, balance and environment simultaneously? Can we maintain mobility in hip, knee and ankle joints while our arms play with a ball? Can we allow ourselves to drop the ball?
It's easy to pay attention to something new, and easy to switch to autopilot once we'd convinced ourselves that we have mastered a skill. If we pay attention to something we have done thousands, if not millions of time as if we did it for the very first time, we open up to learn something new about ourselves. The concept of yin and yang of movement, of habitual uprighting combined with voluntary movement, can help to understand the way we move through life. It's just a map, not the territory.
