Kasturi Torchia: Mental wellbeing, Esprit Concrete, and sharing →

Published September 18, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 18  ·  

Kasturi Torchia: Mental wellbeing, Esprit Concrete, and sharing

How can the integration of psychology and movement practices contribute to mental wellbeing and personal growth?

Kasturi Torchia describes her role with Parkour UK, and how she came to be involved in mental wellbeing and psychology studies. She discusses her family and how they impacted her journey, before unpacking the Esprit Concrete method she has developed. Kasturi shares some of her goals and what she is working on with Esprit Concrete, and discusses the yearly Les Dames du Movement event.

Esprit Concrete is something that was so organic, that it’s really hard to pinpoint what exactly [started it.] But I think that the really strange encounter that I had with Parkour, came at a really important time in my life where I was reflecting on what was happening and trying to make a change. I just needed something, without knowing that I needed it, to jolt me into seeing things differently, changing perspectives on things.

~ Kasturi Torchia (6:30)

The conversation explores the intersection of psychology and movement, focusing on how Kasturi’s personal experiences led her to create the Esprit Concrete Method. Her work integrates psychological principles with Parkour and Art du Déplacement, addressing mental wellbeing through movement. Kasturi reflects on how childhood influences and a desire to understand human behavior guided her journey towards psychology.

Another key topic is the development of the Esprit Concrete Method as a tool for self-reflection and personal growth. The method helps participants confront vulnerabilities and use movement as a metaphor for psychological challenges. Kasturi also highlights the significance of community events, such as Les Dames Du Movement, which bring together diverse practitioners to foster learning and collaboration.

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Autumn →

Published September 18, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 18

I love autumn.

There’s something about chilly mornings and cold nights—good sleeping weather as we said when I was a kid.

Don’t get me wrong, summer is nice too. As a kid, of course summer was awesome. But the problem with summer was sleeping. Back in the day, we didn’t always have air conditioning. This wasn’t a deal-breaker but there would always be the occassional stretch of days where you’d simply lay stewing in your own juices rather than actually sleeping. Which leads to a particular thing about summer which I suspect I will always love: The late-night summer thunderstorm.

I’m not talking about your run of the mill evening summer thunderstorm. Those are a dime a dozen. They’re neat and all, but they can’t hold a candle to a late-night summer thunderstorm.

As I mentioned, I grew up mostly without air conditioning, and so I slept with the windows open. I had the “weather” corner of the house growing up. That means the normal wind, and so most storms, arrived at my corner of the house. It always started with a low rumbling in the distance. Soon I’d see some silent flashes of light. (I grew up in a house in the country, more in the woods than not. Night was dark.) Soon the rumbling would correspond to the flashes. Then, decreasing time between the flash and the boom. “14… 15… 16… rumble …four miles!” Then the rising wind in the trees, and then, finally, the wind from the downdraft of the stormfront. Scant seconds of cool wind, sometimes cold, occasionally frigid—in which case it was going to hail and storm like hell—would blow the stagnant air from the entire house. I’d stand by the window closing it inch by inch as the rain struck the screen. When the window sill was more wet than dry, it was time to close the window until the storm passed. We had a 3-foot exhaust fan in the ceiling in the hallway that could pull the air through the entire house. Someone would get up and run that fan after a thunderstorm, and it was the best air conditioning. After a while, we’d turn the fan off, and I’d lay in bed falling asleep to the raucous sound of crickets, the storm rumbling away bringing its rain and cool to the next community, and the smell of wet earth and trees.

Where was I? …oh yes, autumn.

Yes, please. :)

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Website obesity →

Published September 17, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 17  ·  

Let me start by saying that beautiful websites come in all sizes and page weights. I love big websites packed with images. I love high-resolution video. I love sprawling Javascript experiments or well-designed web apps.

This talk isn’t about any of those. It’s about mostly-text sites that, for unfathomable reasons, are growing bigger with every passing year.

~ Maciej Cegłowski from, The Website Obesity Crisis

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This is so true that it makes me laugh and cry at the same time. I weep. I weep for the Internet. The Internet we know today was made possible by advertising, because too many of us don’t understand how reality works. That’s a good thing—that the Internet happened and grew to be as pervasive as it is—but the current trajectory does not lead to the best possibilities.

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Georgia Munroe: Goals, Ninja Warrior, and coaching →

Published September 11, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 11  ·  

Georgia Munroe: Goals, Ninja Warrior, and coaching

How does the relationship between creative hobbies, personal challenges, and coaching shape the practice and development of movement disciplines?

Georgia Munroe explains her interest in music and how that relates to her parkour practice, as well as how she became interested in parkour. She discusses the challenges and goals she is working on, before sharing her experiences with motion capture and Ninja Warrior. Georgia unpacks her thoughts on coaching, her personal journey of improving as a coach, and how coaching has affected her own parkour practice.

We always struggle with so much […] like when you first start, everything is fresh, everything is new. The only goal is to just turn up, and you get on with it. […] And now, when you start to find your footing, you start to see your character in your movement, you also see your insecurities, you also see the things that are harder than other things to do. You also see what your fears are, and facing your fears or seeing your fears, you want to overcome them. It’s scary, and you don’t want to, but you want to at the same time.

~ Georgia Munroe (17:32)

The conversation explores the interplay between creative hobbies, such as music and movement disciplines like parkour. Music provides Georgia with a natural sense of rhythm and timing, directly influencing how she approaches physical training and performance. This relationship highlights how artistic practices can cross-pollinate with athletic endeavors, enriching each in unexpected ways.

Another central theme is the transformative power of coaching and personal growth. Georgia reflects on the emotional challenges she faced, particularly her fear of failure, and how coaching others mirrors her own internal struggles. As she develops her coaching skills, she learns to manage self-doubt and anxiety, which ultimately enhances her ability to guide others. Her experiences competing in Ninja Warrior reveal how even high-stress environments can evolve from terrifying to enjoyable through mindset shifts and practice.

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Impermanence →

Published September 11, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 11  ·  

I don’t know why we long so for permanence, why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs. With futility, we cling to the old wallet long after it has fallen apart. We visit and revisit the old neighborhood where we grew up, searching for the remembered grove of trees and the little fence. We clutch our old photographs. In our churches and synagogues and mosques, we pray to the everlasting and eternal. Yet, in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs that nothing lasts, that it is all passing away. All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one day will be gone. Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800, only two short centuries ago?

~ Alan Lightman from, The Accidental Universe

It seems obvious to me that apprehending the impermanence of everything is necessary in order to remain sane. Obviously my entire existence is an immeasurably tiny fraction of an instant. Obviously there is no ultimate “point” to all of this. Obviously there is no one true meaning of life.

It removes a lot of baggage and struggle once you realize that reality is in fact the real situation you are in.

…and then you’re free. Free to create, conjure, combine, laugh, love, learn, run, ramble, perable, talk, commiserate, procreate, invent, integrate, mix, mingle and just generally ENJOY LIVING.

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Factory work, Round 2 →

Published September 10, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 10  ·  ,

My fear—or maybe it’s better written, as “my lament”?—is that for every made-it-big tech person who represents the worst of avarice and greed, there is a sea of regular tech people who are being ground up by the works. Countless pasty faces staring at screens, drinking diet soda, trying to live in the bites of life they can grab after hours, (taking their phone so they can be summoned, of course!) stressed-out, burnt-out…

So when I hear people talk about “tech people” as if we’ve collectively done something wrong and messed up the world, I look around and all I see are people who’ve been broken and smashed. The grass is no greener on the inside-tech side of the fence. To everyone outside-tech, what gets done inside tech is magic—it’s not, it’s factory work, round two.

I don’t mean this as a repost to what people say when they lament what has happened to the world, but as a commiserating plea: “Yes! Yes! The problem is everywhere.”

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Presented without comment →

Published September 9, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 9  ·  

Buy less, buy better. Notice the materiality of the things you use. Live in your body. Feel the ground when you walk. Chop wood, carry water.

~ David Cain, from We Are Not Materialistic Enough

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Go read this. In fact, go read everything on Raptitude.

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Get out of the way →

Published September 8, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 8  ·  ,

This is why “culture” in business matters. Because it allows people to see whether or not they’re allowed to cut the metaphorical knot.

~ Hugh MacCleod, from «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2019/08/28/gordian-knot-culture/»

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I was recently asked, “What’s the hardest part, for you, about podcasting?”

Staying out of the way.

I’ve spent so much of my life diving in and fixing things, that it has become my first instinct. To rush in and grab the controls. To attach a sense of artificial urgency to everything. To become frustrated that others aren’t immediately taking action now that a solution or idea has been found.

Certainly, an important step is to first cultivate a team who can do great work. But once that’s done enough, the hard part for me is staying out of their way.

Many people would say that I value action over thought. This is absolutely not the case. I am driven to find evidence, to investigate, to look for previous examples of similar solutions and ideas, to gather data, to analyze, to sort, to organize, to imagine… and then I act— often frenetically.

It is right before that last step that I’m learning to self-intervene.

Ready!

Aim!

Get out of the way.

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You needn’t have happened →

Published September 7, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 7  ·  ,

It’s the very last thing, isn’t it, that we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn’t have happened. You needn’t have happened. But you did happen.

~ Douglas Harding

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Expressing gratitude, part 2 →

Published September 6, 2019  ·  All posts on Sep 6  ·  

Most of the people that I work with do great work most of the time. (No, this is not about to turn into a back-handed compliment.) That means they make a few mistakes, or do a few things where I feel feedback would be helpful. Abitrarily, let’s say 90% of their work is good, and there’s 10% that I think could be improved.

…and so I start providing feedback on that 10%.

What does the other person experience? 100% negative feedback from me!

It doesn’t matter how good I might get at delivering great feedback, and helping them improve. If the only feedback I give is on the 10% of their work that I feel could be improved… ouch!

Instead, I need to think about the entirety of that person’s work. My feedback should be roughly in the same proportions as their work. This enables me to convey both the direct pieces of feedback and my assessment of the ratio in the whole. Continuing with the 90%/10% example, I should be giving vastly more positive reinforcement. That other person should be hearing vast amounts of positive feedback. This is not limited to people who work “for” you. This can be applied to everyone you have regular contact with and is relatd to my earlier post about, “if you see something, say something.”

There is a benefit for myself as well: If I’m only giving negative feedback, (focusing on that 10% as it were,) then it’s going to feel as if everything I encounter all day is negative. If I instead focus on increasing my ability to first notice that 90% of everything is great stuff, and then communicate that outwardly to the others, then it’s going to feel as if everything I encounter all day is positive. Since focusing on the negative stuff is one of my biggest problems, this is fertile ground indeed.

What’s your perception of what you encounter and does the feedback you give reflect that?

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