A decade of refining movement education with thousands of learners revealed unexpected parallels — the same patterns that drive neural network learning.

Why I’m Fascinated by AI as a Thinking Partner

I’m still learning about AI, but I’ve discovered how valuable it is for gaining new insights. It’s not a shortcut — it helps me understand patterns that emerged from years of practice.

Like any learning process, whether linear or non-linear, there are reference points that deepen understanding. For me, it’s how Baseworks evolved through practical work with thousands of learners and dozens of instructors at our Tokyo studio. Different feedback loops emerged from these interactions — between instructors and learners, and between me and the instructors.

We had a rule at our Tokyo studio: every instructor had to attend each other’s classes. Even I, as the founder, attended everybody’s classes and was often humbled by the insights that came from each instructor’s unique perspective on how they wanted to deliver the practice. Although we had technical benchmarks for every aspect of the method, instructors’ interpretations still differed based on how they observed their learners.

What became crucial was my imposing consistency at a level rarely seen in regular movement classes for people of any background. You typically only see this kind of consistency required in elite athletics, dance or other high-level physical performance, not for the general population who often have low body awareness. What happened from enforcing this consistency in movement execution and understanding was that it started to reveal, very unexpectedly, various bottlenecks in perception and physical capacity. The method itself in its entirety had to adapt to accommodate everyone, including those people with less capacity. That really shaped the method — that was one of the most important forces driving its evolution.

Many of these insights came as “aha moments” rather than through formal research. They emerged naturally from a continuous cycle of teaching, observing, and refining.

From an outside perspective, you could say the practice started as something focused on health, but my desire was never to make it health-specific. I wanted to explore something more abstract: if you commit to learning a language — the syntax, grammar, vocabulary — the better you can express yourself across different domains of information sharing. Similarly, the more you use your body across different domains of physical learning, the more you can express yourself in physical activity.

As a byproduct, I found connections with everything else in my life — how I perceived interactions with colleagues, how I reacted to weather not matching my expectations. These experiences fed into a greater awareness of life’s patterns, immediately surfacing lessons about expectation and the downfalls of over-expecting. This experience fundamentally shaped my understanding of how deep practice affects not just physical capacity but perception itself.

Working with AI feels like an extension of that same feedback loop, just faster and broader. AI has become a thinking partner that excels at understanding my cross-domain correlations. When I’d explain these connections to people, they’d often find them too abstract because it doesn’t map onto their knowledge and experience. AI gets these connections immediately and helps me clarify them so I can share them more effectively.

When Bodies Think Like Neural Networks

Baseworks developed over 10+ years with thousands of learners and dozens of instructors, all focused on one goal: making movement instruction clearer. We wanted anyone, regardless of their background, to understand and perform the same movements in the same way. This wasn’t designed top-down by theory; it emerged bottom-up from real classroom experience. The six principles that crystallized from this process represent the shared patterns of how movement is best understood and performed across thousands of bodies. Similarly, artificial intelligence systems improve through massive datasets, identifying patterns that emerge from collective input rather than predetermined rules.

When you move using Baseworks principles, something interesting happens. Your attention spreads across multiple points at once. You’re sensing contact, controlling how muscles engage, and adjusting to changes — all while following cues that direct your awareness. This multi-point attention is the core of Baseworks’ Sense-Control-Adapt approach: sensing multiple body points, controlling engagement patterns, and adapting to conditions. AI systems work similarly — maintaining context, applying rules, and adjusting responses across different information streams.

Modern AI systems don’t store information in one place — they build networks of connections between different types of data. Brain science shows something similar: isolating one finger requires more brain activity than moving all fingers together, because your brain has to actively prevent other fingers from moving. When you turn on distributed activation in Baseworks — performing multiple precise movements at once across your whole body — your motor cortex lights up. Different brain areas overlap as each movement prevents automatic patterns from taking over.

One of the most interesting parallels is how attention works. Baseworks uses a teaching approach called WHILE-NOT-IF-DO that breaks down each movement into four parts: (1) what to maintain before starting, (2) what to avoid doing, (3) what to check for, and (4) what to do next based on those checks. This approach to attention mirrors how AI systems process conditional logic across multiple data streams simultaneously — maintaining context, applying constraints, evaluating conditions, and selecting appropriate responses. Both are training pattern recognition that operates across domains, building transferable intelligence rather than isolated skills.

Both systems are doing the same thing: taking knowledge that’s difficult to express and turning it into something that can be taught, improved, and shared. AI memory systems reveal hidden correlations between seemingly unrelated data points. Baseworks creates a somatic vocabulary that makes unconscious sensory processing conscious and communicable — taking movements that can be performed without momentum and applying principles that train perceptual skills most people didn’t know existed.

What This Means for You

Baseworks captures physical intelligence that emerged from applying unique consistency standards with diverse groups of people. This process revealed how people actually perceive and move, which shaped the entire method. Just as AI distills collective human knowledge into an accessible format, Baseworks distills collective embodied intelligence into learnable principles.

The parallels between these systems offer more than theoretical interest. They suggest that intelligence — whether in neural networks or human bodies — emerges through similar patterns: processing information across multiple points, refining through repeated interaction, managing attention systematically, and turning implicit knowledge into communicable form.

For anyone interested in how we learn, move, or develop new capacities, Baseworks offers a practical laboratory for exploring these principles. The patterns that emerged from optimizing movement communicability apply beyond physical training — to how we process information, make decisions, and adapt to complex environments.

A Note on How This Article Came to Be

I spent 3 days working with Claude AI (Sonnet 4.5, using OpenMemory MCP specifically) to write this. We pulled together two decades of materials and ideas, exploring different ways to explain these connections. The collaboration itself demonstrates the point — AI helping to surface patterns from long-term practice & research and make them easier to share.

Patrick Oancia is the founder and co-developer of the Baseworks Method. With over 30 years of experience in movement practices and two decades developing innovative educational systems, he explores the intersection of embodied intelligence, systematic learning, and collective emergence.

When Bodies Think Like Neural Networks was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Throughout my life, I spent a lot of time paralleling an exploration of personal growth. I did this by cycling through specific movement practices, psycho-contemplative study, and experimentation with diet and nutrition. This was all colored by a very active social life and a bunch of international travel.

As a lot was going on, the wires occasionally crossed when processing the qualities of these different experiences. As a result, a lot did not get digested effectively, leaving me at times tired, wired, excited, and unbalanced. I feel that this was mainly due to the fact that there was a lot going on and I had no way to assimilate the rest, recovery, and reflective qualities of the different experiences.

So to try and make up for this, I sought help from acupuncturists, massage therapists, and osteopaths to hack a reset to get back on track.

The first significant wake-up

It was 1993. I had been in Thailand for several weeks and had just returned to Tokyo. It was February, so I went from cold to hot on the way to Thailand, then back to cold upon my return. I flew back in economy, on the redeye from Bangkok. It was a full flight and I was sandwiched in the middle row. As you could imagine, I couldn’t sleep due to being squashed and upright.

Upon arriving, as I had to get some work done, I didn’t rest at all. And as it was Friday, I went out to a party that night, dancing until the early morning hours. Then, after getting a couple of hours of sleep, I went to meet friends for brunch on Saturday. Later that day, I did a hypertrophy-focused workout at the gym, followed by a short form Taichi practice at home.

That night, I went out clubbing for yet another all-nighter. After again only sleeping a few hours, a good friend who had just completed her advanced Craniosacral training invited me to join her for dinner.

When I arrived, she looked at me and asked if I was ok. And although I did not particularly feel bad, I recall feeling pretty spaced out.

When I answered, “I think I am ok,”….she offered to give me a Craniosacral session. Although I had experienced some mixed osteopathy at many great Seitai clinics across Tokyo, I had never been exposed to something so subtle outside of acupuncture.

Upon returning to consciousness after the session (this is the best way to describe it), all the bones in my body felt stacked. The subtle but constant tension in my neck and the right scapula was gone. My hips felt like jello, and the area around my pelvic floor and genitals was soft and relaxed.

The challenge

I always thought I had great posture, could relax easily, and had good movement control. But that session left me with a new perspective of myself as tense, clumsy, and disembodied.

Apart from the therapeutic qualities that were immediately obvious, that experience opened a new way of perceiving my spine, hips, and upper torso’s relationship to the rest of my body. In addition, what followed on a deeper level shifted how I listened to people and viewed differing opinions from my own as fuel for new ideas (more on this later).

Now, this was both enlightening and challenging. I got turned onto something new about my body that had a reflective impact on my motivations. Yet, I had to re-assess my practice and, inevitably, the entire direction of my life. What I thought was good for me prior was jolted by a melancholy wake-up for change.

The therapies

Craniosacral therapy (CST) was invented in the 70s by John Upledger as an offshoot of cranial osteopathy. Practitioners of both cranial osteopathy and CST assert that there are small, rhythmic motions of the cranial bones attributed to cerebrospinal fluid pressure or arterial pressure.

The premise of CST is that the subtle movement of the cranium can be used to detect the cranial bones’ rhythmic movement. Selective and subtle hands-on applications may be used to manipulate the cranial bones to achieve a therapeutic result.

Although no conclusive clinical research clarifies that CST can address chronic and acute conditions, there was something significant about how my body responded to the subtle movements applied to my head, spine, and pelvis.

It was also through many acupuncture sessions that I had similar realizations. However, unlike my experience with other occupational therapists, I considered my acupuncturist, Edward Obaidy, a teacher. In his books, Edward sensei goes deep into how the Japanese acupuncture and moxibustion tech balances individualized outcomes.

We had many conversations during, before, and after most sessions that pertained to him only being a facilitator to support enabling me to self-regulate any internal or external imbalances. He suggested that all I needed to maintain a robust constitution was to work on listening more closely to what my body was telling me. And his advice really resonated with what I had already started to discover about the necessity of adaptation for everything in life.

Reconstructing

All these experiences motivated me to break down the rigorous body movements associated with any physical practice into a more strategic approach that could adapt to changing circumstances.

The changing circumstances I am referring to here are a combination of morphological, environmental, and psychological. Meaning that it was not just about the one-dimensional physical goal agenda of working with my body.

I became increasingly more sensitive to the climate, my physical environment (available space and space aesthetic), sleep, and diet. This also made me consider the effect of some relationships on my physical and emotional state. With all this combined, I could further adapt and modify my approach to any practice and greatly appreciate the outcomes’ qualities.

If you remember, at the start of this article, I said that I had traveled to Thailand, changing climate/barometric pressure and geographical time zone. Rest was another factor. I had also been going through communication challenges with a colleague, which was not so obviously (at that time) weighing on my subconscious. That combined set of circumstances could have indicated that adapting my routine would be more productive and appropriate to hit and sustain my desired progress targets.

This also ties into the idea that life is a sequence full of random, micro-circumstantial events that glue together our individualized human-experience timeline.

Irrespective of the not-so-obvious possibility of relying on intuition to be more aware of the necessity for moderation and adaptation (across the demands/pressures of an active lifestyle), those indicators are often dulled. Right?

Hack to get back on track

For many (myself included), if and when we start hitting the wall, we can crave a workout, a massage, an acupuncture session, or comfort eating. One may even take a Tylenol or some other over (or under) the counter/prescribed meds to cope with the reality of the life-health-stress balance predicament.

In recent health trends, we turn toward more acute experiences like different types of fasting, extreme dieting, cold therapy, long meditation retreats with applications in sensory deprivation, and taking ayahuasca or other psychoactive drugs.

Although some of these approaches might be of value, I have both personally experienced and witnessed in others that they can also result in a counterproductive rebound to the very patterns we were trying to transcend. And these pretty invasive experiences may not be as necessary as we think to initiate habit change.

Self-regulate

So what can be done to develop and sustain a higher awareness level?

The simplest thing in my life that is always readily available to fall back on is the adherence to a committed movement practice that varies in intensity, modification, and attitude.

These are the key things we develop in Baseworks. The physical gains are secondary and only a byproduct of the level we choose to commit. Therefore, I place less importance on progress, as continuity and commitment to any practice outweigh what it looks like on the outside. And we don’t need a sledgehammer to open the possibilities.

How one approaches a practice is a key to building a self-sufficient fallback tool to reset across any circumstance. The secret is to re-discover and develop the ability to tune in to what is appropriate across the randomness of life.

The wake-up call I had received inspired me to recalibrate my approach to working with my body based on subtle, non-invasive, low-intensity movements.

Micromovements

In Baseworks, we refer to these subtle, non-invasive, low-intensity movements as Micromovements. And this competence was significantly influenced by my sessions with osteopaths and my acupuncturist in Japan.

In Baseworks, we apply Micromovements to the physical dimensions of practice as a calibration tool for higher somatosensory output. And this application can effectively be practiced anywhere by nearly anyone at any level of physical health.

Try it out

Just find a comfortable way to sit on a chair. (or you can also stand). Raise the arms out to the side and up to shoulder level. First, start by making your arms rigid. You can do this by actively drawing your shoulders down while at the same time spreading through your fingers. As you draw your chin down, extend through the back of your neck. Imagine that the crown of your head is drawing upward. Now, this should feel quite active. Let’s now try and add a level of fluidity to this. Start by isolating the movement of your ribcage in a low-amplitude circular motion over your pelvis. Feel how the middle and upper spine are mobilized as you do this. With the back of the neck suspended, gently move the head from side to side so that you also start to mobilize the neck. So even though the muscles in your neck are active and the shoulder girdle is still stable, the neck and spine should feel fluid.

Anywhere, anytime

So, here we combined an element of the more dynamic principle of Baseworks Distributed Activation with the Baseworks Micromovements. But you could also practice this by gently moving the head from side to side or in circular movements, as you can similarly do with the ribcage over the pelvis.

The great thing about these simple movements is that they take little effort and can be done anywhere under any set of circumstances. The key is perseverance and continuity, coupled with taking the time to do a regular inventory of how you feel day to day so as to better adapt the approach.

To find out more about where you can practice with us, check out our upcoming events or subscribe to the Baseworks Practice Platform.

— Patrick, Baseworks Founder

Self-Regulation Wake-Up Call was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

After living in the mountainous forests for over a year, I quickly came to the realization that I didn’t dislike rain. What I did not like were the rainy days in a concrete jungle on pavement with gloomy cars passing by. In the forest, rain fills the atmosphere with the sound of tapping leaves and earthy smell, accompanied by mushrooms sprouting soon after. Even though the path on the trail I built is the same path every single day, it is astonishing how different it looks, smells, sounds, feels. During my daily walk down and up the trail, I have come to realize how incredibly subtle, yet persistently consistent change takes place, in the forest in nature, and equally within our everyday lives.

Being a person who wants everything yesterday right this moment, where soon is pretty much now or never, it took me quite a while to come to terms with the fact that change can be initiated intentionally, based on the actions we choose to take. What I see as the essence of behavior change. Having been raised in a family that moved every 2–3 years to different countries, I was always given the opportunity to radically change via external forces. Moving to a new country was a perfect excuse to restart your life from scratch on an empty canvas. The delight was in being able to recreate oneself to any identity you chose to be, because nobody knew you at all. So, in a way, I became dependent on radical change that were externally generated. I learned to lean into it and recreate it myself.

Yet being surrounded by trees for the last year, spending a large portion of the time on my own, I have gradually become much more comfortable with the idea that a change that is less radical can be self-generated from within. And at times, these less radical yet consistent intentions can be far more profound with positive repercussions. With this in mind, I began to explore ways to self-generate behavior change, and nail down the pieces of the puzzle that are foundational to this process.

Scaffolding 1: Action

First and foremost, you want to be able to convert the change into something that is possible, instead of overwhelming. This isn’t about motivation. It’s more about how earnest and compelled you are to change, and to make it realistic. Converting from rumination to making it something you are willing and ready to act one step at a time.

For self-generated change to take place, it helps to deconstruct the change into concrete actions. The action you create needs to be doable, with a good balance of being not too easy that it doesn’t feel like you’re doing anything, versus not too difficult that you become paralyzed. It begins with clarifying the nature of the change, what is needed to attain that change, and make it easy to act upon daily.

You may for instance want to change the course of your career. For this, you may decide to attend a course that specializes in training you to attain this skill/knowledge. Of course, this doesn’t have to be something that is life-altering. I know of many people who have picked up learning a new language or musical instrument during the 2020 pandemic.

Important thing is, whatever change you want to initiate, you convert it into what’s tangible, doable, realistic, and can be compartmentalized in time increments. By doing so, it becomes something you can confirm if it was done or not, and it will also give you the possibility to reduce or increase the amount, depending on the day. Here, a good framework one can reference is that of the SMART (Specific-Measurable-Attainable-Realistic-Timeframe) goals.

Scaffolding 2: Narrative

The final touch I personally like to add, is storytelling, creating a narrative. With the change you have in mind, you begin to build an idea of what kind of person you want to become though it. The process is like newly adding a personality to who you are, by thinking of what aspects of the change makes it more aspiring and appealing for you. Here, it helps to focus on building a positive image of who you want to become, instead of trying to remove the negative traits of what you dislike about yourself.

Often, the image we create and associate ourselves with eventually end up becoming a part of one’s identity. For example, when I shifted from being a vegetarian to an omnivore, the hardest part was letting go of my identity as a vegetarian. By stating I am a vegetarian in Japan in the 90s when the concept of vegetarianism was non-existent, I felt somehow I was making an intentional choice that was unique, progressive, and out of the social norm. So, when I decided to remove that identity suddenly, I realized how attached I was to it.

What kind of person do you want to become? What behaviors does this person embody? Where does this person go? What type of choices will this person make? What will this person be doing to better themselves on a daily basis? What kind of habits/routines will this person have? What are the types of things this person will focus on? Who will be the type of people this person will choose to spend quality time with? Digging these questions in relation to the actions you have created will make the action more precise and associated with a positive image of whom you want to become through this change.

Scaffolding 3: Design

Once the change is broken-down into clear actions and positive narrative, next will be to schedule it into your daily life. You need to design a structure that facilitates the action to take place. You want to create a space where you can be ready and willing to prioritize this action over everything else you do, in a manageable balanced way in relation to your life.

Here, accountability is key. Be it accountability to yourself, or to others, whatever works for you is what is the best. Some people do well by announcing their actions out loud to other people. Others do better by simply making a promise to themselves.

One of the simplest ways to ensure this is to put it into your calendar on a time that is least distracting and most manageable for your lifestyle. It can be 5 minutes every morning, or 15 minutes during lunch time on weekdays, or 30 minutes every weekend. This can be your own private calendar, or a shared calendar with your family, friends or colleagues.

When I used to work in advertising, I would use my 1-hour lunch break to go for a 15-minute swim. By announcing it to my colleagues that I will be doing this every day not only made it a locked-down schedule, but it also created a structure where they became my accountability supporters who will encourage me, as they will say things like “Heading for your daily swim? Good on you and have fun!”.

Scaffolding 4: Experiment

In order to make the change possible, consistency is crucial. Some may have a negative impression of consistency, as it is often what is emphasized when growing up. Here, converting the negative memory/impression of consistency into a positive experience helps, by bringing in the spirit of experimentation. Instead of thinking about your “action” and design” as a daily chore you must do, see it more as an experiment, where you are the subject, and you are the analyst.

As a subject and an analyst, you examine what you are experiencing on a daily basis. Observe what works and what doesn’t. If something works, continue with it. On the other hand, if it doesn’t, instead of seeing it as a failure on your part, welcome it as data that is coming back to you in the form of feedback, look at it, and slightly modify your action and/or design. Note down the modifications you’ve made and continue with the upgraded experiment.

In a way, my morning body weight training routine that is a part of my daily movement practice, is in a constant flux thanks to this. I have originally started with a 3-minute training, and currently it has evolved into an 8–10-minute training. Nevertheless, depending on the day and how I feel, I will modify the duration. When I talk about modification, it is not always about reduction. It may be at times increasing the number of sets or the content of the body weight training itself, based on my condition.

Remember, when you design the structure of your action, it is not about getting it perfect. It is about recording what you have been able to do for that day or week, analyzing the data, and seeing it as an experiment for you to modify and adjust. If 5 minutes every morning didn’t work, perhaps you can reduce the duration to 3 minutes, or alternatively, change the frequency to every other day. The idea is to not reprimand yourself for not being able to take action and instead, to figure out an alternative way to schedule it in.

For this, creating a journal for self-assessment and feedback is one way to approach it. Of course, if you want to keep it simple, an app like Way of Life is very useful in creating an easy way to log your actions and review it on a weekly basis. On the other hand, if you feel that you may want a bit more objectivity and advice, you can also consider talking with a like-minded friend or even a coach/trainer specializing in the field you are working on, who can be a good partner for you to work with.

Scaffolding 5: Space

Finally, as ordinary as it sounds, the environment makes a huge difference. When I say environment, it can be from the people you surround yourselves with, the support you get from them, to the actual physical space you create around you. Informing those close to you who interact with you on a day-to-day basis about your decision to embark on an experiment for behavior change, and even taking one step more to express small actionable things they can do to support your process, can be highly beneficial.

It is also good to keep in mind that there are two types of environments. The environment you cannot personally have any control over (i.e. weather, what your partner thinks), versus the environment you can influence (i.e. what you purchase, actions you take). There are of course gradations in between, and this will be different depending on the person. What’s important is to figure out what it is you can directly have influence over, so you can curate an environment that is more supportive and conducive to you being able to take action.

I have been personally experimenting with a wide range of ways to eat since mid 2000. From vegetarian, vegan, raw food, ketogenic, paleo, time-restricted eating to elimination diet. In all these cases, the first four scaffoldings are essential, though what I have come to realize more and more is that what surrounds me matters.

When there are food items in the house that are outside the list, it becomes harder to resist. When people living with you eat and welcomingly share meals that do not match, it becomes harder to resist. So having an environment that is free of food items you are not eating, and to have understanding/support from those who live with you makes a huge difference. Of course, this will also depend on who you are living with, what kind of dietary restrictions they have, as well as what kind of role you have in relation to them. Nevertheless, trying to find a creative way to shift and influence the space to a more supportive and conducive one in relation to your action, narrative, designed structure, and experiment really helps.

Final Note

Behavior change is subtle, sometimes not even visible. Yet the day-to-day action one takes is what evolves us to be who we are into the future, and what we do here and now is what directs the shift in direction. It’s been a long extensive journey for me to have arrived at this place today, and I will most probably evolve my ideas in years to come, though I am enthusiastic in continuing on with this subtle daily experiment of behavior change for myself and others.

Lastly, I would like to finish this post by introducing two resources that may be of interest for those who want to dig more into behavior change. One is a recently released podcast by Dr. Andrew Huberman on “The Science of Making & Breaking Habits”. He digs deep into the science of habit formation and elimination in relation to the neuroscience of the brain. The other is the book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, a book I have been revisiting regularly for the last decade, that allows me to uncover my internal process and directional change I want to initiate in my life.

“Scaffolding” is a temporary structure built outside a building or an artwork, usually made of wooden planks and metal poles, used by workers during the building / repairing / cleaning process. Once the work done to the building or artwork is complete, it will be taken down, exposing the complete architecture of the building or artwork. In this article the word “scaffolding” is intentionally used to bring insight into ways in which one can build a solid foundation for the change one aspires to.

Scaffolding for Behavior Change was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Sharing of Information

A lot of what we discussed in this episode derives from personal experience. I can relate to much of what Matan shared, as I’ve had a lot of similar realizations.

I have been listening to podcasts and subscribing to channels on YouTube for over 10 years, to get information on topics that I am interested in. During this time, it turned me on to a bunch of interesting and unanticipated stuff that surfaced through many of the conversation topics across dozens of productions.

I really like how so many interesting people who have separate careers and commitments take the time to produce this stuff to share their ideas and equally take part in the sharing of other information which may have never made its way into mainstream media.

As I followed Matan’s podcast, it was the first time that I actually knew the host personally as a collaborator and friend. Much of the content on Material for the Brain leans toward the articulation of stuff that relates to the way people perceive what they do through the lens of their skill set and creative work and the corresponding effect that process has on life. I also resonated with Matan’s decision to take a break from the production of his podcast channel to re-focus on his in-person teaching after months of Covid lockdowns and distancing protocols.

Although this is the start of our attempt to share via these Baseworks Transmission productions, I have had a lot of experience producing events, educational content and other stuff that I felt directly related to the broader more abstract aspects of my life work. And I have also taken many breaks in between to digest what I experienced and reorienting my focus on to other projects for perspective.

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Ethics

Any events that evolve around ethics, learning, and sharing can be interpreted in different ways, depending on personality and circumstance.

Even the most adverse of situations that come up at any stage of our lives can offer new perspectives that might not be so immediately obvious.

The intricacies and polarities between people’s characters in any kind of collaboration can be challenging to navigate. When Matan shared about not feeling supported in a production they cast him for, the attitude of the choreographer directly affected the output of the experience for Matan.

But who knows, the choreographer may have missed on some of his own learning from not being sensitive to how Matan could have felt better supported.

Of course, no one must alter their personality or work format just because they don’t agree with somebody. Yet, opening one’s self up, listening to, and considering the feelings of others, can be invaluable to better understanding subjective motivations.

I find this to be important and feel like the more informed I am, the more effective I can be in my professional projects and the more empathetic I can be to the needs of others. And for me, this realization came through both self-reflection, feedback, and direct confrontation.

Conversely to this, not always having the support that one would be expecting under specific circumstances, also provides the possibility to stimulate learning in a way that we can deeper analyze individual projections, needs and expectations.

Letting go of preconceptions, even if only occasionally, may present a completely different outlook on personal progress and development and possibly even nurture our emotional resilience.

A lot of this goes hand in hand with commitment, boundaries and responsibility, as we spoke about a fair bit during this transmission. When we commit to someone or something, it is not always going to be smooth. Yet to persevere, within healthy and conscious boundaries, can become an important contribution to one’s attitudes toward coexistence, solidarity, reciprocity, community and mutual respect.

How do we see our practice?

Inevitably, how we approach a physical practice can be a great metaphor for how we can shape the way we respond to the challenges in life. An example question one may want to ask would be: is the practice intensity or quality appropriate for both my physical and emotional state?

We can approach physical practice with different objectives, but the attitude will affect the outcome. A physical practice can be to condition the body to perform at a certain level. It can also facilitate mitigating stress, supporting good health and mental clarity. But many use a physical practice to avoid confrontation or even confronting oneself, and in some situations, the approach to the practice can easily fall into the same category as addiction.

I believe that how we approach our practice illuminates who we are. And I want to emphasize that it is not about the result of any such realization being good or bad. It’s just about being informed.

In Baseworks, we have a particular focus on using the understanding of limitations, expectations and attitude as intel to make the practice meaningful and sustainable under any circumstance. A lot of what we talked about in this Transmission correlates with this type of analysis.

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Reflections: On Ethics, Leadership and Commitment was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Ethics, Leadership & Commitment

The Baseworks Method, at its core is a movement conditioning approach. It’s also been developed with the intended purpose of promoting the deepening of introspection based on realizations that come up as a result of the commitment to the practice.

The conversations with people from different backgrounds in these Baseworks transmissions look at both the concrete and abstract realizations that emerge from a commitment to any kind of practice or pursuit to achieve life goals.

The ideas get unpacked from their subjectivity, and the outcome of each conversation sets out to uncover and exhibit common features of physical and introspective experiences.

We will post each episode here on the Medium Baseworks Publication and the original post, show notes and transcripts can be found via searching for this episode on the podcast directory of the Baseworks site.

Show Summary

In this Transmission conversation we chat about Matan’s dedication to — and brief hiatus from, his podcast — ethics in leading, life in the Israeli army, and thereafter transitioning from a dedicated meditation practitioner living in celibacy to be relentlessly coaxed back into the world by erotic desires that surfaced from intense meditation practice, and how all these things tie into commitment, personal realizations and growth.

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About Matan

Matan is a dancer, teacher and graphic designer. In 2015, he founded Movement Lab — which he considers a vehicle for movement education, choreographic work and personal inquiry.

His own practice is inspired by his enthusiasm for physical and theoretical research revolving around the question of how to develop a meaningful relationship with the body and mind.

For over a decade, he devoted himself to educate people from all over the world about better movement while reflecting upon what Matan describes as “the urgent social phenomena” through the medium of performance and also via conversations through his podcast ‘Material for the brain’.

His passion for research and discovery drives to expand his understanding and to further develop himself as a human being.

As a dancer, he performed in the works of, Martin Nachbar, Alessandro Sciarroni and, Marco Torrice.

His own choreographic works have been presented in various dance festivals, cultural events, art galleries and museums in Austria, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, England, Greece, Slovakia and Israel.

Matan’s focus as a teacher is rooted in “movement research”. He started teaching in Israel in 2008. Since then, he has had the chance to teach under different circumstances and to different audiences; ranging from professional and amateurs, dancers to teenagers, in open workshops, festivals and immersive group seminars.

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ON ETHICS, LEADERSHIP AND COMMITMENT was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today we live in a chaos of straight lines, in a jungle of straight lines. If you do not believe this, take the trouble to count the straight lines which surround you. Then you will understand, for you will never finish counting. — Friedensreich Hundertwasser

Life emanates the concept of cyclicity. We develop through childhood into adulthood, mature into middle age, wisen into senior years. This same life cycle we experience can be seen in all organisms, from animals, plants to fungi and algae. Yet at the very same time, modern human social constructs appear to have an overwhelmingly strong drive for linear progress. A constant pursuit for more, for what is better, where regression or digression is often seen as something negative or rebellious. What one can describe as a one-directional perspective towards doing more, doing better, going through hierarchical steps to advance.

The Good, The Bad, and Everything In Between

At least this is how I have experienced the demands of being widely accepted as a functional individual in society today. And perhaps how I see education to have formulated me, regardless of cultural differences, be it in schools in France, Japan, America, Denmark, Kenya or England. Of course, I do appreciate my ambition to strive for perfection, to upgrade my understanding to the next level, to do more and better.

Yet at the same time my continued engagement in daily movement practices for over 15 years, has led me to realize the most obvious simple law of nature. That we are like the seasons, constantly in flux, experiencing subtle differences, every single moment. And as there are good days, bad days, and everything in between, our mind-body state also fluctuates every moment, affected by what is surrounding us. That perhaps there is ultimately no linear progression of, for example attaining one movement/form/pose one day, and have the reassurance that this will be there for sure the next day, as is with life and death itself.

Pursuit to Learn, Adapt, and Modify though Practice

It is true, learning is built on prerequisites. The more you are able to understand and connect all the factors that establish a foundation in the learning process, the more layers of complexity you will be able to add on top of it. This becomes truer when the modality is something such as movement, where the more you focus your attention on learning the specific movement and build a regular daily practice application on top of it, the easier it becomes. This allows us to not have to think about the details of what we were learning initially, gain fluidity in movement, and either to refine the process or to extend on top of it.

So there is some form of progression in our practices. However, what I have experientially learned through my daily practice with Baseworks Practice, is that there are so many other factors that affect the state we are in. That the more we are in tune with these factors that affect our state of being, the better we are able to adapt and modify our practice into something that is more conducive to the moment and allow the practice to evolve into something that is more safe, injury-free and sustainable in the long-run, into old age.

Some factors I specifically take note of are such as sleep (duration, timeframe, REM vs deep sleep), diet (what I eat and drink, when, how much, how it is prepared, where it is sourced, environment I eat it in), movement (how much I moved, how long I was static, balance between cardio exercise vs contemplative practice), stress (amount, source, what I did to cope with the stress, what I chose to work on to reduce the stress), time (amount of screen time, amount of personal interaction time, amount of time for myself based on my needs/passion/growth), and many more.

As these interchange every moment, I use my daily movement practice to bring awareness to the state I am in for that day and modify my practice to suit the circumstantial factors surrounding me. By doing so, I feel more capable of making better decisions necessary for the specific day in relation to how I manage my life-work balance in a more efficient and sustainable way. Moreover, this allows me to apply the same principles of learning, adapting and modifying for everything in life in general.

No, the Hidden Yes

This entire process is an extremely personal and humbling experience. For instance, I may be able to do much more, based on what I have been doing up until now, and what I have seen myself do in the past. Yet I may intentionally choose not to do a specific movement for that day, because it will be much more conducive for me to do so, in relation to all the other factors and what I want to achieve for that specific day. In a way, the moment I learn to say “no” to something, I realize that it is actually a “yes” to a completely new paradigm I was not able to see before.

Whenever I am in Tokyo, I add onto my daily routine, practices at JayaDojo, where Baseworks Practice is the signature syllabus, and students have the opportunity not only to practice the actual practice method itself but also the approach to practice according to the concept of modifying/adapting the practice to match one’s condition for that specific moment. The concept of cyclicity is the core of the Baseworks Practice Modular practice, where all four modules are mixed and matched, instead of a one-directional hierarchical progression from beginner to advanced.

Of course in the initial stages of practicing the system, there is somewhat of a progression from one module to the other, from Foundation, Elements, Strategy to Integrate. However as one begins to establish regularity in practice, it becomes more and more clear how the practice in each module interrelates with all the other modules, and how every practice experience can become constant learning, unlearning, relearning process.

Intentional Practice, Intentional Choice

On the other hand, whenever I am unable to go to the studio or am not in Tokyo, I convert my home practice by selecting a module to practice for that day, making sure to mix it up throughout the week, and to adapt the practice constantly based on the condition of that specific day and how I want to focus my energy for that day. I also combine this with various other movement practices, ranging from meditation, breathing practices, walking, swimming, jogging, HIIT exercises, improvisational dance, and other corrective movement practices offered in fitness studios.

Though whatever the modality, the insight, and awareness I have gained through my continued practice with Baseworks Practice have had a profound impact in the way I approach all other movement exercises, how I choose to allocate my resources for that specific day, and how this directly affects my mental performance for the day.

— Satoko Hore, Managing Partner: Baseworks | Para Impacto

For information on upcoming collaborations and current Baseworks events check out the Baseworks Events Listings.

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Seasons of Life was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“I am hungry, I need to eat. But people are not realising that I need to move now. Because if I don’t move now, in a few more hours it’s going to become a problem. And in a few more years, it’s going to become an irreversible problem.” — Ido Portal

Movement is integral to our existence. We are born as moving beings, crawling exploring the world with delight using our whole entire body, yet as we go through the process of maturing into society, one gradually becomes increasingly disconnected from this aspect of exploration. This is especially so for those living in a modernized lifestyle where the majority of our basic everyday movements have now conveniently become outsourced.

Rediscovering Movement

My urgent need for daily movement suddenly faced me in 2004, when I realized that I could no longer continue to ride the trains to commute to the office. The idea of the never-ending repetition of waking in a box (home), getting on a moving box (train), working in a box (office building in cubicles), getting on a moving box (train) to go sleep in a box (home), drove me absolutely crazy. Hence I initially began my personal resistance by walking to and back from my office and home, exploring different routes every day, reconnecting with movement and discovering the seasonal changes through the senses.

Since then, I have managed to incorporate bicycling as my main form of transportation on top of walking, daily swimming and Baseworks Practice sessions, combined with occasional and/or seasonal activities such as contact improvisation, dance, hiking, snowboarding, and snowshoeing as a recent addition. To be completely honest, I have never been into sports and scored horribly in physical education at school, due to the lack of strength, flexibility, coordination, combined with my fear against being judged through competition and shame of being labeled a loser. Though I always fond of swimming in solitude, as well as walking dancing and being out in nature, an aspect that was deeply enhanced in my teens when I lived in Denmark and Kenya. So when I discovered that there are other means of enjoying movement outside the realm of sports and competing, free from the anxiety of being compared, I was able to rediscover the infinite world of movement.

Meditative Space for Creativity

What movement offers me is quite profound. Whatever the activity I am engaging in, the combination of all the daily movement routines has definitely transformed me physically, with increased flexibility, strength, balance, endurance, leading to improved health and vitality. Nonetheless what I find most significant, is the effect it has onto my frame of mind, which in turn affects my creativity, productivity, and though this, I can also utilize it as a measurement of my state of being.

The moment I dive into the realm of movement, regardless of what it is, there is an astonishing stillness and silence that engulfs me. The intense concentration and focus on the physical, begin to remove the never-ending layers of noise in my head, and I gradually enter a clean space of emptiness. It is quite similar to the feeling I get the moment I am sitting in front of a white sketchbook, that very moment I begin to draw. The concept of time and the outside world feels distant, insignificantly distorted, and gradually through movement, thoughts ideas memories from the subconscious begin to sporadically well-up from deep within. In a way, the process is extremely meditative, at the same time something that leaves me with hints of creativity and ideas I can directly implement in what I do.

Of course, it is not always as perfect as it sounds. There are days, more often then I wish, when that empty stillness does not exist at all, with my mind racing with thoughts in frenzy, emotionally crazed. It most certainly affects the quality of my movements, yet as frustrating as it may be, it offers me an amazing opportunity to measure and notice my psychologically erratic state and release it through movement if I am lucky enough. And though I still have a long way to go in utilizing these effectively as signals to be more mindful of my interactions with others around me, I am grateful to have a tool that allows me to monitor this on a daily basis.

Enjoy the Process

We are always beginners at some point in time, so it is never too late to begin this exact moment. I am and will forever be thankful for that moment when I realized and decided to walk instead of ride the train. It can be as simple as starting with walking to the next closest train station instead of the station in front of you. Extending from exploring different routes/passages every day, to gradually increasing the distance, and maybe perhaps trying other movement modalities that you may have never imagined doing before. Shake it up, do something different every day, surprise yourself, have fun, enjoy the process. Movement is transformation and an initiator for our inner transformation.

— Satoko Hore, Managing Partner: Baseworks | Para Impacto

Photo credits: Patrick Oancia

For information on upcoming collaborations and current Baseworks events check out the Baseworks Events Listings.

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Movement is Transformation was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Change has always been a challenge for me. The uncomfortable fear of the unknown, insecurity that seems to shake the ground beneath, not knowing where you stand in the midst of intensity, being exposed to the rawness of your own self, your brittleness as well as the stubbornness. Yet at the same time, there are moments in life when one seeks out and grasps for change with great enthusiasm and courage, just like a chrysalis breaking its own hardened outer skin-shell to transform into a butterfly.

Life-Altering Journey

For me, the moment of life-altering change, or series of moments to be more exact, took place in 2007, when I decided to leave my six-year career in advertising as a strategic planner, and began the journey that has led me to where I am today, as a partner with Para Impacto and Baseworks. It was not that I was particularly unhappy with my life at that point in time. It was more that there was a sense of empty unfulfillment, unable to feel the sense of truly delving in experiences that made me feel invigorated and alive at the very essence of my existence.

It all started with my choice to be part of a one-month long yoga teacher training experience in Bali conducted by Radiantly Alive, an immersive experience of daily practice and theory, supported by a completely raw food program with juice fasting combined. Fully focused on the body through physical practice and diet, observing how not only the body but also the mind is affected by the quality of practice, what we eat, the environment we are in, the interactions we have with others, shed light onto the limitless options and possibilities of what I have not yet dared to explore experiencing in life up until then.

Making the decision to leave my previous career and embark on a journey of change was in some ways the easiest part. It was an extremely liberating experience as well, which gave me an enormous sense of autonomy. In fact, tackling the ripple effect of my change within me, and among the people and environment around me was far more challenging than the actual decision itself. As change can be often perceived as something different from the known, initially hard to understand or grasp, I find it quite natural that the instinctual reaction is to harden with hostility, rejection, and/or indifference. Like any animal trying to protect itself, I experienced this reaction both within myself and in the relationships I had with people around me. Yet at the same time, the challenging endeavor to step into this unexplored realm outside my comfort zone with persistence, gradually familiarizing myself to the extent that the change no longer was alien but rather a part of me, was an extremely rewarding process.

Experimental Incubator for Change

Since then, I have been involved in the production and coordination of a variety of different training programs, courses, and workshops conducted in Asia and Europe, periods ranging from weekends to month-long intensives up to one year residential. In a way, I see the material we have taught as an experimental incubator for change, especially for those who wish to utilize the experience in this way. It allows one to immerse into one field, deepen one's understanding, transmit one's experience through interaction with others, in a safe environment with a sound support system.

What makes our programming an ideal incubator for change, comes from the fact that it works on the body first and foremost. Being able to have the support of a studio that offers 50–60 Baseworks Practice classes a week, 7 days a week from six in the morning to ten in the evening, allows participants to build a solid practice foundation, at the same time keep their regular lifestyle commitment and make the entire experience sustainable in the long run. As Movement is Transformation, the simple act of building a regularity in practice sets a perfect base for change to sprout out. Combining these with theoretical understanding on how the body works anatomically, the thinking behind the practice in relation to biomechanics, how diet and nutrition affect our body and state of being and working on methods to effectively present one's accumulated learning through the interaction with others, is an excellent microcosm of society for one to experiment their yet unexplored potential.

Choice To Feel Alive

At the end of the day, whether one decides to take up the opportunity to use it as a catalyst for change, to relentlessly work on the process of converting the uneasy to something familiar, a part of you, is totally up to the individual, especially in today’s era of too many choices. On top of this, there are thousands of mediums for change that one can delve into. Perhaps at times, the overwhelming abundance of choices and mediums to potentially explore, is what stops us from venturing out into the unexplored discomfort zone and freezes us with perceived fear. Yet what I can say from my personal experience is, is that if you are experiencing an empty unfulfillment somewhere inside you, perhaps exploring new areas that connect with what invigorates you and makes you feel alive, could be an amazing catalyst for facilitating something you have longed for, yet have never dared to explore.

— Satoko Hore, Managing Partner: Baseworks | Para Impacto

Photo credits: Ken Nakagawa, Patrick Oancia

For information on upcoming collaborations and current Baseworks events check out the Baseworks Events Listings.

If you would like to stay connected to what’s happening with all our Baseworks projects, sign up for our mailing list.

Ready to change your life? was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.” –Jiddu Krishnamurti

Have you ever thought of developing the cognitive and emotional skills of a monk, but gave up after trying 2 sessions of the Headspace meditation app? Or perhaps experienced a new kind of pain from the kimura lock during your Brazilian Jiujitsu grappling practice and left the dojo feeling defeated and uninspired? Have you then resorted to a fancy neurofeedback device as a shortcut to your mind-body transformation? When even this did not bring you to the anticipated black-belt in mindfulness, perhaps tried ayahuasca and microdosing LSD because you heard that these divine substances are guaranteed to hack your way to a perceptual shift? Were you satisfied with the results?

How soon will it be until you try the next popular thing?

Problem and its Cause

I see more and more people these days who jump from one thing to another without giving anything a more augmented try. It’s no surprise, given the plethora of choices and limited time. And the irony is the more sensational or readily appealing and available something is in catching our attention, the faster people tend to both go for it, and before long, opt-out. Relationships, jobs, hobbies, leisure activities… People drop off before even beginning to understand what effect anything has on their lives.

It’s unfortunate how few people seem to know that if they committed more to anything that it could change just about everything. Even if it’s something that they won’t exclusively stay with forever.

My background

Throughout my life, I did competitive sports, including swimming, cycling, snowboarding, and skateboarding. I played instruments, studied dance, martial arts, and performed in bands. I was an apprentice renovating Victorian and Brownstone houses in the gorgeous Canadian city, which I was very proud to call my home in the ’70s and ‘80s.

Whichever the medium, the one thing that was always constant was that the continuous engagement in any of these activities gave me a sense perspective. And that provided me the energy necessary to persevere and get something that I had, in most cases, not anticipated.

When I started teaching movement practices, one of my biggest desires was to share not only what I learned, but also how I learned it. Eventually, I developed Baseworks, a method to work with the body. In the Baseworks method, how one approaches the practice is at the forefront and is as important as the physical aspects of the practice itself.

From Conceptual to Embodied

A practice always starts as a conceptual experience inspired and molded by trends filtering through media, society, and culture. Yet, if one can commit to a regular practice routine, they will inevitably feel the effects and importance of practice consistency in their bodies, gaining insight beyond the popular trends.

Putting in the time necessary to build continuity and consistency is what’s really making it possible to embody the practice. The continuity of practice is not just about adhering to the concepts. It’s more about understanding the compounded effect on performance, perceptual ability, health, and wellbeing over an extended period. To embody a practice is to bring the experience and the outcome together as a whole.

When the goal of the practice is the practice itself rather than the expected targeted gains, the outcomes that emerge from the continuity are in many cases, unpredicted and unexpected.

I put in years of dedication into the development of Baseworks Practice. Yet, I continuously learn something completely new about my body from all the teachers that studied with me when they teach me the method I developed. This is both humbling and powerful.

Gains Beyond Purely Physical

Dedication to practice can evoke emotional intelligence. As we learn from both the challenge and progress of working with the body, it inevitably begins to generalize into other domains of our existence. It rewires the way we see the world and allows us to apply the new skills to real-life experience.

The Baseworks movement principles are all meant to stimulate motor learning. This is the ability of our brain to control movement under a variety of conditions. However, it is not just about building muscle mass and moving the body in space. One of the main objectives of the Baseworks vision is to highlight the effect of movement practice on all faculties of human experience. This is not about the exhilaration of the high one can get from achieving physical gains. And it’s not about prevention of cardiovascular disease, stress relief and undoing the effects of prolonged sitting. I really would like people to experience how a movement practice can affect our psychological and perceptual framework.

Consistency vs. Novelty and Stagnation

When building consistency, it’s also important not to get stuck in the same practice as a kind of habitual pattern. Although routine is essential to how we learn, it threatens to elicit stagnation. In this way, it is vital to continually experience and learn other things.

I was driven by the realization that trying different things was absolutely essential to achieve getting better at all the things I loved to do. Even if that drive was brought about by having fallen into a rut.

Yet without the appropriate foundation, jumping from one new thing to another gives rise to the very same threat of stagnation — getting stuck at a shallow entry-level, not ever knowing what it feels like to advance by going deeper.

Foundation and Building Upon

I’m always going on about how Baseworks Practice is a foundational practice to everybody I meet. To explain what I mean by that, let’s look at architecture (which I love as an inexhaustible source of metaphors to think about body, space, and life in general ). If you think about the foundation of a building, the stronger the foundation, the more you can build on it. But at the same time, it would be redundant to pour the foundation and not to build anything on top.

There’s no doubt that by committing to a structured practice such as Baseworks, one would become better and better at the practice. And if one were to start to teach it, the quality and the form of the practice would be taken to a whole different level.

But I urge anyone not to think that it stops at just that. This is one of the things that sets Baseworks aside from other more exclusive methods. I hope that the deep structure of the practice and the contemplative nature of the approach will give anyone both motor and emotional skills, a more refined perceptual resolution of the body, and a sense of perspective that one could extend to explore whatever the heart is open to.

For me, the Baseworks approach is the object of my commitment. The foundation to continue building upon and a measuring device to reflect on the changes in myself.

As I stack experiences and relate them to the physicality of what goes on in my life, I reinforce the realization that learning is ongoing.

Conclusion

I believe that this continuous, contemplative learning is something that you cannot get by jumping from one thing to another. A compulsion to novelty and the inability to commit robs one of the essential and meaningful experiences in life.

— Patrick, Baseworks Founder

Photo credits: Peter Cook, Patrick Oancia

For information on upcoming collaborations and current Baseworks events check out the Baseworks Events Listings.

If you would like to stay connected to what’s happening with all our Baseworks projects, sign up for our mailing list.

Why you may want to commit was originally published in Baseworks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.