THE ART OF NO BULLSHIT
EXPLORING THE MOVEMENTS THAT SHAPE OUR LIVES
Let's turn the tables. Let's not focus on exploring our movements. Let's explore the movements that shape our lives. And this exploration should be a struggle. I truly believe that we need to wrestle.
Wrestling with ourselves and with others, with circumstances - individual and global - and ideas, with perceptions, with values, perspectives and also with our instincts, with our complexity and contradictions. Harmony is not a state we live in, I mean, look around you, it is something we always strive for and will never achieve. There is no static balance, and yet we struggle for this balance, and that's a good thing. That's the infinite game.
RING WRING WRESTLE
Isn't it interesting that the verb "to wring" contains the ring, the round, the circle? And that when we "wring", we squeeze something out in a circular motion? You can see it in such a way that what is wrung out is something existential, essential, substantial, or you can see it as something foreign that we get rid of.
Circular movements. We find them in some martial arts such as Taiji, Baguazhang, Aikido, Judo, Tui Shou, Open Hands.
UNGRINDING WHAT HAS BEEN GRINDED IN
We do not become romanticized warriors of light when we wrestle. No, that cannot be the way. Warriors and war cannot be the way. We work truthfully and honestly with our ingrained patterns, the tensions and reactions, with our dark sides, the demons, the dark sides of the myths and gods and the light, our dormant potentials.
"WE DO NOT ASK THE EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS. WE ARE FACING THE EXISTENTIAL QUESTIONS"
Fun & depth
We also discover the rhythms, the primal forces, our alienation from them and from nature, inside and out, begin to reintegrate, create space and find the unimaginable, such as the power of imagination and its very concrete effects. We encounter again and again the resistances that work within us until they begin to dissolve, and we do not solve things by merging them into superficial harmony, by balancing them out, by leveling them out, but by bringing ourselves totally into our true and honest and authentic search for solutions, for peace, balance, growth, evolution, justice - for change. We are totally involved: with everything that we are. We do not find change on the outside. We change ourselves. And in doing so, as a creative act, as agents, we change the outside. Because we don't have to win, we want to change ourselves through our struggle with existential questions. Because we don't ask the existential questions. We face the existential questions. We explore the movements that shape our lives. And in this process, we are shaped.
BUT STILL: IT'S REALLY FUN!
Doesn't that sound like fun? Well... Not superficial fun, but I can guarantee you: We change best when we don't take ourselves too seriously. It's not a fight. That's why our main activity is serious play. The No Bullshit Game, where no one is fooling us and where we are not fooling anyone (including ourselves). We learn to play on the edge, but we play. Playing as if it were a matter of life and death. Because it is a matter of life and death. But we play lightly, because death can't touch us if we really are playing a never-ending game. And yet: it's really fun!
Sounds crazy? Yes. It should be. Because being centered is important, but the crazy and truly transforming things happen on the periphery, and the stronger the center, the wider the periphery can be. That's why we work with both aspects.
Sounds paradoxical? Welcome to the ring!
SOCRATES SENDS HIS REGARDS. AND HE LEAVES QUESTIONS
We consistently explore the movements that shape our lives through dialog. This dialog takes place on all levels and is anchored in physical movement. Our No Bullshit vessel is Open Hands. Open Hands is the Simplest Martial Art of Peace and the Simplest Art of No Bullshit. It is a practice of physical dialog that involves not only the body, but the whole person. It is a very simple form of infinite play that can be practiced anywhere there are two people, unleashing and cultivating the full potential of free-flowing complexity and effortless dynamic connection.
Open Hands is a Socratic method. It is dialogical, and it deconstructs and reconstructs not through statements, but through questions. Every movement is either a question or an answer, and every successful movement differentiates and integrates.