Connections

[thelerner]

Hoping people can write about connections they've found.  The likely and unlikely ones.

 

 

Here's mine.

I've been learning golf and recently started guitar and pool/billiard lessons.  Pool really helped my golf game.  During golf you go long periods without hitting the ball (for me looking for my ball), whereas in pool you're hitting pretty often giving you more actual practice time, with immediate feedback.  Both are aim based and while the techniques are different the planning and concentration are very similar.  

 

In both the power of the strike, the focus is greatly helped by extension, relaxation, a feeling of freedom.  In golf to get the speed it's good to feel like you're throwing the club itself far away.  It's a simpler motion with the cue, but its a similar light yet snug grip and the teacher also said, feel like you're throwing it away.

 

This relates to guitar too.  I can't make good music, so I want to it away.  No, that's not it. It's the strumming.  You hear any tension in the hand.  It's slows you down and the chords sound stilted.  Only with the same 'throw it away' feeling do the chords play right, and that relaxation makes hitting the strings on the up strum easier.  

 

This is the same lesson I learned throughout Aikido, but without specific reminders it's easy to forget along the early learning curve.  So guitar, golf, pool, Aikido.. all the same. 

[liminal_luke]

Star of David...Two triangles intersect, and, in the space where they merge, magic happens.

 

Christian Cross...Two lines intersect, and, in the space where they merge, magic happens.

 

Daoist alchemy...Yang rises as yin descends, and, in the space where they merge, magic happens.

Edited October 26, 2017 by liminal_luke

[thelerner]

39 minutes ago, liminal_luke said:

Daoist alchemy...Yang rises as yin descends, and, in the space where they merge, magic happens.

That reminds connects me to this..

 

On 10/23/2017 at 6:41 AM, awaken said:

The line between Yin and Yan is self-conciousness.

We call it 識神.

 

Edited October 26, 2017 by thelerner

[Fa Xin]

I thought about examples from life. Not many came to mind. 

 

At work one time, a coworker of mine threw something at me - maybe a candy bar or balled up piece of paper and I caught it. He did it a few more times in the following days and I caught them all.  He told a few of my coworkers, “if you throw something at him, even though he’s not expecting it, he catches it.”  The last few months have been coworkers trying to catch me off guard and bounce something off my face...they’ve only succeeded once or twice! Usually when they don’t say “catch” as they throw it (seems I respond like a trained animal to commands)

 

it just makes me happy to know- that all my years of training my hands, and my awareness, has culminated in this honorable display of skills. 

 

*deep bow*

[Lost in Translation]

I don't understand this topic!

 

I've been learning no-driving. It's like regular driving except with my mind turned off. Makes traffic much easier to handle. I hardly even mind @$$3$ who cut me off when merging and don't use blinkers.

[Marblehead]

The hip bone is connected to the leg bone.

 

[3bob]

8 hours ago, Lost in Translation said:

I don't understand this topic!

 

I've been learning no-driving. It's like regular driving except with my mind turned off. Makes traffic much easier to handle. I hardly even mind @$$3$ who cut me off when merging and don't use blinkers.

 

I remember the traffic in big Indian cities or towns, it seemed like major chaos and one would expect to see car, motorcycle, and rickshaw wrecks (and some cow collisions) on nearly every street or block, yet I saw almost no wrecks of any kind for somehow the pin-ball machine like traffic conditions brought out an almost unbelievable level instinctive adaptation in the drivers to avoid wrecks!  (and that was with few traffic lights or traffic cops)

[dwai]

4 minutes ago, 3bob said:

 

I remember the traffic in big Indian cities or towns, it seemed like major chaos and one would expect to see car, motorcycle, and rickshaw wrecks (and some cow collisions) on nearly every street or block, yet I saw almost no wrecks of any kind for somehow the pin-ball machine like traffic conditions brought out an almost unbelievable level instinctive adaptation in the drivers to avoid wrecks!  (and that was with few traffic lights or traffic cops)

Yeah back when I used to drive in India, it felt just like just a stream flowing into a river