Posted by Too often we are taught to break apart the body and look at it as a series of problems; to fragment it in order to make the complexity of human movement more manageable, and injuries more fixable. But we pay a hidden and enormous price for this.
We lose our intrinsic sense of connection to the larger whole. When we want to actually move, we then try to reassemble the fragments and hope they all work together seamlessly and efficiently, but this is similar to trying to reassemble the fragments of a broken mirror to see your true reflection – you’ll get a version of it, yes; but distorted, fractured and incomplete.
And after a while you forget what holistic, natural movement really feels like.
No amount of rigid exercise can prepare you for the aliveness of natural movement. While most forms of training have a benefit, to unlock your body’s innate movement capacity you must explore increasingly complex and endlessly adapting challenges.
Experimentation is necessary. Getting lost is essential. Failure is vital.
The tools and ideas we use in parkour are for destroying the illusion that your body, and hence your movement, is composed of separate, unrelated parts.
When we give up this illusion we can then allow ourselves to become the true learning organisms that we are: organisms in which new and expansive patterns of movement are nurtured, where adaptation is the driving force and where holistic movement is set free.
Dan Edwardes 