#9: My posture journey + some big tech ranting

Blessed to be moving away from big tech with an upright spine and healthy core

Hello dancer,

So many of you are subscribing to my little piece of the internet! If you are new here: welcome (and do reply to this mail if you like)! I am glad for it makes me less dependent on 'social' media. I am really taking matters (and followers) into my own hand here, so power to the people!

I know that there is real creativity and real value to be found on places like Instagram. But it just sucks that it is so addictive, and that the content needs to be so highly charged to get any attention, and that you have to play by the rules of a multibilliondollar company who feeds on all this human ingenuity.

Maybe I'm just becoming this old person who doesn't want to move with the times... becauseI also feel a huge resistance against the uprise of artificial 'intelligence'. I know how powerful the tools are (I'm a programmer).

But it just makes me very sad that literally trillions of moneys are being pumped into these companies, all in order to make something which might or might not be beneficial to life on earth in some future, while we could have used all this money to just – right here, right now - provide every person on earth with a proper standard of living! For those of you thinking: ah, that is just how things are, it is not! It only feels like this is how it is supposed to be because we are letting narcissists lead the way.

AI just feels like a few narrow-minded men are pushing us to make their own sci-fi fantasies a reality. These people live in a totally different reality, and often have a very disembodied view of what it means to be alive. And we just all have to deal with the consequences. I doubt it will lead to much good. Let's just hope the machines they develop will be more emphatic than their makers.

Enough tech ranting. To the content! Posture journey incoming...

About my posture
Track of the month
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About my posture

In my childhood, sports weren't my thing - I was mostly mind and spirit! Computers, books and music were it for me. My physical development fell a bit behind on my esoteric development, so to say.

I also developed some posture problems. I used to 'walk on my toes', landing every step I took on the front of my feet. As I remember, the doctor told us that this would cause problems later on in life. But we didn’t really do anything about it, so I started forcefully correcting myself to land on the back of my feet. This made my posture even more awkward. Also, in elementary school I started getting bullied for being a bit chubby. In an attempt to cover up, I started holding my belly in and hunching my shoulders while walking, all the time, from my early teens on.

This rough start of my physical growth has given me lots of problems later on. Holding your belly in causes all kinds of side effects, like stomach problems, tense shoulders, and a constant feeling of discomfort. Moreover, because of the bullying, going to swimming pools was always a bit of a tense experience for me, having my upper body exposed. That sucked, because me and my friends went to the swimming pool all the time during summer, and besides all the body shaming awkwardness I loved it.

My forceful correction of the toe walking gave me other problems. For one, I wasn't able to walk long hours, because my legs would just start hurting at some point. At festivals my calves would swell up after one day of walking from stage to stage, which was very uncomfortable. And I just always had a general sense of awkwardness around walking and moving, as if there was always some attention and energy going to my posture with every activity.

It was only in my (mid) twenties that I started to learn more about the body, giving me a sense of what a healthy body posture is. I started going to yoga classes, tried some martial arts classes, cycled all around Amsterdam, and of course went dancing a lot. I finally started doing the necessary physical development that I kind of didn't know I needed so much.

My obsession with my own posture and that of others never entirely faded, however. I still like observing how people walk about. Are they stiff, are their shoulders hunched, do they hold their bellies in? Or do they stroll about gracefully from their core -shoulders relaxed, neck firmly on top, confident and calm? I am also still overly aware of my own posture: am I sitting straight(no)? Am I relaxing my face(no)? Am i using the correct muscles for every movement(no)? This might also be why I like yoga: you get to become sensitive to every muscle, joint and bone while you align with the poses.

My obsession relates to dancing too: I like observing how the dancers move, which muscles they use, with what energy - are they moving from their core, or are their arms steering the movement? Are there movements coming from a place of peace or a place of unrest? You can really just observe this if you know what to look at.

Ecstatic dance and other forms of free dancing really gave me an entrance to being safe in my body. Because when it comes to moving on a dance floor, I feel very free. And especially during ecstatic dance, I feel that I can just let my spirit take over and be creative in my movements. I don't have to feel weird about my body because the whole point of dancing is that you are allowed to be weird!

Anyway, I can now say that I have more body awareness, and that I am more at ease with my body, comfortable, relaxing into my body a bit more . I am also content with not having a perfect body and perfect mobility - I'm taking the middle way here: no obsessive workouts, just enough body stuff so I can feel good and free and hopefully grow old with a straight spine and enough core strength to work in my garden until I collapse.

Track of the month:

Shahram & Hafez Nazeri - Mystic

Ah, the mysticism of the east, medicine for the un-alive. The poetry of Rumi and the likes has so much soul to it. I feel it points us to the divine forces, which are to found inside ourselves more than externally. Shahram Nazeri is an Iranian tenor, and on this album he worked together with his son to create a tribute to Rumi.

I have been playing this track since my first years as an Ecstatic Dance dj. At first I did not dare to play such a quiet track, afraid as I was to lose people's attention. But the dancers usually love it. The deep meditative quality that it brings is unmatched, together with the strong male voice calling to our deepest desires.

Once, an Iranian dancer came to me and explained that the text is about asking yourself 'Who am I?'. I hope that during an ecstatic dance you can answer with 'I don't know and I don't care for I am dancing'.