at some point i really need to write up a phenomenology of what sleep is like for me because it’s really much deeper and more spiritual than “did i get my eight hours my physical body needs to be a material being in a material world.”

my sleep schedules

i have basically four sleep schedules:

• 8-11 hours of sleep per night
• 6-7.5 hours of sleep per night
• 3-4 hours of sleep per night
• biphasic period—”up for a few hours in the middle of the night”

i think of these as like gears of a manual car. i just notice which one i’m in and shift accordingly

all of these assume napping!

rest /= sleep! see Help for Insomnia: Yet Another use for Mindfulness – Shinzen Young

kinds of fatigue

there are several different kinds of fatigues i experience, and they really are not all created equal. mind-tired. body-tired. soul-tired.

Sleep Rearranging Things

one of those nights of sleep where a bunch of stuff gets rearranged under the hood

was talking to myself a ton lol

feels like something is being channeled through me that comes out at that time

Savor Your Sleep – Zencephalon

Other:

i think of all my 100k bangers in the middle of the night on waking from dreams and then promptly fall back asleep and never tweet them

i wake up a lot in the night.

i am a light sleeper.

i can nap easily, under any circumstances.

one time—just once in my life—i was falling asleep while walking. that was when I was doing polyphasic sleep. i have an essay in An Autodidact about doing polyphasic

Resources:

sleep deprivation as treatment for depression

Permit Miracles – Zencephalon

note to self: if and when U write these essays, make sure to search your tweets and journals for sleep-related terms. there’s gold there. u’ll notice the patterns

The post a phenomenology of sleep first appeared on Tasshin.

i don’t want to talk about it too much but just to be real food is sometimes hard for me, i have a lot of shame and guilt around eating and food, i forget to eat or often don’t want to, i’d rather do other things, i’ve been underweight at points and have eating disorder-type tendencies

i’m happy with my current weight and promise to myself to eat 3x a day. this is one of my most basic and helpful, loving self-love practices

our society is aimed towards assuming people have a hard time losing weight, but i am one of those who have a hard time gaining weight. it’s real, please don’t say “gee i wish that were me,” it’s also hard and unpleasant, just in a different way

i would sometimes have bad body days where i would feel headachey, sore, tired, low mood, low energy, etc.

i felt like an old man. but i was 30 when this started happening. it took me some months to realize i simply wasn’t eating enough food.

the purpose of this post is to collect thoughts and resources on my food stuff, eating disorders, and practical suggestions for what’s worked for me—esp. in case it’s useful to someone else with similar problems.

some components of my food stuff:

• physical: disliking eating after a certain point.
• financial: don’t want to spend money. habitual frugality to a fault.
• energetic: if i eat less, i can sleep less, do more. don’t need to eat a lot if i habitually don’t exercise much or eat much. i enjoy that.
• logistical:
  • annoying / aversive to shop / cook etc. other things more interesting, fun, useful.
  • i change where i live frequently. different places / states / countries / locations have different shopping + restaurant situations. hard to predict what i’ll be able to buy at grocery stores or restaurants. don’t want to carry things with me.
• emotional/psychological: specific memories and feelings often come up.
  • leftover family stuff.
  • leftover vegan/vegetarian stuff.
  • leftover buddhism stuff.
  • guilt about spending money on food when i’m supported by generosity.
• habitual: used to eating 1-2 meals a day.
• metabolic: hard to gain weight. even when i’ve tried i’ve maxed out at ~150 and lost it again quickly. seems like ~140 is more of my natural set point.
• health: having digestive/gut issues (candida)

a lot of this would be solved pretty easily if i had a house / apartment, and a regular routine of grocery shopping and cooking. which is why, as of this writing, I have ended my pilgrimage and am trying to settle down in Brooklyn

i’ll share just a few things that have helped me, in case they help others:

• making a list of all of the diverse historical, psychological, emotional, spiritual factors that contributed / contribute to my disordered eating tendencies (see above)
• focusing on eating three meals a day. up to four meals a day when exercising more or sleeping less
• weighing myself once every few months when i can, making a spreadsheet of weight over time. adding in bars for high and low weight so i can tell when i am under or over my ideal weight range
• starting to eat meat. tonglen / compassion practice while eating meat to process feelings of grief, pain, self-hatred, fear, etc.
• drinking roughly a half gallon of milk a day to stay hydrated and get some extra fat/protein
• buying a portable blender to make smoothies
• exercising more so i want to eat more, have to eat more (and also sleep more)
• giving myself permission to not finish food if i feel full
• giving myself permission to eat “junk food” that actually feels desirable when hungry (rather than food that doesn’t)
• being willing to spend more money on already-prepared foods, purchased as needed, rather than cooking or grocery shopping
• using the word “sustenance” as a mantra—to remind me to eat, that my body needs nourishment, that i thrive when i am well-fed
• i love how well asking myself “if i loved myself truly and deeply, what would i do” works
• i’m on a new diet i call “does my body believe this food will help me live to eighty or ninety for the benefit of all beings”

i’m gonna go get dinner now, i love U T, and i love U, also

The post notes on my food stuff first appeared on Tasshin.

the internet is magick, so many good things can come from posting!

sharing ur gifts, expressing ur heart, posting ur wisdom on the internet will lead to magick opportunities for u and tremendous benefit for ur friends and ultimately the whole world

Isabel: i honestly think everyone should tweet way more. it is such a gift to have access to what feels like the entire world at our fingertips. share thoughts and get instant feedback on how they resonate. social media, at its best, is a powerful portal into the collective consciousness

people who lurk or post less (or could just stand to post more), often have fears or blocks that partially valid truths and partially outdated, false assumptions. those need to be looked at, cared for, felt through, updated in, addressed their own time

can have a pseudonym. see Alts as R&D

posting to the void

Loopy asks Women: How do U decide how much to share online?

if you were once a lurker (Tasshin)

oh, to tweet/write/share more, i can just be a curator of the shit i’m into, i don’t have to generate knowledge or insight myself! of course (Kristijan)

and then people will engage with feedback in the form of agreement, disagreement, thoughts, questions, which will give you the activation energy and the clues and the breadcrumbs to move forward, help you wayfind the direction to steer in!

isabel’s advice:

H: Posting into the void doesn’t seem too helpful

Rich: if you don’t know how to find your voice on twitter: you can spend time with people who tweet, see how they translate who they are in person into who they are on the timeline. they’ll show you what games are available. you’ll pick it up

what you have to understand about creating something is that doing it now may seem like it is for a silent void or small audience, you may hear only crickets when you share what is precious to you—

but you are doing it not only for now, but for the future, for time, for posterity, to touch a heart you’ve not yet met in a moment that has not yet arrived, to reach a friend you’ve not yet made, to summon a life and a world you’ve not yet imagined

selene: can’t believe I managed to significantly elevate my material conditions, find a fantastic group of close friends, lose weight, meet my husband, and overall position myself better than my parents did at my age…mainly by incessantly posting online about my internal state

useful speech for my lurker friends, timely/context aware speech for my poster friends

an old thread from my friend K, since deactivated:

Tasshin has been my ‘expression cheerleader’ for a few months.

Today I posted much more than I’ve been willing to thus far. He asked me to write on what got me over the hump in the event it would be helpful to others…

1. I waited until I had the internal bandwidth to feel through all the inevitable emotional whiplash that follows being seen

2. I allowed myself to delete posts that put me out of range of how much sensation (eg embarrassment) I can hold.

3. I engaged with people I consider wholesome and nonjudgmental (making their spaces feel more psychologically safe).

4. I reflected on my motivation before posting (but not too much!)

This prevented the delayed onset embarrassment of expressing for validation.

5. I cultivated a willingness to be perceived as lame.

The first two felt really good! Like sharing my personal experience would be helpful to others.

Universe Sweetheart: lurk less, live more

from lurker zero to poster hero

The post notes on expressing yourself online first appeared on Tasshin.

observations on energy and energymaxxing, what i’ve noticed for myself and what’s worked for me, how i see it:

1: use energy to gain energy!

when u use energy, u gain more energy (and capacity). u aren’t spending a finite resource that needs to be budgeted and conserved, u are drawing on a muscle that strengthens from use

After you have found inner peace you have endless energy—the more you give, the more you receive. After you have found your calling, you work easily and joyously. You never get tired.

— Peace Pilgrim

2: u can rest meaningfully from one activity by exerting urself fully at another.

u can rest from one muscle group by using another. u can take a break from one kind of exertion by doing something wildly different just as fully, completely, mindfully

3: monitor ur tank!

watch your battery percentage before and after specific activities and encounters, with different people and in different contexts. notice what patterns u learn, do more of what energizes u, brings u to life, and less of what deadens u

4: energy and calm, vigor and relaxation must be balanced as factors.

neither is better or worse, intrinsically good or bad—they must be increased in tandem, restored and rebalanced as needed, an upward spiral always

MN 10 The Establishing of Mindfulness Discourse | Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta

Sleep: learn to nap

Breathing: learn to do the extended exhale

Hydration:

Diet:

Aliveness:

every intervention U make will support the others!

some interventions may have outsized impact for U than others!

U may need different things that what I needed!

take whatever steps seem easiest for U first!

The steps toward inner peace are not taken in any certain order. The first step for one may be the last step for another. So just take whatever steps seem easiest for you, and as you take a few steps, it will become easier for you to take a few more.

Peace Pilgrim

Strategies to 10x Your Energy Levels from Hyde

The art in this post was created by Sílvia Bastos, and is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license. You can support her work on Patreon. 

The post energymaxxing first appeared on Tasshin.

Once U see something that fundamental differently, U can’t unsee it. Everything looks different. I feel much more well-positioned to understand trust intuitively in a way that seems both more accurate and more useful. 

My Life

Learning about the Non-Naive Trust Dance has clarified situations that I’ve been in in the past, that I found confusing at the time.

I can see that many of these instances had trust and distrust as implicit elements, that the ways that they went awry are well-explained by NNTD. 

This new understanding has also helped me to orient better towards my present life and future goals: to respect my own trust and distrust, and to be well-positioned to respect others’, also.

The Service Guild

I want to be a good leader, and I want the organization I’m creating, The Service Guild, to flourish. To really succeed, it’s clear to me that The Service Guild will need an embodied, well-distributed understanding of trust and distrust. 

NNTD serves that purpose. I want The Guild’s culture to incorporate these ideas and practices. I want us to relate to trust in a way that respects distrust, that doesn’t try to force things or gloss over distrust. 

TPOT/The Network

Beyond myself and The Service Guild, I increasingly believe that NNTD matters for the larger ecosystems I’m connected to—especially the one sometimes called TPOT or, more recently, The Network. 

There are other such ecosystems, networks, scenes that I am aware of. I believe that everyone in these kinds of scenes will need a more robust understanding of trust and distrust as they continue, grow, and expand—as they encounter new cultures and new domains and new problem spaces.

Trust and distrust are simply going to come up. They’re already at play. So the question is, how do we coordinate in ways that respect, acknowledge, and honor that trust and distrust?

NNTD has valuable perspectives and answers for these questions, that I think we need to explore and apply in earnest—that will help us to coordinate effectively at larger and larger scales.

The World

I believe NNTD also applies at even larger scales: that it’s important for our species, for our planet, and ultimately for all beings. 

It seems to me that we are undergoing a phase shift as a species, where we’re learning how to be a global civilization, a planet that cares for all its peoples—not just humans, but also plants, animals, and the land itself.

This is not an easy process, but it is happening—it has a kind of momentum. A necessity, even.

I believe that NNTD will help us to respect different cultures, their careabouts and perspectives, so that we can coordinate effectively, harmoniously. I also believe it will set us up for success with the possibility of becoming a multi-planetary species—going to Mars and beyond.

Above all, my encounter with NNTD makes me have faith in the possibility of world peace.

World Peace by Olivia Ortiz Asenita Fernandez is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Conclusion

May this knowledge spread and dissipate itself fractally through the world. May it take root within our own hearts and minds. May it grow to benefit the people we care about, to serve the communities we are connected to, to aid the cultures and nations we are a part of. 

May a better understanding of trust and distrust lead to more sanity and kindness, love and respect. May it lead us forwards. May we learn to coordinate effectively and skillfully as a civilization, species, and planet, for our own flourishing and the benefit of all beings.

May world peace come to pass in our life times, for the benefit of all beings.

Further Resources

If the puzzle pieces in this blog post and series inspire U, U would probably also enjoy reading these pieces from Malcolm:

• 100x Vision
• Illustration of the meta-team vision 
• How We Get There 

Thank U to Bee Eye for prompting the voice memo that served as the basis for this piece. 

The post Why NNTD Matters: From Self-Trust to World Peace first appeared on Tasshin.

There are a number of reasons why I have come to believe in world peace.

One is the example of my hero, Peace Pilgrim. 

She walked for decades on her pilgrimage, working towards peace through her deeds and her days. Her life was a prayer for peace. 

A pilgrim is a wanderer with a purpose. A pilgrimage can be to a place—that’s the best known kind—but it can also be for a thing. Mine is for peace, and that is why I am a Peace Pilgrim.

My pilgrimage covers the entire peace picture: peace among nations, peace among groups, peace within our environment, peace among individuals, and the very, very important inner peace—which I talk about most often because that is where peace begins.

The situation in the world around us is just a reflection of the collective situation. In the final analysis, only as we become more peaceful people will we be finding ourselves living in a more peaceful world.

Peace’s prayer was not answered in her lifetime. That doesn’t mean that she failed. It means that these things take time. All in God’s time.

Something else that has given me faith in world peace is my experience with parts work and Internal Family Systems. 

I’ve done a lot of parts work over the years, and experience myself as largely internally harmonized as a result. There can still be internal conflict sometimes, of course, but I feel more internally aligned than not. Connecting to Self energy, resolving inner conflict, finding internal harmony, has given me faith in that possibility at other scales.

I’ve already seen examples of this kind of harmony at the scale of small groups: in my collaborations and dyads, in The Service Guild and other groups and organizations and scenes. Collaborating with other people, believing problems are soluble, that creative omni-win solutions are always possible, makes me believe in the possibility of peace at even larger scales.

But above all, something that has given me faith in the possibility of World Peace, as an actual, practical, believable possibility, is coming to understand Malcolm’s Non-Naive Trust Dance (NNTD). A better understanding of trust and distrust seems necessary (but not sufficient) for global coordination and ultimately world peace. That’s part of why I hope to distribute NNTD more widely—in service of world peace.

The post Why I Believe World Peace is Possible in Our Lifetimes first appeared on Tasshin.

I made a list of what I thought their goals were, and sequenced them into a kind of diagram. It was like a pre-requisite tree, or Visa’s dominoes meme.

One of the last nodes I put on the plan was something like global governance. I have long thought that the problems we are facing will require some kind of global governance.

It could be a beneficient, omni-win global government. It could be some kind of coordination layer that would allow us to communicate and interoperate more effectively as a planet, as a species. 

I’m not attached to what this looks like—but I do think we need to coordinate effectively on a global level. As a species, and as a planet.

My friends and allies agreed. They also concurred that a world governance layer or system would become possible, would be needed. 

And then I added: “And then…world peace?” 

To my mind, it seemed like world peace would follow from having the capacity for genuine world governance. That it would be a logical next step.

Banksy: Armoured Peace Dove by eddiedangerous is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

They seemed hesitant and unsure. We have been trained to think that world peace is a foolish dream of incompetent hippies, the product of willful optimism and wishful thinking.

But I became more stubborn, brash, insistent: “No, we must aim for world peace. What’s the point of having global coordination if U don’t use it to bring about world peace? I will settle for nothing less. ”

Like most of us, my heart has broken again and again at recurring war and pointless violence. And my heart has long prayed for world peace.

But increasingly, I believe world peace is genuinely possible. That it is a real possibility—and that it is possible in our lifetimes, no less.

I will stand for it. I will stand for world peace in our lifetimes.

The post I Will Stand for World Peace first appeared on Tasshin.

one of the things i’ve been sitting with here in North Carolina is grief. my pilgrimage was a happy and beautiful and painful and incredibly growthy period of my life, full and abundant and blessed beyond measure. i loved living that way and i was sad to end it. and i found it hard to say goodbye.

i learned so much on my pilgrimage, from so many people, in so many places. i wanted to write something, to document some of the things that i learned, to keep a record for myself and posterity.

i learned that i often feel sad, depressed, and lonely on the first night in a new place. i started calling this the “first night effect.”

i gained the ability to sleep on nearly any surface, to nap with just a few moments, to sleep through loud noises if need be or to summon alertness at the blink of an eye.

i learned that i can do six or seven Zoom calls or in-person meetings a day, day after day, in seeming perpetuity.

for someone who loves SOP’s, i learned, far too late, the value of having a packing checklist, a ritual for going between places. i’d started leaving things behind by accident and resolved never again. i found that when i stopped to collect my things with care and precision, i also gathered my heart—i left blessings for my hosts, and began to orient towards my next chapter 

i was kicked out of a stretching class and bit by a dog. i was asked not to practice Tai Chi outside of a library, and welcomed into the homes of countless saints. 

at the close of my pilgrimage, there were 128 people in cities and countries around the world willing to host me, to put me up on their couches or in their guest rooms—everywhere from Brooklyn to Vienna, Sydney to Sofia. i came to see that having a place to offer is an underrated form of owned power. 

i learned that cities have personalities or characters or spirits, fields and egregores. 

i found myself typing or categorizing cities as head or heart or gut cities. 

i learned that i found it useful to oscillate between city mode and rural mode, between weeks or months with many in-person meetings and weeks or months with far more quiet, stillness, slowness, and nature. it was like maker and manager schedule, but for pilgrims.

i learned that there was often an explicit, conscious reason that i wanted to go somewhere, needed to be there—and that while i was there, a more subtle reason would reveal itself, an implicit mission and an emergent quest.

i heard from someone that they saw me as the most extroverted person they’d ever met, and heard from another person that they saw me as the most introverted person they’d ever met. i fell in love with seeing people’s souls and struggled with my ability to understand groups and social dynamics. 

i learned that meeting new people or going to new places advances the plot. that talking to many people solves problems and cultivates genius. 

i learned how to be a good guest and, by inversion, how to be a good host.

i learned about the word “dyspraxia,” a learning disability, and a number of my friends helped me to cultivate praxia instead. 

i learned that it was possible to have short term relationships, that these helped me to grow and flourish, and were often neater and cleaner and more straightforward than indeterminate indefinite relationships. 

i learned that i was on a self-assigned recovery program, a post-monastic integration exercise, escaping the bubble of Buddhism and rural vermont to see the world, encounter a thousand different people and even more perspectives, ways of life, worldviews and orientations.

i learned to see the world through the lens of the life force, to sense that the life force was calling me somewhere or asking something of me. i learned the joy of being at the right place at the right time, and the sorrow and pain of being out of alignment with the life force.

i learned that people find me brave for things that feel intuitive, come naturally, and that i have gifts that few see but bless my life and this world nonetheless.

i learned that i have a tremendous capacity for enduring awkwardness. 

i felt my heart as one that loves everyone at first sight yet bleeds from papercuts. 

i once believed myself weak and unvirtuous. i have disabused myself of that misperception. i saw that i am resilient beyond my own measure.

i began to view life as having chapters, and myself as a protagonist, one of many heroes in the grand story of God’s endless multiverse—a view that allowed me to let go of being an involuntary subject of the whims and tides of life, and instead become an active participant in the shaping of its seasons. 

i met the greatest love of my life (so far), experienced excruciating heartbreak, learned the hard-earned skill and life-long boon of the capacity to grieve.

i met lifelong friends and onetime lovers, a thousand teachers and a million strangers. i taught a homeless man the dharma on a park bench and argued with a security guard about the sovereignty of my own body.

there’s much more than this that i learned. but that’s what i remember for now. and i am glad to have written of it, and to have shared it with U.

to be on pilgrimage, to wander from here to there, is to constantly be saying goodbye and hello–to constantly be confronting the fact that we will not have infinite time together, to constantly be rejoicing in the gift of the time that we do have alive, alongside the ones we love

The post not quite 100 things i learned as a pilgrim first appeared on Tasshin.

This blog post is about a word that changed my life to learn: dyspraxia¹.

I was reading an essay from my friend David MacIver—Words and Bodies—when he described the word.

And I thought, “Aha! That’s what I have!”

U know dyslexia? It’s a condition involving difficulty reading, from the Greek roots dys (“bad, abnormal, difficult”) and lexis (“word”).

Dyspraxia is also a learning disability, but for someone who has difficulty navigating the world, with mechanical skills, and embodied proprioception.

I’ve historically had such a hard time manipulating physical objects, understanding how they work, using spatial intelligence, etc.

In school, I would pathologically avoid sports. I had weird resistance to things like routine cooking or learning new physical skills. And I was hilariously, comically bad with everyday objects like doors and locks². Over the years this has caused me no end of frustration, embarrassment, and difficulty.

Learning about dyspraxia has been so helpful and explanatory for me. And since then, I’ve learned a number of strategies and tactics—not just for working around dyspraxia’s inconvenience, but for cultivating praxia. This post will share what I’ve learned!

The Challenge of Dyspraxia

There are two levels of difficulty with dyspraxia: the immediate practical difficulties of understanding physical objects and proprioception, and the emotional aspect of stored trauma associated with this confusion.

That trauma can cause us to disassociate from things that might require us to use skills we don’t have, or to subtly avoid situations that could bring up challenges.

For example, in fifth grade I was required to take a music class—band, orchestra, or chorus. I remember that I chose chorus, in part because it wouldn’t require me to learn an instrument. It felt simpler, less scary.

I’ve realized that, for me at least, a component of dyspraxia is the experience of words/labels being disconnected from sights/visual inputs of objects being disconnected from the physical tactile/kinesthetic experiences of touching those objects.

For example, I have heard the word hi-hats; I have definitely heard the sounds of hi-hats before; and I’m reasonably confident that I’ve even hit a hi-hat physically before on a drum. But I can’t for the life of me at this moment connect those three experiences. It’s like aphantasia, but for words and objects.

This can cause me to disassociate when people give me verbal/intellectual explanations of things, because I can’t keep up with the words they’re saying, especially when they’re disconnected from real present physical experiences.

I remember being amazed when I realized that other people actually understand verbal instructions. Someone can explain something to them, and then they get it! Crazy!

I don’t tend to understand verbal instructions unless they are delivered in a very specific way that works for my nervous system and learning type. Instead, I disassociate, glaze over, and feel hopeless that I’ll ever learn what’s being shared—which is unfortunately a self-fulfilling prophecy!

What Actually Helped

Reframing Dyspraxia: Probably the biggest change that helped me was reframing the story that I had in my mind about myself. At first, it was relieving to label myself as dyspraxic; finally, I had a name for everything that I had been going through. But eventually, that became a kind of prison where I identified with the label and the disability.

Eventually, I decided to reframe my experience: to see it as choosing to cultivate praxia.

Rather than avoiding situations that would bring up my dyspraxia, I leaned into the challenge and actively looked for opportunities to cultivate praxia. Rubik’s cubes, juggling, skateboarding, martial arts—all learning opportunities rather than threats.

Practicing Tai Chi, for example, helped me to become more graceful, smooth, and fluid in the way that I move through the world.

I am actively cultivating the ability to orient towards objects in a smooth, fluent way—the ability to navigate the world with confidence.

Finding Patient, Loving, Skilled Friends and Mentors: Finding people who understand dyspraxia and are able to meet me there has been so helpful in this journey. People who make me feel seen and understood. People who respond to my requests and needs. People who explain things conceptually in a way that I can understand them.

Two such people stand out as having been especially helpful mentors in this process.

Catherio

My friend Catherio was very helpful. I got a download just from being around her. She was very praxic, able to explain physical skills in a loving, calm, attuned way that made sense to me, and also able to listen to my experience and help debug anything that wasn’t working.

In one notable example, she taught me how to safely chop with knives, and assess their sharpness or dullness—an exercise that showed me much, much, more than the immediate skill at hand.

Loving Presence: Catherio suggested that I use my skill of mindfulness to be present with the external sensations, and my skill of lovingkindness to be loving towards myself—to cultivate loving presence when learning something new or facing a challenge in the physical world.

Shortly after I spent time with Catherio, I flew to Brooklyn. I arrived quite late at night. It was very, very cold out, and I was looking forward to falling into bed.

My host was gone, and there was a lockbox with the key for me to get inside. Unfortunately, the lockbox was stuck. I was frustrated because it was late at night, it was freezing, and above all, I doubted my ability. My hands were starting to freeze along with the metal. I started imagining having to find a hotel late at night.

I remembered Catherio’s advice about loving presence and decided to keep trying. I focused on being present and mindful with the external sensations of the lockbox while being internally loving with myself. It took a number of tries, but eventually I was able to open the lockbox and get inside. This was a really big win—in a moment that mattered!

Describing What I See: Catherio suggested that I describe what I see aloud. That can help me orient towards my senses and make sense of it. It also helps someone else who’s teaching me to understand my moment-by-moment experience and give tailored feedback.

Believing I Can: Catherio showed me that I had believed there were a whole swath of things that I cannot do, because I didn’t have various prerequisites. But that’s not true!

She gave me confidence that if I put the pre-requisites in place with the help of a teacher I trust, in a learning context I feel safe in, I can develop mastery in anything. In other words, she demonstrated and imparted the belief that I can do everything, in any domain.

Obviously, I may not do everything—I may never go parasailing or stunt diving—but mastery is possible in all domains. Catherio really believes that in her body, and spending time with her helped me to do so, too, on a deeper level.

Rich

My friend and mentor Rich has also been very helpful with cultivating praxia. When I was with him in person at Casa Tilo, he helped me go through various physical exercises in a way that made sense to me and worked for my learning style.

Touching Objects, Finding Referents for Words: Rich showed me several different kinds of wrenches. He let me hold them and touch them as he explained them. He suggested that when I listen to words, I should try to see if I can find referents for them in my own experience.

I found that touching them, listening to his words, and tracking my own experience gave me a real visceral understanding of how these tools worked, in a way that was distinct and meaningful beyond my normal experience of “learning” how tools or objects work.

Watching YouTube Videos: Rich gathered this thread of YouTube videos that share videos of people working on physical projects like plumbing or construction, and has encouraged me to watch these videos (and this kind of thing) as a way to cultivate praxia.

Learning is an End In Itself: He passed on a phrase and state of mind from his father, that learning how something works is valuable in and of itself. I would have agreed with that on paper previously, but him saying that made me realize that I was typically only willing to learn new physical skills if I could see it was necessary for a goal I wanted to achieve.

Other Strategies I’ve Discovered

Going Slowly: Proceeding slowly is helpful if something feels scary, overwhelming, or just very new.

Noticing Voice: The voice that someone says instructive words with seems to matter quite a bit for my ability to process and learn from their verbal instructions. Their volume and speed of speaking can massively affect my ability to download new information about the physical world through words and speech.

Fast or loud feels aversive, hard to focus on, easy to disassociate from.

Slow and quiet feels gentle, easier to work with, smoother to learn from—especially if they are attuned to me, and tracking whether I’m understanding or not. I can also pause them to ask questions if they go slowly.

Use My Body to Mirror What I’m Learning: Using my body to physically represent something someone is trying to show me helps me understand better, and also allows the other person to track my understanding and pace the learning accordingly.

Actually Do The Task: Above all, it’s important that a teacher or instructor actually let me do the task. They can explain it, they can show me how they do it, but I need to actually try to do it with my hands and body—to have them watch me, offer feedback, and let me ask clarifying questions. A verbal explanation alone is insufficient—and may even be unnecessary or unhelpful.

Conclusion

One of the best compliments I got recently was after spending time with a friend of mine in person. When I mentioned dyspraxia, they said that they didn’t believe that I have it, because I seemed perfectly fine with the world and physical objects. I was so flattered! I’ve come such a long way!

I hope that what I’ve shared in this post will be helpful to other folks who want to feel more confident and competent in the physical world. May all dyspraxic beings cultivate praxia

Thank U to David MacIver for introducing me to the word dyspraxia. Thank U to Catherio, Rich, and many others who’ve helped me to cultivate praxia.

The art in this post was created by Sílvia Bastos, and is licensed under a CC BY 2.0 license. You can support her work on Patreon. 

The post Cultivating Praxia first appeared on Tasshin.

It took until my senior year, but eventually I was hired as a writing assistant.

My boss was Mr. Pastille. He was a great boss, in that he was mostly pretty hands off—we received very little training as such, and I was empowered to trust my own intuition and sense for what each student requesting assistance needed, about how to support them. I loved that.

I also got to attend some workshops that Mr. Pastille hosted, about his view on the writing process, which was very instructive and inspiring for me. What he shared in that hour-long session has been an important part of my writing process ever since.

Here’s the core of what I learned back then from Mr. Pastille about the writing process:

1. Pick a topic U want to write about.
2. List questions U could ask yourself about that topic.
3. Order those questions in a logical sequence.
4. Answer your questions.
5. Make sure U include the text of the questions in your answers. (For example, if U have the question “Where did U go to college?”, start your answer “I went to college at St. John’s College…”)
6. Remove the questions!

Tada! U magically have a first draft! And at no point in the writing process did U have a blank page staring back at U.

This process has been invaluable to me throughout my career as a writer. I did use it in school, but I’ve also used it in the workplace, to write blog posts and books, memos and movie reviews. It even forms the basis of how I approach interviews on my podcast.

Now is an especially good time to start using this technique. AI is incredibly helpful in this process. I like to write my own essays, but agents can generate potential questions, sequence the order, iteratively prompt U with questions, or help U make a rough first draft using your answers verbatim.

I hope that this technique helps U as a writer as much as it’s helped me!

The post Writing with Questions first appeared on Tasshin.