∞OS /#eightos/ – is an open source operating system for the bodymind. Its main objective is to develop a kind of ethics that is embodied at its core. How can we cultivate ecological interaction and confluence both on epistemological and physical levels? How can we re-program ourselves using our bodies? How can we fuse the natural and artificial intelligence that can be transferred as code through various hybrid forms of life? What are the theoretical, practical, and aesthetic implications of this approach?

EightOS is based on a set of principles, which are derived from the behavior of sustainable and robust dynamical systems and networks. At the core is a very simple idea that everything is based on a wave. We explore what this means on the level of the body and the mind first, then trying to bring it into relation with the outside world and with the others — practicing transfer learning through embodied metaphors. What we discover, as a result, are the new behavioral patterns, which are ecological at their core: taking into account all the different relations and complexities at play, learning to go with the flow, to generate your own, or to assimilate, infiltrate and redirect. We call this adaptive resilience. Being able to connect to the whole while also pursuing one’s own intention. Co-immunity.

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What is the Difference of ∞OS from other Practices?

Any “civilised” person operates according to a tacit set of principles, which stem from ethics, religion, “common sense” and logic without questioning them too much. ∞OS is an attempt to reverse engineer those and to create a framework that can help others do the same, using ∞OS source code as a basis to venture into the new ways of learning.

In our practice we use physical practice as a way to implement new patterns of behavior (software) into our bodymind (hardware). We believe that any new knowledge has a much higher chance of being integrated if it is also experienced.

∞OS is fully portable: it is applicable not only in the realm of physical interactions, but also in intersubjective relations, organizational management, creative work, scientific research, business and politics.

The main principles of ∞OS are variability, adaptivity, interoperability and modularity . Through daily practice we study, reinitialize and cultivate those principles in our system, allowing the emergent properties to reveal themselves and observing their effect. The progress in ∞OS is based on how automated those principles become in our everyday behavior.

Just like any operating system ∞OS constantly changes and evolves. Therefore the principles and the ways to cultivate those principles also evolve through our practice. The principle of portability is one of the most important ones in ∞OS because it is through that principle that we learn to discover new things and to transfer them from one discipline to another.

∞OS  practice helps people learn new things not only on the level of intellectual understanding, but also on the level of the body. Such approach allows us to deploy new patterns of behavior on the level of reflexes. ∞OS helps people interact physically in a context relatively free from prejudices. The existing alternatives are often limited by certain boundaries: martial arts may seem aggressive and evoke a desire to win, sexual interaction may become tainted by uncontrolled desire, morals and taboos, dance may be limited by aesthetics and “correct” form.

The range of ∞OS applications is quite diverse. It can be used to increase adaptive capacities of the body, it may also improve interactive flow within an organization, increase psychological robustness, help stabilize systems or bring them into new states.

Many instruments, tools and techniques that form the basis of ∞OS source code are derived from a wide range of disciplines: social sciences, anthropology, studies on conflict and dynamics of populations, psychology, Systema martial art, NLP, contemporary dance, Noguchi Taiso gymnastics, aerodynamics, network theory and many others.

The name itself if based on the ∞ / 8 – the idea of cycles that succeed each other. A period of growth is followed by a period of decline. Variability ensures diversity, leading to higher robustness and increasing adaptive potential. A wave is one of the basic notions in ∞OS and many procedures that we deploy are based on modulating oscillatory energy flow.

If you’d like to try ∞OS, feel free to join one of our sessions below or request to participate in one of our events.