Resilience is one of the key elements in EightOS practice.
Largely understood as an ability to rebound, resilience has a certain combination of softness and hardness, which makes it attractive not only from the practical point of view but also from the aesthetic perspective.
Resilience is related to adaptability, regeneration, and homeostasis. Yet, it is not about stability or equilibrium.
To study resilience is also to study how it can be disrupted, what are the different ways to affect and to respond. What is the underlying dynamics of resilience, how can it be modulated?
Resilience is an insistence on maintaining a certain shape. The shape itself has to be fluid, but it cannot be too soft. The shape cannot also be rigid, otherwise it will break. Resilience is plasticity and elasticity — those two words help understand in terms of the matter.
During the past years, resilience became a trendy subject. The demand is produced by the historical moment. We are not yet destroyed (in which case we would not even talk about a possible recovery), rather — there is an onslaught of external influences that seek the disrupt the existing order and that require one to adapt if one is to be left standing wherever they are or, at least, in close proximity.
Session Plan
In this session, we will explore the notion of resilience and the adjacent notions of adaptability and regeneration in four major realms:
- Personal (physical and cognitive)
- Intersubjective
- Collective
- Environmental
During the session, we will use the motion tracking system that will provide direct feedback on the level of variability and adaptability that every participant exhibits during the session. This will enable us to gauge our performance and make the necessary adjustments based on this additional layer of information.
The session will take about 2 hours to go through the following stages:
1) Resilience, discussion
a) We will collect everyone’s personal understanding of resilience, specifically looking for the descriptions that can help us understand resilience on the physical level: anything that has to do with dynamics and matter.
b) The relation of resilience to escalation / deescalation / adaptivity / regeneration / perseverance / intent / integrity / immunity
2) Resilience and Variability
a) Variability as a source of resilience. We are able to accommodate a wide range of incoming impulses if our dynamics is sufficiently variable to be receptive to any of them, whatever the scale they appear at.
b) 4 states: uniform, variable stationary, fractal, variable non-stationary — shifting between the states as — transient variability practice
b) Embodied experience of variability (subjective experience)
c) “Natural” movement and fractality (1/f noise, fractal gait)
d) Fusing fractality into the intention
e) Cognitive variability (speaking / writing practice)
3) Resilience and Regeneration
a) Regeneration as a source of resilience.
b) Regeneration through cyclical patterns. Breathing, heart-beat, synchronicity.
c) Refrain, rhythm
4) Variability and Regeneration
a) How to fuse these processes on the physical and on the cognitive level
5) Intersubjective Realm
a) Interactive exercises in pairs: generating an incoming impulse and ways of responding
b) “Transfer package” to dialogues
6) Group Dynamics
a) Extrapolating (generalizing) intersubjective dynamics to groups
7) Environment
a) Generalizing to space
8) Improvisation
a) Dynamic variability of states
