24 Comments

I so loved the moment when you, Caro, and Iain pushed hands in the way you did. My familiarity with this comes out of Contact Improv dance. I hope you know of this tradition, and suspect you do.

Iain is brilliant in understanding that what tends often to be and produce conflict is actually a situation of complementarity. And so it is in Contact Improv exercises (I never became more than a beginner at it, but know it to be profound). In Contact Improv, it's called "sharing weight" -- a very extreme inverse of "war", in which the partners collaborate in "sharing" the burden of keeping one another from crashing to the floor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPNWivEzSlw&t=137s

In "sharing weight" the partners in the dance keep one another from falling to the floor, thus collaborating rather than being at war. But they achieve this by pressing up against one another!

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Caro -

Please remind me of the Chinese word for heart-mind. I do not know how to spell it or to look it up, but it's like a bottle rocket screaming across my sky at the moment, and I must know about it. I've heard that the traditional / classic Chinese did frame heart and mind in this way.

A delightful fact is that Portuguese has a recently added neologism which unites two much older Portuguese words into a portmanteau neologism. That word was coined by Paulo Freire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire). And the word is sentipensar, which refers to an integrated form of thinking, sensing and feeling!

If you're like me, such a word feels like a gold mine! A mine of diamonds! Emeralds! Sapphires! Sophia!

I'm in search of its analogues (and near-analogues), similes, synonyms, resonants, echoes ... in every language! I'm re-learning what it really means to know anything, and what it means to think.

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Mar 3, 2023Liked by Caroline Ross

Thank you so much for this! I'm especially moved by the possibilities for transforming relationships that you discussed. I have long know of The Master and His Emissary but was reluctant to read it. To hear from you and Dr. McGilchrist about its practical applications and the way it's changed lives is inspiring.

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Hey Caroline,

Tears of relief and recognition come streaming down my face while reading this. I came from a very different angle at McGilchrists work, but had the same response: finally, someone starts putting words to it. Offering a toolbox for communication to the left brain realm. Reading the book to check if he really got it. Seeing the danger of assimilation by the academic structure. The same thought of the importance for Iain to embody the found knowledge personally, to complete the cycle.

Most interviews with dr. McGilchrist are either introductory or done from a sort of moved observant place. Or even pure analytical. I wish for many more encounters like you had. A true widening, a from the ground up change, the intuitive unease with the machine given hands and feet to turn these ruins into a place for the living again. Thank you.

I have started online conversation meetings to discuss the impact of this newfound vocabulary. And am discovering several other similar initiatives. I must say I felt jealous of your chance to speak to Iain directly. I would love to pick his brain on my take of this phenomenon.

Maybe you should upload on vimeo or delikes and embed the video, your server does not seem fast enough for streaming.

Greetings,

Bertus

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Caroline, I wondered if the video could be uploaded to Vimeo or YTube for wider consumption?

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Thanks for sharing this Caroline. I'm about half-way through The Matter With Things and, alongside John Vervaeke's work, have found it utterly transformative. I teach and perform improvised theatre, so it was wonderful to imaginally participate in your conversation - noting the parallels between Tai Chi, the right hemisphere way of seeing, and my own little backwater artform.

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This was a wonderful conversation, thank you for sharing. I have yet to read Iain’s book, no idea why I’ve had a reluctance to do so, but now I feel that I must.

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Really enjoying this conversation although the film seems to freeze randoly. Maybe my device is the problem.

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Feb 15, 2023Liked by Caroline Ross

Thanks Caroline!

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