Session 4 Summary (4/25/26): Pace of the Group, Pace of the Program

Session 4 Summary: Pace of the Group, Pace of the Program

Spring 2026 Smart Movement Study Program | April 25, 2026

Assignment Reference

This session corresponded with the completion of Assignment 4 (Segment 4: Lessons 4.01-4.12, Intensity Modification) from the Baseworks Primer. See: 2026 (Spring) Study Group Montreal

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Session Overview

Session 4 was scaled back from what was originally planned. Segment 4 is the longest assignment so far at roughly 87 minutes, and since most of the cohort had not been able to complete it and the in-person work cannot be effectively approached without the conceptual context loaded by the Primer beforehand, we decided to work through the familiar material at greater depth.

James joined despite a gout flare in his right ankle, and we highlighted his joining the session to talk about how a participant’s condition is worked around rather than rested through. The Q&A in the second half of the session went into questions about post-practice tension as well as the vocabulary participants are starting to develop for describing what they feel.

Key Concepts We Explored

Pace, immersion, and the One Body Principle

The architecture of the program is built around two layers. The Primer loads the conceptual context for each segment. The in-person sessions add physical refinements on top of that context — corrections, calibrations, things that only become visible when someone is in front of you. The two are designed to work together. When the Primer hasn’t been studied, the in-person session can’t responsibly deliver the second layer, because new physical material gets misread against whatever movement vocabulary the participant already has.

A reference Patrick shared comes from Jan Chipchase, a researcher who founded Studio D and leads field expeditions through remote regions, including the Wakhan Corridor in Afghanistan. One of the operating principles his expedition teams use is called the One Body Principle: the team moves as a single resilient body, adjusting around whoever is currently strongest or weakest, with the pace set not by any individual or original objective, but by what the body as a whole can sustain. What we do in Baseworks isn’t the same thing, but this principle can translate to what we do in our in-person programs: the pace needs to adapt to the unit.

Commitment, in this frame, is circumstantial. Someone who commits more learns more; someone who commits less learns less. When collective engagement isn’t unified, the pace of what gets covered must adapt to the group’s dynamic. The work becomes more cohesive and immersive as the assignments stay current. If they don’t, we’ll reach a certain point inside the seven-session window and not beyond.

Intensity Modification: working around condition, not resting through it

James arrived with gout in his right ankle. We highlighted this as a useful example. The default response (and often recommended clinically) to a physical condition that limits part of the body is often to take a break from practice altogether and resume when the condition has passed. In Baseworks, we encourage a different approach. When a single body part is affected, the rest of the body is still to practice. If an acute condition in the legs prevents one being able to perform lunges, drawing the shoulders down, spreading the fingers, upper body tilts, flexion, and torsion, and the ribcage micro-movements remain attainable.

This is the Intensity Modification for Safety principle, introduced in Segment 4. The stop signal for IM Safety is pain or joint compression. Where you stop is where you stop; what you do with everything else is the practice. The Intensity Modification for Form principle generally respects the symmetry. When an affected body part disrupts the symmetry, the opposite part adapts.

Star Tilt: Pelvis leads; the body follows

We spent a lot of time on Star Tilt with correction work. The tilt originates at the pelvis, and the upper body, including the arms, moves with it as one chunk. The arms stay continuous in a single line through the shoulders, the way they do in Star Form, and the head turns only as much as the chest turns.

The most common deviations were leading with the chest (failing to keep the ribcage and pelvis moving as a single chunk) and the back arm hanging behind the line. The cue we used during the demonstration was “robotic”: the upper body doesn’t move independently of the pelvis; it moves as a result of the pelvis movement. Since including the arms into the chunk adds complexity, a way to reduce the complexity is perform it with hands on hips first, a few rounds with the hip movement isolated, and then the arms back out. Whenever the arms line starts to drift, return to the hands-on-hips version.

Fixing-Separating-Isolating in the Front Lunge

Pulling the legs away in Front Lunge creates the foundation, and the foundation is what allows the upper-body movement to isolate cleanly. Without the leg traction, the pelvis easily loses its anchor, and the rib cage and the pelvis stop being independent (the habitual tendency is for the pelvis to follow the ribcage). With the leg traction in place, the rib cage can lift, twist, or stay neutral, depending on whether the form is the Extension or the Torsion, and the pelvis stays where it is.

The Practice

Ignition

Standing, feet slightly wider than hip-width, knees bent, weight centered over the heels, pelvis above the heels rather than tucked or tilted. Marionette arms on the way up. At shoulder height, the wrists torsion forward, palms rotating outward and engaging the forearms; the rest of the body stays as neutral as possible. The synchronized exit lowers the arms as the knees extend and the eyes close briefly into a still standing form. If the breathing becomes labored at any point or the body starts to heat up, the arms come down, no perseverance.

1. Squat (Review)

Practiced with the slow-hinge entry. Arms diagonally forward to offset the weight, hips hinge first while the knees stay extended, then the knees bend a small amount as the depth is set. The rib cage and pelvis stay stacked through the entry and the exit; the depth is not the point, the form is. We stayed with this for several rounds, prioritizing the synchronization of arms, hips, and knees on the way in and out.

2. Star Form (Review)

Stacked rib cage and pelvis, shoulders drawing down, fingers spreading, weight on the heels, legs pulling away. The arm carriage at shoulder height was set up here and used as the reference for the arm line in Star Tilt and Front Lunge Torsion later in the session.

3. Star Tilt (Review with extended correction)

Practiced both with hands on the hips and with the arms out at shoulder height. The corrections that came up most often:

• The pelvis leads; the body follows. The hip on the front-leg side drops slightly as the pelvis tilts; the upper body, including the arms, moves as one chunk with the pelvis
• The back arm doesn’t hang behind the line. Both arms remain in the Star Form line, perpendicular to the direction the pelvis is facing
• Don’t go to a full 90-degree foot turn at first. Slightly less than 90 makes it easier to feel the dynamic without locking into a maximal position
• Stack the rib cage and pelvis throughout. No lifting the chest; no pelvic forward tilt
• Hands to the hips when the arm version drifts. Reset with the hip work isolated, then bring the arms back

4. Front (High) Lunge Extension (Review)

The emphases were the entry (arms diagonally forward, hinge into a light squat first, shift weight to one foot, the other foot long back, high on the tiptoe), the straight line from the back heel through the head before any lift begins, and the legs pulling away from each other to create the foundation in Fixing-Separating-Isolating.

5. Front (High) Lunge Torsion (Review)

Built on the Extension foundation. Arms open to the Star Form line. The center of the chest turns; the arms travel with the chest as a single line; the head turns only as much as the chest turns; the back leg stays pulled back and high on the tiptoe through the turn and the return.

A common issue: when the twist starts, the pelvis tends to drift inward on the lunging side. The correction is to keep pulling the legs away through the twist so the pelvis stays anchored and the upper body/rib cage is the only thing that turns.

6. V-Sit (→ Suspension transition)

From the hang-back hook around the knees, the feet float, the arms release, and the shoulders lead one at a time as the palms press forward. The chest lifts at the last moment; the knees can stay bent or extend; the balls of the feet press through. Hooking back onto the knees between rounds is the built-in recovery position. We went through it several times.

7. Reclining Transition

Followed directly from the V-Sit. Legs extend forward, balls of the feet press, upper torso lowers back, legs open to about Star Form width, ankles extended, soles parallel and the legs rotating slightly inward. The shoulders lead the spinal flexion forward (one shoulder, then the other), the upper spine rounds, the legs activate, and the body finds the flexion-to-extension transition from this angle. On the way out, the upper spine flexes back, the legs suspend, the forearms come down, and the body lowers into supine.

8. Supine Assimilation

Setup with legs slightly wider than hip-width. Head lifted briefly to look forward as the shoulders moved forward one at a time and the lower spine elongated. Then head down, hand behind the crown for a light chin-tuck so the back of the neck became long, arms to the sides. The work from there is the weight-awareness sequence described above. The exit was a deep inhalation with the arms overhead and the palms pressing away from the head as the legs reached the other direction, then an open transition out.

Ignition and Assimilation

Ignition and Assimilation are practiced every session. Both are covered in their own Primer segments, which fall outside the five segments scheduled for this study group.

Brief Overview

Ignition marks the start of practice and establishes a specific quality of attention which is meant to calibrate to your condition. In this particular version of Ignition that we’ve been practicing, the wrist torsion is the only active element; the rest of the body stays as neutral as possible. It’s important to note that this part of the practice is not meant to be interpreted as a warm-up.

Assimilation is another calibration tool. The task is to register the weight of the body at the points where it meets the floor as a concrete sensation, and to stay with that sensation rather than drifting into a relaxed or euphoric state. If a sense of weightlessness shifts in over time, observe it; if it doesn’t, the weighted sensation is fine. Either way, the work is maintaining physical awareness, not drifting off into a hyper-relaxed/restorative state or letting go. in a nutshell, this part of the practice, with its quality of weight and stillness, is designed as a mechanism which can allow for a type of processing of the information that was generated through the movements themselves during practice and the modification and adaptation that was approached to execute those movements. It’s also important to note that this part of the practice is not meant to be interpreted as a cool-down.

Participant Questions and Discussion

Natalie on a vocabulary for what she’s feeling. Natalie introduced “fruit in jello” as her way of describing the spatial sensation she’s been working with. The fruit is her body; the jello is the surrounding space, supportive enough to feel a boundary against. Asia connected this to what Natalie had described in Session 3 as feeling supported by the surrounding space rather than fighting gravity, and noted that the vocabulary works as long as the user knows what they mean by it. Caitlin drew a parallel inspired by her swimming background: as her relationship with the water changed, the water started to feel like syrup, and the weight of the water became something she could feel rather than something she pushed against, and she felt something similar during the Ignition. Both descriptions point at the same kind of perceptual recalibration. Asia added that for Ignition specifically, the “in the jello” frame fits well: the only thing actively happening is the wrist torsion, and everything else can simply “rest into” its surroundings.

Caitlin on weight versus weightlessness in supine. Caitlin noticed during Assimilation that the sensations of weightlessness felt different on different sides of her body. We responded that this observation is exactly the kind of thing the Primer’s journaling segment is about and the Journal feature is built for. The journal is a place to verbalize subtle sensations that would otherwise be forgotten by the next day, and over weeks those notes start to connect across sessions in ways that wouldn’t otherwise be visible. The journaling tool is available now even though the segment itself is later in the course.

Noémie on pain after practice. Noémie described her neck blocking up on the Sunday after a previous session and asked whether the forms could “wake up” pain in the body as a kind of reorganization. The answer is that the body does adapt to the practice, but the adaptation isn’t supposed to come through pain. If something hurts after a session, the right response is to scale back the intensity of whatever movement produced it next time, and to use the Smart Revisits at home to practice the modification in a low-stakes setting. The Primer’s Intensity Modification segment is where this is laid out in detail.

There’s a more general note worth holding alongside a question like this, applicable to anyone whose schedule and energy levels through the week are making the in-between work hard to keep up with. A report about how the body felt after a session becomes interpretable in proportion to the engagement that surrounds it. The Smart Revisits, the assignment work, and the forum threads between sessions are where the Intensity Modification framing actually gets applied, where the vocabulary for describing the experience accumulates, and where each participant develops a reflective relationship with the material on their own terms. Without that layer, the post-session experience tends to be read through whatever movement experience the participant already has. For somebody whose physical background sits in dynamic-fitness modalities, dance, or other practices oriented around free physical expression, that prior vocabulary is loud, and it tends to map itself onto post-session sensation by default. The new vocabulary the Primer is introducing is what eventually gives the experience something specific to be measured against.

The forum, between sessions, is built for exactly that reflective layer. A note posted there can be read carefully, commented on, returned to, and added to across the week, in a way the in-session Q&A doesn’t have time for. The flip side of this point is straightforward. When the schedule and the energy across a week don’t allow for the in-between work, the in-session experience and the participant’s own perception of it inevitably reflect their already learned, habitual experience, rather than the new learning experience. The in-person session can’t substitute for the assignment study. The assignments create the framing for the upcoming in-person session and prime attention to particular experiences.

An important point to note here too is that, in Noémie’s experience, because of her busy schedule, she actually hasn’t been able to get through a large part of the assignments up to this point. All of the ongoing assignments work as a synergistic partner to everything explained here.

We really recommend that, when time doesn’t permit fully engaging with the course content, at least posting on the forum will allow us to address it and point people towards the corresponding parts of the segments they ought to look into more deeply. We never want anyone to be left wondering whether what we’re offering will be physically conducive to their condition. What stands at the forefront of what we’re doing is altogether revolving around the concept of modulation and intensity modification. As I mentioned a few times throughout the segment, tension doesn’t always equal pain, and compression doesn’t always equal pain. Tension and compression can transfer to something painful over time. The work of intensity modification is to develop a fine enough relationship with those sensations that we can modulate them and play with the edge of a challenge in a way that’s productive and conducive to physical condition.

Technical Issues

James on the Primer’s “Done” button. James reported that one of the lessons wouldn’t register as complete after he pressed Done, even after refreshing. The general rule for technical issues on the platform is to send us a DM or email as soon as it happens so we can look at it.

Common Adjustments and Corrections

• Star Tilt: back arm hanging behind the line. Both arms stay in a single line through the shoulders; if it drifts, hands to the hips and reset with the hip movement isolated
• Star Tilt: leading from the chest. The pelvis leads; the upper body and arms follow as one chunk
• Front Lunge Torsion: pelvis drifting inward on the twist. Keep pulling the legs away through the rotation so the pelvis stays anchored
• Standing forms: tightness in the neck or shoulders. Reduce the intensity of the shoulder draw until the neck stays neutral; tightness is a stop signal even without pain
• V-Sit / Reclining Transition: arms leading the upper-spine flexion. The shoulders lead one at a time; the spine follows; the abdominal activation is a byproduct
• Toes turned out at the start of standing forms. Outside edges of the feet parallel; the slight inward toe position helps prevent the knees from collapsing inward in Squat

What We Did Not Cover

The Segment 4 forms (Z-Lunge, Z Expansion C-Tuck, Horizontal Shoulder Flex, Split Form Inflection, Leg Raises, Plank, Press-Up) and the two carry-forward seated Inflect forms from Session 3 (Seated Wide Inflection, Seated Inflection) are still ahead of us. They’re the new physical material that depends on the Segment 4 conceptual framing, and they’ll come in once the cohort is through Assignment 4. We’ll plan the remaining sessions around the assignments as they’re completed.

Next Assignment

The next scheduled assignment, for Session 5 on Saturday, May 2, 12:10-1:50 PM, Studio 1, is Segment 5, lessons 5.1-5.4 (through 5.4 Applied Practice Lab: Transit). Total time for new material: approximately 29 minutes.

For anyone who hasn’t yet completed earlier assignments, the priority for the coming week is to bring everything current up to and including this new Session 5 assignment before Saturday. If the cohort can collectively reach that point, we’ll be in a position to catch up on the deferred Segment 4 forms (Z-Lunge, Z Expansion C-Tuck, Horizontal Shoulder Flex, Split Form Inflection, Leg Raises, Plank, Press-Up) during Session 5. The benefit is collective: when everyone arrives with the same shared backdrop, the in-person session can do what it’s designed to do.

Smart Revisit is the primary tool for keeping earlier work active; the PrimerPrint page has the full description of how it works.

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Tags: Ignition, Squat, Star Form, Star Tilt, Front (High) Lunge Extension, Front (High) Lunge Torsion, V-Sit, Reclining Transition, Assimilation, Distributed Activation, Fixing-Separating-Isolating, Intensity Modification, Micro-Movements, Cohort Pace, Immersion, One Body Principle, Journaling

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Resources

The following resources relate to concepts and references that came up in this session (optional):

• Jan Chipchase on Wikipedia. Background on Jan’s work and the Studio D research consultancy.
• Craig Mod, On Margins episode 1, with Jan Chipchase. A long conversation covering Jan’s field-research method, The Field Study Handbook
• A Short Walk by Charlie Hsiang. Studio D Medium post by a woman who joined one of the Wakhan Corridor expeditions. The closest readable account of what the depth of immersion looks like in that context.
• What Movement Training Misses: The Micro-Movement Gap. Relevant to the Star Tilt corrections and the tightness-as-stop-signal point.
• Study Group Preparation Guide. Practical guidance for study group participants.

Upcoming Baseworks Presentations

We are presenting at two neuroscience events in the coming weeks. Both are open to the public.

• 27th Neuropsychology Day and Brenda Milner Lecture at The Neuro, McGill University, Monday, May 11, 2026. A full-day public neuroscience event; this is our second year presenting a poster. Free, with registration through Eventbrite. Our presentation slot is 2:30-3:45 p.m.
• BRNet 2026: Three Trainable Components of Body Representation in Padova, Italy, June 2026. A two-day conference on body representation and proprioception.

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Group Post

Subject: Session 4 Summary and Assignment for Session 5

The detailed summary of Saturday’s session is now available on the forum. It covers the framing for why we held back the new Segment 4 forms, the Intensity Modification for Safety principle (anchored in James’s gout flare), the Star Tilt corrections we returned to repeatedly, the floor sequence built around the V-Sit suspension and Reclining Transition, and the Q&A on post-practice tension, weight versus weightlessness in supine, and the vocabulary participants are starting to develop for what they’re feeling:

https://practice.baseworks.com/groups/montreal-study-group-spring-2026-cohort/forum/discussion/session-4-summary-pace-of-the-group-pace-of-the-program/

Next Assignment (for Session 5, Saturday May 2, 12:10-1:50 PM, Studio 1): Complete Segment 5, lessons 5.1-5.4 (through 5.4 Applied Practice Lab: Transit). Total time for new material: approximately 29 minutes.

For anyone who hasn’t yet completed earlier assignments (in particular Segment 4), the priority for the coming week is to bring everything current up to and including this new Session 5 assignment, before Saturday. If the cohort can collectively reach that point, we’ll be in a position to catch up on the deferred Segment 4 forms (Z-Lunge, Z Expansion C-Tuck, Horizontal Shoulder Flex, Split Form Inflection, Leg Raises, Plank, Press-Up) during Session 5. The benefit is collective: when everyone arrives with the same shared backdrop, the in-person session can do what it’s designed to do.

Smart Revisit is the primary tool for keeping earlier work active; the PrimerPrint curve on your dashboard shows the current ratio of new study to revisit.

The full list of Primer assignments for the program is here: https://practice.baseworks.com/groups/montreal-study-group-spring-2026-cohort/forum/discussion/primer-assignments-2/#post-22127

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Editorial Notes

Initial draft generated from transcript via /session-summary skill, 2026-04-26.

Round 1 revision (2026-04-26)

Edited by Asia Shcherbakova

Session Overview — condensed. Patrick’s version used two paragraphs: the first named all forms practiced, the second named the conceptual through-line (“collective pace and what’s possible to teach”) and listed the three Q&A themes by participant. Asia’s version merges these into a single shorter paragraph, removing the form list and the explicit through-line framing. The named Q&A topics are recovered in the Q&A section itself.

Section heading. “A perpetual expedition: pace, immersion, and the One Body Principle” → “Pace, immersion, and the One Body Principle.” The “perpetual expedition” phrase now appears inside the body text rather than as the heading.

One Body Principle — reframed as inspiration, not analogy; condensed to three paragraphs. The full longer version of this section is preserved below for possible future use.

Intensity Modification — condensed. Patrick’s version had two subsections: “Intensity Modification: working around condition, not resting through it” (three paragraphs, including the reasoning about practice rhythm) and a separate “Tightness is also a stop signal” subsection. Asia’s version merges these into one shorter subsection, removing the rhythm/rest-day rationale and the detailed tightness explanation. The tightness point is preserved in Common Adjustments.

Star Tilt — attribution removed, condensed. Patrick’s version attributed the “hands on hips” correction to Asia and described Caitlin’s arc through the form. Asia’s version removes participant and instructor attribution and gives a more neutral account of the corrections.

Participant Q&A — reordered and restructured. Patrick’s order: Noémie, James, Caitlin, Natalie. Asia’s order: Natalie, Caitlin, James, Noémie. Two pieces removed: Noémie’s French-captions sub-point; “Natalie on breathing changes mid-week” cut entirely. New material added under Noémie’s entry: a two-paragraph response about the relationship between between-session engagement and the interpretability of post-session sensation, including the observation that prior movement vocabulary maps onto post-session experience by default.

Resources — punctuation format. Em dash separators between link title and description replaced with periods and sentence-style descriptions.

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Archived: “A perpetual expedition: pace, immersion, and the One Body Principle” — Patrick’s original morning draft

Preserved here as source material for a possible future blog post or long-form piece.

The architecture of the program is straightforward. The Primer loads the conceptual context for each segment of material. The in-person sessions add a second layer on top of that context: the physical refinements, the corrections, the things that only become visible when somebody is in front of you. The two layers are designed to work together. When the Primer hasn’t been studied, the in-person session can’t responsibly deliver the second layer, because the new physical material gets misread against whatever movement vocabulary the participant already has.

This is why I’d rather hold the Plank and the Press-Up than introduce them cold. Without the Segment 4 framing for Intensity Modification, both of those forms are easily read as the fitness Plank and the fitness Press-Up, and that’s not what we’re doing. Once the conceptual framing is in place, the same physical shapes mean something different.

The shape of the program reflects how we used to work in Tokyo, where the studio was open through the day and participants came in at whatever time fit their schedules. Density of contact with the practice across the week was the engine. The current online-Primer-plus-weekly-in-person format is a translation of that immersion into a different shape, and the in-between study with the Primer is what carries the immersion now.

A friend I know from Japan, Jan Chipchase, runs a research consultancy called Studio D and leads field expeditions through remote regions, including the Wakhan Corridor in northeast Afghanistan. One of the principles his teams use on those expeditions is what they call the One Body Principle. The team is treated as a single resilient body. The body grows into itself through the everyday habits of the team. It learns from experience. It holds itself up by adjusting around whoever is currently strongest or weakest. Mistakes will be made, and the body emerges stronger when they’re handled openly. The expedition’s pace is not set by any single person, and not by the original objective; it’s set by what the body, as a whole, can sustain.

What we do in Baseworks is not the same as walking through the Wakhan, but the principle transfers. We think of the practice itself as a perpetual expedition through the idiosyncrasies of movement against physical condition and life circumstance. Commitment, in that frame, is circumstantial: somebody who commits more learns more, and somebody who commits less learns less. When the collective commitment isn’t unified, the pace of what gets covered adapts to the dynamic of the group. We want the cohort to understand that as we move into subsequent topics, the work becomes more cohesive and immersive when everybody can stay on track with the assignments. If everybody can’t, we’ll only reach a certain point inside the seven-session window. That isn’t a problem. It’s just the truth of how the architecture works, and we’ll do what we can with everybody on the basis of what everybody can do.

You can read about Jan’s work via his Wikipedia page or the first episode of Craig Mod’s On Margins podcast, which is a long conversation about his field-research method and the Field Study Handbook. A piece worth reading on Studio D’s Medium publication is A Short Walk by Charlie Hsiang, who went on one of the Wakhan expeditions; it gives a feel for what depth of immersion looks like in that context.