concept ignition

6.2. Concept: Ignition — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Hi again.

In this lesson, we’ll introduce you to the Ignition practices in Baseworks.

To practice the method, we have a structured practice that we call the Baseworks practice.

The main part of a single practice session consists of a sequence of some forms.

So the main part is kind of similar to what we have been doing in practice labs, although practice sessions are usually longer.

But in addition to this main part, we usually have an Ignition practice at the beginning and Assimilation practice at the end.

And in the context of movement practices, you may be thinking, oh, so it’s just like a warmup and a cool down. “which is a natural assumption, but this is not what Ignition and Assimilation practices are in Baseworks.

Do you often perform a warmup before opening a language app or before meeting a friend or before leaving the house?

These comparisons show how far the concept of a warmup is from the concept of Ignition in Baseworks.

Although Baseworks is a physical practice, you don’t need a warm-up because of the Intensity Modification.

Since all the movements are performed at moderate intensity, you need a warm-up as much as you needed before doing household chores.

So what is Ignition for?

The Ignition serves the following purposes.

It clearly marks the beginning of a session and shifts the attention to the movements.

This helps to focus on the practice and also facilitates habit formation if we want to establish a regular practice.

The second point is that it provides an opportunity to observe the current state.

And we can use this awareness of the current state during the main body of the practice, for example, to inform our choices related to Intensity Modification.

Ignition also is designed to promote the release of unconscious tension.

So on a purely physical level, the movements, the stillness or static contractions help get rid of some unconscious muscular tension.

And the last point is that we get to experience stillness under different conditions.

We have different Ignition practices, some are more dynamic, some are seated, some are standing, but all of them include some segments of stillness, either with or without effort.

Stillness is a perfect condition for noticing subtleties in our internal experience, and these different kinds of moderate stimulation prior to stillness have different priming effects on how you may feel during the period of stillness and the subsequent practice.

By shuffling different types of Ignition practices before the practice sessions, we provide the opportunity for the practitioner to experience these different priming effects on the quality of the practice.

Some of the Ignition practices also involve slow control deep breathing.

They are intended primarily as an application for awareness and control over one’s breathing.

But of course, on a purely physiological level, these practices involving breathing also act as a tool to increase the breathing capacity.

We’ll say a few more things about how we use Ignition practices in Baseworks, but we’ll leave this to the end of the next segment so that we can talk about the Ignition and the Assimilation together.

So for now, in this segment, we’ll look at two different types of standing Ignitions.

And I will see you in the next Key Points lesson.