concept session level cycling

8.2. Concept: Session-Level Cycling — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Hello again.

In the previous lesson, we talked about task level cycling, revisiting the same movements and exploring them from a fresh perspective.

And in this lesson, we’re going to zoom out a bit and talk about another important aspect of the Baseworks approach, which is session level cycling.

So this is about how you choose and move between different practice sessions or even activities outside of Baseworks to deepen your learning and adapt to your needs.

Let’s explore what this means and why it’s important in Baseworks.

First, let’s think about what session level cycling means.

So in Baseworks, we don’t follow a strictly linear path like moving from beginner classes to advanced ones or sticking to one type of practice forever.

Instead, we encourage you to cycle through different types of practice sessions, each with its own focus, intensity, or approach.

This might sound different from what you’re used to in other movement or fitness programs, where the goal is often to progress, to harder exercises, or high intensity workouts.

In Baseworks, it’s not about choosing intensity or complexity, but it’s about how you engage with the practice, no matter the session type.

To give you a sense of this, if you imagine that you visited our studio in Tokyo, where we used to offer Baseworks classes from 7am to 10pm, 7 days a week, if you looked at our schedule you would not see beginner or advanced classes.

Instead you’d find a mix of students, some brand new, some highly experienced and even senior teachers practicing alongside and even under junior teachers.

So everyone is practicing together, exploring the same movements, but in their own way.

Why is it possible in Baseworks?

Because as we repeated many times, Baseworks is not about what you’re doing, but about how you are doing it.

No matter your skill level or experience, there’s always a new angle or some kind of layer of awareness that you can discover.

This idea of cycling also ties into how different activities shape your perspective.

For example, let’s say you come to Baseworks as a runner or a dancer or a golfer.

And when you practice Baseworks, you might notice something about how your body moves and whatever types of insights you might have, they will be likely shaped by your background and perspective.

And then when you go back to your running or dancing or golfing, you might apply the insights you learned in Baseworks and notice a change in how you perform in your practice of choice.

And that change in your other activity that informs how you approach your next session with Baseworks.

So it’s a cycle of learning where each practice influences the other, helping your skill develop in unexpected ways.

Within Baseworks itself, we also encourage cycling between different types of sessions.

While all our sessions follow the same methodology, they vary in focus, as you know, and intensity.

We also have something we haven’t mentioned before, modules, foundation and elements, which are available on our platform.

And foundation sessions are more detail oriented, giving you more space to focus deeply on awareness and precision, while element sessions introduce more complex movement dynamics with a bit less time to observe each detail.

In some sessions are low intensity, while other are more physically demanding.

But instead of thinking, or I’ll only do low intensity sessions until I’m ready for high intensity ones, we invite you to cycle through all of them right from the beginning, because each session offers a unique lens your movement and awareness.

This approach contradicts the typical fitness mindset where you might avoid high-intensity workouts if you’re tired or you’re having your rest day to recover.

But in Baseworks, we suggest a different logic.

If you’re feeling tired, you could choose a low-intensity session to practice without pushing too hard, or you could try a high-intensity session, but you will just approach it mindfully, adapting the movements to match your energy level.

And many students have shared that this mindset, not avoiding a challenging task, but just adjusting how you approach it, has changed how they handle stress or difficult tasks in other areas of life, like work or relationships.

And to bring this to practice, the next two practice labs in this segment will let you experience session level cycling firsthand.

You will first try a lot intensive session where you can focus deeply on the details without worrying about physical effort and then on a different day you’ll try a high intensity session where you’ll need to adapt the movements to suit your condition using the principles of Intensity Modification.

The key is to stay mindful and keep your breathing calm especially in high intensity session.

This is a chance to practice adapting to your body’s needs, which is a core skill in basework.

So as you move forward, think of this session-level cycling as a way to keep your practice dynamic and responsive to where you are each day, and try to notice connections in movement dynamics between basework and your other activities.

By cycling through different sessions, you’re not You’re not just building physical skills, but you’re learning to adapt and observe.

So let’s move on to the next practice lab where you’ll start exploring this idea in action.