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Heart
Bodymind preparation to engage conflict creatively (rather than fight or flight) shifts one's experience of working through conflict, allowing space for participating in "peace as conflict done well." Physical martial arts are often a starting place for discovery of this pattern, but a full spectrum response requires acting/verbal skills, context and systems study, and other ways of comprehending and participating well in complexity while it is motion. The martial art pattern implies that metaphors associated with aikido, taichi, etc. apply to working through conflict in group process.
Description
If a process deals with issues of fear, violence, competition, and misunderstanding, then a martial awareness and history of careful practice may bring to bear facilitation and communication skills which clear the way for other patterns, literally making them possible where they were not.
Examples
- attention to breath
- expressive body movement when words are unavailable
- requesting permission to fight consciously with facilitation
- summoning courage to intervene with humility, stopping, calling a halt
Related patterns (what this pattern points to)
How related
Naming is parallel to the martial discipline of discarding preconceived notions in order to simply know what is in order to respond authentically. Creating a Container not only reflects the feel of the dojo (training space) but also the centered personal space into which training partners are welcomed. Guerilla Facilitation is called for in the spirit of accepting the need to disturb, rather than denying the essential nature of struggling together. A Jam Session is very similar to Randori (Japanese: chaos practice) in which several partners challenge each other at the same time. Neutral Attention Out reflects the balanced attention and equanimity almost all martial traditions advocate. Based in the certainty of death and the resulting opportunity into which each moment is transformed, both Personal Practice and Personal Responsibility locate the participant in group process in the knowledge of the ultimate resting place of responsibility for each choice made by the individual - that is oneself.
Other patterns that mention or point to martial art
Resources
See Brandon WilliamsCraig for the articularion of the above in the methodology
Martial Nonviolence (tm) or go to http:freeaiki.com.
Also see Arnold Mindell's Processwork and Worldwork approaches, as well as Martial Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication.
Other
Add +other
Stage
Stories
In each of these cards is a story about group dynamics that relates to "Patterns+*tform" (add your own stories on Anonymous+Stories):
- with the
Good to see you here!
I like what you've added, and...martial art seems to me less like a particular pattern and more like a category of practices. What you wrote here in general i read as a call to look to martial art for patterns, or examples of practices that can manifest patterns.
Whether or not we leave it as a pattern, your commentary in how martial art relates to patterns could be put (also, or instead) on those respective pages.
(By the way, you can be emailed when someone adds to this discussion by hovering over the gray footer bar at the bottom of it and clicking on the "watch" link that appears on the right.)
--John Abbe.....Tue Jan 26 18:47:17 -0800 2010
By all means "look to martial art for patterns, or examples of practices that can manifest patterns," but, like many of the other patterns listed, like eating together, it very much depends on how you look at an experience/happening that decides whether you call it a pattern, category of patterns, or process.
In this case, I suspect: martial art is the way/pattern/archetypal metaphor of studying and practicing various forms of conflict in a workshop/seminar setting before and/or after experiencing them in less protected situations. The pattern then manifests as various processes (wrestling, surrender, striking with the foot and hand, asking open questions, running swiftly, making direct requests, distraction or misdirection, balance taking, deliberation, various myriad strategies and tactics) and methods (aikido, tai chi, debate, industrial warfare, greco-roman wrestling, non-violence, fencing, etc.)
In favor of your suggestion: perhaps, for instance, "blending" is a pattern which suggests getting out from directly in front of a someone who seems to see you as an "opponent," joining beside them or with their intention, and encouraging/facilitating full expression of whatever they are working with. Then aikido might be a process, one of several processes in a larger field of study called "martial art."
Is this close to what you intended? In what ways have I missed your meaning?
--Brandon WilliamsCraig.....Sun Jan 31 22:41:30 -0800 2010
Yes, that goes in the direction i was sensing.
--John Abbe.....Mon Feb 01 23:41:03 -0800 2010
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