There is (probably) no magic solution

Don't believe the hype. Learning and transformation takes time.

An email popped into my inbox this week from the (in)famous movement teacher Ido Portal. I signed up to his mailing list a few years ago after enjoying his blog and watching online videos of his practice, so occasionally I receive promotional material and invitations to sign up to workshops. He’s a fascinating figure in the way he bridges divides between movement practices. He’s an acrobat who boxes, a weightlifter who dances, a capoeirista who advocates stillness. I’ve listened to interviews and enjoyed the London Real documentary about his practice. I've also often thought about doing one of his workshops, imagining what it might be like to see behind the curtain. However, I have to admit to gasping (or at least swearing) when I saw that the price of tuition for his 2-week European Movement Intensive is €6,250.

Of course, Ido Portal can charge whatever he wants for his time - and clearly there are people willing to pay for his teaching. It’s also worth pointing out that both he and his students can do pretty extraordinary things. However, despite all this, I was left wondering what such a high cost of entry (€480 a day) communicates to potential students. It strikes me that there is a sort of myth making at work here. Setting the cost of entry for training and learning so extraordinarily high seems to suggest that the content of the training is radically different from what might happen in another, more everyday, movement class. It’s worth noting that the cost of one day’s training with Ido Portal would gain me more that a year’s membership at my local bouldering gym. It would pay for more than 6 months unlimited classes at my BJJ club. It is ten times the day rate that I paid for a seminar with Commonwealth Judo champion and ADCC grappler, Owen Livesey.

It’s difficult to make direct comparisons, and ascribing a financial value to insight and experience is complex. I’ve certainly had brief encounters with teachers that have had a long-lasting and important impact on me and my movement practice. But I do wonder if the extremely high cost of entry risks turning experience into something of a fetish object - where students are encouraged to believe in a certain kind of exceptionalism, or maybe even magic. I am not denying the value of Ido Portal’s teaching (although I know for sure that it’s not ten times better than Owen’s). I am merely questioning what participants can reasonably expect to happen to them in two weeks.

A few weeks ago I wrote about spending a brief amount of time learning from Myriam Pfeffer - one of Feldenkrais’ direct students. This experience was transformative for me - in a way that I couldn’t assign a financial value. However, I think it’s important to note that the transformation wasn’t instantaneous. Myriam didn’t have a magical capacity to change people. Her impact on me unfolded as I explored her ideas in the rest of my 4-year Feldenkrais Training and reflected on them through the prism of other practices. It was in my commitment to ongoing investigation, over a period of almost twenty years, that the transformation and learning occurred. Very little of the learning can reasonably be understood to have happened in the room. In this way, I think I’m just as responsible for Myriam’s impact on me as she was. (I write this with the greatest respect to her.)

None of this is to say that people shouldn’t value their expertise highly. I’m sure I would bring home a great deal from two weeks with Ido Portal and his students. But I’m also pretty sure I could search out just as many insights through reaffirming my commitment to cheaper and less glamorous daily practices of BJJ, swimming, meditation or climbing.

Real learning takes time. One can experience moments of unexpected insight when working with an expert, but the process of integrating such insight into the rest of your life is where real transformation takes place. You pay for that integration with time, not money.

I can’t locate the reference today, but I’m pretty sure it was the Russian theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold who said that it takes 7 years to make an actor. I often think of this when I’m getting frustrated with trying to learn a new skill or understand a new idea. On the one hand, it’s annoying that learning takes so long and sometimes causes pain or injury. On the other hand, it’s good to know that if you just turn up and try your best 2 or 3 times a week, in 5-7 years you’ll be so good at what you’re doing that the average beginner will look at you like you’re a wizard from another dimension.

We should choose teachers as wisely as we can. We should also respect expertise. However, it’s important to note that learning and transformation relies most fundamentally on the learner. It’s not about what happens on an expensive two-week course or a two-day seminar. It about what happens the rest of the time. I believe that learning needs to be undertaken in the spirit of ‘cathedral thinking’. In the medieval era, people worked on building projects that they knew wouldn’t be finished in their lifetime. They committed themselves to a larger vision and concentrated on day-to-day craftsmanship. Gymnastics, meditation or BJJ are not dissimilar. You can’t know what the end is going to be like. You can only know that you’re on your way somewhere. So don’t put yourself (or your teachers) under pressure to manifest immediate change or facilitate magic experiences. Instead, trust that, if you keep going, you’ll get somewhere.