Movement Intelligence:
The Morphosis of Meta Learning
In an age of AI tools, quick fixes and short form learning, we’ve forgotten a critical truth: the human brain did not evolve through short cuts. It evolved by stepping up to higher and higher levels of physical complexity and intellectual depth through challenging adaptation. Today we’re seeing more and more of the opposite. What if the tools that promise freedom are really stripping away the strengths that made us human to begin with?
Human attention has become the greatest currency for big companies like Meta and Apple. Devices are designed to hook your brain into habitual grooves that return a sense of pleasure for zero effort. The price we end up paying far exceeds the effort that we save. Although awareness of the issue is increasing, more and more money goes into perfecting these devices. Then the question becomes; do we really have the willpower to resist?
The post-covid generation are being groomed by technology from birth. We are injecting dopamine hijacking habits and behaviours into the development of the human child - people that will eventually be responsible for the fate of the race. Although the consequences of this are yet to be known, it doesn’t take much to see that it is devastating.
Perhaps the surge in medical technology, along with individual sovreignty has fueled the illusion that we are invincible - but now, with technological brainwashing making us all screen addicts, we are being strongly reminded that we are not in control. Even of ourselves.
For a huge population of people, this warning is a true point of no return. The very tools that were intended to aid our connectivity are now destroying our ability to think deeply, concentrate, feel and actually connect with others. One would sooner consult ChatGPT than share deep feelings with a friend, but this theme is larger than the recent societal advancements and has been brewing for much longer. People want to remove work and have unlimited pleasure.
Take modern medicine for example. Most people with problems caused by chronic stress, battling with anxiety, or joint issues from sedentary living would sooner take a pill that guarantees immediate relief than work consciously into the pain in order to solve it at the root. Why? Because the latter takes work - but we have forgotten that the work is where the real gold lies. Pain is no longer a teacher, but something we believe that we deserve to be free from. Such solutions are temporary and do not alter the habits that caused them.
The larger theme that’s evolving is an exchange of long term health, happiness and freedom for short term pleasure. Why are people doing this? Because our biological algorithms still expect pleasure to require work of some kind, so looking for short cuts is a survival mechanism. Now we are being presented with an abundance of short cuts, which people confuse with freedom, when really it diabolically destroys us by sucking us into addiction and passivity. Freedom requires conscious effort.
This essay is for the person who’s had enough; who is hell bent on reclaiming their freedom through deep, integrative and meaningful work; who refuses to let their finite life get sucked into scattered frames of time spent scrolling, not applying themselves and avoiding challenge.
Your potential is bigger than who you currently are, but conventional living does the opposite of nurturing it’s realisation. On the contrary, conventional living trains us to cut corners, remain in the same trenches of addictions and impulses rather than out-grow them, continuously bombard ourselves with useless information that narrows our thinking and locks our mind inside thick walls of illusion.
The following was written in 1977 - wildly ahead of it’s time for most people, but now more relevant than ever.
I am gross and perverted
I'm obsessed and deranged
I have existed for years
But very little has changed
I'm the tool of the Government
And industry too
For I am destined to rule
And regulate you
I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set
You will obey me while I lead you
And eat the garbage that I feed you
Until the day that we don't need you
Don't go for help, no one will heed you
Your mind is totally controlled
It has been stuffed into my mold
And you will do as you are told
Until the rights to you are sold
- I’m The Slime by Frank Zappa
With a diet rich in toxic information, we grow scattered, incoherent and weak. This essay is a way out of the echo-chamber, designed to offer a toolkit for not only the complete turnaround of your life by returning to the depths of inner investigations, but inspiration to remind you that what’s possible for your development is infinitely greater than the limitations of your doubt.
Whether you are beyond frustrated about your brain fog, addiction and distraction, or aspiring to be an elite performer in your field of pursuit, or simply a deeply obsessed practitioner who enjoys the full richness of diving deep and transforming through skillful play and presence, then the following frameworks are essential for you.
If you don’t have the space to let things sink in (I suggest at least 15 - 20 min) then bookmark the online version for later.
I am going to explain:
- How to reclaim your attention to make life more meaningful every day
- Core drivers of true personal growth and how to implement them
- Hidden traits of all virtuosos and how to adopt them in any practice
- Never stagnate: The cycle of purge and renewal
- The wisdom of your body: Unlocking infinite potential
- Carving out your lifestyle to support growth
The Morphosis of Learning
Let’s start with some basic definitions.
Personal transformation: The change of an individual from one set of attributes (values, beliefs, habits, behaviours, status, emotions and flaws) to another.
Morphosis: A transformation in form.
Everyone undergoes morphosis - physically, psychologically and spiritually. Our cells constantly die and get renewed. Our beliefs change. Some humans age in a purely deteriorate way, whilst others age deliberately by staying active. However, those who stay active physically may yet grow rigid in their mindset, whilst people who do not move much can spend a lifetime reinventing themselves on a personal level. This work explores the full spectrum - physical to psychological to spiritual - in integration (because they are not fundamentally separate).
You likely know what I mean when I say ‘physical’ and when I say ‘psychological’ - so I will briefly clarify what I mean by spiritual because these days the term get’s thrown around with various meanings and implications. Due to it’s weight, I’ll start my definition through negation of what I do not mean.
I do not mean the belief in anything of the spirit - which could be something non physical, non-psychological or transcendent/invisible in any way. In fact, I do not mean belief in anything at all.
As practitioners, our interest is in direct experience - models are secondary. At the root of experience is awareness - the simple foundation of our consciousness; nothing other than that which see’s these very words right now. In practice, awareness can be cultivated, expanded and strengthened, and this in turn has direct consequences to our sense of self. Not to be confused with ideas or theories of self, but the very way we feel directly as a matter of experience. Developing and deepening one’s understanding of self through direct experience is what I call spiritual growth. The through direct experience part cannot be stressed enough, because we live in a world where definitions and concepts can reign supreme by default.
For the purpose of this essay, I will aim to be philosophical only to the extent that it is pragmatic.
Like I said, the physical, psychological and spiritual are integrated in experience, but we distinguish them only in order to communicate with a bit more precision when it comes to setting a practice intention. Much of the tremendous psychological work that we seek lies in the domain of existentialism - contemplating death as a means to identify what is meaningful to us. This inevitably folds into ones spiritual development, as well as informs and inspires one’s practice when it comes to movement.
So any time a word doesn’t feel right to you, remember it’s just a word. Focus on what does feel real - that’s where the true work is.
Without further ado, let’s talk about egos.
1. Types of ego.
The concept of ego is too often associated with the negative - the impure. I prefer to view the ego as a necessary aspect of human life - the personality through which we express ourselves, form relationships and create a (hopefully) balanced society that strives for a greater good. What people usually call ‘ego’ are things like insecurities, tendency towards ill will, desire, attachment, greed and so on. However, I simply view this as having an unstable ego - one that does not have it’s parts integrated harmoniously, full of internal contradictions of intent, belief and value.
A person who comes across as stable, unhindered and deeply compassionate does not have less ego, they just have a more harmonious ego - one that is well aligned and coherent. One should therefore not attempt to be rid of ego, but integrate it.
A. The static ego
It believes that it is fundamentally a static identity - I am who I am. Therefore change is blocked and this leads to the perpetuation of forces that prevent transformation - lest the static identity dies. But in truth, what we are is not ‘this’ in a fixed sense - because ‘this’ only exists in relation to ‘that’, and so there is absolutely nothing fundamental about ‘this’ or ‘that’. How then can the ego be static?
B. The dynamic ego
A well integrated ego maintains change as a constant truth. It does not hold on to anything, because it understands that things are fundamentally relative and therefore empty - transformation is therefore inevitable and welcomed. People with dynamic ego’s have little to no problem with inner contradictory forces that lead to misguided judgements and poor decisions. This is not to say that these things do not exist for such people, but just that they are seen as temporary and relative - like everything else - and so their potency is little to none. Stumbling is a part of the process.
In general, our morphosis is something that, either:
- We, ourselves, guide - as the steersperson of a ship - or
- We do not pay attention to, so we get dragged along for the ride as order degenerates into chaos (as is the way of entropy) whilst we hold on to as much as we can out of fear.
The former comes from diligent practice, whilst the latter is what people with static ego’s tend to do more of. Since they believe that ‘I am what I am and that won’t change’, they are blind to their weak spots and therefore their potential - voluntarily or involuntarily - and submit themselves to a state of helplessness.
It is the difference between confronting chaos to transmute it, or not.
The latter leads to physical degradation, scattered thinking, low willpower, apathy, doubt, anxiety, illness, depression and so on.
The former is where we will focus - since the transmutation of chaos into ordered understanding and embodiment is the heart of transformative learning. It takes the discipline of self-leadership, which I will explain to be a natural extension of having a dynamic ego.
Thematic Interconnectedness & The Virtuoso
Chaos is everything you don’t know (including that which you don’t know that you don’t know). It is multifaceted, immeasurable, overwhelming and absolutely inconceivable. However, with graded exposure, our very intelligent brains create ordered maps that help us to navigate it.
When we are born, we cannot see. When we begin to see, the first recognisable ‘thing’ that we can distinguish from the mass of pure information is our mother. Step by step, we partition ourselves from the rest of our environment from there. The unknown becomes known through a process of mapping - distinguishing ‘this’ from ‘that’ and understanding the gist of their interconnections.
The same is true for any learning process at any age. Give a novice a guitar - they see a box with six strings and some lines where you can supposedly press your fingers. Teach them the hidden networks and connections of melodic scales, harmonic groups of notes, and a transformation occurs.
The person themselves is different after learning - literally and figuratively, they have morphed.
- Physically, their brain is different - new neural connections between previously out-of-contact islands are now speaking in direct communication through coordinated expression.
- Their body is different from having learned new ways of moving (the skin adapts, along with other tissues like nerves and muscle)
- Their motor skill and dexterity has increased.
- On a personal level, they went from not being a guitarist to being a guitarist (at least sort of).
- Their perception has changed - the guitar is no longer a mere box with strings, but an instrument of musical possibility.
- Their self expression has access to new, deeper domains of esoteric forms, principles and concepts - so what they perceive as possible has expanded.
This is a basic example of morphosis through learning. I’m not going to tell you to learn the guitar, I’m going to explain, through the lens of scientific research and personal experience, how certain learning processes - those that involve movement at a reasonable complexity - prime your brain and nervous system for greater growth, adaptation and learning in the broadest sense possible. You’ll see that we can approach skills with less emphasis on the skill itself, and more on the wider implications for the ubiquitousness of themes and principles across learning processes.
By digesting skills in the way that I’ll outline, we become better learners in a general sense because we extract, dissect and absorb such fundamental principles and themes that apply across all domains of life. Finally, you’ll learn that your movement is literally the fundamental bedrock of how you live and interact with the world and others, so training it as strategically as possible through the lens of meta-learning will accelerate your growth in all domains.
The ongoing excavation and embodiment of such principles and themes is exactly what sets the virtuoso apart from all the rest - novice to exceptional - and that staying on the path of the virtuoso is simply about avoiding common pitfalls that I’ll explain. I believe everyone has an inner virtuoso but most simply do not end up fully nurturing and releasing it. If you disagree with me on this front, then that belief will prevent you from gaining anything from this essay and so you can stop reading here.
The principles of virtuosity are buried deeply within the dynamic nature of who you are (or could be) and how you (could) live; they do not depend on the specifics of any skill. We’re here to discover these principles so we can align ourselves with a path of authenticity and purpose.
2. Common Pitfalls
The pitfalls that prevent virtuosity take many forms. This could mean falling off track in less than 6 months, or even carving a deep groove of repetition with the practice after several years - a static plateau. There are many options.
So the question becomes: how can we identify the pitfalls to ensure that we stay on track?
Never Finished - The way of process.
A primary pitfall is thinking that we’re done. Really, we’re never done, because process goes on and on until we die (and who knows if it truly ends then?). If one simply wants to arrive at some goal, then once achieved (if they manage to get there) the practitioner basically takes an exit road off the highway of virtuosity and settles into a static state.
A fundamental paradigm shift that many of my students undertake is going from goal orientation to process orientation in their approach. Goal orientation means that you undertake something in order to be done with it. You just want results, and the process is no more than a means to an end. Process orientation doesn’t mean not caring about results - on the contrary, we care deeply - it’s about recognising them for what they really are (and are not).
To the virtuoso, results are not destinations, they are checkpoints in a process. See how this shift goes from static (destination) to dynamic (process)? When we’re truly in it for the game, we can dial in on every moment of practice, savouring detail within detail - because the true point is the process itself. Then guess what? The results are optimised, because results will always fall to the quality of our process.
Embracing this as deeply as possible catalyses the identity paradigm shift from static to dynamic. Virtuosos are constantly refining and never repeating. They never ‘arrive’ - they are always evolving.
I once attended a guitar masterclass by Frank Gambale - the guitarist of Chic Corea’s band. He said that in the 36 years he spent touring the world with Chic, he never once heard Chic repeat himself in his solos. This pure, continuous, unconstrained and improvisational excavation of fresh ideas - under the spotlight of thousands of listening fans - is the pinnacle of what it means to have a heart that burns bright in it’s dynamical expression. It’s a process, not a place.
We cannot surf the wave of change once and then sit back and let things glide by again, because we will get devoured by the next wave. This is the midlife crisis that arrives once one finally arrives at their dream job, or the death-bed regret of one who only lived for the future. We need to shift to a mindset where we can always be riding on the wavefront of time, shedding the old and revealing the new as a continuous way of being.
If you’re coming from a place of a static ego, then this is tricky, because the tendency to collapse into a state of ‘arrival’ is habitual. “Is it done? Am I there yet?”
You will naturally project the assumption that the virtuoso is a static state of being, when it is not. As a result, you will think that transformation is a temporary period wherein you arrive at a new place. It can be, and people improve in this way, but this is not the way of virtuosity.
We see this pitfall all the time. Marcelo Garcia, the greatest grappler in the world, would glide through world championship tournaments with moves and techniques that no one could keep up with. After the tournament, other competitors thought it wise to emulate him - after all, he’s clearly at the ultimate level, isn’t he? So they would study the videos and learn his proven method. Marcelo himself even taught his entire repertoire to his circle - with no desire to keep it all to himself - because he knew more than that.
Trying to replicate virtuosity is not embracing its dynamic nature. To think that Marcelo won because his techniques were superior is coming from a static belief system - as if he has the answer, where the answer is fixed and absolute. On the contrary, he won because his way of being is so dynamic and constantly evolving that his resulting techniques are always ahead of everyone else. They are too busy emulating what people have already done.
Needless to say, Marcelo showed up the next year and wiped them all out with a whole new approach. He indeed did have the answer, but that answer is a dynamic way which looks different every day and can only be understood through embodiment of the principles of virtuosity.
Never Knowing - The way of the beginner.
People love to feel like they know, which often manifests as a refusal to embrace the beginner mentality - of knowing nothing. Once we ‘know’, the process is over - we can return to the comfort of being static. Being left not knowing is an uncomfortable space that static egos cannot stand, but for dynamic ego’s it serves as the potential for their continuous evolution - the space to lean into. True learning is a constant fluctuation between knowing and not knowing.
I’ll never forget week long movement intensive when the artist Tom Weksler began to give contradictory instructions. I understood this as simply space to choose and interpret, so I didn’t have an issue, but others did. He deftly cut through their complaining with “Sometimes maturity is about knowing that logical contradictions can be simultaneously true.” This is highly resonant of the words of Niels Bohr that I delved into during my time as a physicist, who developed his interpretation of quantum mechanics along side a deep exploration of ancient chinese mysticism. He said that “the opposite of a fact is a falsehood, but the opposite of a profound truth may be another profound truth.”
Our tendency to grasp at some sense of ‘knowing’ is a huge limitation that makes us closed minded, because this form of knowing is far from all encapsulating. Thinking as though the world is obliged to fit into our conceptual frameworks is forgetting that our frameworks are not absolute.
Opening up to the relativity of truths is highly destabilising for static egos, but this is where dynamic egos thrive.
Unlearning as death, learning as renewal.
Accepted truths support the static sense of self, so expanding beyond them can be painful. It requires the death of the one who does not want to grow - and that one will always live inside of us until we consciously unlearn its basic paradigms. The space left behind is what makes evolution possible.
After we acquire a new skill, the natural progression is to take on a higher level of complexity, abstraction, or both, to cement on top of our new foundations and keep expanding. This means continuing to lean into the unknown, which will always be immeasurable compared to the known. However, questions such as “now that I know this, what can I do with it?” scale down the overwhelm by inviting growth out of curiosity.
Increasing the complexity brings us back to the beginner stage of the learning process, and through cyclic iteration we climb the upward spiral of growth. The virtuoso forever dwells on the upward spiral.
3. The Cycle of Learning
Stage 1: Frustration and failure
Beginning something new marked emotionally by our frustration towards constantly failing. The first task is to get over yourself and just be a fool. This is hard when one has little awareness of their own aversions towards failure; the discomfort quickly overrides the sense that there’s any point in doing this. Something vulnerable gets exposed - lack, ignorance, insufficiency - accompanied by the weight of how much work is necessary to close the gap. The instinct of the static ego is to turn away and find something more stable instead.
Since they cannot see the other side of the wall, they stop short and miss out on the revelation that comes by piercing through it. It is therefore highly useful to implement two approaches in ones practice:
- Aversion training. This is actively seeking discomfort and being with it. By building awareness here, the practice triggers our reactivity and then strips it away as it is seen in the light of our consciousness. Over time, one can even build a compassion practice out of this, and the process becomes loving discomfort. Since our aversions are usually held unconsciously, aversion training forces us to lean into growth with a curious heart. Humility is an inevitable result.
My students use high intensity training, endurance, resistance and cold exposure along side nervous system regulation practices to cultivate awareness around their aversions so that they do not hold them back from transformation.
2. Beginner mentality. Cultivate this by always having some practice going on in life, in which you have zero prior skill. Becoming an expert fool is an invaluable endeavour that enables you to take on anything.
Stage 2: Success & Confidence.
Since the wall of failure is beginning to give way, we feel good. But the knowledge is still frail and not deeply embedded. Stopping here would cause a regression to stage 1, but many people do it because they feel like they have arrived at what they wanted - the positive emotion, the feeling of understanding, knowing, success. Continuing would be overly serious and boring, afterall, aren’t we just in it for the fun?
To think that boredom is best avoided is as severe a mistake as avoiding frustration. Working through boredom is where practice makes permanent.
Those who are too hooked on the feeling of succeeding cannot stand the plateau of positive emotion and novelty that comes when successful attempts are consistent and normalised. So, they stop and go chase something else, then they expect to pick it back up at the same level a week later after zero practice. Not gonna happen.
One must use this plateau as an opportunity to embed the information deeply into their being through refined repitition. For those who duck out, the entire learning process becomes a constant oscillation between the lows of frustration and failure and the highs of success and confidence. Their hate for boredom prevents them from ever seeing the other side of it.
Rather than surfing the superficial waves of the emotional response, we must observe from a deeper place in order to penetrate into what lies beyond. That’s why the defining mark of a virtuoso is an endless obsession with fundamental principles - absolute basics that have infinite depth for one who is curious enough to surpass boredom.
Stage 3: The Plateau
If you cannot do it faster than you can think about doing it, then you cannot do it.
Ingraining the skill means teaching our body how to execute the pathway without the need for any prior thought. Being present and curious towards banality the prerequisite that shifts our perspective towards noticing more. This can start with humility - acknowledging that you’ve only taken a baby step and now you must begin again. In doing so, the various stages comprising the task at hand get compressed together into a single smooth action: a new neural pathway.
Generally, the essence of skill acquisition is the degree to which complex action can be chunked down into a single, potent pathway in our nervous system. What previously had multiple parts now has one. It’s no longer a job of mental gymnastics when it’s finally under the belt of reflex.
Stage 4 - Before Completion
Once it’s automatic, our target area has massively shrunk in correspondence with the increase in our one-pointed concentration. There’s less to focus on, so our attention is free to dial in ever more closely on fine tuning. This deep immersion shifts perception towards an increased frame rate and granularity, so we can notice the in-between spaces of our practice. When we truly look, liminal spaces are rich in potential insight. Those who make complex action seem effortless can simply ‘see’ more frames than you, because they have spent more time dwelling in the in-between.
Such a shift in perception can take many forms; zooming out from the sheer stress of the task to see through a calmer and clearer lens, noticing and relaxing unnecessary tension - so that wasted energy can be redirected for greater efficiency, honing in on the segment of the movement where it feels like a blip and imbuing it with clarity.
Once they key creases are ironed out, the virtuoso recognises this phase as a place where the task can be moved up a notch in it’s complexity - and it’s back to stage 1, but we’ve spiraled in a positive direction.
The highest understanding does aim for a particular stage in the cycle, but embraces the cycle as a spiral that goes around continuously for the entirety of life. This is the heart of process orientation. As we go around, we get better at nativating each phase. Failure becomes tranquil. Boredom becomes intriguing. Success becomes empty. No matter what level of skill we reach, embracing the upward spiral means that we get better at learning over time. Meta learning is inevitable for those who have the calling of growth within them.
Aside on being stuck.
“When you are perfectly free to feel stuck or not stuck, then you're unstuck” - Alan Watts
There is no special talent which enables certain people to access high level skill from the get go. Yes, some pick things up faster, but the path to virtuosity depends on so many more factors that the initial set up rarely matters at all compared to the ongoing psychological commitment to the process.
When we watch them perform, it’s far too easy to assume that they never get stuck, that everything is effortless and constantly blissful for them. Indeed, this is how many hope to feel when they reach that level. But that’s not how it feels for them.
They’re way past those initial sensations - the honeymoon period of learning. So much so, that their attitude is no longer that of an immature romanticism. It’s built out of years of toiling through the gutter of hard work, showing up when no one was there to support them. Making progress with no one to celebrate with. Growing in silence and loneliness, obsessed by the mirror of their practice through which they discover more about life, themselves, meaning, and freedom.
Then, once they become virtuosic, people start to notice - and they get labeled as gifted. Hilarious, right?
The notion of talent is the invention of a static ego who does not understand or embrace process.
There has to be hardship - being stuck, full of doubt, totally lost - and the hardship necessary is proportional to the depth of virtuosity that gets galvanized as a result of working through it. Turn away from the work for an easy slip road off the highway.
Most people just want freedom, so once they feel stuck, they believe that they are less free than they were before. But true freedom is equal to a holistic discipline that does not let one’s weaknesses slip through the cracks - since even the smallest non-virtue will grow into a self-sabotaging force that destroys our real independence.
When life and learning are integrated, then being stuck is part of the process that shows us the way to grow. Becoming free to feel stuck through acceptance of what is makes us magnitudes more free than we were before the stuckness arrived. It’s also how we learn from it. Simply turning away from it will guarantee that it follows you. It will pop up somewhere else as a recurring theme in the interconnected sea of life.
4. The Upward Spiral of Meta Learning.
Back to the spiral. This is where things get really juicy.
The critical factor to grasp here is that we do not spiral through repetition alone - we must increase the complexity, abstraction and integration of our practice as time goes on. Let’s dive into what that means.
Complexity, Abstraction & Integration
Complexity: A system is complex when it has multiple variables (or degrees of freedom) which may even interact with one another. When these variables function together towards a particular task or outcome, the system is said to have ordered complexity.
When learning the ins and outs of a complex sysem, one starts with basic principles - those that underlie all potential outcomes - and build up from there.
When learning mathematics, you do not begin algebraic manipulation with equations of twenty variables. That would be too complex. You start by learning addition and subtraction. Then multiplication and division. Then, you have basic equations with three or four variables in order to understand how the operations function together - and build from there.
Then, there comes a point of diminishing returns on our learning when it comes to increasing complexity. Staying with the maths example, you wouldn’t learn more by studying equations of 21 variables as opposed to 20. This is because at a certain level of complexity, you notice meta patterns - abstract rules that remain true regardless of the complexity of the system. This is when you can start to speak of systems of ‘n’ variables, i.e. generalisation is now possible because the complexity does not matter. We have learned what we need in order to look at the system as a larger concept.
This increase in abstraction allows us to view higher level principles rather than becoming arbitrarily specialised. It arrives as a natural step forward once an appropriate level of complexity has been reached and allows us to broaden what we have learned in a way that integrates our lessons into wider and wider contexts.
Let’s look at abstraction within a movement context. Consider someone who wishes to improve their hand-eye coordination.
They might take on the skill of juggling. Going from 2 balls to 3 is a great step up in complexity. So is 3 to 4. But as we continue climbing, to 5, 6, 7, and so on, the increase in complexity get’s less and less. In essence, juggling 9 balls is not really different in terms of the demand on our hand-eye coordination from juggling 8. One who can juggle 8 could relatively easily step up to 9, because they already have enough understanding of the underlying principles in order to do so, and so they do not really learn much more. This is where the generalist must step back, zoom out and ask - What have I really learned here? How can I abstract the principles to apply in other areas? How can I come at these principles from a new angle? And most importantly, how do they integrate into my being?
Continuing to add arbitrarily more balls to ones juggling practice will certainly increase the complexity of the skill drastically, but not necessarily broaden their perspective. Rather, it would narrow it. This makes for a great circus performance but as generalists, our interests lie elsewhere.
We want to embody an integration of learning and lfie, so we must zoom out and connect the dots. Abstraction means asking higher level questions, and therefore solving higher level problems with more far and wide reaching implications.
It goes without saying that this process applies not only to mathematics and juggling, but to all learning processes - language, music, movement, dance, art, cooking, chess, martial arts, science, astrology, spiritual practice, architecture, carpentry, medicine, therapy and so on. With that said, not all people follow it well because of the multitude of potential pitfalls - the pull towards specialisation being one of them.
Well toss me a turd and call me a chimp…
Now we understand the broad view of meta learning, we might wonder how the fuck we humans can undergo such complex growth when the next smartest animal throws shit at its friend for fun? Well, one key reason is that we have a highly developed pre-frontal cortex which is responsible for the following:
Executive functioning.
- A strong working memory to handle multiple variables
- Clarity to discern and discard irrelevant information from our stream of thought so that we don’t diverge out of relevance.
- Zooming out and taking a birds eye view of the process to make top down decisions that get passed down a chain until some effect is carried out.
(It’s called an executive function for a reason)
Now, I’m not saying that the ape brain grew because apes started juggling and doing mathematics, I’m saying the reason we can do mathematics and juggle is because the brain grew in such a way as to be able to handle high level learning.
There is a deeper root cause for this adaptation. Can you guess what it is?
The Morphosis of Motor Learning
Humans are the worst movement specialists in the animal kingdom.
Conor McGregor is useless against a gorilla. Marcelo Garcia would lose against a python. Usain Bolt is dead against a cheetah. The same can be said of climbing, swimming, you name it.
What we can do like no other species is generalise.
1. Movement Intelligence: The Core of Adaptation
As the race was forced to adapt to new environments, we broadened our domain of movement. That means learning to move in more complex ways.
Imagine: you have to climb a piece of rock or die. At first, the towering menace is pure chaos staring deep into your soul. You have no idea where to start. Then, bit by bit, you put the pieces together. Which limb goes where and when. Which direction to push and pull, and in which order. Piece by piece, you fold layer upon layer of understanding in this new domain of movement. You are entrenched in a deep learning process.
By learning how to handle greater complexity across various movement contexts, we became the most intelligent species. All thanks to motor learning: problem solving in movement.
Dont get confused:
Meta Learning - learning how to learn.
Motor Learning - increasing skill to take on more complex movement tasks.
Motor learning has been shown to prime the brain for greater information processing - not only across the timespan of evolution, but even within a single lifetime.
That means that you, right now, can undergo a learning process that updates your brain’s ability to learn. You ready for this?
2. Movement Complexity: Motor Learning VS Motor Activity (Why your gym grind doesnt grow you)
An experiment was done in the early 2000’s on rats. Two groups, one was placed in an obstacle course (complex movement) and the other placed on a treadmill (not complex movement).
Over 30 days, the treadmill rats were exposed to greater and greater distances day by day, whilst the obstacle course rats became increasingly proficient at crossing the obstacle course over time. Dealing with balancing beams, swings, you name it, took them less and less time the more they practiced.
After 30 days, the treadmill rats had travelled a distance of some 19 times further than the rats on the obstacle course. But does that imply greater adaptation?
As usual, the find this answer, the rats were then killed to have their brains examined.
In particular, the scientists observed a layer of the cerebellum that contains particular cells known to support information processing (aka learning, aka skill acquisition) called Purkinje cells.
The obstacle course rats had 25% more neural connections in this region of the brain than the treadmill rats. In just one month - that’s a profound increase in their capacity for information processing. All thanks to movement complexity.
The conclusion from the study was that movement complexity is essential for motor learning, which in turn expands the brain's ability to handle information in general. On the other hand, movement at a low complexity that can be done without much ‘thought’ - like being on a treadmill - only stimulates motor activity, not motor learning. These are critically different.
This (just one study among many) is profound evidence that the basis of animal intelligence is movement complexity, and we are such smarty pants because we became far more dextrous, complex, sophisticated and generalised in our movement than any other species. Cool, right?
That means that you, by default, are among the best movers on the planet (though you probably don’t feel that way, and I’ll explain why.)
3. The Convention: Menial Fitness Work
The shocking fact remains - despite being hell bent on hitting their personal best every day in each and every sphere of life, most people show up to the gym and train motor activity, not motor learning.
There’s no expansion, no inspiration, no learning.
This is like an artist who’s input comes from scrolling tiktok as opposed to exhibitions. Or a chef who just eats sliced cheese sandwiches on hovis bread.
When it comes to creative skill, your input determines your output. When it comes to transformation, how you move is how you grow.
Your movement is literally the fundamental wiring for your life - you are doing it constantly. Changing your life should start with changing how you move, since this affects everything else. So, if you aim to lead a life of meaning and inspiration in your work and relationships, why would you train your system in the menial fashion of factory work?
By never significantly increasing the complexity of their exercise, gym rats neglect motor learning and so miss out on huge potential for increasing their overall capacity for growth. Their muscles might get bigger, but that’s nothing compared to the adaption we’re interested in. The saddest part is they’re just doing what they think is best - but here’s the brutal truth.
This form of training is popular because marketing sells aesthetics - not morphosis. Deep transformation is invisible, whilst aesthetics can be sexualised and sold. It offers a simple process towards simple results.
When the only challenge is grit down and squeeze and the only results are more pump, then there’s no cognition or problem solving involved whatsoever.
This is not growth, so much as masturbation.
Of course, everyone should include resistance training as a part of their life - but it’s about how it is trained, which context it is placed within and how one progresses with it that determines the complexity and therefore the utility.
The Peak Performance Routine:
Pursue your purpose, integrate your intuition & express your eccentricity.
So you’re ready to start implementing and you wanna know where to start. Good, let’s dive in.
Hopping aboard the upward spiral is as simple as putting quality before anything else - in every moment. This is the meaning of peak performance - growing at our edge and riding on the wavefront of dynamic evolution as a way of life. But how does one construct an exact method that integrates the principles of virtuosity that we have covered?
Peak performance routines do not exist in a replicable way. Those who follow scripted outlines suggested by Andrew Huberman as being optimised are not tapping into their individuality. They are still a critical step behind. Don’t be so clinical on yourself. You’re not replicable and neither should your routine be. Look into the routines of those exceptional individuals who inspire you - I’d bet my life that none of them are the same, and yet all of them are totally eccentric.
Richard Feynman - arguably the greatest physicist of all time and most inspirational mind of the 20th century - would finish work early and go play the bongos with his drumming band. His colleagues, who worked over time, would do more than raise eyebrows at this. Then he’d hit up a strip club, sit in the corner under dim lights and plough through page after page of equations figuring out the nature of the quantum world. Or, if he didn’t feel like it, he’d just doodle something - often one of the dancers that he liked.
He knew more than to force himself to keep up with the Joneses. Going against the grain in this fashion is a natural extension of one who knows their true substance without doubt.
1. You are not replicable.
Rather than mimic others, we must understand the underlying principles and mentalities that led them to those routines and find our own way of expressing that. Furthermore, your routine should be a consequence of your alignment with your purpose - not something that you force upon yourself as an attempt to be more aligned.
There’s a huge difference, and most people fall into the latter. Their routine becomes a crutch, because they believe it is responsible for their growth, as if they would stagnate or regress without it. Through ‘discipline’ (or, at least their definition of discipline), they enter a static state that I call bland consistency; neurotically glued to a routine in the hope that it will get them somewhere.
‘Peak performers’ that get into a gym routine - and keep it - simply have an anchor that keeps them in the same place that they are. They may be adding a few lb’s to each exercise week by week, but the complexity does not increase. They are facing discomfort, which does feel like momentum, but the hardcore regularity narrows their development into a specialisation that they do not realise is happening.
Bland consistency is a step up from nothing, but a static comfort zone nonetheless. You hear it all the time - just keep showing up! Consistency is key! But just showing up is not enough, and most peoples’ definition of consistency is certainly not the key.
Virtuosos don’t just show up, they show up and peak in their performance. For them, consistency is far more nuanced than adding a few lb’s to their squat each week.
Without guidance or accountability, people do the bare minimum required for some return. Usually this leads to a routine of bland consistency. In order to grow out of this, the routine must shift deeply as old parts of us shed and new parts sprout. You need to favour long term vision over short term force.
Granted, in the beginning we need to build our Brute Force mechanism by doing the work no matter what. During this phase, there is a clear intention to push through every single time. However, once we acquire this skill - which takes less time than most people think - we need to transition to the next stage of learning: discerning weakness from intuition. Discerning starts by letting our signals seep through rather than squishing them down, so that we can listen to them.
When we don’t feel like it because we’re in a bad mood and the sun isn’t shining very much today, that’s weakness. Intuition is what tells us not to rush into action because there’s a deeper shift that requires some inner stillness in order to unfold.
Weakness is very sneaky at disguising itself as intuition, and the Brute Force persona is equally sneaky at justifying that all intuition is actually weakness in disguise.
Nonetheless, the skill of discernment must be built. So what signals can we rely upon?
Fear Equals Growth
An intuitive shift is often accompanied by fear of loss. Think about it - hardcore consistency provides perfect support for a static ego that thrives on the belief that it is changing itself for the better. Yeah! I’m driven, I’m gonna reach my goals one day because I do hard shit. Me me me. It has everything to lose.
But what about your real nature, which is changing as constantly as you are breathing?
Letting go into the unknown is like shedding skin, which can feel like a rupture in ones sense of self. The urge to keep going then serves as a protective mechanism that perpetuates a static identity. Does a massive change feel scary because of the consistency you’ve built? Maybe that’s the new place to lean into, for a new form of discomfort to galvanize fresh growth.
The nuances lie in the fact that more often than not, we do not need to change what we are doing, but how we are doing it. Being virtuosic is complicated, but we can do it with enough faith in the process. Putting yourself in the shackles of a brutish discipline because you believe that without it you will digress into nonsense is a total lack of faith. As justified as you might be, you are covering up a deeper issue with a band aid.
Ask yourself: Do you trust the way without doubt? Or do you get caught up in trying to make things different?
If you truly trusted that this way is the only way, then how would you act?
The forging of an aligned mentality tends to involve some deep dive into an existential abyss wherein ones sense of purpose is revealed. Then, through a process of integration, the static ego no longer obscures our dynamic nature, so we may trust the way.
After all, we have no choice; we are already inseparable from nature - and nature gets everything done without rush.
2. The just show up fallacy.
The phrase just show up developed because of the overly hyped motivation culture - which non-consensually stimulated the gag reflex of those who enjoy embracing their lows as periods of slowness. Unsurprisingly, those who choose to cocoon became insecure of the hype that said inaction equals weakness. Perhaps they tried joining the motivation jerkers, but it didn’t last because they’re wired differently. They burned out.
But now, everyone is burned out. Many of my clients are fiery hearted souls like myself, who do not know how to balance this energy. When the default mode is go, then motivation culture is a shortcut to burnout because no one can be go all the time - even Jocko Willink.
Just show up became the antidote to this - encouraging that one simply goes through the motions without expectation on their performance. Don’t try to be motivated, just show up. Granted, it’s a step out of inaction and it’s far more realistic than the hype culture, but it’s coming from a place of trying not to trigger the trauma of the last burnout episode. This will not produce your best work.
Just show up is another sneaky crutch that keeps us on the sideline of the path to virtuosity. On the other hand, showing up with a blazing fire every time is unrealistic. The vast majority of people only know these two extremes, but between a piercing thunderbolt and a yielding detachment lies a vast spectrum of attributes, attitudes and states of being that the virtuosic practitioner navigates with skill.
When we just show up, we’re settling for a participation trophy before we get started. We need to show up and peak in our performance - show up to win, even when its only you vs you. This means applying the right mentality at the right time.
3. Just peak
All conditions are dynamic - internally and externally - and must only set parameters around the type of quality and presence with which you show up - not limit the amount.
Since objective consistency is as impossible as two days being the same, our practice must work with the fluctuations of life intelligently, using wise constraints and flexibility rather than trying to brute force ourselves, not showing up, or just showing up.
Our show-up standard should therefore be phrased as a question:
With the current conditions, what does peak performance look like and how can I bring it?
Blowing down the doors with all your caffeine fueled motivation could work at times, but is totally absurd when you could skillfully and quietly zoom in and pick the lock.
Peak performance will never look the same two days in a row, but certain principles will always apply. For starters, the dead-set intention to strike immersive engagement must be there every single time and in every moment - however subtle. Discipline means being driven, intelligent and sustainable.
Sometimes we do need to bite through, others we must yield - and this fluctuates moment to moment as practice develops. The meaningful aspect of practice is learning, through experience, that the spectrum of being is thematically continuous with the rest of our lives.
4. Are you driven or what?
At age 22, Richard Feynman’s childhood love, who was 18, developed tuberculosis. So he married her and spent the next couple of years helping her to die. The same year she died, Hiroshima and Nagasake received the destruction of atomic bombs that Feynman helped build, out of the belief that it’s us or them. Hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths came out of his life’s work. What followed was a long and deep plunge into the existential underworld.
Then, what re-emerged was one of the most loving and inspiring characters known to the world of science and beyond. But what happened there? He realised why life is truly valuable to him, and thus passion and determination for his work not only returned - it grew.
The problem is that for most people, being left to their own devices with instructions such as follow your passion will result in them smoking cones and playing video games, getting nothing done whatsoever. Their actions are not in alignment with what they (think they) believe to be of utmost importance. A catastrophe would no doubt reset their perspective, but they do not need to wait for this to happen.
To regain agency, one should start with deep, active contemplation. Reflect on the fact that you are going to die soon. Everyone you know and love is also going to die soon. Either you will live through the deaths of your loved ones, or you will die first and they will suffer the loss.
Death means the absence of everything - including yourself. In 250 years (which is really the blink of an eye), the letters on your grave stone will be weathered and impossible to read. No one will remember you. So what is really worth your time right now?
The arrival of death is the only absolute certainty - but its timing absolutely uncertain. There’s no guarantee that it wont come today. Go into that until you feel how real it is. We do not need to experience catastrophe - though it will come eventually - in order to shift. We just need to contemplate actively.
Visualise your funeral. Visualise tragedies happening in your life. Don’t just digress into depressive thinking, but weigh the severity and emotion up against the question of what truly matters? Then snap out of it with a deep and profound gratitude that right now you’re not dead - and work with purpose.
Contemplating death is an existential technique that powerfully sets our values and priorities in the right order, so that we can act in alignment with a deeper purpose. Shift doesnt happen over night. It takes toiling willfully through deep shadows, crises and emotional rollercoasters. We can run the risk of emotional burnout from going in too hard, so balancing this with integrative action is essential and best done with guidance. But once the foundation for your behaviour and action is set, your purpose is an ongoing truth that you live without question.
From Insight to Embodiment
To shift from a static to a dynamic state of being - from habitual repetition to a virtuous spiral - is to embody the greatest of human capacities: conscious evolution. Through movement intelligence, we access the original technology of transformation that has distinguished our species since prehistory. The brain and body that evolved through movement complexity forms the same system that is still capable of reinventing itself today.
Yet, we must acknowledge the fundamental paradox of self-directed transformation. We cannot see what we cannot see. When we’re growing inside of our own bubble of self, there is the known, the unknown and the unknown unknown. We can only see the known. The unknown consists of the unanswered questions that we seek to solve. With guidance, we discover and implement them more rapidly. The unknown unknown consists of the unsolved parts that we would not even think to look for, because we are, by default, focused within our domain of pre-existing paradigms. We cannot possibly get ourselves outside of them because according to ourselves, there is no outside! The very tools with which we can ask questions and seek answers are built out of our paradigms. Thus we are confined by what we seek to transcend. Only a skilled mentor has an outside view of our unseen thought structures and the ability to shine light on them.
True mentorship is therefore not a series of prescribed instructions or frameworks - that would only be pleasing to the static ego who craves solidity and certainty. True mentorship is a process that embodies what it seeks to catalyse; dynamic evolution. It is an ongoing relationship that provides the exact conditions for your own inner revelations to emerge through strategically calibrated resistance and support. Resistance to show you your blind spots and support to illuminate the pathways that you would otherwise be blind to. Ever evolving, never arriving at any final answers; the mentor relationship is the ancient technology that continuously reveals new depths of possible exploration and thus completes the virtuous cycle by ensuring that the path continues ever upward.
Virtuosos embrace the paradox that independence requires interdependence. Richard Feynman, Marcelo Garcia, Frank Zappa, Chic Corea, etc, all have or had mentors to challenge their limitations and reflect their highest potential back to them. Despite living in an age of individuality where imaginary borders grow thick, the fact remains: self is a shared space. Mentors have always been essential for growth, and we will always need them.