Art of Fall

Falling - the nearly impossible practice!!

The implications of falling are incommensurable in daily life. Training falling from a technical and mechanical perspectives are valid modalities of training yet they are still limited attempts. A falling skill, regardless how proficient one may become in it, will be cancelled if the body reacts by wired instinctual reflexes to avoid the fall, whenever falling is inevitable. Ironically, the very unwillingness to experience the fall is the worst survival strategy, just making one more prone to get seriously injured.

In this respect approaching falling as a state of being instead has higher potential of effectiveness. It is the foundation of any physical practice and/or skill, as a progressive consequence of the relinquishing of stored mental and emotional resistances to transform the action of falling in the midst of an actual fall, first and foremost, by accepting the fate that goes beyond the human control. To embody a state of non-resistance is the road to full liberation, the groundless ground that may allow any physical skill to be efficiently applied whenever one is taken by surprise and the fall has already happened before the intellectual mind has ever had time to realize it.

After all, isn't life a free fall so falling is already happening regardless of our volition?

Text: Bruno Caverna, Formless Arts Founder
Photo material by lukehoward.net