I have a long Aikido background before coming to Art du Déplacement in my forties. I’m in my fifties now. The age of air, this stretch has been caleld — after roots, fire and water. Things that used to take effort don’t. Things that didn’t take effort do. The practice that carried me here doesn’t fit anymore, and I’m still figuring out what I’m going to do about that.
This thread is a path through pieces I’ve written and conversations I’ve had with others, sequenced for someone who’s wondering what their practice is asking of them next. None of it answers the question! But, I’m hoping it makes the question easier for you to explore yourself.
The age of air
7 for Sunday #144 — July 2025
Six months ago I tried to put a name to the thing I felt subsiding. I was reminded of the roots, fire, water and air progression — the rough shape of how my engagement with practice has shifted across decades. I’m not sure the metaphor holds; I’m sure something is changing. Start here, if you want to know what shifted before any of the rest of this came into focus.
Practicing with an unknown expiration date
Movers Mindset Field Note — with Vincent Thibault
Vincent said it off-handedly, but it’s bedrock reality: You’re doing something temporary, and you don’t know when it ends. Not “practice as if it might end tomorrow” — practice while knowing it will end at some unknowable point, which is a completely different relationship to what you’re doing.
Movers Mindset’s Three Words
constantine.name — November 2019
Discovery. Reflection. Efficacy. These are the three words I came to as the through-line of my practice. The part I want you to notice is that they don’t depend on what the body can do today. They’re about how you meet whatever it is that it can do today.
Strong from what, exactly?
Movers Mindset Field Note — with Iron Gump
Iron Gump has taught elderly women in Maui who hold positions for an hour. Meanwhile, young visitors can’t hold their arms out for a minute. A different definition of strong — available later in life rather than earlier — which I’d never have framed so clearly without his generous conversation.
Honing your craft
constantine.name — April 2020
I keep returning to this one. The phrase that does the work: you have to love living in the forest, just for the sake of living in the forest. Practice that’s contingent on getting better gets brittle as the body shifts. Practice that’s its own reason doesn’t.
Two things
constantine.name — March 2022
The fastest way to mindfulness I’ve found: this may be the last time I do this. Not morbid, but clarifying. The age of air finds its weight here. Practice gets sharper when you remember you won’t always be doing it.
Friction and process
constantine.name — July 2022
If the bulk of this thread is about why the practice asks what it asks, then this one is about how to keep showing up. Set up a life where you find yourself, without trying very hard, simply being the sort of person who does the practice. That’s what I think the next decade is asking of me.
ɕ