Where are you on the journey from chaos to formlessness?

Dec 18

**Formless, connected, and with all the time in the world**

How Your Skiing Performance Develops Over Time

A beginner starts a new activity, skiing for example, with all of their personal resources, but perhaps no understanding of the nature of this new pursuit. Without guidance, the activity would be chaotic, perhaps hazardous.

Then they learn a little, earning an understanding of some fundamental concepts. As they learn more, they gain an understanding of the underlying structure of the subject.

More experience reveals associations, relationships, causes and effects. At this point, they begin to anticipate and predict.

At this stage in their journey, they can start planning ahead, considering how the steering inputs influence the curve, how the curve affects the line, how the line interacts with the terrain to provide control, safety, fun, and excitement.

Soon, patterns begin to reveal themselves, and the activity makes more sense as a sophisticated whole. The performance becomes more integrated and a sense of ease develops.

Then movements become better coordinated - more fluent - and timing improves, based on subtle understanding and fine adjustments. With more development, the performance evolves - it takes on a flowing quality from start to finish, untroubled by complex snow and terrain.

With more development still, the performance liberates itself from ideas and concepts. It becomes as natural as breathing, formless.

Everything we do is a step on the journey to formlessness.

The process is progressive, but it is not linear. There can be many loops and apparent diversions. Sometimes the changes come quickly, and sometimes we need to work through a large volume of sophisticated practice before we sense the new opportunities.

Sometimes we hold ourselves back due to misunderstandings, lack of awareness, or by clinging too tightly to a process that helped us earlier.

Sometimes the performance feels so simple, so integrated and connected to the environment that there seems to be all the time in the world for every aspect of each curve. This is a significant achievement.

Formlessness is accompanied by timelessness.

There are many ways to describe the pathway to this destination - here is one:

* Chaos

* Content

* Structure

* Relationships

* Patterns

* Ease

* Fluency

* Flow

* Formlessness

The evolution of performance, from chaos to formlessness, is a joy at every stage.