Goliath vs David

Goliath vs David

A Greek wrestling Game and

One man’s journey into Spacial Dynamics

In 2005 a good friend of mine (John Takacs) mentioned that I might enjoy watching a presentation from a gentlemen by the name of Jaimen McMillan on movement education and therapy. John knew my background as a martial artist and a Defensive Tactics Instructor for Law Enforcement. The talk started on a Thursday night after work. We met at one of the local Waldorf schools to listen to Jaimen.

Immediately I was very impressed on Jaimen’s ability to physically morph into other people’s posture. Jaimen could pick someone out of the audience and within seconds be the carbon copy of their posture and movement patterns. These incredible lectures continued on Friday night after work as well. On Saturday we transitioned to the Cedarwood Waldorf School gymnasium to spend the day moving with Jaimen.

I am one of those people that thinks talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. Boy was I in for a surprise! Jaimen started to flesh out some of the concepts he had introduced in the previous two days of lectures.

One concept is that our physical body takes up space. If someone gets too close to you, they are in your space. So the question he posed for us is ‘what space moves first? Your personal space or your physical space?’ He very quickly proved that our personal space moves first followed by our physical space.

Another key concept he introduced is that of gestures. He showed how we can end up with poor postural gestures (slouched or rounded shoulders) and that by introducing a better gesture you can fix a lot of issues quickly and have a net positive affect on the person.

During the afternoon we started to get into some basics kids wrestling games. He introduced Indian line wrestling and a form of Greek Wrestling where you pair up with a partner and go into the center of a circle of fellow students with the intent of pushing your partner off the ring of students.

There were approximately 25 Waldorf parents as my fellow students. If one were to stereotype the typical Waldorf parent I would say they tend to be slender intellectual types. I didn’t exactly fit that stereotype at 6’7” and 260 lbs. It was painfully obvious no one wanted to partner with me. Actually Jaimen agreed to partner with me and go last. Jaimen is approximately a foot shorter and about a 100 lbs less, and 20 years older than me. I thought ‘ok, this should be interesting!’

So after everyone took their turns, Jaimen and I stepped into the middle of the circle. Jaimen did a phenomenal job of showing all the different gestures and movements that he observed in the others participants. After he demonstrated what other people had done, it was our turn.

Next Jaimen and I locked hands in the center of the ring of people. Next thing I knew Jaimen was pushing me out of my fighting stance. I thought ‘wonderful!’, as I usually don’t get to play hard with people. I then reset my stance and pushed with all my might. Will a glint in his eye and a smile on his face he responded by again pushing me out of my stance this time moving me backwards. I couldn’t believe what was happening. The last time I experienced something like this was on the North Shore of Hawaii when the surf picked me up like a rag doll and threw me back on shore. It was like meeting a force of nature. I could not hold this little man back. After a bit we stopped, I had been in the presence of martial arts masters before and estimated Jaimen was right there.

Jaimen had so impressed me that Immediately after class I went to him and said ‘where do I sign up!’ ‘I am ready to learn what you just did.’

This is the story of how I started my journey into Spacial Dynamics.

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure teaching as a guest Instructor for Defensive Tactics for Federal Officers. There were two men close to my size in the class. They both made the comment that I was ‘one strong old man that they could not move.’ Hmm? I wonder where I learned to do that? I had the occasion a few years back while in New York with Jaimen telling him this very story and his reply was ‘he would never go back in the ring with me knowing I learned what he had taught.’

P.S Now I am a level 3 Spacial Dynamics candidate and learning more each day about the magnificent gifts of movement each of us can tap into. Anyone can learn and that is amazing & empowering. I aim to apply these concepts in my trainings. I wouldn’t have been as successful in my work without them.