From Frank Forencich

The following comment was sent to me by Frank Forencich, author of “Exuberant Animal, I thought you might find it interesting. It is thought provoking to have someone dissect your ideas. ”You don’t put it this way, but what you’re doing is taking an ecological approach to the human body. Ecologists, as you know, don’t focus on objects, they focus on relationships. Similarly, you don’t focus on muscles, you focus on relationships between muscles. In other words, your approach is profoundly holistic and integrative.

“Whole-part-whole” is a powerful method, not just for effective training, but for the intelligent study of any discipline. In this way, the body becomes a metaphor for all sorts of studies. (It also suggests that our cultural habit of “reductionism” is a lot like the bodybuilder’s approach; work one object at a time and forget the whole. In a sense, our entire fragmented, specialized academic curriculum is a kind of intellectual bodybuilding. Impressive results perhaps, but ultimately dysfunctional.)”