This was actually great. First of all, the water, its shape and texture, and how it moved swirling and foaming from under the water. I could feel the wind as we were moving, and it was also different than before.
We met some sailing ships. I could see their sails tight from the wind, and it now made perfect sense for me how the wind was propelling them in motion. Not that I didn't understand it before, but I never quite felt the exact way in which it happened. I am still not sure I understand wind and if it has a flat front or a spherical front or if wind is like a moving point.
As we were slowly passing the Status of Liberty, I was watching it closely. It was actually not as bad as it looked from the helicopter, and I started to wonder, where the eyes of they statue were looking, and if they were focused. I kept looking at the statue as the ship drifted along slowly. Suddenly the outline of the statue blinked with black blur, and I sensed that the ship has come to a complete stop.
In another experience along the same lines, I was watching birds above the ship, probably seagulls. I was following one particular bird flying in the sky, seeing how it moved the wings. Then, also suddenly, I felt just by watching the seagull that the ship was turning. It was almost as if the brain wanted to show me a turning seagull, but then at the last moment it changed its mind, so to say, and the seagull kept flying straight, but I was informed that I was the one who was turning. I felt that there was some time in between, the time to inhibit the previous response, - but it was not my conscious inhibition, it was an internal recalculation. Interestingly, within a split second after I visually perceived the turn, I also felt it in my body. (If you are sitting in a car with your eyes closed, you will feel the acceleration as the car turns. This is Newton's Second Law.) I clearly felt the turn in my body after I felt it in my vision.
Another new experience was the motion parallax. As I was watching the houses on the opposite shore, perhaps in Brooklyn, I clearly saw that how the houses were moving, reflecting the swaying of the boat. Furthermore, I saw layers of houses moving with different amplitudes. It actually provided a stronger perception of depth of this group of houses than the stereopsis itself, perhaps because the distance was considerable. Now after I also tried observing motion parallax with a tree, I know that it allows to not only see a tree in layers of leaves, but also to judge the distances between those layers.
Fixation on a moving object is really something new for me. As I was on a boat, I was watching objects on the ground, as well other boats, birds, and helicopters. At the same time, I was observing all these other moving objects, and water, with peripheral vision. All this motion provided some other sense of depth, different from merely seeing in 3d, and also different from what I saw in basketball - focus, fine motion detection, curves in 3d. The new sense was not even a sense of depth, but rather a sense of understanding the environment. This new sensation is clearly related to an exercise that is called swaying and that allegedly belongs to the Bates method, although I did not see it in his book.
As I was walking along the river, I was watching people and observing the effects of fixating my eyes on a moving target. Not that I could fixate my eyes really well, but well enough for the purpose. I found it is so much easier to get dizzy when watching a moving target, since it looks like the environment is moving, while the target is not. On the contrary, if I watched a stable point near the person, I could still see the person moving, and many more people moving, and the world was much more stable. You really need stereopsis to be able to focus on and follow a moving target. Even if you want to follow your own finger, you have to be able to see the rest of the world move in 3d.
As I was watching from the piers, I started to watch the optic flow. That is, I started to watch other objects move towards me or pass by me as I was walking. I guess that I started to feel it after observing the motion parallax effect while on the ship. However, the idea of seeing the optic flow of the environment was also fresh in my mind after I had read about it in the morning in the book "Fixing my gaze" by Susan R. Barry. I had understood from her book that this optic flow of the environment is very useful for driving and, as I understood a little later, for piloting a helicopter. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but I was walking, and then I started running. I felt it difficult to run in my usual way, thinking that I am here and now I need to get over there, and now I need to get over there. Somehow, I switched to the mode of only observing the optic flow. I felt that I was running on the same place, but everything else was moving. I was just directing the rest of the world, so that no object would run into me.
Later I applied this same was of seeing in a dance class. Now it is clear to me that many dancers, many martial artists, and many others have undoubtedly discovered this sensation. It gave me a whole new degree of freedom. For example, I was standing on one leg, and I wanted to make sure that my standing leg and my upper body were standing still, literally or as much as theoretically possible, while only the gesture leg was doing something. Before I had often relied on muscular sensations, but the muscular sensations often came after the fact that I lost my alignment to confirm this fact and allow me to realign. I had also used my vision, but it was only by accident when I noticed some changes early enough (before the corresponding muscular sensations) so I was more able to keep the alignment. However, with the optic flow the problem was solved. If the head is not moving, there is no optic flow. If the head is moving, there is optic flow. It is as simple as that. Just intend for the whole peripheral view to stay stable and unmoving, and this almost guarantees that the head will stay in the same place in space. Therefore, the shoulders, the ribs, the pelvis, the standing leg are also very likely to stay in the same place. Furthermore, this felt as a very primary or fundamental way of controlling my body, something that I could really rely on, not a synthetic pattern that needs constant work to reinforce it.
Similarly, if you want to go directly down in plie, simply watch as everything else goes up. Surely, there are misalignments that may not be detected in this way, such as tucking the pelvis or, conversely, not keeping the pelvis under you. However, if you twist or turn the hips, the torso, or the head, you will be immediately informed by seeing how everything else around you moves in the opposite direction.
We met some sailing ships. I could see their sails tight from the wind, and it now made perfect sense for me how the wind was propelling them in motion. Not that I didn't understand it before, but I never quite felt the exact way in which it happened. I am still not sure I understand wind and if it has a flat front or a spherical front or if wind is like a moving point.
As we were slowly passing the Status of Liberty, I was watching it closely. It was actually not as bad as it looked from the helicopter, and I started to wonder, where the eyes of they statue were looking, and if they were focused. I kept looking at the statue as the ship drifted along slowly. Suddenly the outline of the statue blinked with black blur, and I sensed that the ship has come to a complete stop.
In another experience along the same lines, I was watching birds above the ship, probably seagulls. I was following one particular bird flying in the sky, seeing how it moved the wings. Then, also suddenly, I felt just by watching the seagull that the ship was turning. It was almost as if the brain wanted to show me a turning seagull, but then at the last moment it changed its mind, so to say, and the seagull kept flying straight, but I was informed that I was the one who was turning. I felt that there was some time in between, the time to inhibit the previous response, - but it was not my conscious inhibition, it was an internal recalculation. Interestingly, within a split second after I visually perceived the turn, I also felt it in my body. (If you are sitting in a car with your eyes closed, you will feel the acceleration as the car turns. This is Newton's Second Law.) I clearly felt the turn in my body after I felt it in my vision.
Another new experience was the motion parallax. As I was watching the houses on the opposite shore, perhaps in Brooklyn, I clearly saw that how the houses were moving, reflecting the swaying of the boat. Furthermore, I saw layers of houses moving with different amplitudes. It actually provided a stronger perception of depth of this group of houses than the stereopsis itself, perhaps because the distance was considerable. Now after I also tried observing motion parallax with a tree, I know that it allows to not only see a tree in layers of leaves, but also to judge the distances between those layers.
Fixation on a moving object is really something new for me. As I was on a boat, I was watching objects on the ground, as well other boats, birds, and helicopters. At the same time, I was observing all these other moving objects, and water, with peripheral vision. All this motion provided some other sense of depth, different from merely seeing in 3d, and also different from what I saw in basketball - focus, fine motion detection, curves in 3d. The new sense was not even a sense of depth, but rather a sense of understanding the environment. This new sensation is clearly related to an exercise that is called swaying and that allegedly belongs to the Bates method, although I did not see it in his book.
As I was walking along the river, I was watching people and observing the effects of fixating my eyes on a moving target. Not that I could fixate my eyes really well, but well enough for the purpose. I found it is so much easier to get dizzy when watching a moving target, since it looks like the environment is moving, while the target is not. On the contrary, if I watched a stable point near the person, I could still see the person moving, and many more people moving, and the world was much more stable. You really need stereopsis to be able to focus on and follow a moving target. Even if you want to follow your own finger, you have to be able to see the rest of the world move in 3d.
As I was watching from the piers, I started to watch the optic flow. That is, I started to watch other objects move towards me or pass by me as I was walking. I guess that I started to feel it after observing the motion parallax effect while on the ship. However, the idea of seeing the optic flow of the environment was also fresh in my mind after I had read about it in the morning in the book "Fixing my gaze" by Susan R. Barry. I had understood from her book that this optic flow of the environment is very useful for driving and, as I understood a little later, for piloting a helicopter. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but I was walking, and then I started running. I felt it difficult to run in my usual way, thinking that I am here and now I need to get over there, and now I need to get over there. Somehow, I switched to the mode of only observing the optic flow. I felt that I was running on the same place, but everything else was moving. I was just directing the rest of the world, so that no object would run into me.
Later I applied this same was of seeing in a dance class. Now it is clear to me that many dancers, many martial artists, and many others have undoubtedly discovered this sensation. It gave me a whole new degree of freedom. For example, I was standing on one leg, and I wanted to make sure that my standing leg and my upper body were standing still, literally or as much as theoretically possible, while only the gesture leg was doing something. Before I had often relied on muscular sensations, but the muscular sensations often came after the fact that I lost my alignment to confirm this fact and allow me to realign. I had also used my vision, but it was only by accident when I noticed some changes early enough (before the corresponding muscular sensations) so I was more able to keep the alignment. However, with the optic flow the problem was solved. If the head is not moving, there is no optic flow. If the head is moving, there is optic flow. It is as simple as that. Just intend for the whole peripheral view to stay stable and unmoving, and this almost guarantees that the head will stay in the same place in space. Therefore, the shoulders, the ribs, the pelvis, the standing leg are also very likely to stay in the same place. Furthermore, this felt as a very primary or fundamental way of controlling my body, something that I could really rely on, not a synthetic pattern that needs constant work to reinforce it.
Similarly, if you want to go directly down in plie, simply watch as everything else goes up. Surely, there are misalignments that may not be detected in this way, such as tucking the pelvis or, conversely, not keeping the pelvis under you. However, if you twist or turn the hips, the torso, or the head, you will be immediately informed by seeing how everything else around you moves in the opposite direction.
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