The Process of Entrainment :: essays research papers

Essay - The Dance of Life, Entrainment In a television interview, Bruce Lee saidEmpty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water. without delay you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put water into a tea pot, it becomes the tea pot. Now water suffer flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.He was talking about dominantly expressing ones self through martial arts by letting go of rigid styles or patterns youve learned, and freely adapt in combat so as to fluidly move with your enemy, as in a dance, then to crash into your opponent in victory. What Bruce Lee described was a state of total awareness of ones environment so as to continuously be up to(p) to entrain ones self to it. Edward T. Hall wrote among many things in his book, The Dance of Life, of entrainment. Entrainment is the internal process that makes syncing possible with others and the environment around us. Day to daytime we move from one routine to another, or one appointment to another. When we do so, we adjust ourselves from one movement to another movement. When these movements require another person or a particular environment, entrainment is present. Entrainment, whether were aware of it or not, is something that we do everyday with varying success. Depending on our success entraining with any particular situation, on that point results either a fluid transition or a turbulent one. Since not many people are martial artists and will have difficulty relating to Bruce Lee, well look at the process of entrainment using a different mannikin that most people will have some experience in. Also, since the process of entrainment varies with every individual in their various experiences, and will prove quite impossible to describe in abstract mechanics, our example will be a specific and isolated occurrence. The example will be of a students experience while studying.A young girl is in the school library. She goes to th e library because she feels that the environment there is peaceful and tranquil, perfect for studying. She sits there silently at one of the many tables fully engulfed in the book that shes reading. Nothing in the room disrupts her. The lead of pages being flipped at the table to her left doesnt bother her.