The Human Experience · Episode

Episode 105 – Ido Portal on Body Movement Dynamics, Learning/Un-learning, Fear & more

A conversation with Ido Portal on Body Movement Dynamics, Learning/Un-learning, Fear & more

Ido Portal is a movement coach who is obsessed with movement, of all varieties. After embracing Capoeira at the age of 15, an Afro-Brazilian martial art with numerous elements including dance and music, he…

Published
November 15, 2017
Runtime
1:02:57
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Ido Portal is a movement coach who is obsessed with movement, of all varieties. After embracing Capoeira at the age of 15, an Afro-Brazilian martial art with numerous elements including dance and music, he embarked on a worldwide journey to find a Movement teacher. Not finding one, he resolved to learn all he could from people in other disciplines, learning from them as they learned from him. Now, he runs workshops around the world through his Ido Portal Company and has created a yearly event called “The Movement Camp”, a gathering where movement fans from all areas and disciplines can meet and swap information. This fits into Ido’s ideas about Movement Culture, the way that you need a culture to move in, people to play with and places to practice. His Ido Portal website is another way to facilitate this aspect. Movement-X will be happening in Seoul this October, a seminar about exposing people to the concepts he teaches. In 2015, Ido began to coach MMA fighter, Connor McGregor, helping him to flesh out his movement skills in the hope that it would give Connor the edge in his fights. Connor won his next fight against Jose Aldo, who hadn’t lost an MMA fight in a decade. This created a massive interest in Ido and his movement coaching philosophy. In August, Conner fought boxer Floyd Mayweather in a change of discipline from his MMA skills. Connor lost the fight but was quite widely believed to have done better than expected.

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The human body is a complex structure, continuously changing with time and transforming with various activities and actions. Certain sports and activities involve different bodily movements which can drastically alter the human frame. The more a particular action is undertaken, the more certain muscles of the body change. The way in which an individual moves and exercises has a detrimental effect on their
physical shape and mental state. While some movements make us feel stronger and more confident, other movements make us feel more relaxed and increasingly in tune with the environment we reside within.

Coining the term ‘movement culture’, fitness specialist Ido Portal explores the ways in which the human body can move and advance. Having an interest in sport early on, from the age of 15, Portal began learning traditional martial arts and developed a fascination with how sport can push physical boundaries and increase strength and control. Travelling across the globe, while studying and teaching a number of sports classes, Portal began learning from a variety of people from different disciplines
(including performers, yogis, and athletes). Using a combination of disciplines Ido has developed a unique method that takes into account all the benefits of traditional disciplines, and as a result, he has developed his unique outlook on movement and how to best use and transform the human body. Unlike traditional martial arts, however, Portal does not see the benefit in specific movements or practices, and
instead, promotes the advantages of taking into account various movement techniques from diverse cultures and traditions.

With the success of his movement theory, Portal conducts movement camps, traveling across the world to exchange and learn from multiple practices. His method champions cross-disciplinary dialogue and learning between various sports, spiritual practices and anatomists and according to Portal, each individual’s experience is beneficial to acknowledge and learn from

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Find Ido here: http://www.idoportal.com

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Transcript

A full transcript has been published for this conversation.

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Ideas worth returning to

Quotes

Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.

  1. “When you do not yet know how to acquire knowledge, you may collect information without understanding it. That can create more confusion rather than less. Information can become toxic like any other substance: water, oxygen, exercise, and movement can all harm when the dose or prescription is wrong. More information is not automatically more wisdom.”
    From the conversation
  2. “Technical knowledge and the skills passed down by teachers are essential, but they are not the complete picture. You also need to create your own synthesis and develop self-knowledge. That comes primarily through direct experience, and play is one of the most powerful ways to produce the experience from which genuine understanding grows.”
    From the conversation
  3. “Instead of sensing what is actually happening in the body, people often construct a fearful story about it. That story can become their reality. If attention remains trapped in the narrative, they may never investigate what is truly occurring in the shoulder, back, or another area. Awareness begins by returning from interpretation to direct sensation.”
    From the conversation
  4. “One story says the worst thing you can bring into a village is fear because fear can be more destructive than the event itself. A person may not control what happens to them, but they can resist surrendering their inner life to fear. That distinction between circumstance and response is one of the story’s most powerful lessons.”
    From the conversation
  5. “Recognizing a pattern even once is a major milestone, but realization alone does not change a life. The next stage is consistent remembrance because daily demands pull attention elsewhere. With enough practice, the reminder can become a change in behavior—the automatic reaction itself begins to shift.”
    From the conversation

About the guest

Ido Portal on Body Movement Dynamics, Learning/Un-learning, Fear & more

Ido Portal is a movement coach who is obsessed with movement, of all varieties. After embracing Capoeira at the age of 15, an Afro-Brazilian martial art with numerous elements including dance and music, he embarked on a worldwide journey to find a Movement teacher. Not finding one, he resolved to learn all he could from people in other disciplines, learning from them as they learned from him. Now, he runs workshops around the world through his Ido Portal Company and has created a yearly event called “The Movement Camp”, a gathering where movement fans from all areas and disciplines can meet and swap information. This fits into Ido’s ideas about Movement Culture, the way that you need a culture to move in, people to play with and places to practice. His Ido Portal website is another way to facilitate this aspect. Movement-X will be happening in Seoul this October, a seminar about exposing people to the concepts he teaches. In 2015, Ido began to coach MMA fighter, Connor McGregor, helping him to flesh out his movement skills in the hope that it would give Connor the edge in his fights. Connor won his next fight against Jose Aldo, who hadn’t lost an MMA fight in a decade. This created a massive interest in Ido and his movement coaching philosophy. In August, Conner fought boxer Floyd Mayweather in a change of discipline from his MMA skills. Connor lost the fight but was quite widely believed to have done better than expected.

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