I recently completed an eight-week yoga program called “The Work-in Workout: Strength Training with a Yogic Twist.” Deftly taught by Leslie Ellis, my longtime yoga teacher, the program deepened my appreciation of yoga, and yoga-like exercises, as a mindful way of building strength.
Just love your curiosity and the way you share your inquiries Glen. So inspiring. As a yoga teacher, I wish more students were interested in taking their practice to this kind of depth!!
You are a warrior for truth and your detailed exploration of Yoga and anatomy is always a joy to follow!
You asked readers to share our thoughts, so here goes: As an architect, the phrase “Less is more,” made my heart sink into my stomach. The phrase is generally attributed to the German American Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Mies compulsively worshipped purity in form, and simple, straight lines. He missed out on the vast world of organically and human-centered form. He scared the hell out of our profession, and became a justification and safe path for a huge percentage of architects to embrace banality. The world of built form is still reeling from his toxic influence.
Mies was also known for the phrase “god is in the details.” The phrase is generally thought to be a version of Gustave Flaubert‘s saying "the good God is in the detail.”
Your work is a perfect illustration of Flaubert’s phrase. Our attention economy eschews detail, ignores truth, and splits us apart. Your detailed, personal, and in-depth explorations are filled with truth, and are generative and connective. Your readers are grateful!
Thank you, Randy, for offering such a positive appraisal of the essay and, at the same time, pointing out the negative historical origins of the Less is More principle. While I had heard that the principle originated with an architect in the 1920s or 30s, I had only a vague idea of what the principle meant in the context of architectural history. It was enlightening and helpful to read your exposition and critique of the style associated with the principle. I am duly awakened to the narrowness, banality, and seeming lack of heart that this architectural style evidently embodied.
Just in case you might be interested in the educational, as distinct from the architectural, context in which the Less is More principle emerged for my colleagues and me, I'd mention that the inspiration came originally from Ted Sizer's deeply thoughtful book, Horace's Compromise, in the mid-1980s. The principle Sizer discussed, which later became one of the guiding principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, called upon us educators to redesign our academic offerings, especially at the high school level, so that they centered less around surveying a whole mass of content and more around the intellectual and imaginative powers students needed (not easy and quite controversial to determine that, especially if educators are committed to listening openly to the perspectives of diverse stakeholders and to give students a genuine voice in determining both what and how they learn). Anyway, boiled down to its essence, Less is More meant that there would be "less stuff and more thought" in school. It turned out that of all the Coalition's principles, Less is More carried the biggest threat to the status quo of schooling.
Just love your curiosity and the way you share your inquiries Glen. So inspiring. As a yoga teacher, I wish more students were interested in taking their practice to this kind of depth!!
Thanks for your generous comment, Leslie. More fundamentally, thanks for all your help over the years in making yoga come alive within me.
Dear Glen,
Thank you for another thought provoking essay!
You are a warrior for truth and your detailed exploration of Yoga and anatomy is always a joy to follow!
You asked readers to share our thoughts, so here goes: As an architect, the phrase “Less is more,” made my heart sink into my stomach. The phrase is generally attributed to the German American Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Mies compulsively worshipped purity in form, and simple, straight lines. He missed out on the vast world of organically and human-centered form. He scared the hell out of our profession, and became a justification and safe path for a huge percentage of architects to embrace banality. The world of built form is still reeling from his toxic influence.
Mies was also known for the phrase “god is in the details.” The phrase is generally thought to be a version of Gustave Flaubert‘s saying "the good God is in the detail.”
Your work is a perfect illustration of Flaubert’s phrase. Our attention economy eschews detail, ignores truth, and splits us apart. Your detailed, personal, and in-depth explorations are filled with truth, and are generative and connective. Your readers are grateful!
Thank you, Randy, for offering such a positive appraisal of the essay and, at the same time, pointing out the negative historical origins of the Less is More principle. While I had heard that the principle originated with an architect in the 1920s or 30s, I had only a vague idea of what the principle meant in the context of architectural history. It was enlightening and helpful to read your exposition and critique of the style associated with the principle. I am duly awakened to the narrowness, banality, and seeming lack of heart that this architectural style evidently embodied.
Just in case you might be interested in the educational, as distinct from the architectural, context in which the Less is More principle emerged for my colleagues and me, I'd mention that the inspiration came originally from Ted Sizer's deeply thoughtful book, Horace's Compromise, in the mid-1980s. The principle Sizer discussed, which later became one of the guiding principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools, called upon us educators to redesign our academic offerings, especially at the high school level, so that they centered less around surveying a whole mass of content and more around the intellectual and imaginative powers students needed (not easy and quite controversial to determine that, especially if educators are committed to listening openly to the perspectives of diverse stakeholders and to give students a genuine voice in determining both what and how they learn). Anyway, boiled down to its essence, Less is More meant that there would be "less stuff and more thought" in school. It turned out that of all the Coalition's principles, Less is More carried the biggest threat to the status quo of schooling.