Tensegrity is the modemversion of the magical passes of the shamans of ancient Mexico. The word Tensegrity is amost appropriate definition, because it is a mixture of two terms, tension andintegrity: terms which connote the two driving forces of the magical passes.The activity created by contracting and relaxing the tendons and muscles of thebody is tension. Integrity is the act of regarding the body as a sound,complete, perfect unit.
Tensegrity is taught as asystem of movements, because that is the only manner in which the mysteriousand vast subject of the magical passes could be faced in a modem setting. Thepeople who now practice Tensegrity are not shaman practitioners in search ofshamanistic alterna- that involve rigorous discipline, exertion, and hardships.Therefore, the emphasis of the magical passes has to be on their value asmovements, and all the consequences that such movements bring forth.
Don Juan Matus hadexplained that the first drive of the sorcerers of his lineage who lived inMexico in ancient times, in relation to the magical passes, was to saturatethemselves with movement. They arranged every posture, every movement of thebody that they could remember, into groups. They believed that the longer thegroup, the greater its effect of saturation, and the greater the need for thepractitioners to use their memory to recall it.
The shamans of don Juan'slineage, after arranging the magical passes into long groups and practicingthem as sequences, deemed that this criterion of saturation had fulfilled itspurposes, and they dropped it. From then on, what was sought was the opposite:the fragmentation of the long groups into single segments, which were practicedas individual, independent units. The manner in which don Juan Matus taught themagical passes to his four disciples-Taisha Abelar, Florinda DonnerGrau, CarolTiggs, and myself-was the product of this drive for fragmentation.
Don Juan's personal opinionwas that the benefit of practicing the long groups was patently（明显的） obvious; such practice forcedthe shaman initiates（开始）to use their kinesthetic memory（动觉记忆）. He considered the use ofkinesthetic memory to be a real bonus, which those shamans had stumbled upon（偶然发现）accidentally, and which hadthe marvellous effect of shutting off the noise of the mind: the internaldialogue.
Don Juan had explained tome that the way in which we reinforce our perception of the world and keep itfixed at a certain level of efficiency and function is by talking to ourselves."The entire human race," he said to me on one occasion, "keeps adetermined level of function and efficiency by means of the internal dialogue.
The internal dialogue isthe key to maintaining the assemblage point stationary（固定的） at the position shared bythe entire human race: at the height of the shoulder blades, an arm's lengthaway from them. "By accomplishing the opposite of the internaldialogue," he went on, "that is to say inner silence, practitionerscan break the fixation of their assemblage points, thus acquiring anextraordinary fluidity of perception."
The practice of Tensegrityhas been arranged around the performance of the long groups, which inTensegrity have been renamed series to avoid the generic implication of callingthem just groups, as don Juan called them. In order to accomplish thisarrangement, it was necessary to reestablish the criteria（标准）of saturation which hadprompted（激励、怂恿）the creation of the long groups. It took thepractitioners of Tensegrity years of meticulous（一丝不苟的，小心翼翼的）and concentrated work toreassemble a great number of the dismembered groups.
Reestablishing the criteria（标准）of saturation byperforming the long series gave, as a result, something which don Juan hadalready defined as the modem goal of the magical passes: the redeployment ofenergy. Don Juan was convinced that this had always been the unspoken goal ofthe magical passes, even at the time of the old sorcerers, The old sorcerersdidn't seem to have known this, but even if they did, they never conceptualized（概念化）it in those terms.
By all indications, whatthe old sorcerers sought（寻求）avidly（贪心的，热切的）and experienced as asensation of wellbeing and plenitude when they performed the magical passes was,in essence, the effect of unused energy being reclaimed（回收利用） by the centers of vitalityin the body. In Tensegrity, the long groups have been reassembled, and a greatnumber of the fragments have been kept as single, functioning units.
These units have beenstrung together by purpose-for instance, the purpose of intending, or thepurpose of recapitulation, or the purpose of inner silence, and so on-creatingin this fashion the Tensegrity series. In this manner, a system has beenachieved in which the best results are obtained by performing long sequences ofmovements that definitely tax（负担，义务，职责） the kinesthetic（肌肉运动知觉） memory of thepractitioners.
In every other respect, theway Tensegrity is taught is a faithful reproduction of the way in which donJuan taught the magical passes to his disciples. He inundated（淹没，浸水） them with a profusion ofdetail and let their minds be bewildered（困惑） by the number and varietyof magical passes taught to them, and by the implication that each of themindividually was a pathway to infinity.
His disciples spent yearsoverwhelmed, confused, and above all despondent（沮丧的，失望的）, because they felt thatbeing inundated in such a manner was an unfair onslaught（打击，袭击） on them. "When Iteach you the magical passes," he explained to me once when I questionedhim about the subject, "I am following the traditional sorcerers' deviceof clouding your linear view. By saturating your kinesthetic memory, I amcreating a pathway for you to inner silence. "Since all of us, ", hecontinued, "are filled to the brim（边缘，溢出） with the doings andundoings of the world of everyday life, we have very little room for kinestheticmemory.
You may have noticed thatyou have none. When you want to imitate my movements, you cannot remain facingme. You have to stand side by side with me in order to establish in your ownbody what's right and what's left. Now, if a long sequence of movements werepresented to you, it would take you weeks of repetition to remember all themovements. While you're trying to memorize the movements, you have to make roomfor them in your memory by pushing other things out of the way. That was theeffect that the old sorcerers sought."
Don Juan's contention（论点） was that if his discipleskept on doggedly（固执地） practicing the magical passes, in spite of（尽管） their confusion, theywould arrive at a threshold when their redeployed energy would tip the scales（起决定作用的）, and they would be able to handle（运用，操作） the magical passes with absolute clarity（明晰）. When don Juan made thosestatements, I could hardly believe them. Nevertheless（然而，不过）, at one moment, just as hehad said, I ceased to be confused and despondent（沮丧，失望）. In a most mysterious way,the magical passes, since they are magical, arranged themselves into extraordinary（非凡的，离奇的） sequences that cleared upeverything.
Don Juan explained that theclarity I was experiencing was the result of the redeployment of my energy. Theconcern of people practicing Tensegrity nowadays matches exactly my concern andthe concern of don Juan's other disciples when we first began to perform themagical passes. They feel bewildered by the number of movements. I reiterate tothem what don Juan reiterated to me over and over: that what is of supremeimportance is to practice whatever Tensegrity sequence is remembered.
The saturation that hasbeen carried on will give, in the end, the results sought by the shamans ofancient Mexico: the redeployment of energy, and its three concomitants(伴随物)-the shutting off of the internaldialogue, the possibility for inner silence, and the fluidity of the assemblagepoint. As a personal assessment, I can say that by saturating me with themagical passes, don Juan accomplished two formidable（强大的） feats: One, he brought to the surface a flock of hidden resources that Ihad but didn't know existed, such as the ability to concentrate and the abilityto remember detail; and two, he gently broke my obsession（痴迷） with my linear mode ofinterpretation. "What is happening to you," don Juan explained to mewhen I questioned him about what I was experiencing in this respect, "isthat you are feeling the advent（…的出现） of inner silence, onceyour internal dialogue has been minimally offset.
A new flux of things hasbegun to enter into your field of perception. These things were always there,on the periphery of your general awareness, but you never had enough energy tobe deliberately conscious of them. As you chase away your internal dialogue,other items of awareness begin to fill in the empty space, so to speak."The new flux of energy," he went on, "which the magical passeshave brought to your centers of vitality is making your assemblage point morefluid. It's no longer rigidly palisaded.
You're no longer driven byour ancestral fears, which make us incapable of taking a step in any direction.Sorcerers say that energy makes us free, and that is the absolute truth."The ideal state of Tensegrity practitioners, in relation to the Tensegritymovements, is the same as the ideal state of a practitioner of shamanism inrelation to the execution of the magical passes. Both are being led by themovements themselves into an unprecedented culmination（顶点）.
From there, thepractitioners of Tensegrity will be able to execute, by themselves, forwhatever effect they see fit, without any coaching from outside sources, anymovement from the bulk of movements with which they have been saturated; theywill be able to execute them with precision and speed, as they walk, or eat, orrest, or do anything, because they will have the energy to do so.
The execution of themagical passes, as shown in Tensegrity, doesn't necessarily require aparticular space or prearranged time. However, the movements should be doneaway from sharp currents of air. Don Juan dreaded（惧怕） currents of air on a perspiring（流汗） body. He firmly believedthat not every current of air was caused by the rising or lowering oftemperature in the atmosphere, and that some currents of air were actuallycaused by conglomerates of consolidated energy fields moving purposefullythrough space.
Don Juan was convinced thatsuch conglomerates of energy fields possessed a specific type of awareness,particularly deleterious because human beings cannot ordinarily detect them,and become exposed to them indiscriminately（不加选择的，随意的）. The deleterious effect of suchconglomerates of energy fields is especially prevalent in a large metropolis,where they could be easily disguised as, if nothing else, the momentum createdby the speed of passing automobiles.
Something else to bear inmind when practicing Tensegrity is that since the goal of the magical passes issomething foreign to Western man, an effort should be made to keep the practiceof Tensegrity detached from the concerns of our daily world. The practice ofTensegrity should not be mixed with elements with which we are alreadythoroughly familiar, such as conversation, music, or the sound of a radio or TVnewsman reporting the news, no matter how muffled the sound might be.
The setting of modem urbanlife facilitates the formation of groups, and under these circumstances, theonly manner in which Tensegrity can be taught and practiced in the seminars andworkshops is in groups of practitioners. Practicing in groups is beneficial inmany aspects and deleterious in others. It is beneficial because it allows thecreation of a consensus of movement and the opportunity to learn by examinationand comparison.
It is deleterious becauseit fosters the reliance on others, and the emergence of syntactic （依照句法的）commands and solicitationsdealing with hierarchy（等级制度）. Don Juan conceived that since the totality of humanbehaviour was ruled by language, human beings have learned to respond to whathe called syntactic commands, praising or deprecatory formulas built intolanguage-for example, the responses that each individual makes, or elicits inothers, with slogans such as No problem, Piece of cake, It's time to worry, Youcould do better, I can't do it, My butt is too big, I'm the best, I'm the worstin the world, I could live with that, I'm coping（应付）, Everything's going to be okay, etc., etc.
Don Juan maintained thatwhat sorcerers have always wanted, as a basic rule of thumb, is to run awayfrom activities derived from（来源于） syntactic commands. Originally, as don Juan describedit, the magical passes were performed by the shamans of ancient Mexicoindividually and in solitariness, on the spur of the moment or as the necessityarose.
He taught them to hisdisciples in the same fashion. Don Juan stated that for the shamanpractitioners, the challenge of performing the magical passes has always beento execute them perfectly, holding in mind only the abstract view of theirperfect execution. Ideally, Tensegrity should be taught and practiced in thesame fashion. However, the conditions of modern life and the fact that the goalof the magical passes has been formulated to apply to a great number of peoplemake it imperative that a new approach be taken.
Tensegrity should bepracticed in whatever form is easiest: either in groups, or alone, or both. Inmy particular case, the practice of Tensegrity in very large groups has been more than ideal, because it has givenme the unique opportunity of witnessing something which don Juan Matus and allthe sorcerers of his lineage never did: the effects of human mass. Don Juan andall the shamans of his lineage, which he considered to be twenty-sevengenerations long, never were capable of witnessing the effects of human mass.
They practiced the magicalpasses alone, or in groups of up to five practitioners. For them, the magicalpasses were highly individualistic. If the number of Tensegrity practitionersis in the hundreds, an energetic current is nearly instantaneously formed amongthem. This energetic current, which a shaman could easily see, creates in thepractitioners a sense of urgency.
It is like a vibratory windthat sweeps through them, and gives them the primary elements of purpose. Ihave been privileged to see something I considered to be a portentous sight: the awakening of purpose, the energeticbasis of man. Don Juan Matus used to call this unbending intent. He taughtme that unbending intent is the essential tool of those who journeyed into theunknown.
A very important issue toconsider when practicing Tensegrity is that the movements must be executed withthe idea that the benefit of the magicalpasses comes by itself. This idea must be stressed at any cost. At thebeginning, it is very difficult to discern（领悟） the fact that Tensegrity is not a standard systemof movements for developing the body. It indeed develops the body, but only asa by-product of a more transcendental（超自然的） effect.
By redeploying unusedenergy, the magical passes can conduce（导致，有益） the practitioner to a level ofawareness in which the parameters of normal, traditional perception arecancelled out by the fact that they are expanded. The practitioner can thus beallowed even to enter into unimaginable worlds. "But why would I want toenter into those worlds?" I asked don Juan when he described thispost-effect of the magical passes. "Because you are a creature ofawareness, a perceiver, like the rest of us," he said. "Human beingsare on a journey of awareness, which has been momentarily interrupted byextraneous forces.
Believe me, we are magicalcreatures of awareness. If we don't have this conviction, we havenothing." He further explained that human beings, from the moment theirjourney of awareness was interrupted, have been caught in an eddy（漩涡）, so to speak, and arespinning around, having the impression of moving with the current, and yetremaining stationary. "Take my word," don Juan went on, "becausemine are not arbitrary statements.
My word is the result ofcorroborating（证实）, for myself, what theshamans of ancient Mexico found out: that we human beings are magicalbeings." It has taken me thirty years of hard discipline to come to acognitive plateau in which don Juan's statements are recognizable and theirvalidity is established beyond the shadow of a doubt（毫无疑问）. I know now that humanbeings are creatures of awareness, involved in an evolutionary journey ofawareness, beings indeed unknown to themselves, filled to the brim withincredible resources that are never used.