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A quote from a brilliant article linked to below: "Haptic intelligence is human intelligence. We’re just so smart with it that we don’t know it yet. It’s actually much harder to make a chess piece move correctly—to pick up the piece and move it across the board and put it down properly—than it is to make the right chess move.” Katherine J. Kuchenbecker http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/what-the-science-of-touch-says-about-us?mbid=nl_160509_Daily&CNDID=27078136&spMailingID=8897091&spUserID=MTA5MjQwNTA5ODA5S0&spJobID=920911188&spReportId=OTIwOTExMTg4S0 The sense of touch is our work in ST, and in my view, touch is the core of awareness (because the body and its sensations only exists in the present). This is an immensely important article. It is important to realise how little we know about touch; I have long thought that we in the ST world are a new kind of explorer (especially in a world where sights and sounds are so all-pervasive, and accorded huge importance). Of course, what we are doing is not "new", but unlike the other senses, whose content can be recorded and stored, touch cannot, and what we learn about it, and how we might refine it is an unique experience that cannot be transferred, copied and reproduced. Refining touch is refining awareness itself. This is what we are doing, I believe. That is the common thread in physical cultivation, whether it be strength, flexibility, movement, skill development, and so on. Those of you who met me when I was teaching the Monkey Gym syllabus might recall that my opening remarks to a group of brand new beginners was "I am going to teach you about awareness".