1. Same or Different 2. More or Less 3. Faster or slower 4. Bigger or smaller 5. Forward or Backward 6. Right or Left 7. Up or down 8. Lighter or Darker 9. Rougher or Smoother 10. Easier or Harder 11. Harder or Softer 12. Lighter or Heavier 13. Wider or Narrower 14. More round or more angular 15. Rounder or flatter 16. Higher or Lower 17. Longer or Shorter 18. More or less clear (clear/obscure) 19. More or less simple (simple/complicated) 20. Boring or Interesting 21. Tired or Fresh 22. Loud or quiet 23. Sudden or gradual 24. Old or new 25. Young or Old 26. Warmer or colder 27. Full or empty 28. Together or Separate 29. Differentiated or Undifferentiated 30. Compliant or Defiant 31. Relaxed or Tense 32. Relaxed or Stiff 33. Holding on or letting go 34. Open or closed 35. More or less Dense (Dense or spacious) 36. Blank or filled in 37. Cooperative or resistant 38. More or less alone 39. Resting or Active 40. Still or Moving 41. Visible or Invisible 42. Conscious or Unconscious 43. Aware or Unaware 44. Avowed or Unavowed 45. Actual or Imaginary 46. Home or away 47. Awake or asleep 48. Known or Unknown 49. Meaningful or insignificant 50. Important or unimportant 51. The right way or the wrong way 52. Habitual or non-habitual 53. Richer or Poorer 54. In sickness or in health 55. Yes or no 56. On or off 57. Connected or disconnected 58. Empowered or disempowered 59. State Change vs. Stage Change (from David Booda’s piece on ISTA) 60. Exploration vs. Exploitation 1. (from Todd Hargrove Substack, https://open.substack.com/pub/toddhargrove/p/exploration-and-exploitation?r=1abwb&utm_medium=ios)^122fbe 2. from Allison Gopnik article [[Your Baby Is Smarter Than You Think#^2eb16f]] 61. Image of Achievement vs. Image of Act - from [[Berkeley 7 - Segment 1 - 4 - Discussion and Intro Remarks - DL and CK#^702add]] 62. Work vs. Effort 1. [[Berkeley 7 - Segment 1 - 4 - Discussion and Intro Remarks - DL and CK#^d2b166]] 63. Skin vs. Muscle vs. Bone 64. Supported vs. Unsupported 65. Skeletal Support vs. Muscular Support 66. Self vs. Other 67. Subject vs. Object 68. Hurrying vs. Going Fast ([[Esalen - 2 - Scanning and General Remarks#^1c9e24]]) 69. Stability vs. Mobility ([[Happy Hands Happy Feet 12 - ATM 6 - Edges of the feet]]) 70. Distraction vs. Traction - attention flitting and fleeting vs. dug in 71. Self-Image vs. Body Schema - "They make a distinction between what we would call the ‘self-image’ which is the conscious representation of your self to yourself, and what they would call the ‘body schema’, which are all the unconscious processes that make that possible." [[Larry Goldfarb - 2004 Ilana Nevill Interview#^4c86f6]] 72. Size vs. Scale ([[distinctions#^1ebc18]]) 73. Looking vs. Seeing ([[Wayne Thiebaud - Art Comes From Art#^e0f2a7]]) 74. Sometimes isn’t always (Fred Rogers song…) 75. Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic response [[2025-12 - David Zemach-Bersin Visit in Connecticut]] - Keystone Distinction 76. Paradoxical Breathing vs. Diaphragmatic Breathing [[2025-12 - David Zemach-Bersin Visit in Connecticut]] 77. Empty vs. Full 78. Hollow vs. Dense 79. Long term memory vs. working memory [[Uncommon Sense Teaching - Barbara Oakley, PHD#^c6b723]] 80. Induction vs. Deduction vs. Abduction (types of logical reasoning) - DZB told me that moving back and forth from Induction to Deduction was one of Feldenkrais’ main moves, and I remember Dennis saying that Sherlock Holmes was very important to Feldenkrais (I think Holmes was a popularized version of so-called Inductive Reasoning, though some say he was actually more often doing Abduction). [[Mental Furniture - 1 - Sherlock Holmes]] has some clear explanations of these distinctions as Dennis understood them. 81. Organism vs. Assembly of Bits - [[Esalen - 39 - Making the Unthinkable Feasible#^22cbb3]] - means no part of the body works alone. “ALL THE BITS ARE PART OF SOME SORT OF UNITY” - 82. [Demarcation between Science and Pseudoscience](https://youtu.be/zBUKQWM5Jf0?si=DyEqxwXPVA1u_dbi) - great lecture about the historical conversation about how to approach this distinction - starts with Karl Popper saying the real mark of science is FALSIFIABILITY - you need to be able to falsify. I'm not sure how I would falsify a practice like Feldenkrais - I think Feldenkrais is much more in the realm of placebo or in the realm of Healing Rituals that work by suggestion... although the video is about how the conversation keeps going after falsifiability. Is "Feldenkrais" quackery? 1. Precision vs. Significance is a distinction from within the video 2. AND, Claude told me to remember that Feldenkrais isn't science OR pseudoscience, because it's actually a practice tradition... It DRAWS from scientific stuff, but it's made of experiences... 83. Somatic Nervous System vs. Autonomic Nervous System - [Sam Webster nervous system anatomy video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRbctv7JNDc) - somatic deals with conscious movement and autonomic deals with unconscious processes ^9cbdd5 --- God grant me The power to change the things I can The patience to live with the things I can’t And the wisdom to learn the difference. --- “Information is any difference that makes a difference.” From Bateson, Steps towards and ecology of mind --- Weber-Fechner - Just Noticeable Difference Is measurable --- “From a neo-Piagetian view, the transformation in the first eighteen months of life—giving birth to object relations—is only the first instance of that basic evolutionary activity taken as the fundamental ground of personality development. The infant’s “moving and sensing,” as the basic structure of its personal organization (the reflexes), get “thrown from”; they become an object of attention, the “content” of a newly evolved structure. Rather than being my reflexes, I now have them, and “I” am something other. “I” am that which coordinates or mediates the reflexes, what we mean by “impulses” and “perceptions.” This is the new subjectivity. For the very first time, this creates a world separate from me, the first qualitative transformation in the history of guaranteeing the world its distinct integrity, of having it to relate to, rather than to be embedded in. But this transformation does not take place over a weekend, and it does not take place without cost to the organism, which must suffer what amounts to the loss of itself in the process. The laborious gradualness and personal cost of this transformation can be considered in the context of the two best researched phenomena of this period—the construction of the permanence of the object, and the infant’s protest upon separation from the primary caretaker. From a neo-Piagetian view, both phenomena are easily misunderstood. Excerpt From The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development Robert Kegan --- “So, this will be a very interesting conversation, I have a feeling, because we're dealing with such fundamental issues. For example, is the little bit that I know about the laws of form (book by Spencer Brown, discussed as a central text in the Human Potential Movement) is, is that until you make a distinction or even a mark of some kind, then everything is united. There is no difference between the observer and the observed without a distinction of some sort. Exactly. That is the primacy. And that is the fundamental way that Spencer Brown's perspective differs from traditional Boolean logic is that everything is reduced to this primal act and that act is making a mark, making a distinction, distinguishing this from that or from the perspective of a cell, it would be distinguishing inside from outside or from the perspective of consciousness or higher levels of consciousness, it might be distinguishing day from night or rest from activity or just the different opposites that we cycle through all day long that all have to do with drawing distinctions and with making boundaries.” From New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast: Autopoiesis and the Laws of Form with Terry Marks-Tarlow, Oct 16, 2025 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/new-thinking-allowed-audio-podcast/id1435178031?i=1000732185251&r=715 This material may be protected by copyright. --- [[Larry Goldfarb - 2004 Ilana Nevill Interview#^4530c7]] Well, the way it takes me, especially the way you ask the question, is: If we think of this as a conversation then – now I get very theoretical, very esoteric for a moment, I mean academic – that makes me think of Humberto Maturana and his ideas about language. **For him language means any domain in which distinctions drive what’s going forward.** So sign language counts, massage counts, making love counts. There are all these things in which differences are what drive the action forward. It’s not a matter of energy, it’s really a matter of information. --- “Internal scale could activate a painting independent of its size. He (Wayne Thiebaud) described a Monet haystack painting as “not very big… but has a big scale,” and asked students to “always remember the difference between size and scale.” From [[Wayne Thiebaud - Art Comes From Art]], pg. 47 ^1ebc18