Handwriting and the Importance of Detail

Written script is one of the greatest technologies Man has ever made. Transforming communication from ephemeral sounds to concrete has essentially enabled all subsequent inventions. If one stands on the shoulders of giants, they do so by their writings made intelligible through time and space. Script can even transcend language, though I do not speak Latin or most of its derivative scripts I can have some idea of the pronunciation of a word by its image due to my American-English tongue.

However, there are other scripts of which I have little idea how the image bridges into sound. A measured phenomenon due to this unfamiliarity is that language-learners tend to have better handwriting in their non-native script. Not knowing the crucial components required to communicate the letter or ideogram, the language-learner will more faithfully represent the whole canonical version of the image than a native-speaker. The native-speaker more often focusing on the important aspects of the image and reducing it to the crucial components and efficient strokes to get to the next important part. In this sense, familiarity with a thing is degenerative.

Ashtanga yoga is one of the most strict disciplines in the domain, popularized by Pattabhi Jois. However if you examine the posture of his grandson, Sharath Jois, in some asana you may think he’s doing something incorrectly. For example in his expression of virabhadrasana 2 his forward knee goes beyond the placement of his foot whereas this would almost always be instructed to be placed directly above the foot. Sharath is no novice though, well learned in the articulation of his own body he knows the details that need to be focused on even if the apparant expression of the whole is not what is taught to beginners.

Know the rules, and you may break them.