Imagine a subway turnstile that requires a coin. The turnstile has two states: locked or unlocked. If you try to push open a locked turnstile, it will remain locked. If you insert a coin, it will change to unlocked. Once the turnstile is unlocked, pushing it open will change it back to locked.
This kind of logical structure is called a State Machine. This concept is important in digital system engineering, and it can be found in many machines, like coin-operated turnstiles, or vending machines, or elevators.
These things can get very complicated! Software programs can have many many states, with many possible transitions between them.
You can treat your body like a machine, choosing a bodily configuration as a position within a graph. And you can find creative ways to transition between positions.
One of the entry-level poi moves is called a “three-beat weave”. There are three beats on either side, and your hands weave in between each other.
In the gif above, the poi are spinning FORWARD. But you can also do a three-beat weave with the poi spinning BACKWARDS. We can treat these as two different states. Once you’ve learned both of these “moves”, you can TRANSITION between the two of them, like this:
If we were to draw this as a diagram, it would look like this.
First I am spinning them FORWARD, then I turn to my right, which leads me into the BACKWARDS position. By turning to my left, I can return to the FORWARD spinning position.
If you look closely here, I am doing something different.
The diagram would look like this.
The entire possible space of positions and transitions looks like this:
TO ACHIEVE FULL BALANCE, YOU MUST BE ABLE TO PERFORM ANY TRANSITION
You can apply this kind of informational structure to nearly anything, really.
Here’s one I made just now, of transitions between different yoga poses.
This doesn’t encompass every single possible transition (and how could you?), but this is a framework you can work with and play around with yourself!
What the nerds forget is that a naughty boy can jump the turnstiles (poi).