the knowledgethe crazy monkey practice — the long answer

Perception.the layer beneath movement.

How you move depends on what you notice. Change perception, and movement changes with it. This page explains what we train, how we train it, and what it aims to build: noticing more, adapting faster, staying calmer when things change. Ten minutes to read — years to live. No belts, no levels, no secrets.

theory is better with bruisescome feel it in class open all day, whole weekview the agenda

drag the loop — it always comes back around

Coupled, not sequential.

Our working model: movement is not simply planned and then executed. It emerges from a continuous loop between you and the situation: perception guides action, action creates new perception. CMP trains the loop itself — the difference between reacting in time and reacting too late.

The loop framing is borrowed — from ecological psychology and coordination dynamics — and it earns its keep on the floor. Whether what you sharpen here also shows up in conversation, decision and contact is a CMP hypothesis, not an established result: the same loop plausibly runs there, so we build situations to explore that carry-over rather than promise it.

status: theoretical influence — gibson 1979 · kelso 1995. the loop is a thinking tool, not a wiring diagram.

You cannot adapt to what you cannot perceive.

move your cursor across the sentence — attention adds weight

what we trainthree capacities — the heart of the practice

embodiment

Feel it while it happens.

Breath, balance, tension and effort — noticed in motion, not afterwards. You feel balance before you lose it, and catch your breath shortening before anyone points it out.

dexterity

Solve, don't repeat.

Not one learned trick but the capacity to solve sudden movement problems — recovering when you trip, adjusting when the plan falls apart, meeting unfamiliar movement with more options.

synergy

Move with, not beside.

Coordinating with whatever isn't you — people, objects, terrain. In practice it looks like this: keeping a stick balanced between two moving bodies, matching a partner's rhythm without watching their feet, reading intention through the pressure in your hands.

A stick has no feelings, so objects are the gentle entry. People are the deep work — another body is as unpredictable as practice gets, which is exactly why it has so much to teach you.

a note on names: these three are cmp practice constructs, not scientific categories. dexterity leans on bernstein’s classic sense — solving movement problems, not owning movements. synergy here means coordinating with people, objects and environments — deliberately broader than the technical “motor synergy” of motor-control research (latash). same word, different scope: we borrow the direction, not the authority. references below.

how we train itthree sensory channels — the names sound technical, the experiences are not

channel 01Exteroceptionreading the room — a hand arriving, a shift in rhythm, the floor under you

channel 02Proprioceptionknowing where you are mid-movement — weight, angle, position — hand in hand with the vestibular system, your dedicated sense of balance

channel 03Interoceptionreading yourself — breath shortening, effort rising, tension creeping in

a practice model, not a claim that human perception consists of exactly three separate systems — these categories give us a practical way to organise attention and design movement situations.

the terms themselves are established scientific constructs: proprioception — proske & gandevia 2012 · interoception — craig 2002, garfinkel et al. 2015 · exteroception — the standard umbrella for the outward-directed senses. what is ours is the grouping: three channels of attention in training. full references ↓

“Some practices give you forms to refine. CMP gives you situations to solve.”

the cmp overview — v2.2

the synthesishow it all fits

sensed here & now

Exteroceptionthe world around you: surfaces, space, people

sensed here & now

Proprioceptionthe body in space: position, effort, load

sensed here & now

Interoceptionthe world within: breath, tension, state

every channel feeds every capacity ↓

developed over time

Embodimentsense what is happening and build the map

developed over time

Dexterityorganize and adapt — solve problems under constraints

developed over time

Synergycoordinate with people, objects and environments

the capacities compound ↓

autonomy emerges over timeautonomy, defined: you can read your own body, build your own situations, and keep progressing without needing us. the practice embedded in how you live, move and relate — no belts, no levels, no finish line.

why it mattersthe point is not to collect exercises

The point is to adapt when the plan falls apart.

Five aims, honestly labelled: what happens inside practice we train directly and see on the floor every week. How far each one follows you into the rest of life is a harder question — plausible, worth wanting, and exactly what the practice keeps testing. Read these as directions we train toward, not certificates we hand out.

Notice earlier.

Balance, tension, breath and timing become information you can use — in practice and outside it.

Recover faster.

Losing coordination becomes part of learning, not a reason to stop.

Brace less.

More options appear when you stop meeting every problem with force.

Relate better.

Timing, listening, pressure, distance and care — with people, not just movements.

Stay available.

When movement becomes uncertain, you can still sense, adapt and relate. That is the real skill.

how to read this pagefour levels of claim

level	what it means — and where it shows up on this page
Established construct	Supported by an existing scientific literature. Here: proprioception, interoception, the vestibular sense.
Theoretical influence	A scientific model we use to think about perception, coordination and action. Here: Gibson’s ecological approach, Bernstein’s dexterity, coordination dynamics.
CMP hypothesis	A connection our framework proposes — held open to challenge. Here: that capacities sharpened in practice can become available off the floor.
Practice application	How ideas become tasks, constraints and situations. Here: the three attention channels, problem-based classes, partner work.

These levels are not interchangeable. A scientific concept being well established does not automatically validate a training method built around it. Most of what makes CMP CMP lives on the bottom two rows — which is where it should live, and where you can argue with it.

if something in this framework is wrong, we want it to be possible to show us where.

honestywhat cmp is not

cmp is not…	because…
A fitness program	It does not optimize for body composition, endurance or aesthetics.
A sport	No competition, no scoring, no winning.
Therapy	It does not diagnose, treat or claim to heal. Beyond our scope, we refer you to a real specialist.
A movement style	No signature aesthetic. It trains capacities, not forms.
A spiritual practice	No metaphysical claims. Tools, not beliefs.
A guru system	Question everything. No identity capture, no secret knowledge, no gatekeepers.

science-informed, not science-validated. gibson · bernstein · seth — borrowed as tools, worked with daily on a studio floor in amsterdam since 2015. the full shelf ↓

scientific foundationsthe shelf this page leans on

Curated, not decorative: each entry underpins a concept actually used on this page. Where a claim outruns this shelf, it is ours — and labelled as such above.

established construct

Proske, U. & Gandevia, S.C. (2012). The proprioceptive senses. Physiological Reviews, 92(4). doi

Why it’s here: proprioception — position, movement, effort, force — as a thoroughly documented sensory system. The science behind “channel 02”.

established construct

Craig, A.D. (2002). How do you feel? Interoception. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 3. doi · and (2015) How Do You Feel? Princeton University Press.

Why it’s here: interoception as the sense of the body’s physiological condition — the construct behind “channel 03”.

established construct

Garfinkel, S.N., Seth, A.K., Barrett, A.B., Suzuki, K. & Critchley, H.D. (2015). Knowing your own heart. Biological Psychology, 104. doi

Why it’s here: feeling your body is not one skill — accuracy, sensibility and awareness come apart. A caution built into how we coach interoception.

field map

Khalsa, S.S. et al. (2018). Interoception and mental health: a roadmap. Biol. Psychiatry: CNNI, 3(6). doi

Why it’s here: a sober map of what is and isn’t known about interoception and mental health — the reason we make no therapeutic claims.

theoretical influence

Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Houghton Mifflin.

Why it’s here: perception as detecting opportunities for action in the environment — the thinking behind our situation-first classes.

theoretical influence

Bernstein, N.A. (1967). The Co-ordination and Regulation of Movements. Pergamon. · (1996) On dexterity and its development, in Latash & Turvey (eds.), Dexterity and Its Development.

Why it’s here: dexterity as the ability to solve movement problems — the sense our capacity 02 leans on.

theoretical influence

Latash, M.L. (2008). Synergy. Oxford University Press. · (2012) The bliss (not the problem) of motor abundance (not redundancy). Exp. Brain Research, 217. doi

Why it’s here: “motor synergy” and abundance in the technical sense — cited precisely so our broader use of Synergy can’t borrow its authority.

theoretical influence

Kelso, J.A.S. (1995). Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior. MIT Press.

Why it’s here: coordination as self-organising pattern dynamics — part of why we train with problems and constraints rather than fixed forms.

theoretical influence

Seth, A.K. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber & Faber / Dutton.

Why it’s here: the “seth” in our footnote — perception as active prediction, interoception included. An influence on how we talk about sensing, not evidence for our method.

none of these authors endorse cmp. reading them is the fastest way to catch us stretching.

Want to go deeper?

This page is the map. The full CMP Overview — our practitioner document with the complete framework, the twelve-minute starter protocol and the science it borrows from — is handed to every practitioner. Ask us in class, or online. To see the map in use, drop into our movement classes in Amsterdam — or read where CMP sits in the wider movement culture.

One practice, one aim:
when everything changes, you can too.

admit one — no experience requiredstart your practice

the practice belongs to everyone who practices it, and to no one in particular