THEORY: Unifying Occlumency Theory

[Nora Renka]

No: HPFGUIDX 116339


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Magda Grantwich 
<mgrantwich at y...> wrote:
<snip>

Madga:
> I think that what Dumbledore wanted Harry to learn was the
> mind-shielding exercise part of occlumency - the ability to relax,
> let go of your emotions, etc.  The idea was that if Snape was
> pounding away at him mentally it would give Harry incentive to
> practice.  Didn't work of course, thanks to the Harry-Snape
> disconnect and the fact that Harry was channelling Voldemort's
> emotions as well as his visions (that is, the connection was more
> intense than Dumbledore realized).

I think this is insightful, but it raises a burning question I've had 
for some while.  Let me indulge in a personal tangent to explain why 
I've got it.

I (to keep myself sane, and because it's fun), am an avid student of 
aikido, one of the modern Japanese martial arts.  One of the big long-
range things that it works on is mind-body unification (which is 
complicated), but has one very interesting facet; you learn how to 
truly relax both your mind and your body together, and get the two 
working hand in hand instead of poking at each other.  The 
descriptions of aspects of Occlumency strongly remind me of that.

The thing is, learning to really truly relax and have it hold up 
under testing, with variable amounts of pressure, is really and truly 
extremely hard, and takes a very good teacher and a lot of time.  The 
way not to learn is to take a beginner, tell him "Relax!", and then 
hit him to see if he does.  If you repeat it enough, he might get one 
time where he successfully absorbs/deflects the attack.  It's a 
fluke.  He hasn't really learned how to do it systematically.

Teaching relaxation requires (in my experience) a truly co-operative 
model, where the amount of force starts very small, and is really 
primarily an agent of feedback to both the teacher and student.  
Student learns what force feels like in small amounts that can be 
dealt with at first, and then you start to crank it up, over time.  
[It *is* possible to learn just from being hit--but it, as I am told 
by people far more experienced than myself, takes a lot longer, is 
not much fun, and is the reason that they are now teaching--to make 
sure no one else has to learn the way that they did.]

When I read the Occlumency passages, I remember thinking: "Dude, he's 
*never* going to learn how to really actually relax if you go about 
it like that--he's just going to learn to hit back."  I don't know 
whether my perceptions of relaxation teaching method line up with 
JKR's, but that's the perspective on it that I brought in.  Really, 
I'm completely not sure it applies, and I'd love to get a little more 
info about Occlumency mechanics--but it does explain something.

-Nora recovers from the operatic two-fer, and notes it's nice when 
the second one is the short one, not the grand opera extravaganza