Blogging can just be stating the obvious
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Unlock the full reading · $5.50 →Jim Nielsen riffs on a John Gruber post about user-hostile web popups, using it to make a meta point about blogging: often the best posts simply state what seems obvious but no one is saying out loud. The value isn't novelty but the willingness to name a pattern others have normalized, with receipts.
Teaching:
• Cueing often works the same way: students need to hear the obvious thing (breathe, root the big toe, slow the exhale) said plainly and repeatedly, not cleverly.
• In coaching, naming what a student is already feeling but hasn't articulated is often more useful than offering a novel insight.
• Class themes can come from stating the unspoken: 'we've normalized rushing through Surya A' or 'we treat soreness as progress without checking.'
• Teachers should bring receipts too: specific postures, specific moments in a student's practice, not abstract principles.
Writing seeds:
• An essay: 'The Obvious Things I Keep Saying in the Shala' — a list of cues that feel too basic to repeat but actually carry the practice.
• A Shala Daily entry on why functional Ashtanga is mostly stating the obvious: load matters, breath sets pace, pain is information.
• A post on how Ashtanga's fixed sequence is itself an 'emperor has no clothes' design — its value is that it refuses novelty.
• A short piece: 'Yes!!! This!!!' as a teaching stance — curating and amplifying what other honest practitioners are already saying.
Idea map:
• Connects to systems literacy: noticing patterns everyone tolerates is the first move of reading a system clearly.
• Reinforces practice as method: the obvious gets revealed by showing up daily, not by clever analysis.
• Links to attention: blogging and practice both train the discipline of saying what you actually see.
• Echoes his embodiment thread: the body keeps stating the obvious; the work is to stop overriding it.
Source: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/blogging-stating-the-obvious/
Teaching:
• Cueing often works the same way: students need to hear the obvious thing (breathe, root the big toe, slow the exhale) said plainly and repeatedly, not cleverly.
• In coaching, naming what a student is already feeling but hasn't articulated is often more useful than offering a novel insight.
• Class themes can come from stating the unspoken: 'we've normalized rushing through Surya A' or 'we treat soreness as progress without checking.'
• Teachers should bring receipts too: specific postures, specific moments in a student's practice, not abstract principles.
Writing seeds:
• An essay: 'The Obvious Things I Keep Saying in the Shala' — a list of cues that feel too basic to repeat but actually carry the practice.
• A Shala Daily entry on why functional Ashtanga is mostly stating the obvious: load matters, breath sets pace, pain is information.
• A post on how Ashtanga's fixed sequence is itself an 'emperor has no clothes' design — its value is that it refuses novelty.
• A short piece: 'Yes!!! This!!!' as a teaching stance — curating and amplifying what other honest practitioners are already saying.
Idea map:
• Connects to systems literacy: noticing patterns everyone tolerates is the first move of reading a system clearly.
• Reinforces practice as method: the obvious gets revealed by showing up daily, not by clever analysis.
• Links to attention: blogging and practice both train the discipline of saying what you actually see.
• Echoes his embodiment thread: the body keeps stating the obvious; the work is to stop overriding it.
Source: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/blogging-stating-the-obvious/
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