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Strong Endurance with Pavel

5/21/2018

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Strong Endurance with Pavel
May 19-20; 2018
Chicago, Primal Gym
https://chicagoprimal.com/

Chicago, IL:  Saturday May 19, 2018 Chicago Primal Gym opened their doors to host us in their spacious bow truss gym to learn what the famously power-driven, strength-inspired StrongFirst approach to endurance might look like.
Having attended a PlanStrong in 2015, I remember Pavel’s presentation style as precise, dense, and thorough.  Surprisingly, I did not need a calculator for a whirlwind weekend of number-crunching and grid-munching. Information-packed, we blazed through what would amount to an AP biology course on Saturday while Sunday was dedicated to seeing nearly every training template from the manual in real time.  The value of this cannot be understated. The way something looks on paper compared to a live rendering of a plan must be appreciated and first-hand experience was an option for those who wanted to “feel the pain.”  Whereas the PlanStrong ethos encouraged stepping away from frivolous technology and “feelings” and pursuing mathematically precise execution of the plan, Strong Endurance asked us to consider tales of social animals, perceive and rely on certain physiological feelings, and appreciating “what happens under the hood.”  Though known for a ruthlessly minimalist approach to training, there was an occasion to demonstrate a new accelerometer apparatus which is available through the StrongFirst store.

Pavel opened Strong Endurance by stating this is for a wide range of people--GPP.  The structure of Saturday would explain why to do this type of training at all and why it’s radically different than what is conventionally taught.  A tale of two cats led us to consider how we ought to define endurance. While we may have stylistic admiration for the predator who claws and scratches their way to the end of a kill or finish line after much trial, we might define endurance through the lense of strength instead:  accessing high power, high strength, high speed and the ability to sustain it.  Exemplifying pure power says Pavel, “is not heroic, it’s professional.”

By contrast, what then is weak endurance?  We’ve all seen it, the floppy burpee. The sure sign of having been worked to the point that reflexes are dulled and proprioception muted.  The cascade of acid buildup, free radicals, and depleted ATP pool in the body--a stress model that is only justifiable when an organism’s life is endangered.  With Strong Endurance there is a “blue collar approach to train,”  ready and calm.  It is composure with the right amount of excitability.

Anyone familiar with the conventional methods for training endurance may have experienced, after many years, muscle wasting and hormonal depletion are the costs one pays.  One may have asked if a less costly endurance protocol exists.  Strong Endurance [SE] emerged from this very question. After field testing the approach, SE stands as a GPP platform that can be adapted to anyone who cannot afford to be “smoked” by their workouts. Candidates for this style of program are games, combat sport athletes, obstacle racers, TSC participants, fat loss individuals, and those interested in creating more favorable cellular conditions for mitochondrial [metabolic] health.

In quick succession we covered the essentials of energy [the capacity to do work] from the level of electrons to biochemistry: redox, pH [H+], ATP, and creatine [PCr, creatine phosphate].  Then the trophy truth arrives; only with long-term training can we develop the organelle that underpins every adaptation relevant to energy utilization:  mitochondria.  No short cuts exist to developing them.  Short lists do exist, however. This truly is a short list of topics and questions covered Saturday:

What is the role of acid?
How does fasting assist mitochondria?
Under what conditions to we stimulate adaptations in mitochondria?
Is nutrition as important as nutritional timing?
How do muscles contract/relax?  Does it take energy [ATP] to relax a muscle?
What are fast fibers?
Which muscle fibers are structurally stronger?
Which fibers require more neural drive?
Which fibers contract first?
How does aging affect fibers?
What are the ways to train fast fibers?
What can the development of slow fibers net us?
Acid’s redeeming qualities
The 4th emergency pathway, myokinase reaction
What are the conditions for sprinting to be a power exercise?
Short rest periods are surprisingly powerful
The mechanisms in place that prevent you from “running yourself dead”
What is acid tolerance?
How short W:R ratios are different than metcons
The difference between training and peaking.
When/how was the anti-glycolytic approach born? [hint:  Russia]
What does it do? and what can be done better?
How do we build mitochondria?
Mitochondria quality v. quantity
What are the requirements to disrupt [train] the mitochondria into adaptation?

In typical Pavel fashion, the act of showing up and following along provides a certain training effect.  By the end of Day 1, exposure to and organization of the information provided a cerebral lick--a reminder of how one could be training their mind.  By the day’s end, one could sense how their cerebral work capacity training fared.  The sheer volume and level of nuance of the aggregated information is a distillation of decades of literature and science.  This point alone is worth recognizing--Pavel must have a mind of unimaginable rigor and sharpness to collect, let alone to distill and synthesize all this research into a coherent, actionable system.  WTH, indeed!


Day 2

On day two we covered nearly all the templates in the almost 200 page manual.  Pavel repeated that there are more plans in here than we will ever need. Participants were given an example of each plan to execute in real time while we answered questions about the talk test, tempo, and adapting the plans for sport specificity.
Seeing the plan in action was necessary to understand just how simply these plans can be executed.  Moreover, upon completion, each “victim” was asked to say how they felt doing and completing the template example.  Overwhelmingly [with the exception of a couple intensive plans] the participants stated each was extremely “doable.”  They felt they were practicing right up to the edge of comfort. The simplicity of these plans and their feasibility was compared to how children play and blue collar workers naturally adapt their work and rest periods.  It’s a similar cadence experienced best in climbing gyms wherein groups of 3 or 5 individuals stand around and discuss their climber friend’s path as s/he is navigating the wall. After they’ve completed their attempt, another takes their turn.  It’s a cadence of I-go-you-go with lots of time to recover, think, and chill. Worth contemplating: it is “training on the edge of pleasure.”  Enjoyment eventually yields to indifference which precedes an important threshold with which we should all familiarize ourselves--mild acidosis.

If I could summarize the approach in a few words:

“Stay fresh...mostly"

The technicality of the underlying chemical processes may have interested select groups; I wonder what the medically-minded think? Those who convert coded chemistry language into cell functionality--can they imagine the health consequences that can be taken advantage of through this power approach?  I imagine oncology practitioners and biologists, recognizing how this is founded on cellular health, making the connection that these cellular changes can be manifested through strength plans. While it was never overtly stated, there appears to be implications for populations addressing broken metabolism, neurodegenerative diseases, concussion prevention protocols, and autoimmune issues.  Strong Endurance might be one of the most important platforms for bringing actionable plans for cellular changes to our collective health...and with health to strength.


Power to us!















Gwen Mihaljevich, a Chicago based practitioner, works primarily in the healing arts and yogic traditions and has since 2003 under the auspice of Ana Forrest.  With an academic foundation in music performance and therapy, her interests include deep study of zazen [practicing with the Hollow Bones order], trauma and addiction recovery, behavioral development, neurodegenerative diseases and longevity, strength training [implementing StrongFirst methodology], nutrition, sports psychology, epigenetics, jiu jitsu, and integral leadership.


https://twitter.com/GwenMitchell1

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The Doctors' Mashup:  Dr. Mark Cheng & Dr. Perry Nickelston Day 2

9/18/2017

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Day 2

Day two had a decidedly more emotional tone to the morning than yesterday’s joking bubbliness.  Perhaps we were feeling the bodily energetic effects from having massaged many neurolymphatic reflex points yesterday?  Perhaps it was a touching retelling of her own professional and postpartum journey; Suzanne Ko took the stage this morning to enumerate the many beneficial strategies she used to relearn breathing that put her on a successful and healthy trajectory.  Ko shared Julie Wiebe's Piston breathing using a balloon to illustrate Pascal’s Principle [hydraulic/pressure] within the pelvic-abdominal region of the body.  Brianna Battles was in attendence and further helped us understand how every population that uses postpartum strategies can improve their well-being and performance.  This key concept helped me rethink the value of taking a postpartum pelvic floor workshop soon.

Often considered a taboo area and sorely neglected in the general trainer/fitness industry, the pelvic floor remained the interest for the better part of the morning.  Dr. Nickleston added his clinical observations about how the tissues around the hip tend to behave when the pelvic floor is overly tensed.  The energy of the room brightened up as we retested our squat to our amazement.  Indeed, this pelvic floor does need more exploration.  Strong and active does not necessarily mean coordinated.  Most of the attention was on the timing of this goldilocks area in relation to our breathing, not too tight, not disengaged, but just the right amount at the right time netted us easier and easier retests.

Dr. Cheng led us through ankle movements sieza (a formal japanese sitting posture) and hack squat like drills.  Each retest felt easier and had higher fidelity sensation.  The day was not filled with countless examples but ideas that spoke to principles for us to later apply in our own way.  The main principles undergirding the morning session seemed to say:  try improving the communication within the body with by using easy movement through key joint areas and remove interference with that neruological communication.  None of these drills involved high threshold strategies or greater force input, alluding to the importance of softer modalities like tai chi and Moshé Feldenkrais’ work.  They were surprisingly simple, easy to perform moves that made measurable differences in our test squat performance.  Some attendees familiar with Eric Cobb’s Z-Health nodded in agreement.  I believe the key ingredient here was attention paid to the task at hand.  Our careful noticing, not our harder work was giving us the benefit of feeling more at ease in our movement-body.

Dr. Nickleston restated his preference for working succinctly with the body choosing only the fewest key points to affect at a time.  For areas of pain he showed us to work with a foot joint and a neck joint.  These two taken together is a form of pain and trauma resetting that sometimes goes by IRT [injury recall technique].  The use of energy testing and point manipulation during the demonstration reminded me of the way Donna Eden teaches energy medicine.  She demonstrates that energy can change rapidly and show through the body immediately.  This however was framed in the day’s reminder that lifestyle is ultimately how we help construct, maintain, or destroy these pathways to expressing health and happiness.  
The zooming in and out needed for this style of presentation reminded one to stabilize the skill that is required to maintain the “50-foot view” of the client while working with changes of perception that are just below the surface of habitual awareness, whispering yet evident to the careful observer.

By the afternoon we had deconstructed quadruped and integrated pelvic floor exercises into the posture.  This offered more mapping to that part of the body-mind and magnified inconsistencies we may have had discovered earlier in the day.  Dr. Nickleston offered an extrememly easy way to vary rocking by simply changing a hand or a knee position.  We ended the afternoon by setting up half-kneeling.  Doc Cheng’s disavowed himself of the multitude of half-kneeling exercise variations available on the internet and instead emphasized simply setting the posture up properly.  The lesson here, demonstrate mastery via ease.  Be able to breathe, and move eyes and head with no strain or stuggle.  An important reminder here when he asked us to relax after only a handful of seconds in half-kneeling:  the metabolic load of learning a new position can be fatiguing.  Take our lead from the babies:  explore to discover (rather than achieve), then rest.

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The Doctors’ Mashup:  Dr. Mark Cheng and Dr. Perry Nickleston, Day 1 of 2

9/16/2017

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The Doctors’ Mashup:  Dr. Mark Cheng and Dr. Perry Nickleston

Day 1
9.16.17

Arriving at Spindle Fitness in Chicago, participants were greeted by hostess Suzanne Ko and made their way to the waivers, coffee, and doughnuts.  Hugs and handshakes from Dr. Perry Nickelston and Dr. Mark Cheng made for a friendly reunion.  After a warm welcome by Dr. Mark Cheng, we dove into a whole day of seamless back-and-forth between two doctors, sharing anecdotes and wisdom interspersed with hilariously bawdy jokes.  The main objective was clear:  “We are going to have fun today and learn some deeply important things along the way.”  The discussion, which could have easily been dense presentation on topics like sensory input, motor control, and compensations, was made digestible by simple postural tests and hands on experimentation.

Doc Cheng led off by asking us to make some distinctions about the word “fitness.”  Would we be talking about cosmetics or quality of life?  Should we consider training different than testing?  Is health different than sport?  Cheng offered that training is setting up a learning environment for improvement of some quality, while testing gives one feedback. That critical distinction of an external environment influencing our internal environment led us into the freestyle “jam” between the doctors.  The dual presentation was an organic framework injected with the doctors’ insights, dovetailed together effortlessly and coherently.  

Cheng offered tidbits about the clinician/trainer’s professional role in the client’s life, asking us to consider how we educate the client and get their “buy-in.”  Perhaps personal, many of Cheng’s insights were threaded with a theme of responsibility and ownership: “own the movement,”  “make the difficult look easy,” and develop control of your person through extremes like tension and relaxation.  He often implied a hierarchy exists from foundational work through high order [complexity] movements as a rationale for slowing a client down.  While demonstrating the beauty of moving more slowly, he cited efficiency as being at the heart of a regression:  fundamental movement provides a point of access to help make learning efficient. Nickleston offered gems about pain’s insidious distortions on our perception and tended to emphasize the body’s non-linear and mysterious connections through nerves, lymph, and important points on the body worth exploring or “hacking.”  Nickleston also reminded us that our emotions ought to be considered as part of both our humanity and a variable in our learning environment.  “People don’t want to feel judgment or humiliation,”  he said as he instructed us to look for subtle markers of the body responding as if threatened.

We explored a foundational movement, breathing, by feeling nuances in abdominal engagement in a balloon-blowing exercise led by Ko.  Sometimes abdominal tone was evident visually; other times palpating our partners’ bellies offered a chance to feel how different areas of the abdomen engaged in a non-simultaneous fashion.  Nickleston asked us to feel for these timing differences among our partners and asked if timing might play a role in perception of pain or strength?  This was just one question that preceded the chorus-like rejoinder, “Context!”  All of this information we experienced was couched in different scenarios and positions.  How well we breath while lying on our back could be informed by changing the context: breathing in sphinx position.  How good we feel in sphinx position might change after chopping our neck muscles and rubbing our intercostals.  The play between the doctors provided many ways to think about and feel the developmental positions that were strongly central to both doctors’ approaches.

Cheng briefly touched on Ed Thomas’ Three Common and Uncommon Postures and three foot positions as possible movement lenses through which to look at the body.  He briefly introduced his 5 postures he presents in his DVD Prehab-Rehab 101, and took us to through the first two, ground-lying and sphinx [belly down supported on forearms].   We took careful note of our vision, breath, and spinal articulation in these two positions when Nickleston picked up the conversation by delving into an unsung hero of the body, the lymph/nodes.  He used palpation and mobility tools to pointedly implore us to consider how the body’s fluids and waste can produce massive alterations to our well-being and movement quality.  

After a second round of sharing take-aways from the afternoon, our posterior chains “juiced,” and vitalness accessed with simple postural exploration, we conclude day one.

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Forrest Yoga Workshop; Experiencing Opening into your Depths

12/5/2016

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Register here
http://www.mokshayoga.com/event-details/412262/2016-12-10/gwen-mihaljevich-a-forrest-yoga-workshop.html

We're going in deep this week. In this Saturday's workshop, a short recap will be offered on the cycle of
sensation > interpretation > choice > reembodiment.
We will recap how embodiment is a capacity, the ground from which we develop the confidence to begin working with our core vulnerabilities. Then we will get the chance to work with a particular outdated strategy/issue. Feel the revivified life!


Be strong then, and enter into your own body; there you have a solid place for your feet. Think about it carefully! Don’t go off somewhere else! Just throw away all thoughts of imaginary things, and stand firm in that which you are.-Kabir

In this workshop you will learn the tools needed to take your practice more deeply--or more correctly--take you into a deeper relationship with yourself. Instructions for how and where to focus your attention will help you build bodily intelligence, and invite a deeper awareness of your physical body, and your subtle, vital body. [The scope of this particular workshop does not directly address the causal body.]

Using intention, breath, and connecting to your core will help you understand better the nature of tension and openness.

"When our bodies are deeply blocked and tense, we often feel numb. We may not even be conscious of our physical discomfort. As the surface layers are moved away, as we break through some of this surface physical pain, we literally open up to the stored pain that is deeper within the body. We may feel aches that we have never been aware of before--and along with aches in the body, a corresponding emotional pain. This pain is not the pain of sickness but the pain of healing. Though much of kundalini’s work takes place below our awareness, much of it must necessarily go on within our awareness. By allowing ourselves to feel the spontaneous release that kundalini inspires, we learn how to release and open up on our own. We can’t do this when we are unconscious. So the pains that we experience in the body during meditation are actually teaching us, helping us to become more conscious of what is going on in our bodies (192-3).” from Sally Kempton’s Meditation for the Love of It.

Holy Spirit, giving life to all life, moving all creatures, root of all things, washing them clean, wiping out their mistakes, healing their wounds, you are our true life, luminous, wonderful, awakening the heart from its ancient sleep. -Hildegard of Bingen
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Intro to Forrest Yoga Workshop; Little Backbends to Free Your Spine--Doorway to Aliveness

10/9/2016

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Register here
http://mokshayoga.com/event-details/412261/2016-10-22/gwen-mihaljevich-intro-to-forrest-yoga.html

Saturday 10am-1230pm; Moksha Riverwest. What is it? An approachable on-road to backbends for beginners as well as seasoned teachers.
How can it be for such differently skilled practitioners?
The movements are fundamental; they underlie more complex backbends. Teachers can refresh their knowledge of backbend variations while practicing quite deeply.
It's 2.5 hours long, can I do yoga that long?
Yes. The pace is different than 90 min. classes. Rest and demonstrations will accompany new moves.


...By meeting yourself in the place where you feel unmet, something new and powerful happens. Something so simple yet so radical: You start to inhabit yourself. You reinhabit your...heart and bring it back to life” (81-2). from Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships by John Welwood

Often in yoga “opening your heart” is described in terms of surrender. In Forrest Yoga, we consider the process essential to restoring one’s connection to vitality and resilience. This process is necessitated by previous, often historically rooted, protective acts. The intelligence in these protective acts was to preserve the organism from overwhelm or death. In the process of examining those shields in this backbending class, we will explore areas around the heart including the chest, shoulders, upper back, and ribs. We will inquire if those protective patterns continue to serve your highest Good. Take-aways include finding ways to change your habitual life patterns to assist in your personal evolution.
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Calorie.  Santa.  Divinity.

6/9/2016

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Why cultivate one’s breath?  Why engage invisible practices?

I generated a list of reasons that had very unscientific, externally unverifiable consequences.
  • Access one’s intuition and wisdom.
  • Develop attentional perspicacity sufficient to create a choice.
  • Effecting emotional outcomes.   Impact body’s overall health and functioning.


Imagine if we never developed our experience of gift-giving beyond Santa.  We get.  Where does it come from?  Don’t know.

What if it never developed beyond “I get gifts?”  Similarly our definition of energy may be developmentally underrepresented as Santa's mysterious generosity.

The calorie is a good definition of energy.
It’s scientific.  We categorize foods with it, we effort using calories.  

But "calorie" does not include in its definition words like love, service, attention, or compassion.  Yet calories help us express those things.

The calorie is santa—it brings gifts of combustion.
The calorie never asks us what relationships we hold dear or what value we place on what we’ll do with it.  What will we do in the world with a calorie?  
Will we be of Service or selfish?
When we choose to use caloric energy to grow relationships and values, we ought to term that Divinity.

Remembering one’s divinity.  [Hope]
Accessing one’s divinity.  [Charity]
Relying on one’s divinity.  [Faith]

Divinity is value structure based on energy currency.

That gift came from somewhere—how do I honor it?

That gift came to me without my deserving it—how do I show Gratitude?

That gift could be used not just for my selfish enterprising—how can I be of Service?
Divinity answers these questions.

Overheard in a locker room:  self-admonishing for eating pasta last night.  Seen:  someone pokes their belly with a look of disdain.

Even if you change the number on your waist, arms, or on the bathroom scale...

Is the world a more Beautiful place?  Practice remembering your Divinity...Breathe.

Are you wiser?  Practice relying on your Divinity...Feel.

Do you live in integrity?  Practice accessing your Divinity...Love.



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Hand-Heart-Core, Forrest Yoga Workshop

4/7/2016

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Hand-Heart-Core, Forrest Yoga Workshop
Saturday, April 23, 2016


The hands are an integral component of our physical interaction with our environment.  As such, a great deal of our identity is developed--and our relationships expressed--through touch, grip, release, reach, pressure, and movement.  In this asana practice and workshop we will explore
  • the hand-core connection
  • how to feel the linkage between the arms and the trunk, both mechanically and energetically
  • how to then create highly supportive poses and transitions, especially the oft bypassed chataranga-to-upward dog-to-downward dog sequence
  • what to look for, as a teacher, in the neck and shoulder and hip area

We will deconstruct plank, cobra, downward dog, upward dog, and other hand-balancing poses, and rework the connections from breath to spine, shoulder, neck and arm so the neck feels free and the shoulders supportive in the poses.

These hand-ground interactions will be safe and suitable for those working with wrist injuries or shoulder concerns.  

New teachers and teacher trainees who attend will

  • practice feeling gross [physical] body movement to stoke subtle body awareness [“lines of energy”]
  • help improve their intuitive and adjustment skills as a teacher
  • study the organism-environment interaction to improve the quality of their interactions with others.

When attending, please be prepared to be hands-ready, phone-free.  If you typically use wrist supports or props for your hands, you may have them with you.

Occurs:
Saturday April 23, 2016
Yoga Now Chicago; 742 N. LaSalle Ste. 201
Chicago, IL
call:  312 280 9642time:  100-330pm; 330-4pm Q&A
Cost:  $35
Transit:  short walk to both brown line and red line
Parking in lot behind building, entrance on Chicago Ave., validated:  $10
[street parking expires after 2 hours]

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About your facilitator:
Gwen Mihaljevich, a Chicago based practitioner, works primarily in the healing arts and yogic traditions and has for 13 years under the auspice of Ana Forrest.  With an academic foundation in music performance and therapy, her interests include deep study in addiction and recovery, behavioral development, nutrition, sports psychology, epigenetics, zazen, jiu jitsu, and integral leadership.

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Gold.  Position.

4/4/2016

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Real estate=location, location, location.
Martial practice=position, position, position

It's very easy to forget in competition your innate resources.
It's very easy to configure your options based on context alone.
If another person has a dominant or controlling position over you, your options, based off of that context, shrink.

Your limited resources are time and energy.
In a lousy position, if you can remember how much you trained to have energy resources, you explode and use them.

The psychology of your position matter.
You may not be flattened out by anything other than your own forgetfulness.

Train to remember.
Train to not flinch.
Train to not lose consciousness.
Train to remember on what you rely.

Train to stay connected to what's really important, under pressure.

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Anna Schabold and I talk about the Gil Hedley dissection course.

1/28/2016

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Exile

10/14/2015

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In early stages of development, exile--or departing from an undesirable situation--can be an appropriate management solution for difficult energy.  
In later stages of human development, the exile pattern that is trained, or persists, creates more burden for an evolving individual.
The pattern of sequestering Consciousness so as to exclude [an area, a person, an event] results in allergies.
Places left unlit, remain dark blistering pockets of unresolve.
Since we possess greater strategies than exile alone,
we re-imagine a body with breath.
We bring awareness back and light up the areas that have suffered neglect.
In doing so we become more whole.
Energy spent on allergic defenses is now freed up. 
Where breath has been exiled, reclaim.
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