This article, orginially posted in the forums by Romain (aka moviestar) is about learning to find things out through your own experiences and gaining an understanding of what is Parkour.

"It is necessary to do what you cannot do to learn how to do it. (O.Reboul)"

One possible solution to be based on an existing knowledge.
Platon told "You never learn what you already know. Any new know-how is the implementation of an innate or already acquired knowledge, the training only consisting in connecting and selecting. The groping (training by test and error) is essential. You learn by imitation and repetition. The repetition is not a reproduction with identical but allows each time a progress."

You don't come Yourself at Parkour just because it is tendency ; those kind of people do not last.
The initial tracers, in fact, are not really beginners. They have for most of them a bold past and in a corner of their childhood periods of climbing in the trees, jumps over barriers etc.... what they do not have is the Parkour-techniques itself and it is there that they join the movement of tracers.

For the tracers which have followed the traces of their Masters or idols, the knowledge belongs to those which have the most experience... walking on their traces and to see them moving is a good school ; imitate them is an error. To run like So-and-So or to jump as So-and-So is erroneous. It is necessary to open your horizon and make as your own body claims it. You have to respect
your own morphology : some have large arms some others have small legs, or, others of the tonic muscles... All these differences contribute to look at Parkour with his own way.

It will be necessary to move with techniques which exist but to work them while being respected and according to your possibilities. Thus a tracer as any other athlete must pass by phases which he does not know to pass a higher level and never without risk even wound (like the training bicycle or ski).

Parkour as where the life can be endangered does not escape from the rule from the training and the control from your gestural. The Parkour mind in a jump is: "if you do not feel to do this jump don't do it"...
Chaw Belle Dinh from Yamakasi band (report "flight to the top of the cities") passed in front of an obstacle during 5 years without never daring to confront himself with it. Until the day when he felt the thing ; the moment had come. Here is what is the philosophy of Parkour.

Philosophy always implies the concern of the truth. Its specific question is that of Quintessence. If Parkour is a philosophy it is then necessary to seek Quintessence of it.
This Quintessence must be in heart and soul of our practice and of our experiment in Parkour. "All functions of the man as well psychological as intellectual or emotional build themselves starting from a common element which is the body in its relation with the world." (Piaget and Wallon).

Find his own way. This search you find it in all the practices and also in martials arts. You will not practise l'art du déplacement from David Belle or Sebastien Foucan, but your art du déplacement. Art Ultime is to make of this art your own art.
Let us not reproduce any more; let us build, run, jump, fly, with our way.
Thanks to the initiators and models but today we only will make. gentlemen our inspirers !! help us only to do by ourselves.
"It is not with his brain that the man thinks but with his entire body... (Janet)"