Why I became a Feldie

when i was in my mid thirties
i was happily engaged in a career that allowed
me to use my body and my brain
and my creativity
and be outside
and add super bonus,
if I was really ON that day,
meditate in the present
as I worked.

I did landscape,
design
and installation.

It was fun,
it was challenging,
I loved being outside
and working real work
and see real results and beauty.

And sometimes I'd do too much.
And since I was in the Bay Area,
I already knew about these classes where
you rolled around on the floor,
well, not always rolling,
but always moving in a bunch of easy
and engaging and interesting ways.

And after these classes,
I'd always feel a huge amount better.

They were called Feldenkrais classes,
for the man, Moshe Feldenkrais,
who invented them.

And sometimes, in my thirties and
forties,
I'd go to these classes, not from being wrecked
and in pain and wanting to get out,
but from the pure joy and
ease
and happiness at being a live
human
in an aware body.

I felt good after these classes.

I remember being in awe of the teacher
after one class and thinking:
one group of people gets worm out and tight
as they work
and another group
gets paid to help these people out of that.

But, it wasn't for me.
Or so it seemed.

I always told other people: go see a Feldenkrais person,
go to a Feldenkrais class
when they'd complain about back pain
or shoulder pain.
I knew how easy it could be dissolved.

Then in my fifties,
I took up yoga,
almost on a whim
(someone asked if I wanted to go to a class.
I said yes.).
And wasn't very good at it.
But feel in love
with a yoga teacher and
had a sweet eight years
from that.

One day, the yoga teacher and
I heard about an invitation to do
a weekend of this "Feldenkrais" stuff.

What the heck.
I'd been telling so many other people
to "try" it, maybe time for me
to give it another fling.

So we went.
Three movement adventures,
called Awareness Through Movement
lessons,
each day.
Three lessons a day instead of
one a week.
For two days.

I felt like I was ten years old again.
I couldn't believe the waking up
and shift
and ease
and plain old fashioned giddy happiness
I felt in my body.

Wow.

And the leader
"just happened"
for have a training program
coming up in a couple of months.
(a four year training,
seeming always like "too much"
until I'd had this
ten year old feeling).

I couldn't wait to join.
Now I could become one of the ones
who helped
the others out of the tension and pain
and tightness of working too hard,
too fast, too.....

I didn't know what.

I just knew,
I wanted to feel this good all the time.

And
I wanted to be part of the solution.