Friday, January 07, 2011

The joy of learning: it's not just about movement, it's about waking up

If life is movement, and
learning about differences
increases ease, pleasure, skill and awareness in "movement" movement,
And, hey, 
guess what,
noticing differences in the "emotional" movement 
INSIDE 
ourselves creates the same 
increase in ease, pleasure, skill and awareness
on our lives.
Good.


This is from the exercise/ activity/ meditation/ game number 10 of the original 108 way book. 108 "ways" to be happy, to be more aware, to be almost enlightened, to be more free, to move, think, feel, connect to who you really are in new and delightful ways.

108 "Ways" of waking up to the glory of you and life and now.

I'm rewriting that book. The book rotates through
Movement awareness,
emotional learning,
thinking improvement and
soul connection.

It's superb.

I'm going to be selling the first 32 "ways" as a pdf for $12. If people complete those and write email me of their "learning," I'll sell the next 32 "ways" for $8. And if they do and finish and write me about these, I'll sell the final 42 ways for $20.



And if anyone wants to preview, I'll email a pdf of the first 8 "ways" free.

Email if you wish by clicking here

So here's the tenth, without "easy" paragraph breaks. If you want easy to read, please email for the first 8 games/ exercises/ activities/ meditations for free in pdf.

If not, this can change your life, as each of the 108 ways can:

here goes:'

Ten: Emotional Learning
Learning: differences, similarities. We aren’t alone, 2.

Think of a person for whom you have both “positive” and “negative” feelings.
Write down three traits of this person that evoke each attitude.
Look from one list to the other. “Good traits” to “bad traits” to “good traits” and so on. Notice inside yourself the “feelings” that the positive list evokes and the feelings the negative list brings up. INSIDE YOURSELF.
This is huge. They are what they are, but where you put your attention creates what goes on INSIDE of you.
Don’t TRY not to be negative. When you look at the “negative” list, feel what you feel. And as you go back and forth allow real emotion learning to take place as you notice differences, notice differences notice differences. This is learning.

Now, take all six traits and find them in yourself.
Try to do this as if you were an outside observer, some sort of anthropologist taking notes on some exotic tribe. You and the person are both from this exotic tribe. The anthropologist has no stake or judgment about any of these six traits. They are just interested, and very empathetic with both of you for being this way.
The anthologist knows humans are hugely similar.
See and feel the ways you and this person you have picked have a lot of similarity, or have "fallen" into the same habits, or have the same patterns.
Doesn’t matter how you say it, just “be with this” and realize once more, how you are not alone.

3 comments:

Playback said...

Hello, Chris

My name is Vlad, i'm interested in Feldenkrais method and various 'here-and-now' methods as well (as you called them).

Just wanted to share an opinion: if you write a book on this topic, consider making an audio version of it.

This is just an opinion from the point of view of the reader of such books.

I've never worked with a Feldenkrais practitioner (too far from them) and although I read many books about this method and tried to do exercises from books I was able to 'get it' ONLY when I started to do lessons recorded by Moshe himself and other audio lessons.

It's very hard to convey message of what it means to be here and now to a person who never experienced it before with the means of books. Even if a person is curious (like I was), he may not understand what is so special about described movements. And it's simply more convenient to listen and do lessons, then read and do them.

Even now, after understanding how to do lessons, I prefer doing audio lessons then lessons from books.
An audio version with correct temp and pauses when necessary helps tremenduously to STOP and feel, experience and sense.

If i'm not mistaken, reading is essentially left-hemispheric, while what is necessary in this kind of work is activate right hemisphere, balance them. As Moshe wrote somewhere, hearing is primary during learning process and I agree with him.



Best of luck,
http://vlad8.com/

chris elms said...

Hey Vlad,
I love your comments.
I'll do the audio version.

I'll even look into how to podcast the various "movement lessons" I do on the blog here.

Thanks for the encouragement.

P.S. You might want to look into DVDs or CDs from Anat's site. She does them with the same force and clarity that Moshe started this woek in.

Ciao,
Chris

chris elms said...

work
not woek