Friday, December 08, 2006

When You Can't Do the Lesson: A study in options

In Feldenkrais and WakeUp Feld and the Anat Baniel Method and in good old curious healthy wonderful life,
we give ourselves the chance to look at things in lots of ways.

Sometimes lessons go awry and we "can't" do them. Or do WE (not the lessons) go awry? Or is there any awry going anywhere?

Awry is such a fun word I think I'll write it again: awry, alas, awry.

Anyway:

On an online forum for Feldy junkies, someone was disconsolate for awhile in not being able to "do"
an Awareness Through Movement Lesson, disgustingly abbreviated as ATM.

When bored in a yoga class, I began to have fun with the real and fanciful answers. Enjoy

WHEN YOU CAN'T DO THE LESSON ( A STUDY IN OPTIONS) (any lesson, not just Feldenkrais)
Extreme responses:
• Kill the teacher
• Scream
• Cry
• Rush out of room (options: pouting, screaming, crying)
• Kill yourself

Extreme plus imagination:
• Visualize killing the teacher
• Visualize killing Moshe
• Visualize: screaming, crying etc

Normal ( sad but true)
• Look at the clock a lot
• Feel bad without words in head
• Feel bad with words in head

Options for words in head when feeling bad:
• I'm no good
• I'm bad
• I suck
• This sucks
• Life sucks
• The teaching of this lesson sucks
• This lesson sucks
• I'm too …..dumb, old, wrecked, damaged, tired, sleep deprived, distracted, fragile, f…..d up, confused, stressed, individualistic……

Should variations:
• I should have started this when I was younger
• I should have practiced my…..
• I should have stuck with….
• I should have learned how to do this by now
• I should be more…..(flexible, healthy, young, ….)

Shouldn't variations:
• I shouldn't have come
• I shouldn't be so…..
• This lesson shouldn't be so….
• This room, my body, life ….. shouldn't be so……

Perhaps useful options:
• Watch all the above going on.
• Be curious as to where the lesson can't be done.
• Be curious as to what it would be like to visualize the lesson
• Be curious as to where the mental pain is when visualizing,
• Be curious as to words in head during visualizing
• Be curious what would happen if didn't do anything, not even visualize
• Follow breathing and do nothing
• Watch the others and do nothing
• Check out the body shapes of the opposite sex and do ?????
• Take a nap

More options:
• Think about what you will eat when lesson is over.
• Think about what you will tell other people about your troubles in this lesson.
• Think about writing a list like this. ( I started in a yoga class that was boring me out of my skull.)
• Think about what you will say to teacher.
• Think about what you will write in blog, on internet and so on….

What a rich world, eh?

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