resistance so-called
to the Method
again:
now, there is a sort of "resistance"
which is a hideway excuse,
as in : this client is resisting change
famous was Milton Erickson who never had resistant clients:
fun stories:
the man in mental hospital,
grumbled and wouldn't cooperate,
he was Jesus.
great said Milton, since your Jesus,
you're a carpenter, here's a hammer and saw,
get to work
or the young boy in office
stomping on floor,
protesting being there.
Milton: nice stomp, but a big boy could stomp
much harder
of course, the boy stomps harder,
well, that's getting there, but a strong and big
boy could do better than that
and so on and so on
until the kid was begging to sit.
NLP,
which has some sleazy uses,
(seducing women, say),
has some brilliant ideas:
one of which,
there are no resistant clients
only bad therapists/ teachers
2. on the other hand
Moshe
and many others have pointed out:
people love to have the idea of changing
with the hidden clause they
don't have to change anything
3. thinking about resistance
as inertia
two passions back
(byron katie's,
the Work, in between that
and the feldie method)
I pretty much single handedly stated a large
(3 acre) public garden, herbs, flowers,
food, trees, permaculture, soil and soul,
good place, now beautiful.
anyway,
since i loved it
i was enthused to invite lots of people to come.
many liked the idea
many said they'd be out "tomorrow" to help
most didn't make it
i discovered one class of people showed
up:
new to town
my theory became:
people have a rut of 3 or 4 main things they do
and it's really hard to break into that
new people don't have their ruts
defined yet
and so are open to somethng new
and wonderful
with ruts,
old and familiar
wins over new
recent article in New Yorker
on a megachurch in New England,
interesting confirmation:
best new members:
people moved recently,
divorced, lost jobs,
i.e. broken from their rut
4.A. resistance in ourselves, part A, heroic overcoming
last month i set out to do this
national november writing month (
NaNoWriMo.org)
where you go for a 50,000 word novel in
a month
i did it
and plenty of days
"resistance," reared it's slothy claws:
too hard, too crazy, novel sucks,
don't know what i'm doing,
etc etc too busy
blah blah
and i did it anyway
old Gurdjieff work thing:
in a group,
take an "aim" sew an hour a day,
talk to three people a week about job,
wear a business suit to all plumbing jobs,
weird or hard or interesting
you publically admit to something
and
set out to do it (Gurdjieff's idea:
people can't "do,"
are a bunch of I's
one i says, yes, i'll clean my room
tomorrow
tomorrow another set of I's want to watch tv or "has to"
answer the phone or , you know )
and see what happens
anyway,
another resistance
i do halfway well at heroically overcoming
is an aim
to do one or two alexander yanaii
a day
lots of resistance
though
and
always
always
glad i do
HOWEVER
4.B. then there's part B:
the resistance wins:
for twelve years at least i've been going to
"get around to"
learning piano,
learning guitar,
even writing the novel.
with help of organized event
some progress on third,
but piano
and guitar
ah,
and spanish
all languish in the "sometime"
labyrinth
so what is my "resistance"?
one, the ever-ready "story"
story:not enough time
but time to read New yorker,
or see dvd on computer
or...you know,
stuff that's part of my rut
story:
i'm not natural, or talented
or .....
and another factor:
non instant satisfaction
as learning curve bites
which actually, once people get to the Feldenkrais lessons,
we have much less problem with
in our work
(and maybe someone teaches music so the immediate
process of discovery is as delightful
as in ours?
don't know yet.)
5. so,
in a way, it seems to me:
that one of the core processes of our method:
the playing open of habits
to create new options
is what's (partially) going on when
people don't want to/ can't/ are "too busy"
and not interested in
opening to having the feldenkrais method
in their life
they have the habit of not being involved
in our method
