Aging, "Anti-aging," reversing the clock, waking back up to life

Say you took a walk down a narrow path to a river each day, fetched some water and then carried it back up to your village.

Then you picked some fruit from a tree, perhaps climbing up the tree, and if the day got too hot you swam and splash in the river down below, so once again a walk of attention (the path is narrow and you could fall off) and back up: nice exercise.

You hunt or you make baskets or you cook food or you prepare weapons or you take a nap or you talk to the grandchildren or children or adults or grandfathers.

You move, you pick up things from the ground, you harvest roots, you skin any animals you have killed.

It sounds primitive and could have it's own charm and appeal or could be a horrifying life to us "moderns", what with food in grocery stories and cars to carry us to work to make money to drive home via the market and cook our food in convenient ways that require no bending down to light the fire or pick up the firewood.

We don't move much, and some go to a gym and push various machines and barbells and metal around, and that certain helps, but the overall picture is one of a lot of sitting. At desks. In front of computers.

And then, even on the part of the day we used to just walk to the car, we are on the cell phone, and now it's a smart phone, so our eyes are glued to the little one and a quarter by three inch screen.

We hunker around our little electronic communication network, not around the fire, not around the circle of family and friends telling stories.

Movies tell our stories, and less and less people even sit with others watching the mutual dream. We stay home, we get our Netflicks, and probably a big chunk of that time is also spend texting and gazing at the even smaller screen.

People are missing. Movement is missing. Nature is missing.

And so we age.

People in the tribes in the old paradigm aged too, but their bodies stayed relatively mobile and their minds, with real problems to solve, real pathways to negotiate with real sleep, stayed alert. The elders job was to pass on the lore and the skills to the young. The young are figgity and keeping up with their minds and bodies must have kept the elders way more on their toes, literally, than the shoved off in old folks homes, and dimming away to Alzheimers, and decaying into the cancer plague.

And does Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel have something to offer the modern woman and man, the modern desk ridden, car enslaved, smart phone addicted person.

Sure.

It has a plethora of movements, that are slow enough to be engaging on their own.

Movements that vary, and so the brain has to pay attention, and even better new neural pathways are laid down. And this is learning.

We try things in a new way, with attention, and learning, real learning of new connections gets hooked up in our brains.

And the spine lengthens, almost always with either table or group lessons. All the moving this way and moving that reminds the vertebrae: hey, you guys aren't a rod, you are a chain of linked and separate units, and the more you can remember and move in all directions with some separation from how your neighbor is moving, the more the spine can lengthen out.

The hunching over of the old, as the spine gets more and more trapped in the patterns of a life time of slouching, this can begin to "un-do" with the lessons of this work.  In the old days, people picked up things from the ground, reached up to climb and pick fruit, rotated right and left to follow prey and avoid danger and get through various openings. We can create, in gobs of fun and different ways, bends and arches and twists and sidebends in our spine.

We can recapture the joy of having a body that is excited to learn something just a little new each day.

So it isn't really "anti-aging," we don't have anything against aging. It's "anti letting ourselves stop learning, and anti falling into deeper and deeper immobility, and anti thinking we have reached the know it all stage of existence.

It's anti fear of the new, but excitement, and this can spill over.

What new will life bring today?

It's so exciting. Let's find out!

A learning/ awakening game for a tennis player

Stand easily as if about to hit a right handed
forehand shot,
which is to say,
left foot forward and toward your direction of hitting,
right foot back, and more or less, facing to the right
of the direction you want to hit.

Pretend to have a tennis racket in your right hand
and come back for the swing
EXCEPT
in this and all movements of this lesson,
go at about a third to a fifth of your normal speed.

Bring your right hand and arm back,
and feel the weight shifting into your right foot.

Do this several times, from arm in "neutral" to arm
back,
and feel the shifting of weight in both the left and right feet.

Rest.

Do this again,
and see if you can differentiate the various areas
of your foot
where this pressure is in each foot.

Both preparing to hit,
and coming back to neutral.

Now come back as if to hit,
all the while going so slowly
you can feel what's happening in your feet,
and add on
awareness of your pelvis and ribs and arms and eyes.

In other words, come back, aware of all of your body,
keeping special focus on the pattern of weight bearing in
each foot.

This time
aware of feet
ribs
pelvis
eyes
arm
hand
head,

take a practice forehand shot all the way through,
and go so slowly you can track
and be aware of
your feet, hips, pelvis
ribs neck back
arm hand
head and eyes.

Do this with your eyes open
and your eyes closed.

Once you get a deep and true
and hopefully pleasurable map in your brain
of how you do this,
begin to swing in pretend
at slow speed
and create variations:

sometimes your pelvis keeps moving and the arm lags back,
sometimes you take an entire swing and keep your weight back on your right foot,
sometimes you let your arm get ahead of your pelvis
sometimes you raise your head up "too high"
sometimes you let your head drop down so your chin in on your chest

and in these
and any other variations
feel your feet
and toes
and neck and back and pelvis
and hip joints
and knees
and arms and shoulders
(what about the "unused arm, and it's shoulder blade,
what about the lower and upper ribs on both sides)
and head and eyes

Is your mouth and jaw and neck
relaxed
are your eyes

Can you keep feel exactly what's happening
in your feet
and pelvis?

Do this, rest, do this rest.

Now,
in the same stance,
play with a left handed back hand.
All the pieces and patterns as above.

Then switch around to face the other way
and play/ experience/ experiment/ discover
with
first a
right handed back hand
and
then
a left handed forehand.

This can take at least half an hour
and can be like a meditation.

Afterward walk
or nap

Stay away from cars and computers
and even the "real" tennis racket.

Just let your learning sink in.

Get excited about all you don't know
and how much you can learn the next time you
play this game.

Good

Norman Dodge( Doidge) on Feldenkrais

New hope for aching, creaky yuppie bodies

The National Post, October 6, 1999
by Dr. Norman Doidge

Anyone who is subject to the grim tug of gravity might count themselves lucky
that one day, about 50 years ago, Moshe Feldenkrais, in his late thirties, while
standing on a wet submarine deck, slipped and aggravated an old knee
injury. They should also be grateful to the doctors who told him he would
never walk again without surgery (surgery that offered only a 50% cure rate),
because Feldenkrais decided to fix himself, and invented a new treatment in
the process.

Feldenkrais was a remarkable man and a genius. Born in 1904 in Russia, he
fled pogroms to pre-state Israel when he was 14. At the time, the British
Mandate prohibited Jews, but not Arabs, from carrying arms, so Feldenkrais
trained himself in unarmed combat, then tutored others.

With the money he made tutoring he went to Paris where he trained as a
mechanical and electrical engineer. He then became a physicist, working and
co-authoring papers with Fréderic Joliot-Curie (who with his wife received the
Nobel Prize in 1938). Feldenkrais, in the meantime, became one of Europe's
first black belts in judo, and set up the Jiu-Jitso Club de France with the
founder of modern judo, Jigoro Kano.

Feldenkrais and Joliot-Curie were working on the French atomic-research
program when the Nazis invaded Paris. Joliot- Curie knew Feldenkrais would
be arrested as a Jew, so he arranged for him to escape to London - with two
suitcases full of the French atomic secrets, thereby keeping them out of Nazi
hands. Through the intervention of the British scientist J.D. Bernal, he worked
for the British anti-submarine program.

Feldenkrais also led the training of British paratroopers in hand-to-hand
combat. After the war, he completed his doctorate in physics at the Sorbonne.
When the State of Israel was created he became director of the electronics
department for the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and wrote the book on hand-to-
hand combat for the Israeli army. He now spoke Russian, Hebrew, French,
German and English.

But back to the bum knee. Feldenkrais used his incredible scientific mind,
extraordinary observational skills, and his expertise in judo to determine what
made his knee better or worse. His new treatment was based not just on the
understanding of individual joints, muscles, and ligaments, but on the role of
awareness in movement and body mechanics.

Animals have an enviable grace, and so do babies and young children, but
that grace is often lost as we age, thought Feldenkrais, not because we age,
but because we learn bad habits. These include postures which have
emerged to protect injuries, but which now add chronic bodily insult to injury.
Feldenkrais taught limping people to walk by first teaching them to crawl like
babies.

The method can be used for a variety of conditions - back, neck, head and jaw
pain, problems due to artificial hips and knees, fused spines, and arthritic
conditions. It is useful to anyone who has to sit at a computer all day, or for
those who have to be particularly physically active or aware, including
athletes, soldiers, surgeons and actors.

Many musicians in New York have a Feldenkrais practitioner. Yehudi Menuin
swore by Feldenkrais, and so does Yo-Yo Ma. The director of the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre, Peter Brook, was a major fan as were anthropologist
Margaret Mead and neurophysiologist Dr. Karl Pribram, who thought
Feldenkrais in tune with the most advanced knowledge we have of the brain.
Israel's first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, sought out Feldenkrais when
he was 75 years old and could barely stand in Parliament because of his
serious back problem. After treatment, "the old man" could leap onto tanks
and stand on his head.

Feldenkrais eventually used his approach in extreme cases, helping people
with strokes learn how to read, speak, and walk again, or for treating people
with cerebral palsy or multiple sclerosis.

Many well-known treatments for musculoskeletal pain treat the problem
locally, by strengthening the affected area (physiotherapy), using surgery, or
twisting the spine with force (chiropractics). Feldenkrais' method focuses on
general functioning. Regardless of the cause - an aching back, artificial joint,
arthritis, or tension - Feldenkrais assigns exercises to make his pupils aware
of movement. "Errors" of movement are not "corrected." Rather, lack of flow is
noticed. Then, in the low stimulus environment, barely detectable movements
are prescribed. These minute changes induce the nervous system to lower
the general tone of muscular contraction, so the sufferer can become
consciously aware of the unconscious movement patterns that exacerbate or
cause the problem.

Watching and listening to lithesome Marion Harris, who trained with
Feldenkrais, conducting classes at The Feldenkrais Centre in Toronto, I was
amazed to see how many of the concepts are similar to those used in
psychotherapy done properly - which is patiently. Feldenkrais knew, as did
Sherrington, the great neurologist, that most of the brain's activity is inhibitory:
it stops, retards or modifies the actions of our more flowing primitive animal
brain. Most bad habits include jerky inhibitory compensations or vestigial
"defenses" that once protected an injury, but now are locked in. Instead of
attacking bad postural habits directly (which often only makes them get
worse), the master practitioner finds ingenious ways to release the bad habits.

For instance, new non-habitual ways of moving are introduced, to confuse the
current pattern. People with bad posture secondary to knee problems might
be asked to walk backwards for a bit, both to scramble the bad habit, and
because bad compensations haven't yet attached themselves to backward
walking. Then, having experienced what it is like to walk without bad posture,
they relearn walking forward, spontaneously, in a re-organized, nimble way,
so they don't hurt their tender knees. The aim is always to move without
wasted energy or willpower. Often, at the end of a class, muscles have
softened, eyes are more open, breathing is deeper and pain has decreased.
People may stand an inch taller.

Feldenkrais also conducted one-on-one sessions, called Functional
Integration, where he used his hands to diagnose movement problems, and
then gently moved people's limbs, necks, and heads, teaching a suppleness
that could be generalized to all movements.

Feldenkrais died in 1984, but his work is spreading, especially in Europe.
There are too few Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners in Canada, but
they are spread from Vancouver Island to Newfoundland, and there is a
Feldenkrais clinic in the Ottawa General Hospital. Qualified practitioners who
are members of the Feldenkrais Guild can be contacted by calling 1-800-775-
2118.

Dr. Doidge is a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Toronto. His
column "On Human Nature" appears every other Wednesday in the National
Post. © Norman Doidge, reprinted with permission.