Feeding, F...ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais

Before I launch forward on my 4 F essay, I'd like to recommend you try and
play with
and benefit from
the little qigong exercise I presented yesterday.

This morning, in the local park where I do my morning Tai Chi,
I played around with it,
and came up with a sweet variation that takes it to a whole new
level.

that, with pictures I hope, I'll present tomorrow.

For today, though, practice at least as much breathing out during the expansion
hand floating into the air phase of the movment.

And barefoot, barefoot, especially outside on an uneven surface: great for you and your learning, lvoing, connecting self.

Okay:
Feeding, F...ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais.

Feeding, F…ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais.

Why in that order?

Because if we don’t eat, we’ll die, and so a system that is about increasing happiness and well being and vitality in life has to keep us alive, and to stay alive we need to eat. And let’s have some fun: what is the most important movement to a human being who is no longer sucking at the breast?

Answer: bringing at least one hand to our mouth.

This is a movement that has a FUNCTION.

 If you come to a practitioner for a private lesson, they are called Functional Integration lessons, and if you were to lie on your back on that pleasantly firm Feldenkrais table, and the practitioner were to begin to bring one of your hands in the direction of above your head, she or he would first bring your hand toward your mouth, and then in front of your face, and then, bit by bit, probably, toward above your head.

This function, hand to mouth is a big deal to our brains. The brain doesn’t think about muscles and bones (as far as I know), but it really loves and knows this movement apple to mouth, fork of yum food to mouth, celery stick to mouth, glass of water to our mouth. So if a practitioner were to just “make better” this movement of hand toward your mouth, in sitting, and lying on your back, and lying on your side, that “better” would spill out into all sorts of ease and clarity in movement in back, neck, ribs, shoulder, pelvis, breathing, hands, fingers, and probably even more.

The goal isn’t to get your hand to your mouth. If you couldn’t do that, you probably wouldn’t be coming in for a lesson. You’d either be dead or hospitalized. The goal is to piggy back onto the importance and deep seated nature of this function to improve all sorts of things: your use of your shoulders and neck and pelvis, just for examples.

And then there is the “bigger” picture of feeding as in where does the food come from? And can Feldenkrais help that?


Sure.


Let’s say you want to raise some healthy food, save some money, get fresh air, sunshine, exercise, slow down your life a bit, reconnect with the Earth. Where am I leading us? 


 To a garden, of course, 
and all that leaning, kneeling, pulling, shoveling, swinging a pick around, up and down, all this is a great chance to limber up and keep young and flexible feeling and moving in our bodies.



To say nothing of the pure meditative value of being outdoors, assisting Life to be even more abundance, sensing our movement and our breathing and our connection to the Earth in the moment.

Yes, yes, and what of the various “aches and pains” that keep some of us from gardening?

F to the rescue. 
Group classes, private lessons, follow various blogs (click on movement lessons from labels to the right) that include lessons, make up your own, but have a garden: it’s good for you and good for the Earth.


There are other foods, the meats, cheeses, fish, seeds, fruits, and so on, which you could raise, or go out and hunt or fish or plant trees for. F would help with that.

And then that unfortunately or not disconnected feeding necessity of going to the store and paying good old fashioned money, can F help us stand on our own two feet and earn our living?


Yes. 


It’ a long story, but let’s just say, that part of the “side effects” of lessons seems to be a sense that we can start out on a path with an intention, and by awareness and flexibility, keep pursuing that intention much more easily and enjoyably than if we hadn’t been doing lessons.

Or so it seems to me.




Okay, feeding and F. One helps the other.

Now F…ing, which I’m tired of typing so will just use the well understood three letter calling card to modern day attention: S-E-X.

Do we need sex?

As a species, yes, though a strong case could be made for having a lot less reproduction, and for having the population headed back to something like a fourth of what it now is, and boy is that a trouble to the economies based on this endless growth idea.

And a long and amazing discussion could be had about the awareness part of Feldenkrais and the focus on the process and how that could all contribute to a world not so hell bent to consume itself into extinction, and we won’t have that discussion here.

We’ll just say this: sex seems to be good for people who can find a decent and loving partner, good for the spirits, good for old fashioned mammalian needs to be touched and to touch, good for balancing the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system, good for the breathing, the sleep, the practicing of paying attention to someone beside to usual “me, me, me.” 

And good clean exercise for the pelvis and spine, some nice opportunity to move a central part of our moving organism. That is either a sloppy sentence or a way of viewing ourselves that I think is useful, and part of Moshe Feldenkrais’ contribution to seeing the human being as a marvelous engineering project. 


What is this pelvis between two legs that walk and run and stand us and the spine that holds up head to see and hands to grab, hug, put apples in the mouth, shoot arrows at moving future meat, what is this pelvis about?


A lot.


And my F trainer once said, perhaps even on the first day of training, that “the punch line to every Feldenkrais joke is the pelvis.”


In my training since with Anat Baniel, the key to the huge shift she and her students get with special needs children is kicking in their lower backs and the power of the pelvis.


Same with results of all this work with high powered musicians or athletes: get the pelvis and lower back to hold up the head, so that shoulders and head and arms and free, and you have a happier, more easily moving person.


So sex and Feldenkrais go together like the hands on a pelvic clock. That’s sort of an inside joke, but if it doesn’t make sense, buy Moshe’s book, Awareness Through Movement


and read and do the lesson called… the pelvic clock.
Will Feldenkrais help your sex?
Yes.














And now fighting, which is silly, or not to include in this list.

Let’s think historically, as in why you and I are still here. Somewhere back there we probably had ancestors that fought off the cold, or bad guys, or wild animals, or forest fires/ floods and so on.

Moshe Feldenkrais himself, learned of necessity, hand combat and judo for survival reasons in the early days of Palestine before Israel became a state.
Many a martial artist has or could improve their tai chi, karate, judo, aikido, boxing, with two hints that Moshe stressed as central to martial arts: one having the power connected to the pelvis region and that region always clear and connected to gravity, and two: having a flexible and mobile neck and eyes, so we can always look around to find the enemy.

Or friend.

Or lover.


Or food.



Any Feldenkrais lesson could and perhaps even should increase our clarity, ease and power in our pelvis, and ease and mobility in our neck and breathing.


What’s breathing got to do with it?


Well, even more important that eating, we need to breathe. And the easier our breathing is the easier our life is.


Or so it seems to me.
How about for you?



And so I could have said: Breathing, Feeding, F…ing, Fighting and Feldenkrais, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?

Feldie Feet, Monday Yoga, Brain time again, Friends

this is a no picture (of the movement,
pic above is
the pic above)
day
monkey see monkey do
is a lower level
than hearing
or reading
and figuring that to the real world:

so,
here
we go:

Balance

BALANCE

Balance

1. Stand somewhere beautiful.
Look ahead, sense down, listen to feet and eyes and head.
Shift weight to the right foot, right heel.
Slowly.
Notice what happens in breathing as go to right,
and come back to middle.
Slowly.
Rest.

2. Do the above and bring weight to right heel.
Again, watch, listen to breathing. Going and coming back.

3. Do these two to the left.

4. Rest between all. Walk around, sit, lie down.
whatever.

5. Cross Right foot over left, i.e.
in front of and a bit to the left of left foot.
Now, shift weight right and left,
with the feet on the opposite than usual side.
slowly.
watch breathing.
rest.

6. Do this and keep weight mainly on the heels.

7. Do this and keep your head in the middle, so pelvis/ butt
goes side to side
and weight shifts,
and your head stays in the middle.

8. Now, like this:
as you shift weight to your right foot, which is over to your left,
let your head flop to the right,
as in right ear toward right shoulder,
gentle,
not rotating neck,
tilting, easy does it
slow and follow breathing

9. As you shift weight to the left foot, which is on your right,
let your left ear tilt down easily and
sweetly
toward your left shoulder.
Notice breathing.
Weight mainly on heels.

10. Do this other feet around,
if you are so inclined.

11. Go back to beginning,
shift weight left and right,
now keeping head more or less in the middle
and weight more or less on your heels
and noticing
and being calm in
your breathing.

ciao
chris

The Feldenkrais Method® and Rolfing; or Functional Integration® and Structural Integration

ROLFING AND FELDENKRAIS®
Many people have heard of Rolfing and the Feldenkrais Method®. Many more have not. Or, as I like to say, optimistically: not yet.

A lesser number know the names Ida Rolf, who, it is quite clear, is the founder of Rolfing. Likewise little known is the name Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the Feldenkrais Method. Ida Rolf at least has the advantage of one name that is vaguely familiar, whereas those of us who have completed a Feldenkrais Training, and become a Feldenkrais Practitioner, have to endure endless, Huh? responses to the name Moshe Feldenkrais and the work. Though this is changing and a surprising number of people have heard of Feldenkrais, rhymes with nice.

Rolfing involves a series of lessons, often ten, done with the client lying on a table. The lessons have been associated with deep and sometimes "painful" work, but the word is out, that this has changed greatly. The goal of the lessons is in their title: Structural Integration. The structure of a human body in relationship to gravity can be greatly improved, according to rolfers, by deep and clear work in the myofascia in a way to clear out stuck and structurally inappropriate patterns.

Many successful outcomes have resulted from Rolfing.

See, if you wish, Wikipedia on Rolfing and Wikipedia on Structural Integration).


FOR FUN
THIS IS WHAT THE FELDENKRAIS® GUILD,
bless their hearts,
minds
and learning centers,
has written
in their PRESS RELEASE on
Rolfing®, Structural Integration and the Feldenkrais Method®.
Check that out,
if you are in the mood.



The Feldenkrais Method has two modes to improving human life, one, called Awareness Through Movement®, involving lessons wherein the student moves in aware and deliberate and curious and usually slow and often novel patterns, and from these "lessons" learns more about how to move and function in the world and in their movements in new ways. These so called Feldenkrais Exercises can be useful to a dancer or a person recovering from a stroke or a child with cerebral palsy or a weekend gardener with a sore back or a professional athlete with an aching shoulder.

The other mode, called Functional Integration, is the Feldenkrais parallel to the Structural Integration of Rolfing.

The work is done by touch guided manipulation of a client on a table.

The touch is aiming to produce a difference in the organization of the client.

However, in Feldenkrais Functional Integration "lessons," we aren't treating, or fixing, or rearranging anything but the wiring in the client's brain. Our aim is to create new pathways of connection and possibilities of movement.

The difference is obvious from the words, Structural vs. Functional Integration helps explain the difference of Feldenkrais from not just rolfing, but good yoga (not flop around yoga or work yourself to death yoga), in that good yoga and Rolfing are both concerned with alignment, getting the best alignment into our human structure.

We move the skeleton and the awareness. We aren't concerned with undoing any tissue.

In fact, it could be said that we say:

the issue isn't in the tissue,
it's between the ears.

In the Feldenkrais Method, we are concerned with function, which is a huge word, and can be anything from lifting an arm that has been laid low by a stroke, to crawling for a challenged child, to skiing better for someone who wants zest back in their life, to being able to run or dance again for another zest seeker. The Feldenkrais path is one of learning, and though we often imagine an ideal path of moving, the goal is not to "correct" or "fix" anyone, but to open up learning and options and possibilities, so that the person, as a learner, can discover easier and more pleasurable and more efficient ways of functioning in the world.

Many successful outcomes have resulted from both pathways of the Feldenkrais work.

(See , if you wish more learning on the Feldenkrais possibilies,
you might enjoy
almost any of the links in my links section to the left.
As starters, why not peruse....

The Feldenkrais Method® in wikipedia

Feldenkrais.com

and my own What is the Feldenkrais Method®? )


Whatever you do,
Please be Well.

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PLEASE BE WELL:


Pleasure
Ease
Awareness
Sensitive Strength
Enlightenment

BE

Waking up to now.
Embracing Change.
Learning to learn.
Loving to move, improve and transform.

Special Needs Children, and Learning "Challenges"

Sometimes children need help in their learning.

They may have been born with a neurological issue, such as cerebral palsy or a stroke, or brachial plexus. There can be complications in utero or at birth. All sorts of traumas can occur.

For these neurological issues, as well as children with "ordinary" learning challenges (as in reading and math and social adjustment and co-ordination) the Feldenkrais Method, especially the method as refined in the Anat Baniel Method for Children,
(see Overview, Anat Baniel Method for Children)
is the supreme way on this Earth of helping these children.

This is because in these methods, we recreate the natural pathways of learning
and wake up the brain to its possibilities of change and
learning and improvement in a way that no amount of physical therapy or surgery ever can do.

Think of a child learning to crawl.
She or he sees no one crawling,
gets no crawling lessons,
isn't pressured to learn,
doesn't even think about learning to crawl.
He or she just moves this way and that
and learns hundreds of ways to understand
and move
and sense
and coordinate themselves.
And then one day,
wanting to get across the room
or yard
easier,
they just pull together the twenty things
they need
and crawl.

This is organic learning.

This is why this method is so amazingly effective.


For a summary
and continued explanation
see Amazing One on One Lessons

You might be excited to
View videos of Anat's work with three children. This shows work over a period of time and you can see with your eyes the marvelous/miraculous changes the children undergo.
Try this:

Grace, Isabel and Carter Transform and Heal.

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This work, for a child with learning difficulties,
is the fresh drink they have been desperate for all their lives.
They are not pushed, or prodded, or force to "do it right."
They are not "fixed," or moved in ungentle ways.

They are given small pieces of real and immediately felt learning
(inner and organic "learning,"
not the imposed kind that gives "learning" a bad sound to many children, and adults)
and they begin to renew and change almost before our eyes.

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