What Can We Learn, Right Now

All this moving and learning
is so great

and then the grand question:
why aren't we in awareness and learning
all the time?

Think about how great you feel when you do a movement
lesson.
BE curious: what would it be like to be
like
that all
the time

Or, hey, since perfection and always
is the hobgoblin of the attached ego mind:
more of the time.

(Remember the discussions in here about "getting better"
as a lifelong joy
vs "getting it Right" as lifelong hell).

So, you sit in front of a computer reading this.
I sit in front of a computer writing this.

What shift can we create by awareness and variation
and a bit of playful exploration?

One:
What shifts if we become aware of our breathing?

Notice this isn't about: Thou shalt be aware of thy breathing.

This is about: what shifts when we become aware,
now,
this now,
even before this sentence ends,
as this sentence is unfolding,
aware
of each breath?

It goes in.
It goes out.

We don't command it, and it goes
and goes.

Nice.

And curiosity is our game here:
what shifts when we wake up to our breathing?

Okay, that's one.
Next must be two:

Two:
Let's do two things at once as per the hint
of the number two.

Let's look up, and beyond the computer, and look for the farthest away
thing we can see.
Let's pay attention to how we use our backs to be part of/
or not to be part of looking up and beyond.

And then come back to the computer.
Two objects of attention in looking: the computer, the up a bit and farthest away thing,
and two places of attention in our bodies: our neck shifting
and something happening or not happening in our bodies.

Three:
rest a bit, and see how the idea of following our breathing is faring.

Good, breathing awareness in the movements and in the reading this
and in the rests and in and out throughout your day
IF YOU LIKE THE SHIFTS
THAT BEING AWARE of your breathing brings.

Pleasure should/ could/ might/ delightfully be a motivator in
our lives, think you / feel you not?

Okay,
three:
feel your pelvis on the chair.
Rock forward and back a bit on your pelvis,
and then make this more pronounced by pulling in your belly and
slumping down a bit in the front
as you rock back on your pelvis
and then
when you rock forward on your pelvis
push your belly out a bit
and raise your sternum some.

Do this slump and unslump
back and forth
two ways:

way the first:
breathe out as you slump down
and
breathe in as you unfurl up

way the second:
breathe in (feel it in your back lower ribs area) as you slump down,
and
breathe out as you rise up and push your belly forward

rest,
and breathe
and notice
whatever you notice

Four:
Now combine
looking up beyond your computer
to the farthest thing away
with unfurling a bit and pushing your belly forward,
and then don't curl up/ slump,
but do come back just a little on your pelvis
as you look at the computer
and then come forward on your pelvis a bit as you look up
and
beyond
and let your belly come forward

This is enough for playing with now
and movement today.

I hope you enjoy this.

Chris

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

Sitting and folding, for fun and...

“Anti-aging” and happiness #2, Leaning forward:
Sit in a chair. Sit up more or less straight. Feel your pelvis at the chair or bench or rock or log below you.

Breathe and feel what that’s like and how that involves or doesn’t involve your ribs.

Lean over and move toward touching the floor. Easy, go a few times, breathe, explore.

Sit up again and rest.


Now, put your left forearm on your left knee, and prop yourself a bit, and from this position take your right hand down your left calf, caressing this and letting your head and eyes look to the left and right , while your neck hangs freely. So you’re “bending” forward, but just with your right hand, and it is taking the easy path of caressing your left calf. If it gets to the shoe or sock or foot, fine, it can keep going. But don’t effort, and come up to a “neutral” position each time: leaning on your left elbow on the left knee and leaning your right hand on your right thigh. Pause and integrate a bit each time before lowering yourself again.

Go up and down, and then after twelve or so times, come upright and rest.

Imagine doing this on the other side.

Now do this on the other side.


Now: take your left knee in your left hand and put your right hand behind your head. Do three things here: 1. Gently, gently bring your knee up toward your head. 2. Gently, gently bring your elbow toward your knee. 3. Gently, gently bring your elbow and knee toward each other.

This is not gym class, not “ab” strengthening, though it will. This is learning to love and use your spine and self and brain.

Do this slowly a number of times. Sometime take the hand from behind your head and press on your sternum so it goes down and you lean forward and lower your head and bring your knee up.

Rest. Imagine doing this on the other side.

Then do this on the other side.


Now go back to the first position. Left forearm on your left thigh. Lean down to the left, caressing as before your left calf with your right hand. Do you go farther and easier?

Go up and down several times, and then when you get to the down and left position, easily circle your right hand. On the floor. On your left foot. In the air. Doesn’t matter. Feel the circle releasing you a bit, and let your head hang easily the whole time. Circle both directions.

Come up and rest.

Then do this on the other side.

And rest again.


Put both hands on both thighs and alternate pushing your belly out and arching your back a bit, and pulling your belly in and letting your sternum go down, and rounding your back as if the look between your legs. Easily. Slowly. Gently. Many times.

Each time feel and enjoy something new about you.

Rest.

For extra credit, if you are in the mood, do the previous arching and rounding movement with these variations: your chin is tucked toward your chest; your head is vertical while your stomach and chest and pelvis go through the movement in their many shapes.

Rest.

Now, just feel yourself on the chair.


And…. tada: Reach down as in the beginning and see and feel the difference. Please enjoy sensing your spine all day long.

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.