Pain is... not everywhere, so where else can you go/ Bonus: helping with migraines

Let's say your right shoulder is sore
You had an accident way back when
or you fell on it
or lifted weights with anger and inattention
or whatever
pitched a baseball too many times without full awareness

It's sore.

You lie down on the floor or table or bed
and someone asks you to pay attention
to what you notice.

Where do you go first?
To the sore shoulder?
To the calm ribs on the left side?
To the happy toes in right or left foot or both.
To the tension in your neck that you didn't even know was there,
and you're kind of excited to release.
To the feeling/ sensation of the back of your head on floor/ ground/ table/ bed?
To the good feeling in your left pinkie?

The list is long and varied, but the points are two:

One: there is a lot of us to pay attention to
This is a great and glorious "game" at almost any moment in our lives.

Two: we may have a tendency to put our attention
immediately on "what's not working"
rather than what feels good.

So, be it.
This might be nature's way of helping us remember that
we have an area needing improvement

And the other point is elusively obvious:
why neglect all the rest of us.

So, if you are in any pain:
lie down and any position that is comfortable

Scan yourself for painful areas
and non painful areas

Be sure to include a sensing of all of your skeleton:
legs toes fingers hands ribs vertebrae pelvis head arms shoulder blades

Sense all of you
and get this feeling:
how much of you is a non pain zone
and how much is.

And then try this:
begin any movement
slow and gentle in the non pain zone,
and notice it
feel awareness spreading to this movement
and allow yourself to enjoy aware and slow and gentle movement

Now rest
and feel what difference that made

Now do this same feel good movement
in a slightly different way.

As you do this,
feel what is going on in your body
learn more about how this feels good.

Rest again.

Now pick some third way of making this movement.
Go slowly and gently
with the premium on awareness
and as you are doing this movement
pay
a SMALL amount of attention to your pain zone.

See if you and your brain can realize that gentle good feeling
movement can coincide with parts of us that don't "feel so great"

Rest.
Now, with the smallest possible movements,
move some part of you in the "pain zone"
or right next to it
(shoulder is the zone,  move the ribs, or your elbow or fingers, or you neck;
or move, very very slightly,
your shoulder)

The movement has to be slow enough and gentle enough
that the pain doesn't increase.

Add in an awareness of all the part of you that aren't in pain.

Move slowly and gently,
I've said that I know,
and
hey
move slowly and gently,
and find the pleasure
the learning,
the pleasure
even in this small and slow and gentle movement
inside the pain zone.

Rest.

This is a retraining of many people's whole world view,
so go slowly and gently about learning to see pain
neither as all consumming
nor as something that needs to be instantly "gotten rid of"

It will go
as organization increases,
so keep moving slowly (and gently)
in ways that feel like they are connecting more
of
you
to more of
you

Good luck.
Lots of rests.
Tons of awareness and smiling and breathing.
And did I mention:
move slowly and gently.

ciao
for
Now

Good.
Chris

body and soul

body and soul
on a roll

how to connect with this moment?

just do.

that's the shortcut.

and another:
to follow our breathing

and another:
to begin some simple movement
and go slowly
and with little effort
and see what is behind and
connected to
and stuck
and free
in that movement

say:
this movement,

we sit in some sort of chair
looking at this thing
a computer thing

we slowly let our heads and noses
turn right and left

what is that like?
how does that feel in
neck
throat
eyes
jaw
back
ribs
shoulders
pelvis

fine
and
what do we see
as our head rotates right and left
and
if this is not enjoyable and
even a little or a lot
beautiful
do we want to do something about
how we have our computer thing

and how does it feel
to sit
now
and whatever we are sitting on?

fine:
now,
how about hugging ourselves
nice and sweet
(soul, soul, self love
and soul might have something in common,
the heart in their under this hug),
putting each hand near the opposite armpit,
hug and hug
and rotate the arms
and chest and shoulders
right and left

and feel
in the moment
in the body
and the soul of being now:
chest
ribs
pelvis,
eyes
neck

and how to enjoy something slow
and sweet and simple
like that

are we too fancy
for simple
here and now
self hug rotation?

I hope not.

and now
rest,
hands down,
eyes closed,
how is it to be us
now?

and then,
hug again,
and keep eyes on the computer,
or over the computer,
and let our arms ribs torso rotate right
while our head rotates left
and then coming back
let the torso go left
as the head goes right

slowly
slowly
feeling in the middle
everything lining up

following breathing

enjoying
stopping
resting

and then
fancier still
you figure out how
and go really
really slowly:
eyes one way
shoulders the other
head the others

so eyes and shoulders/torso are the outside of the sandwich
and
the head is going left say
as eyes and torso/ribs are going right

and flow
go slow
find everything together in the middle
if you muddle don't worry
slow
and learn
and be present

and is being present
the royal road to the soul?

one
of 'em I think
(nature and love, the other two)

you discover
you enjoy

ciao
chris

hello again

Marlie moving her five lines
in a nice shape

wake up Feldenkrais is
about this:
to move with awareness
in the Feldenkrais mode of
trying new configurations
of our
five lines

to move
slowly
so we
can really pay attention
(which sounds like a costly thing,
until we realize
how costly
inattention
is:
to wit:
we are not there
as
our
lives
are happening.


the old "what profit a person
if they gain the whole world
and lose
their soul"

and....

what is the "soul"?

ah,
a

fun question:

and when Pierre,
in
War and Peace,
gets shot
and is on his back in a field
and looks up
and sees,
really sees the blue sky,
as if he'd never seen it before
((actually, he'd probably "seen"
it like that hundreds of times as
a child,
but
we forget
as adults,
how awake we were as a child,
enthralled with the world,
and not enslaved to the clock
and to expectations of others
and our own inner patterns and slaveries))

anyway...
when Pierre
sees the sky
like that,
he found his way,
back to his soul)

and in Feldenkrais and the
Anat Baniel Method
and in real spiritual work
(my definition,
which is to say: not just on the ass in meditation,
and waking like a zombie in
walking meditation,
but living in meditation)
the quest is that:
to return
to our deepest
truest
selves

to our
soul

and going slow
and minimizing force
and being
excited at what we are discovering:

this is what
wake-up ANYTHING
is about

and sure
this too:
less pain
more ease
more joy:
in learning
in living
in moving

and wake up feldenkrais
is offered
as classes
and as individual work
and my work
broadens
out to include
emotional work
to find freedom
from unhappiness
and connection to ongoing peaceful joy

and includes
for those who
want it,
consultations
on land use
in the Permaculture
mode

all
ways
about this:
waking up
to the ease
of a whole system
working
with sweet
connection
to real nature

la la

am i present
now

that is one
useful
and
sweet
question





have
a sweet
awake
day

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.