Letter to a mother who's tired of people trying to "fix" her son

Take a baby who cannot, for some reason, roll over.

Put it on its back and offer it:
Chiropractic adjustments
Acupuncture meridian cures
Physical therapy or occupational therapy prodding where the baby is forced over and over to do what it can’t do yet

And little to no results will occur.

Put this child on her or his side, and gently lift the vertebrae, one by one, in the back, sometimes linking this movement up with the shoulders, sometimes with the pelvis, constantly giving different "information" by touching and moving difference vertebrae and different combinations of vertebra and some other place in the baby, sometimes helping the head to roll the same way as shoulders or pelvis, sometimes opposite, sometimes “teaching” the arm/ brain/ body to move backward as the spine rotates that way, and the baby will learn, of its own, how to roll over.

It may take a while, but when it happens, it will be part of a whole evolutionary stage for the child, since the learning will be all within, within the child.

Take this same lesson and give it to

Penina
A professional baseball pitcher,
Andre Agassi,
Michael Jordan
Tiger Woods
Yo Yo Ma
Seiji Ozawa
A person with a stroke, (starting always with the “first best side”)
Someone feeling in pain in back, neck, shoulders
Someone tired of feeling old
Someone wanting to improve their studying
Someone "bored" with their life
Someone depressed

For every single person this will "feel good." And every single person will stand up at the end feeling taller and more connected to some clearer "sense" of themselves. And the lesson will teach each and every person something about how wonderful shoulders (and ribs, and a pelvis and an arm) are, about being present, about pitching or hitting the golf ball or tackling the opponent with more ease and power, about dancing and thinking and breathing and making decisions easier.

For your son it might lead to better soccer, easier sleep, more feeling of confidence in walking, more pleasure in being himself, ways of experimenting that might otherwise be years down the road, if there at all, , ease in art, ........

At no time would the lesson, for anyone from baby to Tiger Woods be predicated on “fixing” anything wrong. Even the person with the stroke starts off improving the "first best" side 30-50 %, and then the other side is given the chance to learn whatever it wants to learn.

Human beings are separated from animals in their ability to learn. A dog can get up a run around and speak dog very soon and easily. A human learns to roll over, crawl, sit, walk and talk in a long period of learning. Most humans stop when they are functioning and unless in pain, don’t bother to transcend a fairly limited functionality, of which they have little or no awareness.


I have spend hundreds of hours and written at least a dozen essays on how our work is not “fixing,” is not “getting it right,” is not “treating” any “ailment.” I am in Austin and not still in Sonoma, CA, since my relationship with a wonderful, beautiful and amazing yoga teacher keep floundering on the fix it (by doing the pose right) vs. learning (by discovering ten other ways to move) models of life


That’s why I insist of calling the sesions lessons (not “treatments”) and refrain from calling it “body work.”

This is whole person work.

Any one who wants to participate more fully in the glory of being human can benefit.

12 Principles of Permaculture: Creating the New in a Way that Lasts

How do these work for us in the Feldenkrais Work?

Quite well, I think:

Twelve Principle of Permaculture:

From David Holmgren’s  Permaculture: Principles and Pathways beyond Sustainability

1)     OBSERVE AND INTERACT :  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

2)     CATCH & STORE ENERGY: Make hay while the sun shines

3)      OBTAIN A YIELD: You can’t work on an empty stomach

4)     APPLY SELF-REGULATION & ACCEPT FEEDBACK: The sins of the fathers are visited unto the seventh generation

5)     USE & VALUE RENEWABLE RESOURCES & SERVICES: Let nature take its course

6)     PRODUCE NO WASTE: A stitch in time saves nine. Waste not, want not.

7)     DESIGN FROM PATTERN TO DETAIL: Can’t see the wood for the trees.

8)     INTEGRATE RATHER THAN SEGREGATE: Many hands make light work.

9)     USE SMALL & SLOW SOLUTIONS: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Slow and steady wins the race.

10)  USE & VALUE DIVERSITY: Don’t put all your eggs into one basket.

11)  USE EDGES & VALUE THE MARGINAL:  Don’t think you are on the right path just because it is a well-beaten path.

12)  CREATIVELY USE & RESPOND TO CHANGE:  Vision is not seeing things as they are, but as they will be.

Strength out of gyms and into Life

check the links before,
people knowing how fitness
can be built in real ways,

all that's missing is working with
pick
axe
shovel
hoe
scythe
sledge hammer
wrecking bar
and other fun stuff:

real work, too for real strength

Here's the links:

Man in Nature, swim run jump happy fitness

another man in woods, getting cool and strong

And one more link
the article in Men's Health
(a really weird/ interesting sociological/ psychological document)
that started it all off:

Fitness in the Wild


Ciao,
Chris

What are feelings? What is thinking? The prison of conditioning.

I'm in the midst of a, to me, amazing, project
and have not much time to devote to this
and
this is so huge
that I wanted to get some
starting ideas/ understandings out
there
and see what they might stimulate.

What are feelings? What is thinking?
The prison of our conditioning.

1. Very few pure E-motions out there.

a.The mother bear, dog, person, skunk
perceives a threat to her young,
inner mobilization flashes up,
something like anger,
she goes into action to repel the threat

b. We are the one she is chasing.
Fear could be the name
for our inner mobilization
and getting the hell out of there.

2. Most, so called "feelings"
are far, far more murky,
often no action, just some tendency
to action,
a combination of inner sensations
and a bunch of words in our heads.
(the first two, "pure" emotions,
where pretty word free).

That our feelings combine sensations,
often unpleasant in ways we don't directly
pay attention to
and a "story" which we often obsess
over offers many
ways out of feeling traps,
and I won't go into these now.

3. THE FROWN EXAMPLE

SOMEONE, OUR LOVER, MATE, FRIEND
WALKS INTO THE ROOM
WITH A FROWN ON THEIR FACE

We have some internal reaction,
or not,
but the story possibilities are huge.

a. We tell ourselves the "they are angry" story.

From here, we can go off with the "they are always
getting angry" story, go into a being angry at them
story.

We can go into the "they are angry and I'd better watch
out" fear kind of story.

We can go into a "they are angry and I'd better attack
before attacked" story.

We can go into a "this is so hard always putting up
with this story."

And more.

b. We can tell ourselves a "they are sad" story.

And "feel sorry" for them, wonder what we can do.

A "feel burdened" story, as we "always have to take
care of them.

An "angry" story: "Why don't they get it together
and stop bring that sadness around."

A sad story, "they are right, I forgot, but now
I remember how hard life is."

Another sad story: "they are thinking about our troubles,
and now I feel bad, too."

A weary story: Oh dear, prop up time.

And so on.

Cheerful even: "Oh, goody, fixing them time."

c. We could have more neutral responses:

Curious: what's up.

Concerned without baggage: is something bothering you, can I help.

Amused: you are so cute when you frown.

Loving: I love all your shades and colors. This frown thing
is just one more wonderful aspect.


d. Feelings and reality:

the frown might have been, from their point
of view: anger or sadness

then again in might have been a stomach ache,
or worry about their work,
or an experiment in facial muscles

4. Thinking is what?

Are any collection of words in our head
"thinking"

Moshe has some interesting things to say about thinking:

As in, most people never have real thinking.

Most thinking is just mental masturbation.

Looking at the reactions to the frown,
and say it was just stomach gas,
we can see that the mental abilities
weren't put to very good use.

What would real thinking be?

5. So:
What is feeling?
What is thinking?

A lot of unclarity,
and oh yeah,
this bit to add to the stew

to place "feelings" as nouns:

I am angry
I have sadness

rather than verbs:

I am angry-ing
I am sad-ing

turns them into something therapists can
live off of for years,
but cut us off from the sort of
dynamic change and experimentation
that this work opens up for us.

6. Back to:
What are feelings?
What is thinking?

The lack of clarity,
shows for me, how well Moshe was
"thinking" in his beginning chapters in
Awareness Through Movement
about the stuckness of humanity,
and improving moving being the quickest
and most clear way
to get people out of being the same,
the same as everyone else
and the same
as they always have been.

A longish start,
but it's been mulling since I
had the "not enough time to write"
story..


Ciao
Chris