the Feldenkrais Method and real (organic) learning

the Feldenkrais Method and real (organic) learning

Brain plasticity is a field that is discovering in research what Moshe Feldenkrais discovered empirically 50 years ago, as he went about "healing" knees that were almost "worthless" from years of brutal and overly competitive soccer playing. He discovered that it was not the "trying" to fix the knees that did anything, and was not just a "working on the knees" that did the trick. He discovered that what he wanted and needed to learn was how to move himself as a whole organism, in the easiest and most efficient way possible, which turned out to be the most pleasant and most powerful way.

In other words, he learned that he needed to re-learn how to move, and that this re-learning meant he needed

1) to use less effort,

2) to involve more of himself,

3) to move with a slowness that allowed him to notice small details he otherwise might miss

4) to try out various ways of moving, even some that were “worse,” because his brain needed

5) to have a variety of possibilities so learning could be a choice, rather than replacing the old rote movement with a new “better” movement


So this sort of learning was about involving our brains in a variety of possibilities, and from those possibilities discovering for itself more effective and pleasant and congruent patterns of movement.

What does that mean?

It means that when you have choices you aren’t stuck.

It means that if you want to move with ease, you have to have choices that you make, not “good ways of moving” that are imposed on you by some well meaning teacher. (Note how most yoga, Pilates, weight training, dance, singing, even music is taught: “This is the way to do it. Yes, you are doing it right.” Or, “No, you are doing it wrong.” Praising, scolding. Good, bad. High level, or maybe not so high level dog training. In this mode, this usual way of “teaching” that really has no “learning” going on, there is no experimenting, no discovering, no involving of our brains and our excitement to be creative and to discover.)


This sort of learning, called organic learning (as opposed to rote, academic, learn it the right way training disguised as learning), is exactly what we almost all, as humans, go through when we are small. To learn to crawl is not a falling into and acting out some internal “crawling” program.”

We, as babies, have to first learn to roll over, to raise our heads to the vertical.

We have to learn what a hand can do to hold up a shoulder, and to learn that we try all sorts of positions of hand forward, to the side, closer to the legs, closer to the middle, hand on its top, hand on side, hand on palm, fingers together, fingers in a fist, fingers down and palm up.

We are little scientists, or we are little artists, creating all sorts of possibilities and experiments in gravity. We are moving. We are falling. We are holding ourselves up. We are trying, good, worthless, okay, pretty good options, and discovering which of these, combined with what we are doing with our legs and chest and head and eyes and spine and ribs and pelvis, are going to get us moving across the yard or floor the most easily.

We don’t want to crawl.

We want to move.

We want to move because we want to get something, “over there” and crawling turns out to the be the way we get there.

So we learn. And are a different being, a different sort of human for having this learning. This is organic learning. This is our human birthright. This is what the Feldenkrais Method and the Anat Baniel Method tap into.

You, too, can join this fun.

I hope you do.

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

Nikhila Mary Ludlow: hand lesson via U-tube

just do the usual
thing

Feldenkrais Hand Lesson
via
Nikhila Mary Ludlow

five lines, five ringed circus, called life

time
to follow our
breathing
always time for that

time to sense
our spine
and our relation
to gravity

ah

and our five
lines:
two arms
two legs
with the
sweet
wonderful
often trying to boss
too much
head
on top

ah

breathing
in the middle
especially the lower back
floating ribs

spines and limbs
in gravity

eyes and ears
on mobile
head

the three
ringed
circus

and then
we
add
thoughts
and
awareness
of all this stuff

and then maybe
awareness of awareness

and then
the feelings
e-motioning
us

hopefully
toward
love

and peace

and joy

which are
sort of
all that's left

once we
come
home

to
now

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.

Excerpt From: UP, Improve Mood, Posture, Thinking, Backs, Necks and Sex, ...and Help "Save the World"

AND THEN WHAT? (in book, paragraphs are "regular," here I spread things out, for easier viewing in computerland)

These prior 4 activities/ meditations/ practices/ lessons (first four of 21 activities that will be in the book) will increase your awareness of how you fit together as a human being on this planet Earth.

They will bring you into the present.

And soften and moderate your breathing.

And will lengthen your spine and improve your posture.

By involving your pelvis they will increase your sexual awareness and skill.

By involving your attention and thinking and awareness they will help you to solve problems better.

By connecting more of you to more of you in pleasant and watchful ways, they will increase your ability to love yourself.

This way of learning and exploring and discovery is ancient to our lives. It is the way we learned when we were infants and the best learners we’ve ever been. When we discovered how to crawl and roll over and walk and talk, we were little geniuses. We didn’t have a program of action, we didn’t do what we were told. Rarely, at least in the first movements, did we imitate anyone. (Speech required a lot of imitation, and yet: it also was hugely about “playing around” with sounds and discovering how to make the noises we heard out there.)

This way of discovery will access our brains, and call us back into solving real and literally tangible “problems.” How to move the head down as the belly comes forward and the head up as the back comes back, is a real feat of attention, and awareness.
And learning.

Learning as discovery.

This is how this work can be anti-aging, by reconnecting us to that young state of heightened learning and awareness, where we are pouring on the new cells in our brains.

When we learn one of these new and complicated movements, we are doing just that: laying down millions of new brains cells.

When we make the new, we become as if young again.

Aging, so called aging, can be seen mainly as a solidification of old and familiar and unaware patterns. We move and talk and sit the same way, wearing down mental and movement and emotional and speech groves (ruts) that tend to get a little more rutted and stuck each year. We think the same things, say the same things, do the same things, have the same reactions to the same situations.

We become predictable and programmed, and boring, although we probably don’t realize that.

So, now, these activities offer a chance to move beyond old habits and get back in the way of living where being present, and being curious and discovering are what our lives are all about.

what are these activities??
come to a Sufia yoga class, or movement class
and find out.

It's so much
fun
and you
really do
expand
change
learn
and become better able
to love yourself

A year of sweetness and year of..

sun almost gone, "year" almost gone

the learning goes like this:
in this moment
i can do this
i can't do that

how can i learn
to know more
about what i "can" do

how can i learn ways
to sneak up
near
what i "can't" do

how can i learn
to be
fascinated
not frustrated
when the learning
doesn't come
"fast" enough

which means
i've forgotten learning
and fallen into the old habit
of wanting "things fixed,"
means me changed
like a broken car

instead of what i really am
a miracle of
brain
body
nerves
blood
bone
learning
and abilities
to learn
to be present
to explore
to discover
to expand
all that i ever
thought
was possible

yes

INDEX OF POSTINGS 2007

DECEMBER 2007

135. Dec. 31: A year of sweetness a year of...

134. Dec. 28: Meaning of Life in Three Layers: A Christmas Present to your Present

133. Dec. 18: 6 awareness days until Christmas

132. Dec. 11: Listening to Ourselves, Now, at the computer

131. Dec. 4: "Resistance" to the Feldenkrais Method (Mainly a post for practitioners) .

NOVEMEBER 2007

130. Nov. 24: What to do about our sleep?

129. Nov. 21: Learning and Becoming a Child again, sort of

128. Nov. 13: Pleasure, Ease and Learning: Group Lessons on Mondays and Wednesday

127. Nov. 12: Yoga in Feldie Land: Triangle

126. Nov. 10: Life is Real only when I am

125. Nov. 6 Moshe's high octane, body/mind/lust powered youth, via Deborah Elizabeth Lotus

124. Nov. 5 Monday Yoga, Feldie feet intro, fun

OCTOBER 2007

123. Oct. 31: Where are the Hip Joints???

122. Oct. 18: Stress, Learning and the Feldenkrais Method®

121. Oct. 16: Walking Again

120. Oct. 12: Walking, a miracle we usually take for granted

119. Oct. 11: Waking Up and Feldenkrais

118. Oct. 10: Weight Loss and Wake Up Feldenkrais

117. Oct. 6: Now Knowing: Food for a good life and a good Functional Integration Lesson

SEPTEMBER 2007

116. Sept. 28: Love, Remembering, Feldie Forum, parenting, whatnot

115. Sept. 19: Feldenkrais Method and therapy

114. Sept. 17: Take a Rest, Learn and Be Human

113, Sept. 12: Learning and Love

112. Sept. 11 The Real Terror

111. Sept. 5 Boring is as Boring Approaches

AUGUST 2007

110. Aug 29: New Life, Choice: Learning or Robot Upgrade

109. Aug 29: Feet on Ground, Eyes glued to Computer

108. Aug. 27: mindfulness, moving, healing

107. Aug. 22: Variety and Learning

106. Aug. 20: Health Backs, and the old choice:
Discovery vs. "Doing it Right"

105. Aug. 18: Happier Backs

104. Aug. 14: What Yoga and "yoga therapy" always misses...

103. Aug. 13 Yoga as if we had a
Brain, Heart and Spirit.

102. Aug. 8: This Moment.
Or: Waking up,
in as well as through Feldenkrais

101. August 7: The Glories of Living and the Feldenkrais so called "Method"

JULY 2007

100. July 27: The Power of Feldenkrais Plus Ananda Yoga

99. July 14: yoga training, more learning, la la

98. July 4: Freedom

JUNE 2007

97. June 28: Letter to a Wonderful Parent of a Special Needs Child

96. June 18: One 11 minute "cure" for depression.

95. June 1: What is Possible? A life full of learning, change and transformation. And happiness.

MAY 2007

94. May 22: Human Beings: Designed to Learn

93. May 16: Learning, Play and Love

92. May 16: Nature, Big and Small, always amazing

91. May 2: Improve Your Brain, Get more Neurons, and Move Better: all in one process

APRIL 2007

90. April 25: Awareness and Attention

89. April 18: Happiness Now? Heresy or Sanity?

88. April 5: A Morning's Feast, an Introduction to Awareness Through Movement®

87. April 3: Rolfing and Feldenkrais

MARCH 2007

86. March 26: An Experiment in Learning and Fun, one rolling to sit lesson.

85. March 16: Slow Down

84. March 11: What is the Feldenkrais Method? And Wake Up Feldenkrais? New Version.

83. March 6: Going from -1 to +3 in ten minutes or less

82. March 2: The Glory of Being Human: Bones, Brains, Learning and Gravity: and, We can Change

FEBRUARY 2007

81. February 26: Learning to Turn, Learning to Learn

80. February 26: Watch the Baby

79. February 25: Waking our Pelvis, Waking our Lives

78. February 21: Thinking and Non-Thinking, and : What Makes a Good Life???

77. Feb. 18: The Enemy Game

76. Feb. 15: The Joy of Improvement

75. February 12: To be Small or to Expand

74. February 9: Life and Love and the Really Good Lessons

73. February 7: The Waking up in Feldenkrais and in the Byron Katie Work, always from within

72. February 5: Porpoise of Life, 2: to Live

71. February 2: A Big Dream: Now and Nature and Love and Learning and Transformation, on the Earth

JANUARY 2007

70. Jan. 30: Lifting Rocks and Having a Good Time

69. Jan. 27: Change and The Anat Baniel Way

68. Jan. 24: Gurdjieff and Feldenkrais

67. Jan. 21: Jesus and Judo

66. Jan. 18: Feldenkrais and Love

65. Jan. 15: Martin Luther King, Racism, Corporatism, some Personal History

64. Jan. 12: Yoga and Feldenkrais

63. Jan. 9: The Feldenkrais Method®, a winter presentation.

62. Jan. 6: Cat and Cow, Yoga 3, Happiness, Mind and Body

61. Jan. 3: Doing "something" (for pelvis, spine, whole self and brain

60. Jan. 2: Doing "Nothing" is more than we might suspect

The Meaning of Life in Three Layers

Marlie's daughter Sari

In the morning, Life’s miracle is here waiting or me, and all I have to do to snatch it is to not snatch it. To just be. That’s all. Not to snatch, but to glide on home to myself, and what is this self, this human being on this planet earth? Well, one very “grounded” way to realize my life in the present on this Earth, is to start with gravity. I have a skeleton that holds me up in gravity, a spine and pelvis over two legs, holding up ribs and arms and a head. First level of be present, for me, is to notice the relationship of this arms legs spine head skeleton to gravity.

That’s my start.

And the next level of here and nowness, and life on Earthness is this: Air. In the middle of me, I have lungs and chest and ribs and diaphragm all designed to breathe me, whether I know it or not. Air in, and I am inspired. Air out, and I expire. In, out, I can notice this relationship to air, in the present, adding that on to awareness of my relationship to gravity.

And now, the top layer, the complicated one, the head. Thinking, thinking, thoughts, thoughts, and really the head is designed to be up high to better notice the world. Eyes for eating and making sense of light. Ears for doing the same with sound. Tongue and smell to sweeten and nourish my life, and to make the world taste good, and my language to reach out.

And to keep it simple, noticing in the present what is my relationship to light, noticing it coming into my eyes, and having an awareness if my neck is free and mobile, for if I want to look behind me, this is necessary. Sound can reach me from behind, whether or not my neck is free and mobile. Light cannot. To live fully, I want to be able to easily and clearly look around me and see all that is available and wonderful.

So, here’s my three layer awareness cake, and where does awareness live? The brain? The self? Who knows, but awareness that I have awareness creates a kind of inner lighting up for me.

And for you, with your skeleton and gravity, and your ribs and lungs and air, and your neck and light, maybe this simple and full meditation can help your days be more full and rich and aware and pleasant.

6 awareness days left until Christmas

Ah,
to be aware while
browsing the stores

ah
to be aware of the guilt
obligation
habit
routine
and fear stuff
nagging away to
buy more
give more
do more

ah
to say no
to an invitation
or two

ah,
to say yes
to an invitation
or two

where do we want
to be present
and following our breathing

and remembering the three oceans:
gravity
calling on bones and brain and pelvis
how are we "grounded"
what is our weight doing
right now

and air
our lungs inside the rib cage
or can it be
a rib basket

and light, sound, taste, smell
the joys of a head
mobile and free at the neck
looking left
and right
even now
on the computer
keep the eyes forward and let your
nose
go up and down
and right and left
and following your breathing
and know
about your pelvis
and be
in love
with the you
right now

what else to do?
love others
love the earth

does that have anything
to do with Christmas?
it certainly could have.

and does awareness have
anything to do
with our ability to love?

yes

Listening

sitting down at the
computer
and
what do we listen to?

said,
the more Proper way:

to what
do we listen?

can we listen
to our pelvis?

is it there,
have we played and enjoyed moving it forward
and back
tucking tailbone under
alternating
with butt back and up?

pelvis
yes

and spine,
holding up our head
is our neck free
are our
eyes and jaw and neck
relaxed and mobile?

pelvis,
spine,
neck, jaw, eyes,

and ribs
how are they?
what would it be like to wiggle them
a little
before we play too much on/ with/ under the
spell of
the computer?

wiggle ribs?
rib basket
or rib cage?
lean, arch, curve left,
left hip up
toward left ear
this fun
ribs together on left
and expanding
like an accordian
on the right.
can we enjoy
playing that way,

and
of course
the other way.

and our breathing inside those
ribs
and down
into belly/ diaphragm?
is it in our awareness
and now ness
and
pleasure?

breathing yes
ribs yes
pelvis yes
neck jaw eyes free and easy, yes


so
can we listen
to healthy and mobile pelvis
aware and relaxed jaw, neck and eyes
spine holding up our head
feet on ground,
butt on chair
breathing in the air

and other words
can
we listen to what it
is really like
to be here
now

creatures of gravity
(pelvis, feet, spine, butt on chair)

creatures of air
breathing free the ribs the lungs the air

creatures of light
(free neck
to see easily in a wide variety of directions
on upright and rooted spine)

wow

there's lots to being
here
isn't there?

---

of help with this
is to sign up for
DEsk Trainer

Invitation to Improvement and Joy

Invitation to Improvement and Joy

Let’s say: you have a soreness in your back or shoulders or neck as you move through life, and wouldn’t mind not only having that go away, but could enjoy learning how to function better from head to toe, from pelvis to ribs, from elbow to ear, from spine to sternum, from eye to brain?

In other words: are you game to become a more complete and aware and happy in your body and happy in your awareness person?

If this sort of improvement, about upgrading your nervous system, and rekindling your love of learning appeals to you, come on around and give yourself for awhile to this work, this Way of Conscious and Exploratory Movement.

Let’s say you want to play tennis better, or ski better, or golf with more ease and improvement and success. Again, are you willing to go inside and discover how you are and how you could be more, as this marvel of engineering, all these bones and muscles with a big brain on a planet of constant gravity and a body of two legs, and brain that loves to learn?

Good.

"Resistance" to the Feldenkrais Method

resistance so-called
to the Method

again:

now, there is a sort of "resistance"
which is a hideway excuse,
as in : this client is resisting change

famous was Milton Erickson who never had resistant clients:

fun stories:
the man in mental hospital,
grumbled and wouldn't cooperate,
he was Jesus.
great said Milton, since your Jesus,
you're a carpenter, here's a hammer and saw,
get to work

or the young boy in office
stomping on floor,
protesting being there.
Milton: nice stomp, but a big boy could stomp
much harder
of course, the boy stomps harder,
well, that's getting there, but a strong and big
boy could do better than that
and so on and so on
until the kid was begging to sit.

NLP,
which has some sleazy uses,
(seducing women, say),
has some brilliant ideas:
one of which,
there are no resistant clients
only bad therapists/ teachers

2. on the other hand
Moshe
and many others have pointed out:
people love to have the idea of changing
with the hidden clause they
don't have to change anything

3. thinking about resistance
as inertia

two passions back
(byron katie's, the Work, in between that
and the feldie method)
I pretty much single handedly stated a large
(3 acre) public garden, herbs, flowers,
food, trees, permaculture, soil and soul,
good place, now beautiful.
anyway,
since i loved it
i was enthused to invite lots of people to come.
many liked the idea
many said they'd be out "tomorrow" to help
most didn't make it

i discovered one class of people showed
up:
new to town

my theory became:
people have a rut of 3 or 4 main things they do
and it's really hard to break into that

new people don't have their ruts
defined yet
and so are open to somethng new
and wonderful

with ruts,
old and familiar
wins over new

recent article in New Yorker
on a megachurch in New England,
interesting confirmation:
best new members:
people moved recently,
divorced, lost jobs,
i.e. broken from their rut

4.A. resistance in ourselves, part A, heroic overcoming
last month i set out to do this
national november writing month ( NaNoWriMo.org)
where you go for a 50,000 word novel in
a month
i did it
and plenty of days
"resistance," reared it's slothy claws:
too hard, too crazy, novel sucks,
don't know what i'm doing,
etc etc too busy
blah blah
and i did it anyway

old Gurdjieff work thing:
in a group,
take an "aim" sew an hour a day,
talk to three people a week about job,
wear a business suit to all plumbing jobs,
weird or hard or interesting
you publically admit to something
and
set out to do it (Gurdjieff's idea:
people can't "do,"
are a bunch of I's
one i says, yes, i'll clean my room
tomorrow
tomorrow another set of I's want to watch tv or "has to"
answer the phone or , you know )
and see what happens

anyway,
another resistance
i do halfway well at heroically overcoming
is an aim
to do one or two alexander yanaii
a day
lots of resistance
though
and
always
always
glad i do

HOWEVER
4.B. then there's part B:
the resistance wins:
for twelve years at least i've been going to
"get around to"
learning piano,
learning guitar,
even writing the novel.

with help of organized event
some progress on third,
but piano
and guitar
ah,
and spanish
all languish in the "sometime"
labyrinth

so what is my "resistance"?

one, the ever-ready "story"
story:not enough time
but time to read New yorker,
or see dvd on computer
or...you know,
stuff that's part of my rut

story:
i'm not natural, or talented
or .....


and another factor:
non instant satisfaction
as learning curve bites
which actually, once people get to the Feldenkrais lessons,
we have much less problem with
in our work
(and maybe someone teaches music so the immediate
process of discovery is as delightful
as in ours?
don't know yet.)

5. so,
in a way, it seems to me:
that one of the core processes of our method:
the playing open of habits
to create new options
is what's (partially) going on when
people don't want to/ can't/ are "too busy"
and not interested in
opening to having the feldenkrais method
in their life

they have the habit of not being involved
in our method

what to do about our sleep

on feldy forum
a long discussion
on the "difficulties" of getting people excited
to come to Feldenkrais lessons

called
" Re: resistance to the Method"
this chain
reaction
is an old familiar one:

we have something amazing
and unique and the
world is not beating down our doors

oh, well:

a few other things
people
seem to have
"resistance" to:

love
(when they don't get what
they want, from the person
they "love" when they get what they want)

awareness of the present moment
minor exceptions:
first kiss,
sex,
first bite of new meal,
maybe

self realization
of the
oh, yeah, I lie, scold, hide,
blah, blah, whatever i criticize,
too

patience
to listen to another
to hang in there with "bad" feelngs
to hang in there with "not knowing"
to be here and not at the next
thing

silence
inner
harder than outer,
neither of much use to many

so,
la,
la
back to Monseur Gurdjieff
and the whole
question of humanity asleep

a big question

bigger even than the Feldenkrais Method
if you can believe anything so vast

and joking aside
the Method
is vast


and the title of this posting:
what to do about our sleep;

our
sleep

look at the s and the p
of the word sleep
notice the difference

notice the breath
coming in
and out
and don't even notice that difference
notice
the difference
that noticing
our breathing makes

sit calmly
and if
you know
the Feldenkrais
method
do six or so
variations
in pelvis, neck, ribs, eyes,
belly back
and be
so happy
at the gift
of knowing
how amazng
this brain body thing is

and then
holy fuck
go try to talk to another person
about this
from a noticing
and awake place
knowing they are asleep
and loving
them anyway
or maybe even
especially
they have such an amazing chance
and probably won't take
it
and we
can
and
can
and
forget
and the
can remember again


ciao
chris

Learning by Copying, or Learning by Learning

Life is meant to be enjoyed
and we are meant
as human beings
in a complex environment
and with brains
designed to learn...
we are meant to learn

The boy above is playing

Playing means he is not copying
what someone else showed him
he is
trying out some idea or possibility
that occured out of the play
that led up to that moment

one thing
led to another
and he's discovering
as he
goes
what he's going to do next

in a good Feldenkrais® lesson,
whether the group lessons called
Awareness Through Movment®
or the
individual lessons
called Functional Integration®
the big kick
for the lesson giver
and the
lesson taker
is following one
thing that leads to another
and another
and neither giver
nor getter is
sure just what is going to happen

but
since we are dealng with real skeletons
and real awareness
and easy movements,
not in the sense of uncomplicated,
but in the sense of not strained and pushing,
that kind of ease,
easy movements
and awareness
and the possibilities
of the human brain body set up
are huge

the explorations are the joy
and if we are lucky
we get hooked on this
and go home
and keep exploring
and learning
and expanding our
understanding of ourselves
and the world
and this miracle
called
awareness

Pleasure, Ease, Awareness and Learning

to be at ease
is a sweetness
that we can access

and yet
often we are in "too much of a hurry,"
or are "in our habit,"
or are "doing what we always do."

if we always feel
good
happy
comfortable in our body
and thrilled with the new learning
in our life,
fine

otherwise,
come join me
for classes
on Mondays
and Wednesday
at noon, and 5:30 PM

this is Brain Work,
and ReVitalization Work,
pretending to be about our body

Go slowly
work easily
on a mat, usually,
on the floor
slow and profound
and being present:

side effects might include:
breathe better
better posture
walk and sit and run and dance better
creativity up
mood up
pleasure in ordinary activity up

and more,
at Benefits of Feldenkrais®,
rhymes with Paradise

Triangle in Fedlie Land

this boy
is not afraid
to be himself

and so in yoga
sometimes
the whole fun
is to
just make a mess
of whatever
it is
"they" think
we should be doing
and
whatever we think
we SHOULD be going
and
whatever we THINK
WE SHOULD be doing

and just fool around

triangle, Trikonasa
is kind of a pain in the ass pose
anyway.

like this,
again the words are
harder than monkey see,
monkey do,
too bad
live with it:

1. stand with feet apart and point one foot a direction
you'll call forward
to make life simple we'll say R, right foot, is forward
face that way.
L, left foot, is behind and in a line with R heel.
R heel bisects middle of L foot

2. raise arms up to shoulder height,
facing forward

3.play,
rotate arms to face the direction your belly is facing
(left)
and rotate your arms to face the other direction
(around the the right)
have fun with this.

4. rest.

5. arms up again, rotate arms so R arm forward, L arm back, keep spine
straight, and tilt at the waist your whole torso forward
R arm will go down by R leg
L arm will come up in air
pointed to Up, up, up

look up at the up hand

6. Have some fun
look up at the up hand
and have eyes goes down,
and look down at feet with nose
and have eyes come up.
then eyes and nose toward up hand

notice other stuff: pelvis, ribs, feet
bend knees
unbend knees, explore

are you breathing???

7. rest

8. the same position, R foot forward, L back,
heel of R in line with mid of L,
rotate arms so L arm is foward direction same as R foot,
L arm back
tilt down at waist
R arm up
L arm down
spine straightish
head looking up at up hand

play with eyes and head
as above

9., play with triangle and reverse triagnle:
once arms one way,
once the other
sometimes head and eyes follow up hand
sometimes they go opposite

horse
around

breathe

have fun

Life is Real, only when I am

So spake Gurdjieff

and he
knew
what he was
talking about

and so

little amazing puzzles
to help us

brain improve
movement improve
attention improve:

like:

circles of pevlis
on the chair

uhhh
feels good

follow breathing

umm

eyes
closed
open

and now

stop
enjoy

and now
now
now
circles of pevlis
be now

head right
and left
and pelvis
circles
be now

and breathe
and
eyes
opposite
the head
your head

where is your attention
pelvis circle the other way
head right and left
eyes
opposite
breathing

life is only real
when we know sense
experience
i am

Juicy from Deborah Elizabeth Lotus, via Feldyforum

A story Moshe told us in S.F., (yes, Eva, gossip!)is that when he was
at the Sorbonne, living nearby on the 'left bank' in a 5th floor
walk-up; on nights preceding lectures, he would read and study until
1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. Then, he would descend the back stairs
and under cover of darkness, he would mount his bicycle, pedal
furiously to his first 'assignation' which had been pre-arranged with
one of many lovely young ladies; most of his assignations involved
climbing up the back fire escape through the bedroom window,(nosy
landladies prevailed, and no doubt added to the illicit thrill!), have
sex for an hour or so, stealthily climb back down, pedal furiously to
the next 'assignation', and so on until first light, anywhere from 3
to 5 back stair or fire-ladder-climbing 'assignations'--a regular
pre-fixed route! until pre-dawn; then pedal home, maybe not so
furiously by then. He would sleep a few hours until late morning when
he would again mount his trusty bike and go for his cafe and
croissants at 'Deux Magots' and then pedal off to his afternoon round
of lectures and lab-work. In between lectures, he would go to the
'Bohemian' Cafe's: Café de la Paix, Les Deux Magots, Café de Flore,
for strong Turkish coffee and sundry sweets.

Then Moshe would go play soccer and/or practice Judo at his nearby
left bank Judokan he helped establish and then pedal home to perhaps
grab a 'cat nap', wake up and study and start the whole 'cycle' all
over again.

So, Silani, I am imagining those thunder thighs came from not only
soccer, but all of the above! What a man! These days it is rare that
a man has a physique to match his intellect and vice-versa!

I hasten to add that Moshe told this story of 'performing sex 4-5
times per day' on himself a bit shamefacedly, using himself as an
example of (then) male immaturity, admitting his "Don Juan" Complex,
and allowed that he was not proud of 'using women' in this
way--although still tinged with pride at his male sexual prowess. So
on the one hand, he talked about this as an example of 'mature
behaviour' NOT, positing that most men get 'just good enough' in their
sexual maturation, by copying their closest model, whether big
brother, father, uncle or adolescent peer, and are 'stuck' in their
adolescence vis-a-vis immature sexual behaviour. He made the point
that of all the animals, only humans have, for the most part,
neglected the developmental process of 'sexual apprenticeship'-- so
the act of sex is all trial and error rather than the high art it can
be of, say, Tantra.

On the other hand, he posited that men of power, John F,Kennedy,
great artists, Einstein, warriors, etc.--all are 'highly sexed' and
this 'comes with the territory' of male leadership--as we see with
Bill Clinton, and even so-called celibate Swami's and Guru's. He was
making the point that we should not be so shocked and scandalized at
such behaviour--it is part of male high personal achievement, and we
can't have one without the other!

In this day and age of PC, I don't know how this idea would go over in
a Feldenkrais training, but I still find it relevant and accurate,
whatever one makes of it, and helped me forgive Bill. And it still
epitomizes Moshe with all his personal paradoxes!

As a possibly redeeming foot note to my above gossip, here is another
tit-bit:

Cafe de la Paix is where it is (rumored!) that Moshe the student first
overheard and eavesdropped on Gurdjieff holding forth to his students
over said Turkish coffee and pastries.

Such Cafe's allowed for such
pursuits; I can't quite imagine this level of conversation in a
Starbucks! It is probable that Gurdjeiff did not acknowledge MF's
keen attention, but spoke in a way that he could be 'overheard' from
his nearby table, where ostensibly he was reading his University
assignments.

It is (rumored!) that Moshe missed a few Sorbonne
lectures in favor of listening to Gurdjieff and learning about what
came to be called "The Fourth Way"-- this intriguing "new" psychology
of mind which was a melange of Sufism, other Eastern mysticism,
philosophy, psychology as then understood and being created by
Gurdjieff as different from Freud's "analysis" --which Moshe thought
got nobody anywhere except wallowing in past insults and injuries to
the psyche. He thought the most useful thing Freud discovered was "lie
on your back"!

Gurdjieff's philosophy was that man is asleep, and
needs to wake up! A philosophy of action, not analysis! Such thinking
to which every Feldy owes homage, imho. For a good article on the
Fourth Way, where you may see some similar concepts as espoused by
Moshe please see:

Duversity/Gurdjieff

I vouch not for the total veracity of my posting; yes, it is 'gossip',
but gossip Moshe told on himself, so at least has historical interest!
Of course he wrote at more length and more 'scientifically' on his
ideas about sexual maturation in Body and Mature Behaviour and the
Potent Self, which are as revelatory today about human nature as when
he wrote them.

All of the Zest,

Deborah Elizabeth Lotus

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

Where are the hip joints

A chapter from
Up: Improving Mood, Posture, Sex, Sleeping, Thinking, Backs
and Saving the World

16 : MORE EXPLORATION AND POSSIBLE DISCOVERY:
WHERE ARE OUR HIP JOINTS??????
This time we’ll go to both hip joints. We’ll be approaching them, with our awareness and our movement, in a number of directions. So, as usual, get out the timer, figure out the directions, and then click on and explore for at least 11 minutes.
Can you do more?
Yes.
Can you do this several times a day?
Yes.

16.1. On back, feet standing, rounding and arching your back. This we did on one side in the last lesson, and you almost can’t do a slow and aware rounding of your back too often. In a chair, in the car, on a seat of a bicycle, or on your back in bed, or on the floor: this is great for our backs, our pelvis (and hence sex, to say nothing of most coordinated activities that involve the top and bottom halves of our bodies), and our breathing and ribs. To make the floor comfortable you’ll probably want a thick blanket or mat to lie on, or outside on grass or a deck, this could be nice, too.

16.2. Rest and notice how your back rests on the floor/ ground. Now do the same movement as above. Round and arch your back, so you feel your lower back coming to the floor, and then lifting up from the floor. Notice how your legs stay more or less fixed as this movement takes place, so it is your pelvis moving forward and back. Where is this happening? The hip joints. See if you can notice them in there. Where are they? Focus on the right hip joint, the left hip joint and then both. As always, rest before the next section.

16.3. Sit up and hold one arm in front of you, exploring what a joint is. Here’s the thing: one arm out in front of you about chin height with your palm facing down. Try two movements: one, move the tips of the fingers up and down, but keep the forearm straight and horizontal. So, notice, one side moves, the hand, one side stays still, the arm. Where does this happen? A joint. Now, bring everything straight again, and keep the hand from moving and the wrist stable, and let the elbow rise and fall. This might require holding the hand with the other hand, if it doesn’t want to cooperate and stay steady. But again, same joint, different movement.

16.4. Down on back again, legs standing, lift one knee at a time and study for the hip joint. Now, the pelvis stays relatively stationary and the leg bone, the big femur bone we call the thigh moves. Poke around a bit in the rear end area and see if you can discover where there is movement, that’s the leg, and where it is stable: that’s the pelvis. Do one side at a time. Occasionally alternate with the 16.3 movement of pelvis moving with the back arching and rounding, for a contrast, again with hands exploring: what is moving, what is staying put? As always rest between. In the rests, let your legs go long. Be still and aware.

16.5. On back once more, legs standing, tilting legs. Again, one at a time, tilt your legs at the knee, tilting in and out, and explore just where this reveals your hip joint as your leg moves and your pelvis stays stationary. After doing both legs, again alternate with 16.3. And then rest.

16.6. On back, soles of feet together, arch and round your back. If your soles won’t quite touch, get them at least in that direction. Tilt and untilt your pelvis so your back lifts from the floor/ground and comes back down. Notice and discover all you can about your hip joints, now once more the pelvis is mainly the mover and the legs are mainly the unmoving.

16.7. On back, feet standing, try for this, the pelvic clock. Go slow, because this can be a whole lesson in itself, but sensing where the pelvis is pressing into the ground/ floor, push the top part down (lower back to floor), and then the right side, and then the lower part of the pelvis into the ground/ floor (lower back coming up from floor), and then the left side pressing in. Go slowly. Enjoy. Get the idea of the round movement, and then go back to discovering where the hip joints are. Rest.

16.8. Pelvic clock again, other direction. Come to feet standing, and first visualize and imagine going to the opposite direction of circle with your pelvis. Enjoy this imagining, visualizing. Now, do the movement. Notice what you left out in your visualization. Stop, rest and visualize again. Then do it again, once more noticing what you left out. And so on, until you’ve had enough. Rest.

16.9. If any more time remains in the eleven minutes, do more pelvic clocks.

First 12 pages of the book for sale:
$3 online
$5 in the mail

Stress, Learning and the Feldenkrais Method®

Stress, Learning, and the Feldenkrais® Way

Life is a bowl of cherries, if you are a bowl filled with cherries. Otherwise there are elements of learning that at first might seem “stressful,” and yet, once learned, are a sweet and ongoing part of life. For example, we come out of the womb, and the air thing: new. Stress. Lungs don’t know how to breathe air. If we don’t breathe air we die. New situation. Luckily we don’t have cell phones to call up another baby and complain how stressed out we are. Instead, we handle it, learn to breathe, and another Life begins, the life in air.

So what is “stress” anyway? Well, we all know that it’s “bad,” because when people say, “I’m so stressed,” they imply that they are in a tense and worried and poorly functioning place. And yet, if the stress of breathing in air had not presented itself and been solved, we’d all need to keep the umbilical cord with us. Not a pleasant way to live.

Okay, let’s resort to the dictionary. Well, maybe not. The first couple of meanings are along the lines of emphasis, “I’d like the stress that….” Or where we put the oomph in a paragraph, sentence or musical line. Finally, though, in physics, stress is “An applied force or system that tends to strain of deform a body.” And then the last definition in my dictionary: “A mentally or emotionally disruptive or disquieting influence.”

As part of this life out of the womb, we swim in three oceans: gravity, air, and light. The gravity ocean takes us longest to figure out: how the heck can we move around on two little feet and this long tall cylindrical body, with a big heavy head thing at the top? This is a stressful situation, having a human body in an ocean of gravity. Most of us handle this, often stopping our learning when we’ve gotten the mere basics of walking from chair to bed to feeding trough to automobile, but we know how to move in gravity. Sort of.

And if we step off a curb and aren’t paying attention, or suffer a stroke, or are born with some neurological limitation, the gravity thing can be more than we can handle.

So we start life in stress, handle it, and have the stress of a long tall top-heavy body in gravity, and sort of handle it, and then life keeps throwing challenges our way. Is this stress or opportunity? Well, having to learn a second language in ten minutes might be stressful. Have three months in a new country in which to immerse ourselves and learn, an opportunity.
What to wear to the party you don’t want to go to: stress , opportunity? How to build up a new business? How to learn to ski when you are over sixty? How to live with the loss of a loved one, either through death or divorce?

When the Oakland fire of 1989 roared through the hills and destroyed thousands of home there were two reactions. One, was what you’d expect, “Lost everything. Devastating. All the family photos. Years of work and memories.” And so on. The other was rather more charming: “Wow, I was dreading cleaning that back room and the garage, and now I don’t have to do it. This is a great chance to start over.”


And so stress seems at least in part in the eye of the beholder.

And if seen right, small doses of stress are exactly what we need as human beings that want to expand and grow and thrive in our lives. Interestingly enough, and not surprising for a system developed by a physicist deeply interested in judo and the biology of living systems, the Feldenkrais Method® could be called the intelligent application of small and useful stress to break old habits, discover new ways of moving, being and thinking.

So, for example, we could turn our heads to the left and see how far we turned, and with what ease. This is a useful skill when driving a car, the ability to look behind ourselves to the left. If we then turned our head halfway to the left, picked something to look at there, and then began to move our nose to the right of that point and our eyes to the left, and then brought nose and eyes back to this reference point, and then took our eyes to the right and nose to the left of this point, and so on, back and forth, this movement, if we haven’t done it before might seem “stressful.”

And if we slowed down our efforts, and took rests, and allowed ourselves to do this in little smaller bits, we might find ourselves learning something we didn’t know we could do. And then as this head and nose in opposition thing became easier, the stress feeling might completely dissolve and a feeling of ease and expansion might appear.

If we once again look to the left, and allow our eyes to go in synch with our nose, we might discover that turning to the left has become easier. Stress set us up to learn.

(There is more to this lesson, as many of you know: try turning to the left with your hands each hugging the opposite shoulder, and spend a little time with the stress of practicing moving your hugged shoulders to the left while you head goes to the right. Or: push out your belly and arch your back and roll a little forward on your pelvis and alternate that with slumping forward and pulling in your belly and looking down. Then look left again.)


So, we are designed to learn, and often avoid the opportunity, and if we are smart and/or lucky we will set up challenges to stress/ expand our lives. And strangely and wonderfully enough: each time we do this, we get less “stressed” out about almost everything.

Walking again

WALKING AND LOVING LIFE

To walk is part of the miracle
of being human
in a planet where gravity
is one of the big three
influences,
along with sunlight, and air.

This is who we are,
long tall creatures,
ready to fall forward,
again, and again,
and if we stick one foot after another
out to catch us,
it's called walking.

Walking is fun,
and it's good for us.
Personally, I'm not that fond of walking on concrete
and asphalt,
my feet are softies
or spoiled by years working in a garden I created,
where I made the paths as moisture retaining
and weed supressing areas by
using cardboard covered with woodchips.

I like to walk on grass and sand
and dirt
and even gravel.


And that's my preference.

Be that as it may,
some people say that walking is the best exercise,
and I might agree.

It's certainly the best for remembering this:
we live in gravity, air and light.
Feet pushing off against the earth,
skeleton holding us up in gravity,
air coming into our lungs,
eyes up top,
scanning the world,
hopefully bringing in some beautiful impressions.

This is walking.

Walking is also great for a spinal
twist.
Walk a bit and pay attention:
the top half (or so) of your spine rotates one way
and the lower half the other way.
Shoulders one way,
pelvis the other.
This is good,
this gives us power,
this gives us grace.

This also stabilizes us,
because when we bring one foot forward,
the weight of that leg going forward needs to be
balanced by something going back,
which would be our hip,
and that would make walking awkward,
to say the least.
So the shoulder goes back on the side
the leg goes forward, and that keeps the hip stable.

So when you see people naturally swinging their
arms with great flair
as they walk,
they are doing what we are designed to do.

Then again,
some really flail at the air thing
and turn walking into a huff and puff kind
of thing.
Well, that's their kick,
and it's probably good for the old cardio
thing.

Though, when people talk cardio,
I can't help but think of the New Yorker cartoon,
where one hamster, spinning wheel in the background,
is explaining to another hamster:
"For my workout, I like to do two hours of cardio,
and then four hours of cardio,
and then another two of cardio."

La, la..


So, what are contenders with walking for
THE BEST EXERCISE?

Well, swimming and
sex.

Notice both these are in the fish world,
the horizontal world.

The earlier world in our evolution.

Sex is kind of like the dolphin
swimming, lots of nice undulations in the spine.

Swimming can be the dolphin, again the undulations,
but more tiring that sex with les the perks,
or it can be frog fun
with the breast stroke,
or some nice lenghtening and stretching and
strengthening all of us at once in
the Australian crawl or the backstroke.

Problems with swimming and me:
again, I want salt water
or a clear lake of river.
This chorine swimming,
or swimming laps,
ah, here come the hamsters in my mind.

Oh, well.

Anyway: you might have another favorite exercise.

Walking
can also be a fine meditation.
Which foot is touching the ground,
and where is our breath:
coming in or out.
What are we taking in with our
eyes as we notice which foot and
which way the air.

That's a lot.

Life often
gets richer
and richer
when we can do a lot
with our attention,
lighting up our awareness,

of NOW.


So,
as I wrote in the last walking essay:
you are a miracle, and walking is a miracle, and learning and awareness can make both miracles even better.

Walking, a miracle we usually take for granted

WALKING AND WAKE UP FELDENKRAIS
Most of us can walk. If we can’t walk easily, or suddenly have trouble, we realize how precious is this skill that so many take for granted. To walk on two feet, circus tigers and trained bears aside, is a uniquely human ability.

This ability is amazing. Try, as I often say, to make a sculptural model of a human being, two little feet way down there holding up this long body. It will topple unless you give the statue a huge pedestal base, or put a staff in the model’s hands. Then, with the kind of huge feet we don’t have (the pedestal solution), or with three legs (the staff solution), the model can stay up.

But, two feet are unstable. That means: a huge increase in mobility. It also means walking is easier than standing (we don’t need to go into that now, but think of it this way: since we are inherently unstable, falling forward from one foot to the next and that being what our walking is, is more what we are designed to do that stand stable on these two small feet of ours). It means that even walking is much more complicated than we realize, again until we have trouble, or if we have a neurological condition that makes the enormous learning which walking requires even more difficult, cerebral palsy or stroke for example.

So, how can the Feldenkrais Method and the Anat Baniel Method and Wake Up Feldenkrais come to our aid in improving our walking.

The same way these all come to our aid in improving almost any movement, or pattern of thinking, or even emotional state.

One, slowing down, we can start to discover what we take for granted. Two, with awareness, we begin to find connections and possibilities. Three, by going on a search instead of just cranking out the usual, we train ourselves to appreciate what we have and what might be possible.

So, just to walk more slowly (or rapidly, actually, a change from the habitual always helps see the habitual) we can begin to focus on just what IS this walking thing?

Elusive obvious: one foot is holding us up, while the other one swings forward.

Slow that down. Pick a stable foot and let the other foot go forward as if you are stepping forward. Which part of the moving forward foot will come to the ground first. When does the knee bend in this m.f. (moving forward) foot? Where does the swing in our hips come from? Where are our hips? Does this side of the pelvis roll forward or backward as the m.f. leg moves forward?

Reverse the usual. Now practice taking the m.f. backward, so it is a m.b. leg and foot, moving backward leg and foot. What can we discover about our hip joint here? What part of our foot touches first when we walk backwards? Which part of our middle helps this, our back muscles or our stomach muscles?

And now, begin to walk a bit around a room, or outside in some pleasant and interesting place. Notice the tendency of your arms. When your left leg comes forward, which arm likes to come forward? Try both possibilities: left leg forward and left arm forward, and left leg forward and right arm forward.

Walk some more and pay attention, one at a time, to your right hip, your right shoulder, your left hip, your left shoulder. What can you learn about walking from this?

Sit in a chair and “walk” forward and backward on that chair by lifting one sit bone and then the other and moving forward to the front edge, and then back to the back of the chair. As if your butt had two feet at the sit bones, “walk” back and forth and see what this call forth in your spine.

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Will all this improve your walking?

Yes.

Will it help you understand how much more there is to learn about this amazing activity? Hopefully.

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And another way to improve walking? Come to the mat discovery lessons, whether called Awareness Through Movement, or Transformation Movement Lessons, these lessons, usually on the ground and OUT of gravity, allow our brain to discover aspects and relationships that we might never find under that gravity and balance demands of normal walking.

SEE Current Classes and Workshops


So you are a miracle, and walking is a miracle, and learning and awareness can make both miracles even better.

Waking Up and Feldenkrais

WAKING AND FELDENKRAIS
This moment comes once
and is gone.
We are here and awake to notice that,
or we are missing in action,
or missing in inaction.
Either way, if we are missing the moment,
our life is going on,
and we are not there with it.

To be awake is so simple and yet so
far
from how we mostly live our lives.
It is as easy as the slightest shift,
to noticing how we are sitting, standing or lying right now,
to noticing how we are breathing right now,
to noticing the five lines of two arms and two legs and one spine,
to noticing the ways we push against gravity,
to noticing the reflected light in the world
coming into our eyes and the sounds coming into our ears.

That shift, and these and
in its many other forms and possibilities,
is our birthright, our challenge, our gift.

The Feldenkrais work,
by allowing us to slow down
and actually put our attention on small movements, or sometimes large,
and by allowing the rests between the movements,
and by encouraging an attitude of experimentation rather than “getting it done,”
and by again and again playing with
variations that trick (wake) us into
paying attention
to something that before we took for granted,
all these aspects are a wonderful and
waiting training ground to
the opening of awareness.

As the lessons are called,
we have a chance to develop our
Awareness through Movement.

But not donkey movement.
Not crank it out exercise movement.
Not struggle and rush movement.
No, movement that is going to bring learning,
which is to say,
movement that is going to create
opportunities for us to change
and transform
and get more flexible
in our minds and our whole lives,
this movement has to call upon
and live in awareness.

So, at any moment
we can wake up,
and usually we don’t.
A Feldenkrais lesson is a chance
to open up to the pleasure
and expansiveness
of being awake to each moment.
It’s a question of living a life,
or being taken through one by…..?

Weight Loss and Wake Up Feldenkrais

WEIGHT LOSS AND WAKEUP FELDENKRAIS

WEIGHT LOSS AND WAKEUP FELDENKRAIS
We can move and stay overweight.
We can be aware some of the time and stay overweight.
We can’t, however, be aware while we eat and stay overweight.

To be aware while we eat is
to feel the weight of the spoon or fork or chopsticks
in our hand,
the weight before the food is on and after.
To be aware is to sense our arm
and hand
as we bring the food to our mouth.
To be aware is to chew, slowly,
and taste each bite, not just the first bite of of each mouthful.

To be aware while eating usually means
a lot less talking than those who eat publicly,
and no reading nor television watching
for those who eat alone.

To be aware while eating calls for
putting down the chopsticks or spoon or fork while chewing.
To wait a bit after the bite is finished being chewed and swallowed.

To be aware while eating means this:
we can sense our bottoms on the chair while we eat,
and notice what we are seeing while we eat,
and follow our breathing while we eat.

And with all this awareness,
to notice when we have had enough is no great shakes.
We chew a bite, enjoy, stop, breathe,
notice
how nice that food is making us feel.
Chew another, and more pleasure and noticing.

Taking breaks between each bite to set down our utensils,
and to breathe and to sense our bellies and our posture,
we will discover ourselves easily aware
when pleasure starts to slip over into stuffing ourselves.

Then we take a deep breath, get up from the table,
wash the dishes and go about our lives.


If we panic between meals,
because some slight hunger
comes that we aren’t used to because we haven’t stuffed ourselves,
we can do the Work of Byron Katie
on: “I have to eat something right now.”
If we find out that this isn’t true,
we can keep breathing and
wait
a nice space of time, three or four hours between meals.

I could write another essay on
what to do with the pretend hunger between meals,
but I’ll say this for now:
find something physical to do,
and do it slowly and with awareness.
This could be

yoga,
tai chi,
golf practice,
walking,
Awareness Through Movement® lessons,
some version of dance we know
or are inventing,
almost anything with awareness and pleasure,
ride a bike,
putter in the garden,
sweep the sidewalk,
walk the dog,
go for a run (pleasure run, not kill yourself run),
lie down and invent some movements,
do the five rhythms movements,
belly dance,
pretend to belly dance,
take a walk,
take a walk,
take a walk.

Move.
With awareness.
Sense the pleasure of being alive.

We can learn to
wait until our next meal to eat
and it doesn’t need to bother us a bit
if we are doing pleasurable and useful activities
such as those mentioned above and
then there is always gardening.
Nothing like some puttering outdoors
to heal the mind and calm the spirit.

When we eat out of emptiness the solution is simple:
fill ourselves with awareness and love of life.

I offer coaching on weight loss,
if you wish assistance. Please see:
Fitness and Weight Loss

Not Knowing: Good Food for our life

Not Knowing

When we do the Byron Katie work, a big conclusion is :”I don’t know.” The first question asks: Is it true? And the answer is often: I don’t know.

If we truly live in the present, what the future is going to be: I don’t know.

Brendan remembered from a book on Leonardo diVinci that one of his abilities was to live in the state of, you guessed it: I don’t know.

About Moshe Feldenkrais, it has been said that he had a huge tolerance for ambiguity. He didn’t need to know. He loved not knowing, that meant he got to attempt to learn something.

With a client in WakeUp Feldenkrais and the Anat Baniel Method, we don't have to know the specific outcomes. That is impossible. But we try lots of variations, to create some outcome, some change, some (maybe even radical) opening of possibilities. If we try something and it "doesn't work," great, we are in the I don't know state: we try something else.

Always something to learn, for ourselves and our clients.

A lot like a real relationship, and keeping love alive.

About life: the “such and such is too hard” story often gets undone and dissolves, with the Work, into a state of excited curiosity: I don’t know how to do this YET, and what am I going to do to learn what I don’t know yet.

What I don’t know yet, is the field of potential glories of my life to come.