Moshe
Quote Of the Day: "Both the touched and the toucher feel what they sense through the connecting hands,
even if they do not understand and do not know what is being done." (from The Elusive Obvious, p. 4)
Okay. Let's get right down to brass tacks. What is this stuff? Why haven’t you heard of it? Why aren’t you doing it right now with all
your enthusiasm? What’s it got that
Pilates hasn’t got? How are twinkies made?
I won’t pretend
to answer that last one, but I can take a stab at the other ones, hopefully
entertaining you and informing you along the way. What is it?
It’s simply the most interesting thing you’ll ever do with forty-five
minutes of your life. You take the time
to stop and ask yourself what you do well, what you want to do well, and how to
go from one to the other.
There. That wasn’t so hard, was it? You understand now. You could probably teach a class in it by
yourself. (Some people already have.) Let me put it another way that will clarify
what I’ve just said, making it sparkle with crystal clarity in your minds.
There are things
in this world you want to do: water-ski,
mountain-climb, type like a demon, play the
piano. Some of them you can do, and you
do them because you enjoy it. Some of
them you can’t do. You probably tried a
couple of them and found them too difficult, so you quit. Piano lessons are a great example of
this. How many of you tried to play when
you were young, but gave it up because you just couldn’t get to where you could
really play the thing? You left thinking
to yourself, “Some people were meant to be musicians, others
weren’t.” But then you went and water-skiied all afternoon, which was what you wanted to do,
because you were good at it, and you enjoyed it.
Let’s see. Do well:
Water-ski. Want to do well: Play piano.
Is there really any way to get from one to the other?
Yeah.
The whole trick
has to do with becoming aware of how you do the things you do well. By how, I don’t mean each individual
water-skiing element. I mean what is
your state of mind when you ski? How do
you think about yourself when you’re skiing?
What do you do in your head that puts all those pieces together to make a successful, functional water skiier
out of you? There’s a process going on
as you ski, of balance, of filtering information (forget the spray, look out
for that rock!), and of the flux between tension and relaxation. You don’t even think about that process. You just water-ski. But it's going on anyway. Why can’t that kind of thing just be “going
on” when you play the piano? And how are
you supposed to understand what's happening if it’s so automatic?
That’s the
key. The Feldenkrais Method®, bless it, teaches you how to tap
into that process, to be more conscious with it, so that you can apply it
whenever you’re learning something.
You can use it to get better at water-skiing, or you can use it to start
enjoying the piano.
But all this is gravy, isn’t it? This
is the kind of frivolity we Americans just don’t have time for. “I made my choice to water-ski years
ago. I hardly have time to do it
anymore, anyway.” So what good is the
Method for me?
What if what you
do well is to “sit in a chair” and what you don’t do well is “stand?” Sure, let’s think about this. You can sit comfortably in any chair, but you
can’t stand up for more than five minutes without your back killing you. Isn’t there something you can do to make
sitting as pleasant as standing?
Yep. You’re soaking in it. It’s called the Feldenkrais
Method. By taking the time to
understand what good sitting is in your case, you’ll give your mind and your
nervous system a chance to get into it and compute a lot of good stuff. The result is that when you stand up, you’ll
stand better.
Using what you do
well to learn what you do less well is a really powerful idea, because it gets
you to learn difficult things while keeping you in a place where things are easy. You learn so much better when you’re happy
and comfortable. You can address your
injuries, your insecurities and your difficulties from a place of safety, and
they can start to vanish. You can be curious, have fun, laugh, and you can
change the unthinkable.
It sounds so
tempting, so good, too good to be true. Well, it’s not too good to be true. We just don’t do it much around here because
we’ve always been told growth comes from pain.
You can grow from painful experiences, yes. But you can also grow from pleasant
experiences. You simply need the right
method. May I suggest...ahem.
Okay.
How about those other questions?
F-E-L-D-E-N-K-R-A-I-S spells Feldenkrais. No “Christ” in Feldenkrais. He was Jewish, anyway. Sure it’s a funny name. But it could have been worse. He could have been named Schluff. Would you be here now if I was talking about
the Schluff Method?
Probably not.
Come
back and see me.
© 2002 Adam Cole