Possibilities, Volume 1, No.
12, January, 2003
Quote from Moshe: “...in the correction of man faults and deviations should not be suppressed, overlooked, or overcome by force in any way, but used to direct his correction.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 33
Here’s an old story: Once a grasshopper met a centipede in the middle of a field. After looking at the centipede, the grasshopper asked, “When you walk, which of your legs do you move first?” The centipede stopped to think about it and got so confused that it found it could no longer walk at all.
Is there something familiar to us in the centipede’s dilemma that we fear? When I was a young man, I knew how to juggle fairly well, and I wanted to get better. I borrowed a book on juggling and thought if I started from the very beginning I would be able to learn more effectively. On the contrary, I got so confused trying to learn the way the book instructed me that I began to lose what juggling ability I had. I stopped reading the book and decided it was unwise to relearn what I already knew.
Are there things about our lives that we don’t want to know because we find the information unnecessary, possibly more than we need? Is it this fear which keeps us from observing ourselves doing everyday movements? It’s true that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But what if it is broke and we don’t realize? The fear of learning gets in the way then, doesn’t it? No longer serving the purpose of protecting us from danger, our fear confines us to our habits which only seem safer.
Let’s take the example of a man on a balancing beam who can walk backwards or forwards quite successfully by sliding his feet along the bar with skill. He has never lifted his foot from the beam, and he has not fallen in many years. One day, the man finds something in his path, something on the beam that prevents him from sliding his foot past it. Should the man stick to what he knows, even if this means he will only have half of the beam to travel? Or would it serve the man to observe that he moves his foot by sliding and that he might be capable of lifting his feet in order to step over the obstacle?
Like this man, we have to examine our processes to improve them. Sometimes the benefits of observation are obscured by the fear that we will lose ourselves if we question too much. If we challenge our fundamental assumptions about what works we expose ourselves to potential danger and discomfort. This is why such thinking, which is called “learning,” must be done in a safe environment in order to be truly successful.
As you move in a Feldenkrais lesson, you examine your thought process in order to discover how you are moving. The nervous system, which enables you to learn, feeds gratefully on the new information you give it and, if the environment is pleasant, and if you slowly explore the unfamiliar with an open mind, a new kind of learning may begin.
You can overcome difficulties you have always endured, such as that limp which has come and gone without warning ever since you were a teenager. Perhaps you can learn to throw a ball farther and harder than you ever have because you are willing to listen to your own body and gain a movement in your shoulder you never even thought existed. Maybe you’ll discover that there is more of you available for walking and running and eating and hugging and playing sports than you ever thought there could have been. You never could have found it by thinking the way you always have before.
Moshe Feldenkrais said: Use what you do well to learn what you don’t do well. In other words, examine yourself as you do something with ease and find out how you do it. In many instances we are constrained not by physical limitations, but by a fear of the unknown. By remaining in your realm of ease and comfort, you can slowly examine the unfamiliar without getting too far away from the familiar, eventually getting to the “impossible,” which was only impossible because you couldn’t connect it to yourself.
It may be “broke,” it may not be, or it may be somewhere in the middle. When you can count on the environment in which you are learning being safe, you can ask yourself questions about how you move without worrying about the risk. There may be moments of disorientation, but the human mind is designed to bring order out of chaos, and you’re likely to put things back together better than they were before. There is an ending to the story about the centipede that we are never told.: Later, the grasshopper met the centipede again, only now the centipede knew how to dance.
Adam
© 2003 Adam Cole