Volume 2, No. 10 – November, 2003

Quote from Moshe: “Doing does not mean knowing.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 46

Three Feldenkrais Games

Many of you would like to try Feldenkrais. I know it. You just haven’t had the time. Classes may be too far away, maybe your budget doesn’t allow for it. Maybe you just don’t think you know enough about it, even now, to give it a go.

Feldenkrais is so unusual that it can’t be easily described in a newsletter, even one as splendid as Possibilities. Nevertheless, the benefits are so tremendous, and the improvement in many people is so great, that I want to give you a chance to experience, if not an actual Feldenkrais lesson, then the experience of learning through an altered state. This is the essence of Feldenkrais: changing your awareness of the world and of yourself by discovering a different perspective on a routine idea.

In this month’s newsletter, I have developed three exercises you can do in the course of your daily routine that will give you a sense of how you might feel during a lesson. You may also experience some of the benefits of a Feldenkrais lesson from doing these exercises, because they work on the same principle of paying attention to yourself in situations where you usually just coast.

Exercise 1: Changing the compass

Take a walk. Do you stroll daily with your dogs? Take a weekend constitutional in the park with your sweetie? Maybe go shopping in the mall. Any of these scenarios are fine. But instead of giving your full attention to your dogs, your sweetie, or the bargain in the window, spare some for this challenge.

If you walk in a familiar area, you have a general idea of how it’s oriented in the surrounding neighborhood. In a park, you know which direction the sun rises every morning. In a mall, you know the way to the parking lot. You take this orientation for granted, counting on your mental map without a second thought.

As you walk, imagine that all directions have been reversed. Pretend you’re in a totally different park or mall, and you’re walking through as a visitor, perhaps from another state. As you move along the path, see if you can get the sensation that you’re walking in the opposite direction, as if all the details of the park or mall have remained the same, except that someone has picked the whole place up and spun it around a half-circle. North is now south.

Can you feel a difference in the way you walk when you concieve of the space in this way? Are you looking at the details differently? Do you react to the same scenery in a different way? Is it a pleasant sensation, or an unpleasant sensation, and how does it change your pattern of strolling?

When you’ve had enough, convince yourself that you’re back in your familiar park or mall. Do you feel as if you remain altered? If you have reverted to your original state as well, do you have a better sense of what that is?

Excersise 2: Meal in a mirror

Go to a full-service restaurant, preferably by yourself or with a friend you can trust. When you are seated, tell the waiter you’d like to start with desert (it takes a lot of courage to do this). Order the entire meal in reverse and eat it that way, main course second, appetizer third, salad fourth. Go on! It won’t hurt your digestive system to do it once.

As you dine, rearrange your silverware and glasses so that they are on the opposite side from where they usually are: forks on the right, spoon and knife on the left. If you are right handed and you usually cut with your right hand, and feed yourself with your right hand, use your left. Reach for your glass with your non-dominant hand. Lefties, of course, are going to try being right-handed for an hour or so.

You will have to be very patient as you eat in this way. It may be clumsy, so you’ll have to go slowly. Don’t be embarrased. Many people who have suffered a stroke have to do this every day, and you’re nowhere near as hampered. Instead of throwing the whole experiment away in fear and disgust, stick with it. It’s only one meal.

What happens to your experience of eating when you change the speed at which you dine, when you have to think about all the movements you usually make automatically, when you can’t even trust the sensation you’re going to experience next? Pay specific attention to how you are sitting, whether it makes you feel completely different as you leave the restaurant, and whether you notice anything about the way you walk or see that has changed. You may be surprised to find that your initial discomfort goes away after a couple of hours, but that the things you discovered stay with you and may improve your ability to do ordinary tasks.

At the meal following your strange meal, eat normally. How does it feel to eat, now? Are you noticing the way the food tastes? Is it so much easier to cut your potato that it feels like someone elses’ arm and hand holding the knife? Most importantly, are the benefits to this kind of awareness worth the slight discomfort you might initially feel, or is it better to be in a numb routine where you eat mindlessly, never really tasting the food or appreciating the moments of leisure you have?

Exercise 3: Think about it

Lie on the floor in a comfortable place, preferably on firm carpet or a workout mat. Take a second to notice how you lie upon the floor, where you press into it and where your body rises up.

Imagine a simple movement, that of rotating your feet so that your big toes come closer to one another, then away from each other again, back and forth like slow windshield wipers. Don’t actually make this movement at all. Only think about it. You will never make this movement during this entire exercise. If you find yourself actually moving, stop and return to thinking only.

Imagine as clearly as you can the sensation of the heels rolling on the floor, the toes sailing in a gentle arc through the air. Are your toes coming along for the ride, or are they pulling the feet behind them? Is your big toe the center of the universe, or does the toe on which you focus depend on the direction your foot is going?

Make the image of this simple movement clearer and clearer, so that you have the impression that you can notice all of these little things. You may fall asleep as you concentrate on this. That’s fine. When you notice and wake up, imagine again. You may drop in and out several times, but always return to improving that image of your big toes moving towards one another and away.

When you have passed out about three times, or when you have sufficiently created a clear image of this movement, open your eyes. Slowly come to standing. How does it feel to stand upon your feet now? Different? Walk around. What’s that like?

Why should you feel so different after only thinking about a simple movement, without even making it?

These three exercises demonstrate the kind of approach you will experience in a Feldenkrais lesson. You will be instructed to move with an attitude of curiosity and attentiveness. The exercises above are very general may only make you feel different without teaching you anything. Feldenkrais lessons, on the other hand, are designed to bring your attention to specific aspects of your functioning so that when you get up at the end, what you have learned is useful to you. Your ribcage may actually move when you walk, and you will understand why. Your head may rotate more easily on its axis, and you will be able to turn and swallow without effort.

But in order for you to experience these changes, you have to go in with the understanding that what you know is not sufficient, or you would have used it to improve already. How you find out what you need to know is a question of the degree of unfamiliarity you’re willing to tolerate. Hopefully your Feldenkrais teacher will make it easy for you to explore! In the meantime, try these little exercises and see if you can stand to see the world just a little differently for just a little while.

QUESTION FROM ASK ADAM:

Why isn’t Feldenkrais covered under my insurance plan? Ivana Noe

Answer:

Dear Ivana,

Feldenkrais is so new and so different from prevailing approaches to health that insurance carriers have a difficult time classifying it. Practitioners have gone to great lengths to differentiate themselves from modalities like massage or chiropractic, because our work is so very different from those. Unfortunately, state licencing boards see all people who touch the body as doing the same thing and tend to lump us in with massage therapists, sometimes even forcing us to spend years and lots of money getting massage licences when we do no massage and our work has nothing to do with massage.

Very often it’s simply too much for a fledgling practitioner who is starting up a practice to convince insurance companies and city- and state-officials that what they are doing is effective, safe, and unique. The money and effort required often do not come back to us in terms of actual referrals.

In short, while it may be possible for a Feldenkrais practitioner to get included in an insurance plan, it’s often so difficult and so expensive for them that it isn’t worth the trouble. Many clients are willing to spend the measley $10 a week to go to a class and find great benefits without involving their insurance companies!