Volume 2, No. 11 – December, 2003

Quote from Moshe: “In those movements when awareness succeeds in being at one with feeling, senses, movement, and thought...man can make discoveries, invent, create, innovate, and ‘know.’ He grasps that his small world and the great world around are but one and that in this unity he is no longer alone.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 54

Can Feldenkrais give you the Buddha Nature?

One aspect of many alternative therapies, whether they are rooted in science or metaphysics or Chinese medicine, is that they possess a spiritual component which Western medicine has long since thrown away. The Feldenkrais Method has no such obvious spiritual components. Moshe Feldenkrais was a skeptical and a rigorous scientist long before he was “miraculously” healing people, and he endeavored to explain the success of his work in scientific terms even while it was being adopted by people who were far less rigorous and skeptical.

Nevertheless, Moshe understood the connection between the spiritual and the physical, and, admitting such a connection existed and was a practical and usable tool in the betterment of the self, he was able to develop his Method to procure the kinds of “miracles” that many of his colleagues in medicine and therapy were unable to reproduce or explain.

Moshe said “We all pray to different gods, yet we all have our prayers answered. Therefore, there must be something in the way we pray that gives us what we need.” What could it be? If Feldenkrais was interested, it must have involved something regarding human movement. As in all other spheres of life, movement is one of the few elements in human behavior that transcends culture, race, sex, and era. While the kinds of movements we make vary depending on the demands of the environment in which we live and grow, that we need to move in order to survive is an unassailable fact. Moshe’s method uses our ability to learn in the process of moving as the way to improve ourselves in all aspects of our lives.

So in religious acts, the fact that we move in certain patterns, and the way we move, is a subject of interest to Feldenkrais. Coming at it from the other direction, examining the way we move in all spheres of life and determining which of those patterns provide us with a sense of satisfaction, particularly a deep, spiritual contentment, may bring us closer to an understanding of the purpose of religion in our lives.

The most important feature of religion is the bow. Even in those religions in which movement is restricted to the forward bending of the head, when the congregation as a group bows they are entering into another state. It is significant that this state is initiated by a specific movement. The preacher does not say “We will now enter into a prayer state which will last ten seconds.” The act of averting the eyes from the forward and upward focus of the pulpit with a definitive bend of the head produces a different feeling in the body than even a simple closing of the eyes. It is a movement closer to the curling of the foetus, the little ball we curl into when we wish to snuggle under the protection of our covers or our mothers’ arms.

In other religions, the movements are more pronounced. Judaism, Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy have ritualized movements in their long services such as the Eucharist or the kissing of the Torah as it passes. These movements have long been studied for their symbolic significance, but the fact that these movements have evolved and been maintained for thousands of years speaks to their effectiveness and the idea that by substituting different movements, one would lose the effect.

The Moslem custom of the deep bow and the placing of the forehead on the floor, done many times in a day, present an example of the full use of the body in prayer as an essential component in the connection with God. Going even further, we can look at the Dervishes who whirl and twirl in intricate, stylized dances for the purpose of keeping a connection with God. These movements are inseparable from the state of religious adherence and point to the fact that some cultures have long been aware of the connection between God and the body in motion.

We cannot ignore the element of movement in religious acts, but if we differentiate the movement from the ceremony, can we still claim that we are approaching a spiritual state? Is the movement without the intent sufficient or even valuable? If we are attempting to replicate a deep bow in a Feldenkrais lesson, what will we accomplish without the religious impulse behind it?

Movement without intent is simply habit, and Feldenkrais had an aversion to moving simply out of habit. But, after all, in an Awareness Through Movement lesson there is intent. The intent is to inspire awareness so that one is more intimately connected to the world around oneself, able to interact with ease and grace in the world and accomplish one’s dreams. These goals are not unlike the prayers we offer to our various gods. If the movement in prayer can bring us closer to such a way of being, then we may find a similar result using these movements outside of our prayer-centers.

For the unreligious, this means one can reach a sense of satisfaction and spirituality through the Feldenkrais lessons, solely as a result of the effect that movements done with awareness has on the self. For the religious, one may wish to differentiate between the purely spiritual motives in prayer and the more selfish physical desires in ATM class, but to isolate the two completely is to miss the point of Feldenkrais’ work, that we are complete humans at every moment in our lives and that no action can be stripped of one of its elements, physical, emotional, or spiritual without robbing it of some of its effectiveness.

Those who are religious may be able to use what they learn about themselves as moving bodies in their ATM’s and FI’s to reach a more profound state of calm and tranquility in prayer, to make a more satisfying movement when bringing their forehead to the floor, or to be aware of the difference between staring at the preacher and contemplating God with bent head. Feldenkrais’ work serves to offer us benefit no matter where we are by stressing the importance of awareness in our daily life, specifically in those times when we are most troubled and most at peace.

QUESTION FROM ASK ADAM:

Adam -- I enjoyed your article in Possibilities and sent it to a couple of my friends -- two who, like me, have very poor orientation skills and one who is blind and has fantastic orientation skills. It's a running joke among us that the one who's blind is the only one who can lead us... The rest of us often experience the feeling that we're looking at things that should be familiar from 180 degrees. It happens without warning, and can even happen in places I frequent every day. I know some of it has to do with lack of attention -- operating on automatic while your mind is engaged on something else, some of it is due to anxiety. Some of it is due to always having someone around who takes the lead and makes decisions/directions. I feel I have learned to be passive in travel. Any suggestions?

Joanne Welsh

Answer:

Dear Joanne,

Yes. All of the things you mention experiencing, such as lack of attention, anxiety, distraction, reliance on someone else, these all have physical manifestations. The Feldenkrais Method uses movement as the key and the medium to address these issues, because movement touches on the physical, emotional, mental, and interrelational. All three of my examples involve movement to some extent. If you want to improve these aspects of yourself, start by examining yourself in situations you describe. How do you walk by yourself in a mall versus the way you walk when someone else is guiding you? All the details, and the big picture too. Do you weight yourself differently? Rely less upon your eyes? Hold your mouth tight? Something else? What is it for you?

As you become aware, decide if you have a choice. Where is that choice? It may be that you can't stop clenching your fists, but you can wiggle your toes. Wherever the opening is, go for it and see what you can discover about more actively being in those situations instead of going along for the ride.