Possibilities, Volume 2, No

Possibilities, Volume 2, No. 4

Quote From Moshe: “The more an individual advances his development the greater will be his ease of action, the ease synonymous with harmonious organization of the senses and the muscles.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 87

Going Through the Motions

Of one the great things about the Feldenkrais Method is that, by first providing us with a means of perceiving our habits, it enables us to break them. Typcially, it’s our habits that are preventing us from improving, and the lessons themselves are so cunningly created that they point directly at the choice we have been unwittingly making the same way every time. When we recognize our choice and develop the insight to choose differently, we are in a state of higher mindfulness which is very valuable to our health and well-being.

The greater our dependence on habit, the farther our mind is from the task at hand. To be sure, there is value in habit. Complete mindfulness is impossible because it would require us always to be thinking about every action at once. In such a state we would be unable to prioritize or focus on any particular activity to the exclusion of another. Driving a car, breathing, blinking, listening to the radio and so forth, would take an equal share of our attention and would inevitably cause us to crash. Habits allow us to make order out of the incomprehensible amounts of sensory input we are constantly receiving.

But when are habits valuable and when do they interfere? Most often, they are least valuable in learning. Mindlessly steering ourselves down the same pathways, taking no notice of the process we undergo, we are largely unresponsive to new stimuli and new challenges that arise. We resemble a blind man walking a familiar path through the woods. When he comes upon a fallen tree branch in the path, he must learn a new path or risk injuring himself in progressing forward.

As humans, we are glad for the path. Who wants to create a new way through the woods every trip when there’s a perfectly good one already? But when we come across a branch, or when we desire to know if there are ways we can go which will get us there faster, or which will be more pleasant, our habits prove not only useless, but in fact hindrances. Our desire for safety, security and the known, will keep us on that path even if better options exist. In fact, we may perceive the contrast between the path and the unexplored woods as an absolute, deciding that there are only two realities: the known and chaos.

At this point, habit is interfering with our perception to such a degree that, like the blind man, we are liable to treat the dangerous branch as an unavoidable reality, something that is simply part of the path we tread. We risk our safety considerably trying to walk through it or clamber over it, and we tire ourselves trying to pull it out of the way. How can we recall that there are other ways, that the branch is blocking only the path we know, and that we are capable of improving our ability to move through the woods?

The Feldenkrais Method is, of course, one powerful way of overcoming habit. But even the Method is not sufficient in and of itself. When Moshe Feldenkrais was training many of the second generation of practitioners in Amherst in the early 80’s, he took them through hundreds of lessons. Most of them were mystified at the unorthodox way he asked them to move, and were surprised at the benefit they received following his instructions. Feldenkrais insisted that people were not to take notes during the lessons, but were only to listen and move, writing down what they could remember afterwards. Against his wishes, several students surreptitiously took notes. Some time later, when Feldenkrais found them, he was very unhappy. To prove a point to the students, he read some of the notes back to them as a new lesson. Out of his mouth came a stream of simple instructions which, in and of themselves, did very little for the person following them.

What was the difference between his initial set of verbal instructions and the transcription he read? What many of Feldenkrais’ students had failed to recognize was that he was not teaching them to make the movements at all. He was guiding them through a process of self-examination in which the coordination of the movements, their ease, and their elegance all were an indication of their level of attentiveness. Rather than the movements creating better mindfulness, he wanted them to see that mindfulness resulted in better movement.

You can experience this yourself. Attend a Feldenkrais class and just go through the motions without thinking about what you’re doing. Or go to Yoga or Tai Chi. Do what you’re told without paying attention and see how it benefits you. Movement itself can generate a response in our nervous systems that stimulates learning, so we may find a small benefit from simply following directions. But unless we recognize that “sensation of learning,” pay more attention to it, and use it to improve the integration of our movement with our thinking and sensation, we will not reap any significant or lasting benefit from our “exercise.”

Do you go through the motions a lot? Is your mind following its own path while your body trudges along blindly? Do you ever pay attention to yourself, or are you always simply moving through your day like an automaton, eating without noticing the taste of your food, having sex as a meaningless diversion, fulfilling religious obligations as a way of satisfying your sense of duty? Is it safe for you to question anything, or would such questioning cause you to lose your path forever?

At least in our physical selves, we are capable of discovering our habits, feeling more energized, and perhaps avoiding a great deal of pain. If in our learning we go slowly and pay attention, we can overcome our habits, or decide to keep them, without incurring trauma. We have to decide that we consist of more than our habits, and that the world we are capable of experiencing is more than what we already know.

Take care,

Adam