Volume
3, No. 1 –
January, 2004
Quote from Moshe: “I use many movements and reactions that were used in infancy and given up and stored in the normal way in the memory bank.” The Elusive Obvious, pp. 137-8
Our
Second Anniversary Issue!
Wow! Two years of Possibilities! (That sounds nice, doesn’t it?)
I began this newsletter as a way of letting more people know about the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and those who came after him, but it has grown into something more than that. It has connected me with you and has deepened my own understanding of the work as I’ve endeavored to explain it to you. For that opportunity I continue to be grateful.
In two years we’ve acquired a healthy group of subscribers, a nice archive full of interesting topics, and a bunch of great questions from you. Keep them coming! I love to answer your questions, and to hear your reactions to what I’ve said.
We need you to tell people about this site. Tell them there’s this great free monthly periodical that comes right to their e-mailbox and tells them things they always wanted to know but were afraid to believe. If you’re as excited about this work as I am, share it with someone. Together, we can make it to the next anniversary in style!
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What
Can I Do For Feldenkrais?
Wait, isn’t that backwards? Shouldn’t we be asking what Feldenkrais can do for us?
Not this time. In honor of our second anniversary, I want to tell you how you can help Feldenkrais, and why you should.
The Feldenkrais
Method was invented, more or less, in the 1950’s with the experimentations
of its creator, Moshe Feldenkrais. He used to hold classes regularly in a little
studio on
Feldenkrais’ ideas were considered radical in the 50’s. When he published his seminal book, The Body and Mature Behavior, he expressed his opinion that there were only about three people in the world who would understand it. He wrote that emotion, thought and movement were all different aspects of the same thing, a human’s ability to function. Defining a connection between the emotions and physical functioning seemed rather unscientific in an era of increasing specialization and separation of concepts.
By the 70’s people were flocking to him because of the reputation which he had earned from the results of his work on people. Nevertheless, understanding the ideas behind the work required one to experience it at least, and ideally to do the work oneself. His ideas, and even his successes, therefore, were easy to dismiss by outside observers as New Age pablum and unsubstantiatable hocus-pocus.
Those prejudices are still in place today among some doctors, educators and legislators. Ironically, there are so many new approaches to health today that even those who would be allies and supporters of the Method are unable to distinguish it from other unrelated fields like Massage and Chiropractic.
The Feldenkrais Method is different from all those other approaches. I think it’s better, not because it’s more effective or because the other approaches are invalid, but because the Method instructs a person on how to change themselves.
This self-change is instigated in an investigation of movement, but movement is only the medium, the means of communication, so chosen because of its emotional neutrality and the clarity of its feedback. The use to which the movement is put involves bringing a person into a recognition of a pattern which they previously considered unalterable. The Method encourages one to raise one’s level of thinking up a notch, to observe oneself, and even to notice how one observes!
Douglas Hofstadter, in his book, Godel Escher Bach, discusses this type of thinking as it relates to self-awareness, in computers and in people. He uses the example of a dog that sees a bone on the other side of a fence. Try as she might, the dog can’t get through the fence to get the bone. There is a gate twenty feet away where she might go through and get to the other side, but to get to the gate she’d have to go in the wrong direction, away from the bone!
We clever humans can laugh at the dog because we understand that what she sees as a waste of time, going in the wrong direction, is actually a necessary step in a two-step problem. But how do we deal with our pain? Do we seek the quickest way to end it, even if it means sticking our head through a fence again and again, scratching ourselves and never actually feeling better? If someone told us the way to end our pain was to first experience the pain fully, or ignore it and think about something seemingly unrelated, would we think they were crazy?
That’s what Feldenkrais does. It teaches people to take a step back and see a larger picture, of themselves, and of their world.
Learning to think this way is nothing new. It’s practiced by Zen monks, Orthodox Jews, Chess grandmasters, football coaches, anybody that ever succeeded at anything in the last ten-thousand years. It’s the heart of the learning process, the very way we learned to walk, to speak, to reach and attain. But we only think this way in arenas to which we are naturally inclined, those things we’re “good at.” You may be a naturally good basketball player but you wouldn’t touch a piano because you “can’t play.” I assert, based on what I know about learning, that if you knew how you improved your basketball skills, you’d be able to apply the same process to playing the piano and, with a little courage and some patience, you’d successfully improve.
Can you imagine what a nice world it would be if everyone decided their identities were not fixed by what someone told them they were capable of? If teachers knew how to reach that fifth-grade boy who can’t read and doesn’t want to cooperate because he’s sure he’s dumb? If the person in the wheelchair decided they’d like to see just how much they could actually move on crutches?
How much farther can we extend this kind of thinking? What if politicians were able to recognize the way they automatically reacted to the people around them, people who are constantly telling them to spend here, ignore this, fight that country? If they started questioning their process, which they now obey blindly because it’s the only way they believe they can survive? Would they start offering this country the best of their talents, finding a way to make progress together rather than in spite of one another?
What about us? Would we decide to make those changes in our lives that we’ve always decided were too difficult? Would we start getting rid of “stuff,” would we eat less, would we stop watching television? What’s keeping us from doing these things if we want to? Many of us lack a method for asking difficult questions of ourselves safely.
I submit that this method is the Feldenkrais Method. I think it’s the best way for Westerners to start thinking another way, and know they’re doing it. The fringe benefits of the work are enormous – you simply feel better. The deeper ramifications of the Method are that this part of the world, so based in greed and self-criticism, might have a means of changing itself.
Tell people about this work.
ASK ADAM
In our last issue, I discussed the reasons why after getting a stellar, life-changing lesson, you often find yourself returning to your old self and old feelings after a few days. That prompted this response from one of our readers:
You must be a mindreader, Adam. I'm in my second segment of Feldenkrais teacher training. Last night, Paul Rubin gave me a great FI and I was thinking this morning as I turned on my computer, how great my posture was and how much I wanted to hang on to that! Your article puts it all into perspective. -- Thanks. -- Joanne
ADAM REPLIES: I’m no mindreader. The experience of losing a lesson is so universal that I could have published that issue any time and I would have had someone say “Hey, that just happened to me!” The reason it’s such a common experience is because it’s a human experience, and, in fact, nothing to be alarmed about, as I said before. All it means is that our focus is on the small reward rather than the big one.
© 2004 Adam Cole