Volume 3, No. 4, May 2004
Transitions and Pain
Quote from Moshe: “The similarity of reactions of a newborn infant to withdrawal of support, and those of fright or fear in the adult is remarkable. This reaction to falling is present at birth.” The Elusive Obvious, p. 57
About a year ago I went to the dentist. I have no great fear of dental visits, because I am a compulsive brusher. However, I have been lax about flossing for several years. This was my first visit to a new dentist, and he berated me right away, telling me that I had swelling of the gums, known as gingivitis, and that flossing was the best way to reverse it. He told me that when I floss, I have to push up into the swollen gums, which would hurt for a while until the gums toughen up.
Because my gingivitis had gotten noticeably worse over the last couple of years, I decided to face up to any fear of flossing and deal with the pain. The first few weeks were agony. I literally had to take the attitude of a masochist: “Boy, I love this pain. This pain is good for me!”
After awhile, my gums began to toughen up and the pain began to subside. It got me thinking about the transition I had taken from sick gums to healthy gums, and that the path from one to the other led through pain.
All transitions generally take us from an old place which is no longer stable to a new place which is. Transitions such as this can occur in physical situations like the one I just described, or in emotional ones. If you are married and you and your partner are fighting so much that you can no longer effectively live together, you are in a painful crisis point. Whatever lies you told yourself to bear the dull ache of the failure of the relationship are no longer convincing.
The path out of this situation is a transition to a new state where either you come to terms with your partner the way they are now, or you split with them. Either way, the transition leads through pain: the tortuous proceedings of a divorce or the agonies of counseling.
I believe that, to some extent, painful transitions are natural things, and by that I mean they are to be expected in nature, and are not simply evidence of our inability to do them right. Pain is to be expected as an inevitable, perhaps even a necessary ingredient of the change.
Why necessary? Why should a woman undergo labor on the way from being pregnant to being a mother? Why should we experience a fever while we are dealing with a virus?
I do not believe that the pain is separate from the experience of change. Rather, in this case, the pain comes as a result of our conscious attendance to the change, being awake through a birth so that we can more easily relax through contractions, rather than being numb from the waist down and waiting for the baby to come out. Pain in this case is our strange reward for taking the initiative. By avoiding the pain, we do not avoid the transition, but we miss our chance to direct it to the most positive outcome possible. If I chose not to floss, I might have developed gum-disease, and that would have been a less-favorable resolution than healthy gums.
Feldenkrais lessons take us through transitions which are sometimes very powerful. In the most extreme case, we may lie down on the floor feeling unable to function and then rise up forty minutes later feeling whole for the first time in our lives. Usually, the change is more measured and subtle, but when one is dealing with the nervous system and one’s ability to function, or to be unable to function, there are always profound issues on both sides of the experience.
So Feldenkrais lessons can be painful in that sense, emotionally, if not physically. But Moshe Feldenkrais was well aware of this, and so are all Feldenkrais practitioners. We are trained to direct our clients to go slowly, stopping well before pain registers. We steer people away from habitual paths of action that lead to failure and instead search with them down pathways that may be unfamiliar and yet easier. The path to a mobile left shoulder may be discovering the contraction and expansion of the ribs on the left side to assist instead of simply gritting your teeth through the pain.
So many people feel that something in their lives is impossible because the only transition of which they can conceive will result in overwhelming pain, emotional or physical. Feldenkrais lessons are designed to decrease the focus on the goal and awaken the person’s conscious attendance to themselves in the moment, so that they can be well aware when they are approaching pain.
If one goes slowly enough, then a single transition that would result in great pain may be reduced to ten transitions that result merely in the slight discomfort of unfamiliarity. By not really worrying about how far one can go, one continues to move along a path through relatively modest transitions, continuing to make progress that, seen from the perspective of time, is remarkable.
These attitudes, anathema to the no-pain/ no gain model, have made Feldenkrais suspect among certain types of therapists who know only how to work their clients hard. Surely hard work is inevitable when one has a limited amount of time to accomplish one’s goal, be it taking a math test or starting a business. But in human health, such haste forces a transition that may or may not be ideal.
Realistically, a person will be adapting to their physical situation their whole lives and not just after an injury or illness. They will always be aging, changing, coping with some kind of difficulty. It is deceptive to lead someone to believe that they are either non-functional or functional due to their ability to pass some kind of physical test. Rather, making someone aware of the nature of transition from one state to another gives them the tools they need to heal in a pleasant way and one that is most effective. If these transitions are slow enough for the needs of the patient the pain can be minimized and the benefit can be maximized.
Often times we are very impatient to get better. We do not want to go slow. But this attitude is only a reflection of our hurried world and can do us little good. While we are often put in positions where everyone is demanding we get better right away, we cannot do so. If we try we will simply be forcing a particularly painful and shoddy transition, usually resulting in our moving into another crisis which, again, knocks us out. This goes on indefinitely until we finally have to slow down.
There is pain in life, but there is also intelligence and awareness. While it behooves us not to lie about the nature and necessity of pain, neither should we convince ourselves that it is always inevitable, or that the greater the pain, the greater the benefit. If you focus on pain, you tend to miss what comes before and after.
© 2004 Adam Cole
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Ask Adam
Question: “How can I become a Feldenkrais therapist?” Lem Meinonit
Answer: First, Feldenkrais practitioners are not strictly therapists, though the work has therapeutic value. It’s more accurate to call us “teachers,” though some would argue with that as well. “Practitioner” is good enough, since we do practice what we preach! (Except we don’t preach. Well, I do…)
Anyway,
there are numerous trainings all around the world and new ones are always
beginning. If you go to www.feldenkrais.com, you can explore the
site for training opportunities in the
Trainings generally take three or four years and are done in two or three sessions of several weeks each. After that, you will be certified, although a certain amount of continuing education is required to keep that certification.