Volume 4, Number 2-3,
March-April 2005
Quote from Moshe: “Correction of movements is the best means of self-improvement.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 33
This month we’re
celebrating the launching of a new website by Guild Certified
Feldenkrais Practitioner Louise Runyon. Louise Runyon has
over 1,000 hours of training in the Feldenkrais Method, and is also a
certified teacher of BONES
FOR LIFE™, a Feldenkrais approach to
improving bone strength and alignment. She has been a dancer/choreographer
since 1980, performing throughout the Southeast and the nation, and has taught
movement for over 20 years. Louise maintains a private Feldenkrais practice in
Decatur, Georgia.
POSSIBILITIES: So, why a website?
RUNYON: A website is a good way for many people to find answers to their
questions about the Feldenkrais Method, and about my practice in
POSSIBILITIES: How does your site differ from those
already out there?
RUNYON:There are a couple of areas I
specialize in, and the site has pages for each of them: Bones for Life, work
with Performing Artists, and Pelvic Floor Power.
POSSIBILITIES: What is Bones For
Life? Is it different from The
Feldenkrais Method?
RUNYON: Bones for Life is a Feldenkrais approach
to prevention and reversal of osteoporosis and to building bone strength - and
much more. It is based on the idea that impact, widely recognized as
necessary for building bones, is most effective when it can travel through the
whole skeleton in a wave-like fashion. Along with freeing the individual
vertebrae so that movement can pass freely through the skeleton, Bones is also
very much focused on alignment. It is unfortunately true that when many
people begin a program of impact, they hurt themselves. An aligned
skeleton is one which can safely absorb impact.
Bones for Life is different from traditional Feldenkrais work in that it
is specifically focused on the function of walking. Although much of
Bones work is done lying on the floor, it is always organized around this
function. Bones classes are also somewhat more vigorous than Feldenkrais
Awareness Through Movement classes, involving more
rapid, rhythmic movement. I believe that Bones for Life is a development
of, and not different from, the Feldenkrais Method. Its benefits
are much broader than simply building bone strength: it is invaluable in
improving alignment, and in improving movement in general and walking in
particular. Students also report that they gain height and develop a
sense of sturdiness.
POSSIBILITIES: They
gain height? How is that possible?
RUNYON: Absolutely. And this is only people who
actually happened to have a doctor's visit, and got measured. Last fall,
two people in my classes reported growing half an inch, and a woman in my Bones
for Life training reported growing three-quarters of an inch. It happens
because the spine becomes more mobile, the vertebrae
differentiate from each other and are no longer "stuck
together." In short, the spine straightens; it doesn't actually get
longer, but the kinks smooth out.
POSSIBILITIES: How
did you get involved in Feldenkrais? What made you decide to take a training?
RUNYON: I first consulted a practitioner
when having problems with carpal tunnel syndrome. Much to my surprise,
the heel spur pain I had had for four years completely
disappeared after my second class. I was very curious about that, since
that was not what I had come for! I came to learn that many surprises are
in store when people do Feldenkrais work, reflecting the fact that
"everything is connected."
Two other experiences really helped me decide to do the training. As a
modern dancer, I often combine movement with words. I was performing in
The third thing that convinced me was having an emotional reaction, quite
unexpectedly, to moving different parts of myself.
I realized that I had unknowingly kept myself from moving in certain ways for
many years. Finding a connection between my emotions and my movement made
it clear to me that the Feldenkrais Method was profound work, that it
was making a difference not only in the way I moved, but in the way I was
living. I felt that I was releasing a lot of suppressed emotion through
freeing my movement.
POSSIBILITIES: What
do you think distinguishes The Feldenkrais Method from other work? Do you
think it’s better than other work, or just different?
RUNYON: I think the Feldenkrais Method,
while having some things in common with many other disciplines, is quite unique
and ahead of its time. One of Dr. Feldenkrais's
books is calledThe Elusive Obvious, and
I think that characterizes the work well. The Method is extremely
sophisticated, reflecting that we are
tremendously complex beings, and extremely simple at the same time. It is
based on a sophisticated understanding of the interconnectedness of things -
how all the parts of ourselves interconnect with each other, and how we interconnect
with our environment. I think it is advanced, profound, work,
representing the wave of the future.
POSSIBILITIES: Lots
of disciplines claim to serve the “whole person” and the “interconnectedness of
things.” How does Feldenkrais
deliver that claim in a way that is different from any other new-age approach?
RUNYON: The answer lies in movement, and
embodied learning. It is not enough to understand intellectually that
parts of ourselves are interconnected. Movement
helps us feel this. When we push our feet into the floor and feel
something move all the way up the spine to the head, we know beyond the shadow
of a doubt that the spine is a chain, that there is no part that does not
affect another. The implications of this are tremendous not only for
easier, more functional moving, but for living in general. When we feel a
new possibility in an embodied way through movement, we begin to recognize -
often on an unconscious level - that we have choices in our behavior, and find
ourselves acting in new and surprising ways.
POSSIBILITIES: What
are your long-term goals as a practitioner?
RUNYON: I am interested in working with
people so that they may begin to sense how they can move, and live, with more
of themselves engaged, so that they begin to see themselves differently, and
begin to recognize how much more is possible for them than they may have ever
imagined.
POSSIBILITIES: Do
you really think people are going to come to you for that? It sounds very
personal, not something that a Method focused on improving someone’s movement
should be able to do.
RUNYON: Generally, people come to Feldenkrais
because of pain, dysfunction or injury, or because they want to move more
easily. I certainly did - I couldn't type, clap my hands or even hold a
phone for 6 months. The Method does not treat pain directly, but gives
people options other than the habitual. When I became more aware of what
I was doing that was putting me in that situation, I became aware that I had
options in many areas of my life. I have seen this happen to many, many
people with whom I have worked.
POSSIBILITIES: What
would you like to see happen with this work?
RUNYON: I would like to see the Feldenkrais
Method utilized in every classroom in this country - so that children can
be engaged in learning with all of themselves, rather than to sit still and
silent and be forced to learn only with their minds, which leaves out so
much. I would like to see every performing arts program in the world
offer the Method to students from the very beginning of their training, so that
these artists could perform with longevity, without injury, and to the maximum
of their potential. I would like to see the Method taught in every
medical school, so that doctors could understand that there is so much pain and
injury that can be avoided so easily. As the Feldenkrais Method is an approach, there is
no area of life in which it cannot be effective. I do believe that it is
the wave of the future. The destruction of the environment is beginning
to teach us, finally, about the interconnectedness of all living things.
I think the time is ripe for this kind of thinking to be applied in every area.
POSSIBILITIES: I
think a lot of people tend to shy away from Feldenkrais because it claims to be
all things for all people. How can this Method succeed where a host of
other tried and true approaches are already in play and are working very
well? Actors, for instance, have a huge repertoire of warm-ups and tools
at their disposal. Why do they need Feldenkrais?
RUNYON: Actors are a good case in
point. Everyone has seen movie actors who play the same character in
every role - something close to themselves, probably. The Method is about
choices, and an actor who desires to play different roles genuinely must move
beyond his own habitual choices in movement, thought, expression, etc.
Actors who engage in theatrical improvisation exercises often tend to affect
the same volume and style of sound and movement over and over. When
actors have done a Feldenkrais lesson and returned to the exercise, very
different things have come out of them.
Even the most accomplished musician may have a certain way that they set
themselves up for performance: perhaps they tighten their lower back as they take
their seat and begin to play. Feldenkrais helps people to
understand what they are doing and how they are doing it. A musician I
have worked with came to recognize just this phenomena.
As he began approaching performance with his spine in a more neutral position,
fellow musicians commented that his playing became more fluid and satisfying.
POSSIBILITIES: What’s
your most inspiring experience in this work as a teacher? As a recipient?
RUNYON: There
have been so many significant moments in doing Feldenkrais work with people
that I will have to mention a few:
A client called me on the morning of her first appointment and said that she
couldn't keep her appointment because she had woken up that morning and
couldn't see. She was unable to form images from the visual information
coming into her eyes: what looked to her like a skydiver on TV was, for
example, actually someone mopping the floor. I took my table to her house
and worked with her, doing a lesson with movements of the jaw and the eyes.
At the beginning she was unable to see my facial features; at the end she could
see me blink. By the end of that day images on the TV were
coalescing. She continued to do the jaw/eye movements on her own,
especially when her eyes were giving her particular difficulty. Within a
couple of weeks (and a couple of group classes) she was able to drive during
the day, and within a couple of months she could drive at night.
Just last week a woman I work with, who hadn't been able to walk around the
block since a car accident a year ago, took an 8-mile hike without
incident! A student in my Bones for Life class, she used several Bones
for Life variations whenever she started to feel tenuous during her hike.
Early in my practice, I worked with a 50 year-old man who had been in
psychotherapy for most of his adult life, dealing with an extremely abusive
childhood. During the course of our work together (10 sessions), he
experienced a sense of wholeness for the first time in his body.
This had to do with concrete things: taking in his full volume of breath,
taking up his rightful amount of space in the world; feeling grounded,
literally, by sitting with his feet in contact with the floor, perhaps for the
first time; moving slowly, feeling himself move through space, rather than
habitually moving fast in a life-long effort to avoid being caught.
Movement was the missing piece for him - actually feeling himself in space and
in relationship to the earth - that no amount of
therapy had been able to supply.
I worked with a woman who was very active and in excellent shape but was
habitually very nervous and had great difficulty sleeping. It is very
hard for her to feel where her head should be over her spine. It was a
small, simple moment for her, but extremely profound, when she came to sit at
the end of a lesson and her head and spine were aligned. She looked, and
felt, regal - calm and in control, like somebody who could handle whatever
needed to be handled.
Another woman had broken her leg 37 years before, and the bone healed
"lapped over" so that this leg was actually shorter than the other
leg. The lesson we did directed her attention to this place in her leg in
a way that she had never done in all those years. It was a powerful emotional
experience for her, and turned an awkward, disjointed walk into something much
smoother and more pleasing to her. With legs of different lengths, she
will never have a completely symmetrical walk, but symmetry is not what was
important. Comfort, feeling connected to her own
leg and finding pleasure in her walk were far more important.
Louise
Runyon’s website can be found at www.feldenkraisatlanta.com
The Mixed Blessing of
Flexibility
In our last issue we talked about the need for increased flexibility, not merely for the sake of being able to do cool things with your body, but for the process involved in getting to that point. Those of us who consider ourselves “not very flexible” or even “hopelessly stiff” often look with awe upon those people who can flop around, as if they possess the secret to the universe and we’d love to be in their shoes for a while.
But extreme flexibility is not always what it’s cracked up to be. There are certain people whose bodies are as loose as rag-dolls who, nonetheless, have just as many problems as their stiff cousins. How is that possible? Even if you’re flexible, you may not know the answer.
When I was in my training, I continually lamented my stiffness. It prevented me from reaching the important part of many a Feldenkrais lesson and, in some cases, from even doing the beginning. I thought of myself as one stiff mass of putty and I hoped that the Method would enable me to touch my toes at least. Then one day our trainer mentioned to everyone that I had incredible flexibility in my ankles.
I was astounded. This seemed like some kind of enormous complement that I didn’t think I deserved. Flexible? Me?
He didn’t elaborate, and I didn’t think to ask him about it. I just filed the information in the back of my mind and moved on. One day many years later as I was contemplating the memory of that statement it occurred to me that I had never twisted my ankle despite a number of awkward falls and missteps. Usually when I should have twisted my ankle I just rolled off it, stumbled a little, and was fine. When I realized the unlikely strangeness of this fact I began to see that maybe my trainer had been correct and had observed something in me that I’d always taken for granted.
But once I admitted I had over-flexible ankles I started to wonder how they’d gotten that way when all of the rest of my body is stiff. Could it be that there was a connection between my super-flexible ankles and my mercilessly stiff hip-joints?
I remembered doing hands-on work with another trainer who was so loose I hardly knew what to do with her. At that time I thought the goal of the Method was to increase everyone’s flexibility. She was already there; what could I do for her?
When I told her my dilemma, she informed me that super-flexible people often lack bodily organization, that they can put themselves anywhere but don’t really have a sense of where their parts wind up or how they connect. If you think about the perfect tennis serve, it relies on a smooth arc in the arm, with the engaged musculature contracting and expanding perfectly. If someone is very stiff in their upper body they won’t be able to make the arc as elegant as it needs to be. The movement will be jerky. But what about the super-flexible person who can make the arc without any trouble? Well, they’re likely not to be able to feel the perfect arc. They’ll flail their arm out without really knowing where it’s supposed to go. Such a serve lacks power and accuracy. Flexibility provides opportunity, but not enough constraints.
My flexible ankles were the counterpoint to my inflexible hips. In a better-organized bottom-half, I’d be able to make adjustments between the ankles, knees and hips as I walked, ran, and sat. Every joint would have an equal reaction in another joint. Instead the ankles were taking all the strain and keeping the hips still, like a secretary who doesn’t allow any calls to reach the boss. I had no idea where my ankles were supposed to go in any given situation, how much or how little they were supposed to bend at any time, and so forth.
The result of my flexible ankles? Stiff sitting, awkward walking, a frozen skeleton, even up into my ribcage and my neck. When I was a boy my head used to bob as I walked, making me the target of jeers. If I’d been able to feel the transference of my weight from my feet through my ankles, knees, hips, and ribs, I would have walked much more elegantly. It would have felt better and looked better.
True, I never sprained my ankle. But I never felt safe on skis, I couldn’t consistently play soccer well, and my lower back ached whenever I played the piano.
My work in the Method has increased my flexibility and I am very happy about it. But the real value of the work has been to increase my awareness of myself, to show me which parts of myself are flexible as well as inflexible, and to give me the internal sensation to organize all my parts into an efficient, elegant, powerful whole.
What’s your state? Are you flexible, stiff, or a little of both? Could it be that the answer to your problems has always been finding a way to bring your intelligence into the equation so that the parts of you which are flexible and the parts which are stiff both have an opportunity to change? Feldenkrais, anyone?
© 2005 Adam Cole