Volume 4, Number 5, June 2005

Quote from Moshe: “….our self-image…governs our every act…” Awareness Through Movement, p. 3

Awareness Defined

This week’s Possibilities was inspired by an AskAdam conversation. If you head to the bottom of this newsletter you can read the whole thing. In it, a reader complains of being unable to solve a physical problem despite previous experience with Feldenkrais. The reader made a comment to me during that exchange: “Wanting to make pain stop is natural.  Learning from pain is natural.  So's learning from joy.”

For some reason, that caught my attention. Learning from pain is something I’m well familiar with, but joy? I thought joy was the stuff you got after you learned, your reward, your respite from all the learning. But after I thought about it, I realized that we can learn from positive experiences as well as negative, of course!

Then I began to wonder at my seeming indifference to joyful experiences. Have I learned from joy, I asked myself. Am I capable of joy? Pleasure, yes. Satisfaction, probably. But joy? That pure, healthy happiness? Do I experience that?

It may surprise you that I asked myself those questions. It surprised me. It seemed like a ludicrous idea, that I should have such a wonderful life, a supportive family, that I could live in a beautiful place, do interesting work, and not experience joy. Well, it was ludicrous. And it was untrue. Once I thought about it, I recognized the places in my life where I experience joy. They’re everywhere. I also began to see how I have learned from my joy, although that understanding is deeper and farther away. For me this was an unexpected exercise in awareness.

Many people have difficulty with the concept of ”awareness,” especially when used in The Feldenkrais Method. The awareness we search for is triggered by movement, but the things we become aware of go beyond physical experiences. What are those supra-physical experiences? If you’re one of those people who doesn’t understand the idea of “awareness,” you may find yourself wondering what it is, and how you’re supposed to get it. Maybe you already got it, and it’s no big deal. Or maybe it’s some wonderful illumination and you’ll never get close.

What are you doing with your breathing right now? Chances are, until I asked you that question, most of you were not thinking about your breathing. You weren’t even aware of your breath. It was still there, though. You’d been breathing for a long time up to that point. That’s the key to awareness: the conscious recognition of something you have access to.

In my case, the awareness centered around joy. I’d always had joy in my life, but until I asked myself about it, I was unaware of it. Now that I’m aware of my joy, I can refine that awareness, find out where the joy is greatest, and begin to learn from it.

In our work with the Method our awareness usually centers around something more tangible, like the sensations of the toes. Can you feel the pad of each individual toe against your shoe? Are you able to discern one from the other? Can you choose one and press it into your sole? Some of you are better able to do this than others.

Is it worthwhile to increase your awareness of your toes? I think so. Every day most of you spend an enormous amount of time on your feet. All the while, your toes are making subtle adjustments to help keep you balanced, to propel you, and to counteract the movements of the ankle. Your toes are an important piece of your stability in standing and moving. If you want to improve in your standing or your moving, one way is to better learn how your toes assist you in those activities. How do you learn that?

By getting greater awareness of your toes. You have sensations that you may not have registered. You are taking actions involuntarily with your foot as a matter of habit. If you spend some time investigating your foot, with a little help from The Feldenkrais Method, your awareness of your feet will increase. What you can learn from that awareness will surprise you. I guarantee it.

AskAdam

This month’s AskAdam is a doozey!

Adam -- I enjoy your newsletter.  I do have a question for you, but would appreciate your not using my name. 

A decade ago, I used to harbor stress in my shoulders, keeping them slightly shrugged, and coupled with overuse (on the computer) developed repetitive stress symptoms in my arms and hands. After bringing myself to an awareness of my tendency to tense that way, I broke myself of the habit.  It took a long time.

Now, I'm having a similar problem.  I'm again holding tension.  It is as though I were lying flat on my back and trying to lift my head ever so slightly using my neck muscles.  I sometimes wake in the middle of the night on my side, with this tension -- so I'm not really trying to lift my head forward, but the movement is the same.  There's also tension in my tongue.  Once I call my attention to it, I can relax, but it's habitual and subconscious.

I realize that when sitting, my head may want to lift and tilt back (throat forward).  I sometimes feel tension between my shoulder blades, and often have stiffness in my neck.  I realize that if I sat balanced on my pelvis, the rest of my spine would stack nicely and my head could be supported without effort.  I'm guessing that perhaps, engrossed in my work, I sit "incorrectly" for long periods of time.  Perhaps the tension I feel when I wake up during the night is a tension of muscles that have been trying to balance my head during the day.  Despite this awareness, I don't know how to correct the situation long-term. 

I am taking Feldenkrais classes weekly and am trying to get more physical exercise.

Do you have any advice to offer me? Thanks in advance for your help.-- J

***

Hi, J!

You were able to break the habit the first time by bringing yourself to an awareness of your tendency to tense.  It was the process of bringing yourself to the awareness that changed you, not the information you acquired.

I think this time you’re trying to make the pain go away like it did last time, instead of trying to learn something about yourself.  You’re seeking a long-term solution, but you’re looking for a short-term fix.

The first time, you were probably trusting a process of Feldenkrais and entered a state where you could make some profound changes in yourself.  This time, you’re trying to make the changes by going through a more superficial process.  I’d go very slowly and look for the place, anywhere in yourself, where you begin to feel some resistance, emotional, physical, mental.  You may find it’s somewhere that seems entirely removed from “where the problem is.”  Discovering what that far-away resistance has to do with your current problem is the thing you want to increase your awareness of.

Yours most truly,

Adam

***

Thanks, Adam.  One of the things I've just resumed doing is meditation -- haven't done that regularly since my first injury was resolved.  Filling lungs with air is hard to do unless you're sitting up.  Now that I've studied Feldenkrais, I'm aware of the actual internal space.  But mentally, I'm encouraging myself to accept risks and challenges without being afraid.  I've been doing nothing but changing and growing this past year -- it's been a bit intense (in-tense) at times. I think, mostly, it's a lack of balance -- not enough play.  Not enough time for nurturing me. -- J

***

You’re welcome, J!

Pain and tension are incredible distractions when you want to meditate.  I think the Buddhist monks simply incorporated the pain and tension into the meditation rather than trying to use the meditation to get out of it.

Yours truly,

Adam

***

Dear Adam,

I guess I don't understand what you're trying to say, or maybe I'm not communicating well.  When you meditate or do Feldenkrais, you're not "trying to" do anything -- you just are.  It is what it is and you are what you are.  I was trying to communicate positive, global things I was doing to try to bring my life more into balance and keep myself open to any opportunities for learning that might present themselves.

Wanting to make pain stop is natural.  Learning from pain is natural.  So's learning from joy.  -J

***

Oops!

I’m sorry if I offended by presuming something.

I love e-mail, but it’s very easy to communicate badly with words.  Please let me know if I continue to misunderstand you or sound like I’m talking more to myself than to you!

In fact, Feldenkrais is not the same as meditation if you see meditation as “just being.”  There’s an active aspect to Feldenkrais which makes it effective.  But it’s not active in a sense of “trying” to do something.  When you do an ATM the practitioner is asking questions that you are actively seeking the answer to.  The difference is that you don’t need to “do” anything once you answer the questions.  Simply changing your attention is more important.

Often there are things you can actively do to improve yourself, reduce your pain, increase your effectiveness.  But most people attempt to address these problems with a limited amount of information.  Feldenkrais lessons are DESIGNED to teach you how to notice more so you can start to understand how to change something.  Often, what happens is that, after increasing their awareness, a person brings more of themselves into an activity, like typing or sitting.  While they are being more active, and even deliberate, it can feel more natural and less effortful.

You may already know this.  And, for that matter, this may be the way you see meditation as well.  Or…maybe not.  What struck me from your initial description of your issue was that the first time you worked through your problem, you seemed to trust the Method a little more because it was new.  As a result, you got the benefit of the work, perhaps without realizing fully what you did.  Now it looks like you’re at a different crossroads.  You can’t simply go through the motions of the Method to address your pain because you know too much, but you also recognize that trying too hard to fix your problem isn’t effective.  So I was suggesting that by looking in a different place, or in a different way, than you have before, you might find yourself open the way you were the first time.

It’s the fuzziness of this kind of thinking that makes Feldenkrais so challenging.  As far as learning from joy, I read in an article recently Moshe’s thoughts that laughter had to be a part of a lesson, so your comment is well taken.  I have a lot to learn about learning from joy.

Please be blunt, if you can, about whether what I’ve said is speaking to your situation.

Yours most truly,

Adam

***

No, you haven't offended me, Adam, although the conversation was getting a bit too cerebral, there.  And I appreciate you taking this much time. 

I'll focus on your suggestion that I go slowly and notice any resistance (physical, emotional, mental), and see where it takes me.  Please feel free to continue the conversation.

Also, I realize that Feldenkrais and meditation are very different, but they do both share an active engagement on the part of the practitioner -- maintaining focus of attention on the breath is similar to focusing attention on a particular movement (and perceiving differences).  And they are both certainly involved with bringing someone into a state of heightened awareness. They both result in feelings of relaxation and renewal. And I guess, basically, that's what it's coming down to for me and my relationship with the Method -- it's a practice.  Although I gather you're only supposed to do ATMs if they hold your interest -- they usually do.  Maybe I'm just a slow learner:)

Anyway, thanks again. – J

***

My pleasure, J!  Always very interesting.  I can understand conflicts in a training.  My training was rife with such impressions and many people left.  Glad you still like the Method.

I’ll compile our conversation into an edited version for the newsletter, leaving out any telltale identifying information.  If you want any more feedback (I’ll refrain from calling it “advice!”) feel free to buzz me.

Slow learner?  That’s the idea, right?

Yours most truly,

Adam