Volume 4, Number 7, August 2005

Quote From Moshe: “On examining even the most generous list of instincts, no other one but fear is found which inhibits motion. Now, the problem of ‘can’ and ‘cannot’ is fundamentally a question of doing…” (The Elusive Obvious, p. 63)

A Choice Encounter

One of the great lessons I, in my infinite wisdom as a parent, have tried to impart to my children is that they always have a choice. (Even when they really don’t have a choice, like when I tell them to do something and, dogone it, they better do it, I present it to them as a choice.) I say, “You have a choice. You can do what I say, or you can do what you want and then this will happen.” That’s the key: take a situation in which they are fighting with you because they don’t like how much power you have, and give the power back to them. “Kid, it’s your choice.”

What I like about this exercise is that I can turn it on myself. When I’m faced with a situation where I feel like a victim, either of circumstances or of an emotional state, I remind myself that I’m choosing my response. This is especially bitter medicine to swallow when I’m angry. At first, anger is a chemical response, out of our control. Things do make us angry and often we can’t control the inbred, hardwired reaction. But after a very short time the initial stimulus fades. Yet we find we are still angry; we nurse a grudge, turn the situation over and over in our heads. In fact, we are choosing to remain angry, all the while telling ourselves the way we feel is their fault.

We don’t want to admit we have the power because owning the power will require us to do the work to change ourselves. We want someone else to do the work, preferably the person who we are angry at. Of course, other people rarely go the distance to fix our problems for us unless we are extremely aggressive or extremely manipulative. For those of us that are neither, we are stuck with our feelings until we choose to do what it takes to feel otherwise.

As difficult as it is to make the long-term shift, recognizing our power to choose in situations where we had previously considered ourselves trapped is an extremely empowering thing to do. When we see that we are choosing a reaction of violence rather than simply riding the non-stop rail towards it, we can envision new outcomes, change relationships that we thought were unchangeable, and create a life for ourselves that we had always assumed belonged only to other people.

What is true for the mind is also true for the body. So many of us find ourselves with certain physical problems that we assume are hardened and inescapable. But after a short time working with the Feldenkrais Method, we discover ourselves escaping these states, if only temporarily. When experiencing sudden relief after years of chronic back pain, we long to live permanently in that place. It often takes years to make that temporary shift a permanent change, but it can be done, and it comes from recognizing where our choices are.

In our bodies, as our minds, we have the ability to self-examine. The Feldenkrais Method creates this environment of self-examination through movement. By approaching physical challenges such as rolling from the back to the side and then returning, or rising off the floor gracefully, we are forced to confront those places where we get stuck, where we either push through or avoid our difficulty. If we are patient, if we are curious, if our Feldenkrais teachers our doing their jobs, we can change our attitude towards, and thus our approach to, those difficult spots. If we go slowly enough and keep our minds clear we can find the choices that were not apparent to us before.

An amazing thing happens when your physical choices increase. Your mental and emotional choices also multiply. This is especially important for children and for the very old. A child has limited experience and cannot always envision the end of a sequence of choices. By experiencing certain consequences in their movement, they may be able to imagine the existence of such chains of thought in other areas. “If I combine this series of concepts, the following occurs.” This shift happens naturally when we are babies but as we get older we begin replacing this process with a more intellectual one which may not be as efficient.

As we age we begin to have a sense that our options are vanishing, that we have far fewer choices than we did before. Family, career path, and illness can corral us so that we see only a straight road ahead, often lined with razor wire to keep us upon it. This reduction in our sense of choice takes a toll upon our body as we physically conform to the situations we imagine to be our prison.

Even when our constraints begin to lift, we continue to believe that things once fluent are fixed in stone. Our identity narrows and, correspondingly, our physical ability deteriorates. We wear grooves in ourselves from acting and reacting in the same way over decades. These grooves go all the way down to the bone and we experience aches and pains, debilitating conditions and depression.

The elderly benefit from Feldenkrais in several ways. Obviously it opens up more choices for them in their physical life. The lessons allow them to fully explore the range of possibilities in their bodies that they have long since forgotten or denied themselves. But discovering that what was once a physical constraint is really a choice makes its way to other realms of the imagination as well, so that someone who finds themselves able to move in more directions will also begin to see more facets of themselves. Perhaps they can choose to be more loving, or more patient, or more assertive than they ever were able to be before.

This is the gift of the Method to all ages: To provide us a view of choices whether we choose to make them or not. We have only to become aware of the forked path and we can go wherever our choices lead us, if we so choose.