Volume 4, Number 8-9-10,
September October November 2005
Quote From Moshe: “In every conscious reaction, perception
becomes sensation when our interest is in what happens at the moment in our
body, rather than outside it. The image
of our body and its relation to space is an essential element in every
sensation.” (The Body and Mature
Behavior, p. 173)
A Triple Apology
For those of you who are faithful readers and subscribers to
Possibilities, please accept my apologies!
It has been three months since I put out the last issue. Some of you know that I am currently at
school getting a degree in Music Education.
The workload is tremendous and I have not had a moment’s time to do
anything else. But I pride myself on
keeping current, and so I have three, count them, three essays for you to make
up for the three months I was out. I
hope you find them enjoyable, and I hope we’ll be able to stay on schedule from
here on out!
The Body of the Beholder
I’ve often suspected that beauty is a very malleable thing. I don’t mean that by adding makeup you can become beautiful; I mean that by changing your awareness you can.
Often when I’m working with someone I know I’ve made a change in them when, as I look down at them lying on the table, they appear different to me. Especially in my training, when someone I knew well had reorganized themselves on the table, they looked “prettier”. That’s when I knew I was doing my job.
Have you ever seen a really good impersonator? I mean, like a professional on a comedy show? They aren’t as common as they used to be. I saw one once and was astounded. Here was a man who could impersonate all these familiar actors simply by taking on their bodily traits. What amazed me was that a man who adapts someone else’s organization can change appearance completely. This man looked nothing like Christopher Lloyd, and yet when he did the impersonation I saw Christopher Lloyd. Not the impersonator doing Lloyd, but Lloyd himself! And even more amazing, the impersonator became three other people whom he looked nothing like. It was as if his face disappeared, or more to the point, as if his physical features became less important than his organization.
The other day I saw myself on video and was alarmed. I don’t usually get to see myself that way, and all I noticed was the huge curve in my upper back. I’ve had what orthopedists call a “lordal curve” since I was a teenager. I’ve always been self-conscious of it and, like so many things we hate about ourselves, I spent a great deal of time trying to hide it. Eventually I dissociated myself from it.
Years later I’m only just beginning to recognize it again, as I did watching the video. Why did my “hump” stand out to me? Because I didn’t see it as part of me. It was just what I called it, a “hump,” excess matter on my back. When I moved, talked, lived, I didn’t take that part of me along. I couldn’t get rid of it, but I treated it like some kind of unwelcome alien visitor.
There’s a woman in one of my music classes who is obese. She clearly has some kind of problem with her weight that goes beyond overeating. This woman also happens to be a phenomenal singer. The other day I watched her give a mini-lecture. As she went in and out of describing certain aspects of opera-performance her charisma morphed from low to high and back again. One moment she was “fat girl,” the next, “charismatic singer.” I wondered at the difference. How was such a switch occurring?
When she was discussing her singing, she was using herself the way she does when she sings; that is, she was organizing herself very well, using her whole body to emote. Nothing was superfluous to that cause. When she wasn’t discussing her singing, she was a person trapped in a fat body. At those times most of her body seemed a nuisance, even an impediment, to her communication.
I doubt she was aware of the shift herself, at least on a level beyond “performance.” She could probably make the transformation easily on stage, but not recognize its significance in her life.
Of course we all have “humps.” Anything about us that we disown becomes our hump. For this woman, it was her weight. For you it may be your acne, your hair, your gangly arms, or whatever else you like to remove in your fantasies of “the perfect you.” But if you want the thing you hate to cease to matter to anyone, you have to include it in your awareness of your self-image.
How do we do this? The Feldenkrais Method brings us to awareness by having us incorporate into a movement the parts we may dissociate from. For me, I’ll have to start paying attention to the distance between my shoulder blades and the middle of my spine, really getting to know the space by observing it as I function. How does it move when I move? How have I been “taking it along for the ride” when I bend over, and how can I begin to use it in my bend instead so that it changes its shape in the most elegant way possible?
There’s a funny kind of recognition that happens in awareness. It’s akin to being led blindfolded to a room, having the blindfold removed and, after a period of disorientation, suddenly recognizing where you are. At first the room seems strange because you don’t think of it in isolation but rather as a place connected to other places. Without the pathway that leads there you may have trouble identifying it. But then you say, “Oh! I know where I am,” and the pathway fills itself into your mind.
Self-awareness does the same thing. You’ll be moving your arm slowly, paying closer and closer attention, and suddenly you’ll realize, “Oh my lord! That bump that’s been moving along with my arm is my shoulder! I always thought it was over there!” Suddenly the shoulder in your mind and the shoulder you can feel come together as one; you’ve owned it. You’re integrating.
The more you do this, the clearer your self-image will become. When your self-image becomes clearer you look better, more complete, more attractive. It’s not a function of your actual worth but rather your self-worth. The more of you that is acceptable to yourself, the more will be acceptable to everyone else.
The Right Game at the Right Time
I don’t play tennis, but my piano teacher does. He’s been playing tennis longer than he’s been playing the piano. Interestingly enough, he recommended The Inner Game of Tennis as a means for me to improve my piano playing, rather than The Inner Game of Music. So I bit.
It was
published in 1974 when Feldenkrais was still alive and beginning to gain steam
in the
If you read it, you’ll learn practical applications of awareness. Timothy Galwey’s insights are not too far from Moshe Feldenkrais, and the two of them have some of the same influences. Galwey’s take does differ from Feldenkrais’, and his book changed the way I think about the work. I want to discuss those differences with you today.
Like Feldenkrais, Galwey was seeking the means to improve himself by eliminating intellectual judgment about what he should be doing on the court, and focusing instead on what he actually did. This is right in line with Feldenkrais: “When you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.” This approach worked well for him and his students, and it works well for us too.
I assumed that the “inner game” was the little judging voice that ruined your awareness. I thought the whole book was about how not to play the inner game, how to transcend it so you could just enjoy the process. This was also how I approached Feldenkrais. I didn’t want to think about how uncoordinated I was anymore. I wanted to grow. So I let judgments go and vowed to no longer be in competition with myself.
Imagine my surprise when I read the third part of Galwey’s book where he defends competition. Now if you’re one of those people who’s been burned by competition or is afraid of it, please contain your disgust and keep reading. I was one of those people too, but Galwey’s book clarified the idea of competition for me in a way that made the quality of my life much greater.
He explains that competition can serve a very useful purpose. It can inspire. If two people enter into a contest with the right spirit, then they really want to win, not to prove they’re a better person but to show they’re a better player. They’ve spent some time working on their ability to quell the inner judge and the result, hopefully, is that they can play at the top of their game. When they do this, they can demonstrate that mastery by playing better than someone else, by winning.
Far from feeling belittled, the loser of a game can be inspired by such an opponent. Feldenkrais understood this too. He was a judo-man, and he knew that when a master throws you, you hit the floor in a more organized state. The master can teach you something about what’s missing in your organization by throwing you. It’s a very efficient way to learn!
Coming to terms with the idea of competition has freed me up. Instead of trying to transcend the idea of skill to avoid having to deal with fear of failure, I can show off my skill and face the fear. This is possible because my playing is no longer about my self-worth; instead it’s a demonstration of what I’ve done, and what I can do. If someone thinks I’m a better pianist than them, then I’m raising the bar and challenging that person (in a friendly way) to do the same. If someone thinks they’re better than me, then I can watch them play and I’ll be the lucky one who gets inspired.
In the end, the inner game isn’t a bad thing. It’s simply another contest going on inside of us rather than outside. The challenge is playing the right inner game. How does this help us in a lesson? We can understand the process of awareness as becoming more complete, and then use the awareness in those things in which we desire to excel. We need not fear anymore that the desire to excel will inhibit our ability to grow. We can make a distinction between improving and winning.
In Defense of Feldenkrais
Recently I had the pleasure of taking a workshop from Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer Michael Colgrass. Mr. Colgrass is certified to teach NLP and this was the tool he used to instruct us in his workshop. NLP stands for “Neuro-linguistic Programming” and is the work of two psychologists who were searching for a way to describe how successful people functioned so that the process could be taught as a conscious act. Colgrass was chosen by the proponents of NLP to model success in creativity. As he learned more about NLP, he became so interested that he became certified and began teaching the process himself.
In this case, the workshop taught by Colgrass involved Performance Anxiety, that is, Stage Fright. Those of you who have read my article “My Eyes Uncover My Hands” know that I have dealt with severe stage fright while playing the piano (but not, oddly enough, while acting) and that my work with the Feldenkrais Method proved the beginning of a way out of my problems. But Colgrass’ workshop was much more direct and concrete than the Feldenkrais approach and it led me to wonder why anyone would bother with the Feldenkrais approach at all.
Colgrass showed us how the eyes move to different places when one is contemplating in different ways. While remembering a visual, most people look up and left. While in a feeling state, most people look down and to the left. We are hardwired this way. Colgrass’ simple message was that, if you are aware of the placement of your eyes when you are in one state, you can change states by changing your eyes. He trained us to prepare ourselves to go on stage by breathing deeply and raising our eyes to enter a visual state where we could connect most easily with an audience. In this state we could also most easily visualize a good prior performance and place ourselves within that scene. He advised us not to lower our eyes to the floor, in the direction of the pure feeling state, while we were presenting ourselves. Once we had made contact with our audience, it was quite all right if we wished to enter the feeling state upon performing.
The results of this simple discipline upon the 50 people who engaged in the workshop were astounding. Everyone who was able to keep their eyes up from the moment they changed states was a more attractive, more confident presenter than they had been before. I laughed at myself because, as an actor, I have entered this state many times and used it successfully to present myself; but as a pianist I had always shunned such an “easy” way; I did not want my piano playing, which I considered to be “honest,” to become the deceptive art of “acting.” I hadn’t realized that the presenter-state was not the means to trick an audience but rather the best way to connect with them, no matter what you are doing.
As a Feldenkrais Practitioner, leaving the workshop, I found myself deliberately doing what I had never thought permissible before: I was holding my head and my eyes up, standing in “good posture.” Everything I had worked for over years in my Feldenkrais work was suddenly achieved in a few hours with this knowledge. My visual field was greatly improved; I was comprehending what I saw; and I could connect so easily to people I passed.
So why, I now ask, should I keep doing Feldenkrais? Why not dump the whole thing and become an NLP trainer? Well, not so fast…
In the first place, this game I played in Colgrass’ workshop is not a method, but a technique. Like all techniques, it fits within a larger framework like actor’s training, or musician’s training, or business-executive’s training. Without that framework, it will soon become swallowed by a person’s old style of thinking and lose its effectiveness.
The joy of the Feldenkrais Method is that I am learning every day to be aware of the changes I experience in myself, whether those changes come as a result of mourning a loss or beating my stage-fright. The Method is my tool for functioning within a given state, recognizing the nature of obstacles to my improvement, and surmounting them.
It occurred to me that many of us who would like to keep our eyes up to reap the benefits of Mr. Colgrass’ work are often conflicted. We may be unable to push out our chest and hold our head up without great strain, perhaps because we are stuck in a habitual posture of flexion. We may have to force ourselves into an extension to enter the visual state. This will cause as many problems as it solves; we may be able to connect, but only with strain and discomfort.
Feldenkrais offers us the way from one state to another along the most elegant path. It does not dictate what these states are or what we do with them. You and I could work together in a Functional Integration session to increase your awareness so that you could fully change states in a natural way, effortlessly. You could discover, to your joy, that you belong in whatever posture you desire to maintain.
© 2005 Adam Cole