Volume 5, Number 7, August 2006

Quote From Moshe: “Clear thought is born only in the absence of strong feelings that distort objectivity. Thus a necessary condition for the development of effective thinking is continuous withdrawal from feelings and proprioceptive sensations. Nevertheless, harmonious development remains more important to the individual than discordant development even if effective thinking is the disturbing factor.” Awareness Through Movement, p. 52

Another Milestone

This is our Fiftieth Issue! We’re very excited that we’ve been able to serve the general community so long. We hope it’s been a fun trip so far, and we hope twice as many of you (at least!) will be here to celebrate our 100^th issue!

Reese’s Peace

The Feldenkrais Community lost one of our own last month. Mark Reese was an internationally renowned practitioner and trainer. At the time of his death he was working on a biography of Moshe Feldenkrais, one which I hope will find its way to the shelves eventually.

I did not know Mark Reese. What I know of him I learned from a wonderful testimonial written by one of my trainers, Russell Delman. In that testimonial, Delman describes the unexpected joy that Reese found near the end of his life:

Most recently, I can remember him fiddling with the annoying feeding tube that he needed for the final months, when he looked up, eyes full of deep sincerity, and said, “if you would have told me a few years ago that I would be happy living the rest of my life with a dry mouth (due to the radiation Mark’s salivary glands and taste buds were not functioning) and a feeding tube, I would have said you were crazy. But you know, I feel so much love with Carol and I am so inspired by the book that, on a good day like this, I would be happy to live with these conditions forever.”

Mark was really happy when he wasn’t miserable. What a strange sentence but it is true. He had many physical challenges from the intensive cancer treatment he was choosing so the bad days were indeed very unpleasant. Yet, he actually told me once three months before he died, “I have never been happier in my life”.

Mark and I would often speak of “present-moment living” and the connection between the Feldenkrais Method and Zen. He said that now he finally really understood what it meant to live in the present moment without letting the future and past dominate. He once asked with true earnestness, ‘can you teach people this ability before they get into this ridiculous state”?

I was surprised that something which I dread so severely could be a positive experience for anyone. Was Reese really happier because he was living in the moment? If I hold on to my sense of past and dreams of the future, to what extent am I failing to heed the warning of a dying man who may have found a certain enlightenment?

In my twenties I lived with a terrible fear of sudden death, and so I lived as if I had no future. I holed up in my apartment and wrote music, stories and poetry in order to get as much out as I could before I could be “prematurely killed.” In the process, I found myself neglecting the kinds of things most of my friends were doing: Getting job experience, finding out who they were, and even simply enjoying their freedom.

On the other hand, it is quite appropriate for someone who is anticipating a long life to spend time thinking about the future and the past, living not only for today. Certainly there is a kind of thrill in freeing oneself from the tyranny of these monsters “past” and “future,” but in doing so one runs the risk of neglecting relationships in one’s life that depend on remembering the past and thinking of the future.

As a parent I must keep cognizant of my past to prevent myself from acting in a way which has proved harmful to my family in the past. Similarly I must be thinking of their futures as well as my own. It would be inappropriate for me to live as if I were dying now, because if I were dying, I’d most certainly be acting differently.

The conflict between my reading of Delman’s words and my experience troubled me. When I contacted Delman about this issue, he suggested to me that I had misunderstood Reese’s comments and he encouraged me to reread the testimonial.

Having spent some time rethinking the issue, I no longer believe Reese was saying that he was happy because he was living in the moment. Rather, I think he was happy because he came to recognize that, in the state he was in, living more in the present was appropriate for him. In other words, what made him happy was the self-acceptance of his state, that of a dying man. Once he accepted who he was at that point in his life, he was able to grow again, which must have been a great joy to him.

This is a particularly Feldenkrais notion, because in our work we may seem to be asking our clients to “give up the past” by throwing away their habits, or “give up the future” by opening themselves up to possibility. But if we demand our clients think in this way, we may be constraining them to think of themselves in a way which is inappropriate to their state, and we may hamper their learning.

In my mind these things must be seen as elements of a greater aim: self-acceptance. One of the most powerful lessons of the Method is that self-acceptance must come before true change can occur. As I have stated before, the self-acceptance that the Method focuses upon is a neutral one regarding human movement: How am I able to move now? We must be “in the moment” to answer these questions, but we are also asking, “How am I moving differently now than I did a few minutes ago,” and “What ways can I move that will benefit me in the future?”

I don’t believe that Feldenkrais lessons should force us to regret our previous way of interacting with the world, nor do I believe that any truly compassionate person is willing to denigrate the act of living by demanding mythical standards of illumination. As Reese knew, and as I am learning, what is essential is not to seek a perfect state of mind, but to continue to grow, even when we lie at death’s door.