Volume 7, Number 6, July 2008
Quote From Moshe: “Our knowledge of what is biologically important is so scanty that we worship ideas which merely sound good.” Body and Mature Behavior, p. 18
You Don’t Know You Don’t Know
Have you ever heard the expression, “What you don’t know can kill you?”
Very trite, very true. See those yummy looking mushrooms over there? Don’t eat them! The expert happens to know what you don’t: They’re poison! “Whew. Glad I learned that! What I didn’t know could kill me.”
That’s not good enough for me, though. I think there’s something more important than what you don’t know. That’s “What you don’t know you don’t know.” Did I just turn your head around? Hold on. I’ll explain.
There’s another expression that sums it up really well: “Only two people get hurt skiing. Beginners and experts.” Beginners makes perfect sense, because they don’t know how to ski, and what you don’t know can kill you. But experts?
Experts know how to ski. In fact, they know how to ski so well that they mistake their knowledge about skiing for the sum total of knowledge. They get the impression that there’s nothing left for them to learn, and therefore every decision they make will be correct. This leads them into situations which are even more dangerous than those beginners get into. The experts go places where they don’t know something, and they act as if they do.
It’s a little like putting a blindfold on and walking along a high girder on an unfinished skyscraper. Sure, you might be okay, but more likely you’re going to fall because of something you don’t know is there. But it’s not the blindfold that kills you, it’s the fact that you’re walking with the blindfold!
What you don’t know can’t kill you in this situation if you recognize you don’t know it. You stand still or ask for help (or take off the blindfold!) But if you’re under the delusion that you do know it, then what you don’t know can kill you.
So the expert skiier doesn’t know what they still have to learn about skiing, and that’s dangerous.
Am I getting to Feldenkrais? Is a duck a bird?
Unless we make our living as a construction worker, a ski instructor, or an astronaut, most of us do not find ourselves in dire danger on a daily basis. Nevertheless, what we don’t know we don’t know can harm us. It just happens very slowly.
As little babies, we constantly get into scrapes. We bump and crash. We faw down go boom. We cry. What we don’t know hurts us. But then we learn it, and we get better at living. We learn to balance, to walk, to talk, to function.
Something happens along the way to a lot of us. At some point we think we know everything there is to know about ourselves. “Okay. I got walking. I’m good.” Usually by the end of high-school we’re pretty sure we’ve got mastery of any function we can think of. College usually knocks us for a loop intellectually and sometimes emotionally, but rarely does it offer us physical challenges.
We spend a good many years acting like experts, never checking in, never questioning, never even thinking that we might not know everything about ourselves. Then boom! We fall down. And here’s the kicker…we don’t know why!
Things happen to us, one thing after another. A bad back, blurry vision, headaches, insomnia. We want to recover, to get back to the way we were. And since we’re experts, we try everything we think we know. Sometimes we get through, but more often we find we’re stuck with a new thing, a periodically bad back, far-sightedness, vertigo, a heart-condition.
If we’re sensible we may recognize that there’s something happening that we don’t know. Then we consult other experts: doctors, therapists, faith-healers. But because we assume we understand the problem, because we think we know what we need to learn, we go to the wrong experts, ask the wrong questions. Sometimes we still get the results we want, at least for a little while. The surgery works, and we’re great until the next thing goes wrong. Then we try all over again.
If we’re really humble, we may take a good honest look at ourselves and say, “Hey. I thought I knew everything, but I guess there are things I don’t know. And hey! I don’t know what I don’t know.”
What do you do then? I mean, if you don’t know what you need to learn, you’re really stuck, aren’t you? How are you going to ask the right questions if you don’t know what they are?
Good question.
This kind of humility, this panic, this absolute despair, is the beginning of true learning, in any discipline. Once you recognize that you don’t know what questions to ask, you become really curious, and greater gifts of knowledge become available.
The Feldenkrais Method operates on those principles. Not that the Feldenkrais practitioner is so smart…they don’t know what you don’t know either. But they understand this state of openness. They’ll ask you the kinds of questions you might not have asked yourself, either with their touch or with the instructions in an ATM. They may ask about the way you move, about what you’re experiencing, about what you are noticing. Things you considered irrelevant in your previous mindset somehow gain significance now. The impossible becomes an option.
Then once again you learn something, really learn, about yourself. And you can begin to make the changes that you didn’t know you didn’t know you needed to make. Then you’re okay, until the next time!
© 2008
Do you have a question for Adam? Write him at adam@feldenkraisinfo.com. The most interesting questions will be posted in Possibilities.
Possibilities is an informative, interesting online magazine about the Feldenkrais Method® published by www.feldenkraisinfo.com. Want to subscribe? Want to sign up for a class? Get the best, most complete listing right here! Interested in reading articles about Sports, Martial Arts, Theater, Language and Music? All of these topics are discussed in Possibilities. If you can't wait, become a member of the Atlanta Feldenkrais® Institute and receive your page absolutely free, delivered right to your e-mail doorstep. To read previous issues, check out our archives.
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1. AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT
Monday Nights: January 28 - March 17, 8 - 9 p.m.
Where: Several Dancers Core
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For BETTER ALIGNMENT and BONE STRENGTHENING - Develop a springy and dynamic walk / Align your
posture for functional bone strength! An application of
the Feldenkrais Method to
prevention and reversal of osteoporosis, and much more.
A. Wednesday Mornings: January 23 - March 12, 10:30 -
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(off Clairmont just south of
To Register: Call Life
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B. Thursday Nights: January 24 - March 13, 8 - 9:15 p.m.
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Classes by Melissa Wirsig, aboutmovement@aol.com
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404-373-9672
Classes by Bobbie Dees
Awareness through Movement class at
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706-635-2876 or cell 770-842-0513.
Classes by Bonnie Jokl-Brough
Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement in Candler Park, Atlanta
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