Feldenkrais Method and My Teaching Practice

Part I-My Self-discovery Process

Last summer, I began utilizing Feldenkrais lessons learned during 

my August 2010 Teacher as Artist fellowship in New York City.

Feldenkrais is a somatic practice that allows the body to work more 

effectively and is proven to reduce stress and relieve pain.  It also is a way 

to open up new ways of thinking and creating.  Moshe Feldenkrais is quoted as saying, 

"I am not after flexible bodies, I am after flexible brains.” 

As a teaching artist, I am exploring the possibility 

of using this practice as a way of helping struggling students.  

I will explore this practice later.

Philosophy behind Feldenkrais practice 

Feldenkrais’ philosophy is in direct opposition to our Western way 

of thinking concerning fitness and skeletal-muscular health.  

Feldenkrais emphasizes becoming aware of how the skeleton, 

joints, fascia, muscles and tendons work together.  Many times 

our repetitive movement patterns are the very factors, which create and 

exacerbate chronic injuries.  In Feldenkrais, we learn that 

“we must feel, not strain” 

that is, our effort can sometimes be more effective when we don’t work too hard.

Make no mistake; Feldenkrais exercises are not fuzzy science. 

Moshe Feldenkrais was an engineer, physicist, inventor, martial

 artist and student of human development. Born in Eastern Europe, 

he emigrated to Palestine as a young man. Later he studied at 

the Sorbonne and worked in the Joliot Curie laboratory in Paris 

during the 1930s. During this time he worked as a research assistant 

to nuclear chemist and Nobel Prize laureate Frédéric Joliot-Curie 

at the Radium Institute.

Personal discovery of awareness through movement

The first time I experienced these awareness through movement 

exercises, a licensed practitioner led me.  The results seemed 

nothing short of miraculous.  But I attributed the power of the 

work to the training and skill of my teacher.

Last summer I jumped into reading everything that Moshe Feldenkrais 

wrote during his life, and trying out exercises on my own.  

Attempting these lessons without benefit of training was a daunting task.  

Due in part to Feldenkrais’ reassuring words1, I began trying 

the exercises one by one, listening and following the instructions 

carefully.  His philosophy, based on the science of the method, 

rested on the premise that endless possibilities exist when the effort

is minimized and self-awareness is heightened.  

My experience was, that I began to notice remarkable 

changes in my body, which were only surpassed by shifts in thinking.  

Suddenly creativity, which had been lying dormant for many months, 

returned. Beginning the new school year my primary concern has been 

how to make this fragile new practice part of my life.

A recent realization is that one of the ways I will integrate these exercises into my 

life is by leading students at the Curley in this exploration of mind and bodywork.  

While my ultimate goal remains becoming a licensed practitioner, 

in my heart I know students will benefit from being guided through 

some of the fundamental lessons, with what I have learned through 

my self-guided practice.

Absence

After a two week break from writing on this blog, I have decided that even though I don't really know which direction to take my writing, I will begin again. 

In the last two weeks, I have not been able to transition into having time for myself, as I had it established during the summer months.  But even when I started this process at the beginning of summer, it was difficult to leave time for myself.

Even though my school takes front and center with my attention, finding a focus or inspiration will allow the process to begin unfolding again.

As I start easily by simply writing anything, I can see again how seamless it can be to start, if I simply do so.

Equilibrium...on and off-balance

Even though it is Sunday, and I tend to blog Monday through Friday, I felt compelled to write today. 

I tried the first Feldenkrais podcast lesson about the line of effort and wanted to write about the experience while fresh in my brain.

Much of the lesson was spent on my front, with arms extended overhead.  In this position I am always uncomfortable.  Amazingly, while following along with the audio-cast, my comfort level increased.  By the end of the 48 minute class, I was both feeling elongated in my skeleton, but also with high level of equilibrium.   Almost as if I was a very wide and stable letter "X".

In life I am often out of balance.  Too quick to do some things, too slow at others. Procrastination versus haste.   

Procrastination is the thief of time. Edward Young

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Henry David Thoreau 

I jumped into joining the PD team at the end of the year at school, and felt not as ready to function effectively on that team.  Timing is everything and I will try to pay attention this year, using my instincts to guide me.

I am ready to start school mainly because I did have time to play this summer.  This equilibrium needs to be nurtured during the year in order to allow myself a personal life in the midst of professional requirements.

Awareness

I am always replaying scenarios from daily life in my head.  Sometimes obsessively, I find ways of improving on my performance either speaking with someone or handling a tricky situation.  Often, I will beat myself up for what I consider gaps or missed opportunities.

Meta-cognition, as it is termed in education, is a method of being in the moment.  It is seeing yourself as an observer and using those observations to further enhance your personal learning process.

 Today I finished my book and now I am working on using the 9 principals outlined in the book.  As I begin the teaching year, I will try to focus on a different one each week.

Imagination

As a younger person, I rarely if ever controlled my daydreaming.  It was constant and vivid.  I imagined myself in a variety of roles and scenarios. 

As a mature adult, I find that I still play in my imagination, but often it is directed more neurotically.  I find that I am imagining worst case scenarios and catastrophic endings.  Somewhere along the way I forgot the joy of pure imagining.

As I read Anat Baniel's book, I am staking a claim to vitality in my work artistically.   I need to follow those pursuits which gave me pleasure earlier in life.  This work can continue to grow and develop as I do.

To daydream and imagine as a fully formed but changing being.  I used to imagine myself on the Broadway stage.  My dreams have shifted; not just out of necessity.  Why do I allow regret to enter my thoughts, as if change signifies a downgrade of a sort.

How have my dreams changed?

Flexibility

Students achieving Oneness will move on to Twoness.
Woody Allen

All my life I have had goals that have given me a path.  It was not until I became a mother that I understood the true meaning of flexibility in my goal setting.

It is like a tiny oak seedling.  You know how weak and puny they appear, but if you have faith in the process (water, sun, time) that seedling becomes one of the most stable and real forces on our earth.

It is hard to see where I am going sometimes, and I do hold general "paths" in my head.  But until lately, it has always been to get somewhere.  These days I am learning to delight in the journey.

Keywords for the day:  

1. identify
2. create a process
3. wonder
4. back of
5. play
6. be flexible
7. fine tune
8. let go
9. intend and choose
10. be wrong
11. apply reversibility
12. be free

Enthusiasm

There have been many times in my life that I have felt ignored, under appreciated, insulted or looked down upon.  I have lost my spirit from being overwhelmed by those who push their agenda and are impatient with or incapable of true collaboration.  There is an element of distrust that I am weary of letting go of;  it is self-protection.

One part of myself I have never relinquished, regardless of the circumstance:  my enthusiasm.  I find delight in the large and the small and my glass is perpetually full.  Being around negative people often makes me chronically cheerful.  I even can use this quality in a passive aggressive way,  not allowing others to pass without acknowledging we are passing by each other.

Today and tomorrow I am in teacher workshops, and I am regaining a sense of what it like to be in community, after two months of being in charge of my own destiny.  It is, in a way, like being in a raft that I have no control over and the waves, at times crash over my head.  

I will persist in my enthusiasm, even in the face of negativity.  May I have the strength to endure.