Thursday, April 07, 2011

Awareness of The Fool Archetype Is Helpful?


art work by www.kimwatersart.net

"He who can no longer pause to wonder, and stand rapt in awe,
is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." -- Albert Einstein

As a society,
we ridicule the adult 
who sees life with the innocent wonder of a child...
what can we learn from the FELDENKRAIS Method to alleviate this
violation of our own capacity for joy and aliveness?
 
Moshe Feldenkrais, who instigated this profound method for increasing conscious involvement in every facet of living, understood a fundamental truth: that learning, when presented in a way that mimics how children learn, is sticky.
 
It takes hold in an organic way that is available at any appropriate moment. Like learning to drive a car - imagine how dangerous it would be if you had to stop and think where the breaks are! Once you learn how to drive, it's a part of you. 
 
The irony is that even though there are plenty of studies in both linguistics and in psychology to affirm that people learn much more easily when they feel relaxed, safe and playful, our institutions do not take advantage of this. But institutions are always way behind the consciousness of the individual.
 
It's up to us as individuals to take the lead in actively using what we intuit:  that learning the way children do, with curiosity, playfulness and in a relaxed, unstressful environment is much more effective.
 
The way we learn as adults is NOT sticky. It's slow, painful and easily forgotten. How much of your college classes do YOU remember? Very little if you don't use it - it's the experiential nature of using it that makes it stick, that makes it a part of you that you can access without thought. Our institutions still promote book learning in environments that are fraught with the tension of deadlines, the stress of evaluation and a sense of duty and discipline that makes it feel more like an endurance race than a pleasure.
 
I well remember those first weeks of intensive AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) lessons: what a different way to learn! There were moments of unbridled laughter in the middle of a lesson. There were times when I would feel awe opening like a light within me at the intricacy and delicacy of the human design, so accessible, and yet so unappreciated and so unnoticed by most people who live in a body.
 
Intuitively brilliant, Moshe Feldenkrais, found a unique way to access the way children learn. It uses our curiosity, our sense of wonder. It creates a fertile connection with the creative vitality of the childself. It spontaneously accesses the subliminal archetype of the Fool: the aspect of human experience that includes the wonder, the excitement ignorant of fear, and the ecstasy of the moment of comprehension.
 
I remember the relief I felt to find that we focus on what works in stead of digging ever deeper into a pit of pathology. The study of what's wrong with us is the obsession of Western Medicine. Finally, a modality that makes the study of what works it's main purpose! I remember the first taste of being given permission to explore, to investigate, to follow my own curiosity and strengthen my own intuition. This is the gift that every ATM provides anew.
 
The delightful energy of the Fool dances in and out of every lesson. It's not ever-present. As in life, there are serious moments punctuated by emotions and thoughts. But when it shows up, it's a wistful, fun way to move with playfulness around pain without challenging it head on.
 
This taught me to open myself to options heretofore unseen, and completely overlooked in all aspects of my life. Hence the ever-present expansion in new directions of greater fulfillment. Yet, this invitation is also an opening backwards into the profound wisdom of the childhood. The wisdom of the Fool is that when the judgment and the criticism of the mature adult is allowed to fade into the background, a certain divine insanity is free to take hold.
 
It's like spring fever. Thoughts, memories, feelings of past loves and sensations of openness, expansion and joy manifest as sensation. When you give yourself over to the profound power of the Fool archetype, you give yourself permission to access your own creative muse. In the process, you may find solutions to your problems that would otherwise never have occurred to your more rational mind.
 
Besides which, did it ever work when you were told to sit up straight? Did that change your posture, even if it was drummed into you? Of course not. Why? Because it was drummed into your mind and you cannot change behavior via intellectual learning. It has to be embodied by an arising sense of meaning welling up from a spring of deepening motivation, often fed by a tributary of strong emotion. Now personally, I embrace the Fool Archetype because wonder is one of my favorite, most motivating emotions!
 
On the other hand, it may well have changed you to be berated into postural submission, but it's doubtful that it changed you in helpful ways. Most likely, it pushed you into a rigidity that ended up being a habit of self-restriction, a.k.a. you developed the unconscious habit of moving with TENSION and FORCE. You know, like when you are in a hotel room and someone walks by in heels and you can hear it a block away. It's as if the woman is slamming her heels down into the ground. In ATM we call it, 'the use of excessive effort.'
 
(For those of you not in the know, that IS how concussion to your joints wears them out prematurely. The human body, if cared for with awareness of it's design, and respect for it's amazing capacity to regenerate, can last far longer than the paltry average age most of us assume as a given. See Frank Wildman's book, Change Your Age, which you can access from my feldenkrais blog for more...)
 
But back to the topic of the wisdom of the Fool Archetype. Our modern era has left us bereft of foolish heroes...It's not cool to be a fool. Yet, when you look back at the fairy tales of your childhood, you will find that many, if not most of them begin with a quest that the serious, promising ones fail at. It's the youngest, most foolish sibling that often finds the answer by virtue of his or her innocence and ability to see beyond the confines of the constant restrictions of reality.
 
The remarkable message of these tales is that being genuine and in integrity with one's own authenticity is more important in life than the intelligence or self-control. Yet, as a society, we value information, intelligence and control much more highly than integrity or authenticity. Clearly, as a society we have reached an all-time low with our lack of esteem for these values!
 
Therefore, hit the mat I say. Or, rather, kneel down gently with reverence and gratitude. For there it is that you WILL find your authentic self, if you embrace ATM as a practice. And with it, as the legions of authentic selves go out into the world, the lies and false values that permeate our institutions will be slowly, but definitely dissolved by the authentic integrity of the next generation.
____________
 
Check out the Interview I did with FELDENKRAIS Trainer
 
Frank Wildman
 
for the FELDENKRAIS GUILD:

What would Moshe Do?

 
"WHAT MAKES a person old? Some people think it’s wrinkles; others think it’s stodgy attitudes. But, really, the culprit is our habits. When we unlearn these habits and create new ones, we make our bodies and minds younger, stronger, and more flexible. In essence, we create a more youthful and intelligent body at any age." 
--Frank Wildman

P.S. Although brilliantly knowledgeable, Frank is one of the most playful teachers of ATM I know - in the right environment, even though he does look very serious here in this photo. Check out his excellent new book below, 'Change Your Age.'
 
 

Monday, March 28, 2011

A Different Sense of Self - Every Day!

"My training in physics has taught me that there is no such thing as coincidence."       - Madeleine L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet


After nursing my sick horse for three days, I lay down on the floor to do a movement lesson. The horse, by this time, was fine. Myself? I was trashed. In the body scan, I noted how crooked I was. My neck was kinked off to the side. My hips were completely externally rotated, my right shoulder was up off the ground. 

It was not a version of me I recognized; at least not from my shape. I recognized the sense of exhaustion. I recognized the sense of relief that the emergency was over. But I knew it was important to do an AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT lesson now more than ever to regain my sense of comfort which had been disturbed by the worry of it all. It was an opportunity to 'unkink myself.' And that's the continuous magic of the FELDENKRAIS METHOD. 

Now you might think that, as a practitioner, I'm perfectly aligned and never get out of synch. Nope. Sorry. Life's not like that. It sends you curve balls. With stress we all regress. All those late nights, checking up on my 17 hand patient, with his hard belly, administering homeopathics in the pitch darkness by flashlight. 

At least he was used to it now. Last year, he had never seen a flashlight before and it sent him to the other side of his paddock in a heartbeat. My sense of safety was disturbed enough with the wind and the rain whipping sideways without spooking the horse to boot. All that carting heavy buckets of hot water and hot bran mashes up the hill in a mental state of abject anxiety and concern got me returning to older, more dysfunctional movement patterns. The questions is, can I get out of them now? Do I know how?

With each passing lesson, it gets easier to 'unkink myself' at will. This morning, I was reconnected with my more organized self within minutes of doing the lesson I had chosen. What does it feel like? It just feels more comfortable to be in my body, and my mind eases and finds it easier to remain in the present moment without having to police my thoughts, or 'try' to stop thinking (well nigh impossible anyway!). I didn't even have to finish the lesson, although I did, because it's relaxing. My muscles released their unconsciously held unequal tonus: that disjointed feeling of tension that is a result of having some muscles short, and some long - even at rest. My skeleton settled into an alignment that supports me in space both on the floor and in standing. When I stood up, I was more myself.

This is very different from training myself to the shape of some idealized concept of perfection. I was restored to a sense of my own individual strength in body and spirit. The experience is completely unique and each time it becomes more quickly accessible. I don't have to do an exercise for an hour each time to get the same result. Each time I can reconnect with less and less effort. And this is my goal for you as your teacher. To get you connected - to yourself, to what matters to YOU, and to what makes you see, sense, hear and feel. This is embodied presence; consciousness expanded to include both internal and external environment in one big whole sensation of spirit living in a dynamic, changeable, self-aware body.

Besides, it's spring time: it's time to embody the life force that is about to pop out of every living creature on the face of this earth who is not stuck in some sort of artificial with-holding of self or holding back of joy! It feels like watching that big bay buck as he ran across the field in the sunshine when he finally felt better, mane and tail flying in the wind...Yahoo! Sometimes joy is simply a good romp in the pasture with all systems go.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Feldenkrais for the Battered Women of this World...


"You were kind to me," she said. He made a sound, of wonder or pain; his hold tightened.
        "I did nothing - "
        "Your eyes saw me." She paused, gazing back into those 
          strange, bleak years. 
        "No one ever saw me," she whispered...
                   - Patricia A. McKillip, the Book of Atrix Wolfe

Globally, at least one in three women and girls is beaten or sexually abused in her lifetime. (UN Commission on the Status of Women, 2/28/00)

Yesterday, I was working on a particularly delicate desktop publishing project that was all about getting the spacing correct, lots of tiny changes that, if not saved, are pretty much a ‘start all over again’ deal. Suddenly, the power cut off, and everything went dead. Years ago, I might have panicked. But, I have joked for years that I am the Queen of  Starting Over. I was not particularly disturbed.
 
As a survivor of the experience of growing up in an alcoholic home, I have a lot of experience with thinking about how to get what I need when it appears as if the power lines have been cut.  That feeling was pretty much an every day occurrence. Then, later, as an adult, I was a sitting duck for attracting abusive men. Why? I was so used to abuse I thought I deserved it. Water seeks it's own level. I will never forget facing the locked front door to my own home, hearing my six year old daughter screaming for me inside - but her father - God bless him - had changed the locks.
 
He was the King of the Perfect Family, and as such, since we were over as a partnership, was committed to getting me seamlessly out of the picture so he could find a new wife a.s.a.p. This new individual, this  a new mother, he would then insert into the space left vacant by my sudden exit from abject emotional servitude. Never, 'in my wildest dreams,' did it for one second occur to me that he would completely cut me off from my baby. 

When we had first discussed bringing our daughter into the world, we had made an agreement. We had agreed that if it ever happened that we did have to separate, neither of us would use her as a pawn to hurt the other. He probably didn't think twice about breaking that commitment I had made with such solemnity with him. From his perspective, I guess he thought he was protecting her. What he was really protecting was his ego. Love does not create separation.
 
For me it was a loss that cut to the very foundation of everything I held dear. As a recovering addict, six years earlier, having a baby had been a momentous decision for me. I knew it would be hard, not something to do lightly. But after much thought and soul-searching, I had determined to have this baby as a demonstration of my new-found commitment to life, an act of saying 'YES!' at a profound level of my own experience. An addict is committed to slow suicide. 

The commitment to Love, and to have the audacity to bring another living being into this world was a huge shift for me. For any mother, having a baby is an act of faith in the universe, of hope that the world is not such a bad place. For me, this was a step into trust far greater than any I had ever taken before. And, it was about to be tried almost beyond endurance. This is not the place for the whole story, but I will say that I never picked up again, no matter how close to the depths of despair I came during the next few years. I was a mother now, no matter how near or how far I was from my daughter.
 
When I left that house, where I had endured abuse both physical, mental and emotional, I was beaten, broken, ashamed, emotionally and physically depleted. At that point there was no question of fighting for what was true and right. This righteous father called the nastiest lawyers he could find into play and their tactics where as sleazy as they come.  I was broke, homeless, and had no skills to speak of. They say battered women have ‘Self Esteem Issues.’ Well try having no self esteem at all, at all. See how far you get in the world. People walk all over you, they take advantage, they step on you. There is no reprieve. And if you’ve just been through years of trauma that the violent relationship represents, you think you deserve it. Because that’s how you’ve been programmed.

When I tread the dry texts of psychology, that speak about me as if I were a rare specimen, instead of a common occurrence, they talk about having an unhealthy ‘Sense of Self.’ What IS that? Well, the text-book definitions are abstract, as are all attempts to categorize and study something from the outside. All I know is that the best way to understand what it means to have a healthy Sense of Self, is to try living without one!

Nowadays, things are very different indeed. As a FELDENKRAIS practitioner, I work with healthier ways of shaping and molding the way we perceive ourselves in relationship to our environment all the time. Now if that sounds like jargon, it’s because in the abstract it is. Without relationship to something actually happening, it’s theory. But within myself, or within the people I work with, it’s a tangible shift in perception. It’s a way of relating to self and the world as if I matter. It’s connecting to the sense that what I think and feel is important on both an internal and an external level.

What I sense IS how I notice that I am thinking and feeling. For people living in the trauma of a constant crisis, either in the occupied territory of a war zone in a foreign country, or, in the war zone of their own home if violence is the norm, sensing and feeling is INTENSE.  So intense, in fact, that it’s common to turn it off, tune it out. It’s the only access to any sense of peace internally, even if it is illusionary and temporary - until the next predictably unpredictable outbreak erupts.

The problem with this is that if I turn off my ability to feel anything, I actually make myself even more prone to being taken off guard, to being hurt, to being a target. So victims, family members and war veterans alike usually more than compensate with developing a heightened sense of awareness to the ‘vibe’ around them. 

Hypervigilance is a symptom of trauma and it runs rampant in the homes of the multitude of dysfunctional families all over America. Wake up people, this is not an uncommon issue. (I was called for jury duty once. They had to eliminate potential jurists who had prior experience with domestic violence. One by one as each person was called and questioned, they were eliminated. By 10:00 a.m. about two thirds of the potential jurists had been released; approximately nine out of ten people, in this small American town in California, could not claim to have never been in contact with friends or family dealing with some form of domestic violence...)
 
Post traumatic stress syndrome is not just a veteran’s diagnosis. And, from my point of view, it’s not much of a diagnosis at all; it’s a symptom of a shattered sense of self - something entirely responsive to the gentle and safe environment of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT as a path home, back to a clear sense of how to feel. When used as a practice, it's delivers powerful juju: you discover how to create an internal sense of security and comfort from within.

And, so the process of healing the pattern of choosing destructive relationships, is to learn, slowly and gradually, to give credence to the possibility that what we ARE matters. Thinking my needs are completely insignificant is a learned behavior, and unconsciously shaped by the environment of emotional blackmail and manipulation that is pretty much the norm in the dysfunctional family dynamic. The good news is, you can unlearn it.
 
When I allow myself to feel, I can sense when conflict is immanent. Anyone has this ability. Just walk into a room where people have been arguing and it’s clear. I can also begin to sense when people are not emotionally safe, or trustworthy. When I give credence to my own perceptions, I can nip those patterns in the bud. With each new encounter, I can begin to open up only to what feels safe. It’s a feeling, and one that is so unfamiliar after so many years in a virtual war zone, that it takes dedication and time to relax into.

It actually takes a leap of faith that it’s possible. It takes a leap of faith in the process, because the process is often uncomfortable. It takes an ability to be with not knowing and to allow that by hanging in there the path will be made clear, eventually.  And, if it’s really challenging, it’s going to take a leap of faith that you could find someone trustworthy to support you in the process. 

If this history rings true for you, if you relate to it, it may be that I'm the person that can take you from numbness to aliveness, from the patterns of the past to a pattern of finding new options, new ways of coping, living, loving, and moving through live both on the mat and off with a spontaneity you have been denied for most of your life. If you feel it IS time for you to reclaim your power, please contact me and I will take you through a number of strategies for releasing old patterns that you can do safely, without drugs, in the comfort of your own home no matter where you live in the world. If you think you might be ready for a self-directed way of moving your life into the next level of growth, please, please contact me. Been there, done that and won't it feel good when you are on the other side of all that baggage?  gabrielle.pullen@gmail.com
____________
 

We are not born knowing how to live! Be compassionate with yourself!
Check out the Interview I did with FELDENKRAIS Trainer
Dennis Leri for
the FELDENKRAIS GUILD:

What would Moshe Do?

 
"The process of Functional Integration® and Awareness Through Movement® 
  brings us into our human-ness by helping us understand how we function and learn."
                                                                                -- Dennis Leri

______________________________
 
 
Come for the release from tension; 
stay for the discovery of your own path to
living your best life!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Self Sabotage: When Your Face Belies Your Words...

Congruence is when we are saying and doing the same thing. When we are BEING it - that's an even deeper level of integration. Awareness allows us to begin to pay attention to how we are showing up in life. Are you showing up as an old burnt out truck or as the Garden of Eden that is your true Essence? What have you become?

When there is a gap between what I say and what I do, my daughter looks at what I do. What I say then becomes what it is, merely words. She hears it like this: "Blah, blah, blah..."

Given that this is so, it's an opening, a doorway into self-understanding. What time is it? Time to take time to notice the discrepancies. It's time to walk through the door that helps us heal what is broken in ourselves by beginning to notice where what we do and what we say is incongruent.

In a movement lesson, this shows up as having an intention to move in a way that fulfills the request of the lesson, but finding that what actually happens is something different. Our ability to sense the discrepancies in ourselves is heightened by the practice. We refine the ability to notice, in the moment, when we want to show up in a certain way but something else happens instead. We also refine the ability to self-correct.


For example, when I was in the thick of compulsive codependence, it took me years to notice how incongruent I was. In one relationship after another, I saw clearly the violence of the man I was with. It was demeaning. Over time, I felt my sense of self-worth diminishing.

I was unconscious of how it was slowly annihilating my sense of self. It was as if I was slowly crawling into a worm hole in their shoe, simply another thing for them to step on. I was unable to differentiate between myself and the other person. My sense of self was so submerged already, that when the recriminations came, they seemed only to confirm the shame I already felt.

Going back to how a movement lesson (ATM) relates, it helps us become sensitive to our own inner conflict, and how this shows up as moving in ways that are inconsistent with our intention. Certainly we do this all the time, but we are usually too busy to notice it. ATM provides a framework to support us in sensing what is usually below the level of consciousness.

Long before I ever encountered ATM, I had a vague sense that when I took a stand for my gut feeling that I did not want to see this abusive man any more, my body was conveying a completely different message. I was afraid, I was conflicted, I wanted his love more than anything and my body expressed this.

I would smile when I needed to be connected to my outrage. I would appear fearful in my stance when I needed to convey all the power in my being. My facial expressions gave me away, proof that I lacked the courage of my convictions.

Having an intention to move in a way that is congruent with what I am feeling deep inside so that I am not giving in to fear or people-pleasing is a whole body action. It means incorporating my whole self into my stance, my feelings, my beliefs, my light and my love and hope for a better life. All this ATM helps me refine. And it can help you too.

Our ability to sense the discrepancies in ourselves is a heightened level of awareness that brings us home to our own power.

Saturday, March 05, 2011

Which Way Are You Facing? Towards Joy or Pain?

Integration is when all parts of your Self are going in the same direction! When the parts of your Self are integrated into a whole, there is no need for more power or more control, because harmony is the natural result...
Nowadays, the word, 'orientation,' is a buzzword in politics because of the issue of Gay and Lesbian marriage. In reference to which gender a person finds attractive, 'orientation' reveals what dominates their perception. Who will they move towards, and who will they tend to move away from? It very literally determines perception. Yes, this is a stereo-type, but most gay men have more fashion sense and than the average male has in their little finger. It's a function of what they happen to notice naturally.
But orientation has other meanings. It can be used to refer to a function of the mind: when you get a head injury, you are asked to demonstrate this function: what's your orientation in time, space and person? They will ask you, "What year is it? Where are you? What's your name?" When you woke up this morning, how did you know who and where you were? (This last was a favorite question of one of the Trainers in my four year Feldenkrais Training.) What he was really asking was, 'Are you aware? Is Awareness a function of the mind? How important is it?' Can you change something if you are not aware of it?
What does it mean to be functional? It means to fulfill a specific purpose. A functional body can get you from point A to point B. A functional mind fulfills it's purpose when it knows where it is in space, time and identity.
Individual sessions of the FELDENKRAIS Method, are known as FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION because they are about bringing the whole Self into a functional relationship with gravity. But this is NOT limited to time and space alone. Why? Because how we  move in space IS how we interact with the world.
We interact via movement which is the basis of all action. We also interact via the sense organs, eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Imagine seeing without moving your eyes, smelling fire without being able to move away from it, hearing a child scream without being able to do anything to help.
The advantage of erect posture is the the ease of being able to survey the environment, to rotate the head and body around a vertical axis - kind of like the telescope of a submarine - to assess orientation, and safety, among other things. The direction of orientation will determine what information comes into the database of the mind, the memory banks of experience.
Moshe Feldenrkrais once said, "...our relation with anything outside, beyond what can be explored by the sense of touch, is determined through the movement of the head. All the information from the space around us comes through the head. And our relations with the world outside us affect the quality of the movement of the head most of all."
The sense organs that dominate our orientation with reality are all double organs that are located in the head. Eyes, ears and nostrils all use two sources of data to find the intersection that locates the exact direction whence a potential danger, such as fire, or a possible opportunity, such as the scent of home-made apple pie, might be coming from.
"In most people, their heads show clearly...which parts of the space around them they rarely make contact with. The carriage of the head is characteristic of the general bearing and manner of acting of each person," Feldenkrais went on to say in the same article. It's no mistake that as people age, they can barely turn the head after a while.
Why? Because how we move reflects how we think. And gradually, most people give in to the phantom of 'Reality.' How much sadness there is in the admonition, 'Be realistic! You're getting old, you're supposed to hurt.' After such an encounter in a doctor's office, most people gradually loose their sense of what's possible, even as they loose mobility in the neck and eventually stop looking outside the known space in front of them for their own answers.
How many times has that phantom crushed your hopes and dreams? The phantom that states that it's inevitable that we be crushed by the weight of gravity instead of stabilized by it. That we be diminished by the weight of experience instead of enlightened by it. That we give into pain as a permanently limiting factor, instead of challenging it's source and examining it's underlying message. Pain is the body speaking it's mind in the only way it can communicate it's infinite wisdom since it has no words.
Unfortunately, it does seem to be human nature to focus on what's wrong. The hope of the FELDENKRAIS Method lies in the way that it teaches you a completely new way to relate to life. The more AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) you do, the more you cultivate the new habit of looking for what works, what is easy, what feels good, what you may have overlooked.
What new options are out there that have escaped your notice to date? This only happens for people who keep doing ATM. Why? Because it's a means of becoming aware of what we don't know. And it's fun, so why not keep doing it? It's a given that what we don't know is always changing, even as we change and evolve and grow. The only certainty in life is change. We need a means of coping with it, since it's the nature of life.
I got a new oven and gas range in my kitchen for Christmas. I love to cook. But I am still learning how to use this shiny new instrument of creation. It requires a change in how I think. I can no longer just look at the flame to determine the heat. Each burner is a different size and the size of the flame might be the same, but the intensity of heat differs from one burner to the next. So I have to think in terms of outcomes. I have to really look and see if the pan is pan is producing the result I'm looking for, or, am I simply going through the motions and getting an outcome that burns my food.
ATM has taught me to integrate the results I'm getting, the changes I'm experiencing and the responses I make to life. It has taught me to orient myself differently. I used to be oriented towards self-destruction, suffering, martyrdom and self-loathing. It was simply a habit brought on by a life lived in some pretty difficult circumstances. My orientation was all about looking for a means of survival.
It was completely outside the realm of my reality to orient myself towards somenthing so completely outside my experience as success, or happiness, or joy. But, slowly, I learned to change my habitual thinking. Change your habits, change your life. It's easy if you know how. I have spent the last 20 years looking for the fastest, the most effective, and the most comfortable ways to do this. And this is what I offer you, so that you don't have to go through what I went through!
ATM provides a simple, concrete Method for changing your habitual thinking through the medium of moving while in a relaxed attentive state. You don't have to obsess about how you think, or what you think. It orients you towards your own best version of living, completely specific to you. It gives you the new reflex of looking at what works. Your life experience and history and preferences, as written in the template of your physical body, provide the clues. It's up to you to follow the path of bread crumbs to freedom. It's tasty fare, let me tell you. Unique to you, shaped by your own desire, longing and sense of what's right for you.
Quotations from 'Mind and Body' article in Embodied Wisdom, The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais edited by Elizabeth Berenger.
 

Monday, February 28, 2011

Too Many Choices
















Ever enter a supermarket and go into the deer-in-the-headlight mode? Hmmn, what's the organizing principle going to be today? Is cheap more important than healthy today? Or, is healthy more important than going over budget? Or, are my cravings for junk food (chemically induced corporate control of the masses making the poor especially susceptible) going to win out over my desire to actually have more energy and feel good? And, more to the point, can I actually tell the difference?

It is a measure of the respect I have for the comment my esteemed FELDENKRAIS colleague posted after last weeks article that inspires a more lengthy response. I was going on about how improving our ability to sense ourselves may well be the greatest hope for humanity in terms of empowering people to freely modify their own behavior witout legislation, government interference or war. What he picked up on, though, was a question about whether or not FELDENKRAIS is about improving our ability to sense ourselves, or is it more about having additonal choices?


Recently, I was listening to a comedian tell a story about staying with a friend and her two kids. Before breakfast these two kids, one 8 and the other 6, were grilled with options: cherios or frosted flakes? Toast or pop tarts? Milk or orange juice? And we wonder why kids born into privilege  are willful!

Then there's a more difficult kind of choice. Typically, the average kid, whose parents are getting divorced, is asked who they want to live with. One million children in America are involved in a new divorce annually, according to divorcemagazine. That means that one million children are subjected to choice as one of the most stressful experiences they will ever encounter. Talk about having your loyalties pulled in two! For many, this is a set up for a sense that choices in general are difficult and stressful by association.

Objectively speaking, though, choices are like habits. They either serve or they don't. Either they have been made already, or they remain incomplete and slow the whole process down. If I've already decided what to do in advance, I can act faster. If I have a habit about how to get up in the morning, I don't have to think about it and can get on with it. Come to think of it, habits are very closely related to choice.

Most habits are acquired by default and not by choice. So it is essential to evaluate habits every now and then, to make sure they still serve. The same is true of choices. This is a huge piece of what FELDENKRAIS is about. For example, when I sit with the same leg crossed over the other all day, how does that adversely affect my neck on one side? By the same token, a habit of  eating frosted flakes since childhood can serve in dysfunctional ways, such as contributing to the potential for diabetes in an adult. 

I won't make these connections immediately, but if I stay with AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) as a practice, gradually the metaphor of movement becomes clear in relationship to the rest of my life. It simply falls into place as I move my attention from one part of my life to another and as I form the habit of noticing differences and similarities no matter what I'm doing. These two self-sensing mechanisms are intrinsic to the practice of ATM, and eventually become so deeply ingrained they are a part of me.


I very much agree with the statement that, 'It's the questions we ask ourselves that determine the quality of our lives.' In , we encounter certain questions over and over again in any lesson. The bottom line in any lesson is always, 'Is it working for me or not?' and I evaluate that, by how it feels.

By refining my ability to sense myself, my environment, and, by extension, the results of my actions, I can tell if I am getting the results I seek or if I'm just running in circles. When shopping for food takes 2 hours instead of forty-five minutes, I'm missing the sunshine outside!

I really appreciate this topic, because it makes me acutely aware that having choices is really demanding and requires an organizing principle. If I live my life as a free-for-all where anything goes and choice is king, all I've got to show for myself is anarchy. Believe me, I know, I lived the first 25 years of my life this way and it's exhausting! One of the organizing principles I learn in ATM is to seek out the feeling of the force of gravity running through my bones instead of fighting it with my muscles. I learn to use it to my advantage to hold my structure in a stabilizing compression that leaves my muscles free for movement, creative expression and whatever work I have to do.

Those of you who have worked with me have probably heard me say, 'Strength without coordination is like the scene in the old black and white film when the monster, Frankenstein, rises off the mad scientist's table after a good jolt of lightening and rambles off into the village where people run screaming from his presence.'

Coordination, by definition, is an organizing principle. In the case of FELDENKRAIS, and I learn to organize myself so that I live in the middle of all possible options, so that I can easily move in any direction at any time. Not only is it perceived as safer by the nervous system. It's perceived as a feeling of security, and a sense of psychological freedom and empowerment. 

 I can learn this principle, if I'm sharp enough to pick it up, from Martial Arts, or Yoga, but in ATM it's a primary goal. In ATM, it's not just a means to an end, it's a main theme in every lesson. The point is not simply to have more choices, but to have a way to 1) discern my choices in the first place, and 2) to choose more functional choices than I have in the past, and 3) to be able to sense when circumstances have changed and be able to respond accordingly.

The gift and the legacy of Moshe Feldenkrais is that he created an easy Method for anyone use to discover how to move in the direction of the unknown without an expert or someone telling them 'What their problem is.' It's very foundation is in learning to be self-directed.
At first, we learn how to use the framework of a lesson to discover how to make more comfortable, safe and functional movement choices. Once the nervous system recognizes the difference, by how it feels, it becomes a new habit. It no longer requires the safe environment of a lesson to be implemented, it crops up when needed.

I was just listening to FELDENKRAIS Trainer, Elizabeth Beringer, mentioning a client who did a lesson involving the judo roll. She complained after the lesson to Elizabeth that she felt she didn't 'get' it. Of course, Elizabeth told her there was nothing to 'get,' it's a process that goes on in some place other than the intellect. The woman then went on with her life. A while later, she took off for a bycycle ride and was abruptly knocked off the bycycle only to roll spontaneously on the ground completely unharmed to the applause of the people looking on. She had no idea how it happened. The magic of the nervous sytem is intact should we care to trust it's infinite intricacies to the schooling of the FELDENKRAIS Method!

Imagine, what would it be like to live a life based on the organizing principle of choosing greater ease, of making more functional decisions without having to first decide if functional was more important than whim, or approval, or duty? So, I agree whole-heartedly, choice is a huge part of FELDENKRAIS. It's a matter of first choosing to be more functional, and then choosing to notice the difference, and then feeling how empowering that sensation is, and finally, learning to notice those sensations even in the midst of chaos, even under pressure, even when not in the safe construct of an ATM lesson.

image courtesy of www.thesituationist.wordpress.com

Monday, February 21, 2011

Hope for Humankind

When you drive a car, you think it’s the car that has the blind spot. That’s how it’s constructed. Guess what? "You've got mail!" If you're driving, you are a part of the car. That place behind and to the left of you as driver is YOUR blind spot. The inability to see another car coming up on your left when it's really close to your vehicle is YOUR limitation, not the car's. It’s remarkable that we don’t have more accidents, but some part of you often senses the other vehicle, often moments before peripheral vision can lay any claim to having contributed to perception.

Growing up is like that. A child stuck with the frustration of learning to tie shoelaces may throw a tantrum. But as a parent, you know that after shoelaces, there’s reading, there’s going to school, and any number of unknowns that will need to be navigated to move into adulthood.

As adults, we think we’ve arrived somehow and that there shouldn’t be any blind spots. Silly humans. The ancient Greek word, ‘hubris’ may not be very popular anymore, but it’s sure a rampant behavior! Where, in society, do you see the extreme arrogance of people over-estimating their competence?

The weird thing is that teenagers and young adults can get away with it. There’s a phase in everyone’s life when you can bluff your way through anything with a blind combination of confidence and ignorance. It’s as if Not Knowing is no hindrance at all and you proceed along your merry way without thinking about it. It’s an gift of youth that gets tamped down by time, ground under the weary feet of the accumulation of disillusionment.

In the tradition of the American iconic folk singer Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger tells a story about two frogs. Now these two guys knew something about disillusionment, having survived the Great Depression. The story goes like this:  one evening after milking the cows, a farmer left a tall can of milk in the barn without a lid. Two frogs hopped into the luscious fresh milk and then found they couldn’t leap out. After much thrashing around, the one frog said, "There’s no hope.” With one last gurgle, he sank to the bottom. The other frog thought, "There must be some other way," and refused to give up. In the morning, the farmer came out and found one live frog on top of a big cake of butter.

Now the structure of an Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) lesson doesn’t APPEAR to be about finding hope-no-matter-what, but it may well cultivate it. How? By virtue of the way it cultivates a habit of always looking for another, easier way to do whatever it is you are doing. For most of us, it’s a new habit altogether. When that happens, you start to have a new faith in your own ability to figure things out, even when you don't know what to do. What is hope, but a sense that maybe I don't know everything, but it's gonna be okay? 

ATM cultivates this attitude towards life by teaching you a process of systematically experimenting with one specific option several times to check out how it feels until it’s clear. Then, you take a break, so that the next attempt is clearly separate or differentiated. Then, you try a different variation on how to do the same thing until it’s clear. An important piece it to take yet another short break, to give the brain time to process incoming sensations as data. Without these little rests, the brain has no opportunity to assess what works and what doesn’t.

What’s the difference between one option and another? Without awareness, it’s all unclear. Additionally, you’ll usually only notice if something is NOT working, when you give yourself a little break. This holds true for life as well as ATM. So you see, ATM provides vital life-skills.

At first, differences may be vague, but they become increasingly more apparent. In ATM, the elusive is made obvious as a sense of having overused a few specific muscles without discrimination. The goal of any lesson is to notice which parts of yourself you are NOT using that could be making a bigger contribution. Which of your habits are serving you and which ones are limiting you? Again there is a chance to develop a primary life-skill: it's not just about movement! Which of your habits in thought, word and deed are no longer serving you?!?

This question of 'Which parts of you are not coming to the party?' is posed in the background of every ATM lesson. It's said that it's the questions we ask ourselves that determine the quality of our lives. This question is a direct path to expanding the boundaries of what you don’t know. From my training and from working with hundreds of people, I can guarantee that there parts of yourself are you not even aware of, so that they couldn’t participate if they wanted to. Chances are you even have a sense there there is something you don't know that you need to know, but it's so vague you don't even know where the problem lies or who to ask. In ATM, you don't need to know. When you pursue this as a practice you do on a regular basis, the clues to where the answers lie get laid out for you like bread crumbs leading you on a magic treasure hunt driven by your own curiosity.

And here’s another one of the other major gifts of ATM:  every lesson is an opportunity to revisit the humility of childhood that allows you to BE with NOT knowing the answers, trying different things until the best answer becomes apparent. This ability is not just helpful; it's a huge part of the creative process. Artists, actors and writers never really know how their art is going to come out until it’s finished. Inventors, research scientists and innovators of social and environmental change also dwell easily in the realm of NOT KNOWING as a means of finding answers that have never manifested before. Remember when we thought the world was flat?

Listen up: it's not just about movement, it's about the evolution of human consciousness. What's that, you say? This evolution is inherent in the gradual advancement of our sensibilities. For example, the advancement from the preoccupation with trivial social niceties due only to an elite who happened by chance to be born into nobility. This social superiority was carried by whiplash and tremendous suffering on the wings of the slave trade which finally led to a sense of hipocracy that took several hundred years to become enough of a FEELING of conflict between ideology and behavior after the idea of equality was written into the Declaration of Independence. Then, during the French Revolution, the momentum of the emotional charge between conflicting ideals and actions exploded in violence against the Nobility. The abolition of slavery in Britain and America did not lag far behind.

Other examples of the evolution of human consciousness are inherent in the gradual worldwide shift from colonialism and despotism to a more equitable political systems where people are not starved or locked up without trial. It's also evident in the slow change from religious persecution - the Inquisition, for example - to religious freedom. It's inherent in the shift from segregation to civil rights, or from women-disposed-of-as-property - whose very children were taken from them when widowed - to women-seen-as-individuals with their own right to own property and how to best care for their children. I could go on, but I won't. You get the idea.

The significance of this is that we usually think of it as an evolution of ideas. In actual fact, it's the self-revulsion and the sense of horror all these ways of behaving evoked in both witnesses and in perpetrators that gradually changed our way of thinking about those once common practices. Hence, the evolution of ideas has it's seed in our ability to sense ourselves. The Information Age is over. This is a New Era: one in which our ability to sense ourselves is the key to moving out of old, insane social structures that foster violence and destruction into ways of being that work for more and more people. Now I'm not saying Feldenkrais® is the only path at all; but I am convinced that it is definitely one of the ways out of the madness. What madness? A world that turns a blind eye to 12 million souls wasting away their lives in refugee camps while on the other side of the globe, a floating mass of plastic garbage from affluent countries gradually grows bigger than the size of Texas. If you haven't heard about it, it's in the Pacific ocean.

The core of ATM is improving our ability to sense ourselves. The impetus for the evolution of consciousness is in the refinement of our sensibilities as sentient beings gifted with the awareness to know the difference between hypocrisy and integrity. It's a FEELING. Feelings are registered as sensations in the body. The greater our sensitivity to feel the effect of what we do, the faster we will move through the anger, the fear, the guilt, the shame, the denial, and finally, into constructive action. Ah, there's one more vital element: the cultivation of allowing ourselves the feel whatever comes up without resistance. ATM is about that too.

This is what the Feldenkrais Method® has to offer a world entrenched in economic, environmental and social turmoil. It’s a pathway into the unknown, a yellow-brick road from chaos into order; an order that respects the individuality of each unique living, dynamic system, and at the same time honor’s it’s potential for contribution to the well-being of the whole. If you would like me to be your guide on this road, it would be my pleasure.

Photo Curtesy of © 2009 Smart-Kit.com

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

How I Got My Juju Back



How I Moved Out of Back Pain That Would Have Kept Me From Everything I Love To Do In Life...

After all this rain, there is a sun! It would seem I lead a charmed life. After the first six weeks, eventually the buckets of rain washed away all previous footing in the horse corral until the big dutch warm blood, affectionately known as ‘Himself,’ after the Irish tradition, churned up a soupy mess of wet clay with his huge feet. It was like quicksand, only worse, because it was on an incline and I was afraid it would suck his leg right under the fence, forcing him into a position he couldn't’t get out of. Miraculously, he never lost a shoe. (I have an excellent horse shoer - my spouse - is the head farrier at U.C.Davis Large Animal Veterinary Hospital). But the mud was treacherous, slippery and seemingly bottomless.



There I was, slogging around digging trenches in the wet clay for the water to drain out, spreading a half ton of gravel into the corral by hand in the downpour, changing out soggy wet blankets in the relentless rain that went on for a good three months solid. My back never once gave me a twinge of discomfort. Not once. I never was incapacitated by back pain, neck pain or a knee problem.

But it was not always this way. Thirty years ago, when I was in my twenties, my back went out while I was picking up a tissue from the floor and I was down for the count of three full days looking at the ceiling. In that time, I had plenty of opportunity to think about what I would be willing to do to be able to walk again. I tried a lot of things as you can imagine. I also had more problems along the way. I have survived seven whiplash injuries including a few concussions mostly from car accidents, but a few from falls off horses - mostly while jumping. 

But still I lead a charmed life. I have never broken a bone.

Yet, the most amazing experience for me has been the slow introduction to the FELDENKRAIS Method. That is what has given me this ability to do really heavy physical labor without any physical fall out. It’s what has taught me to work my body smarter, not harder. It’s what has given me a new sense of self that is stronger, more adaptable and more grounded. Now I can lift, sweep and tote that bale with the core of myself, activated by the use of the pelvic floor in a way that has so completely reorganized my use of self that I no longer fear the work involved in keeping horses.

In short, FELDENKRAIS has allowed me to pursue my dreams and live the life I have always wanted to, in spite of injuries that, for most people, would be so debilitating that most exercise would be suspect or painful at the very least. With this gift, I can continue to be a part of that amazing dance with the horse that is a give and take that is non-verbal; a relationship with the horse wherein my body is my voice; one that has called to me my entire life.

Oh, to sense that soft muzzle in my hand, and to see that beautiful clear eye waiting, inviting, challenging me to play, to run, to buck and to experience the warm sun like any new foal drunk on the warmth of the sunshine after a long hard season of gray fog and rain...


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