BeingHuman 2012: Perception From Both Sides of the Fence

"The developmental learning process involves creating integration of movement and perception into a coherent pattern..." - Carl Ginsburg, The Intelligence of Moving Bodies: A Somatic View of Life and Its Consequences

Life is chaotic (a pattern). Everyone seems to have their own agenda (a pattern), or at least their own strongly held convictions (a pattern), about how things should be done, their own lens (a pattern), through which they see the world and make sense of the seemingly incoherent movement of time, technology and ideas, not to mention politics, economics and power. Neuroscience sees the world through the filter of it's own studies, which of late, have brought new insights into the discussion about how we make sense of experience. 

For example, what if, because of the way our brains are designed, we only understand reality through the veil of past experience (another pattern)? For example, you recognize the logo above as a bar code (yes, it's a pattern!), even though you didn't think about it; it was a visual recognition that occurred below the level of conscious awareness. You made sense of the image without thought, based on past exposure to bar codes over a lifetime of shopping in supermarkets that use them on every item they sell.  If its true that we can only perceive an experience based on past experience, neurologically, then given that knowledge, we can be a little more detached from 'being right,' (a seriously deeply ingrained pattern!), and a little more objective and compassionate in realizing that others see the same situation as we do, but from an equally valid perspective. This could be a huge step in the direction of creating a coherent integration of understanding among peoples across a world divided not so much by geography as in past centuries, but more by minds that are set in peaks and valleys of righteousness, which, like walls of certainty, interfere with coherent integration and living with each other in a way that makes sense.

Consider this: At the first Being Human Symposium held March 24th, 2012, in San Francisco, Beau Lotto, who holds a Ph.D. from Edinburgh's Medical School in cellular and molecular developmental neurobiology, demonstrated just how differently we understand the meaning of experience based on the perspective we are coming from. He runs the Lotto Lab in London: an experiential public research lab that specializes in perception. By means of a number of ingenious illusions, he demonstrates the divide between what we perceive and what is actually there.  He began clarifying the divide by using a visual illusion based on the perception of color, since, he says,  'Its is one of the simplest things the brain does,' which is remarkable in and of itself when you think about it. For years I have been reading about these kinds of visual illusions, never really understanding their relevance to reality. Lotto is a vivacious presence with a mischievous sense of humor which you can get a sense of by viewing an older version of his presentation from a TED talk given in 2009.

By showing a variety of images in successive illusions that challenge you to discern which colors are held in common, you begin to realize experientially, that context is everything. Without understanding that the context, or the lens through which we see a thing either puts certain distinctions in bold relief or tends to cast them as minor by setting them in the background, we will never realize how biased our most cherished perceptions are; including the one that holds that we are unbiased.

One of the things that was so moving and powerful about this symposium, was that it was a true attempt to create a meeting of the minds between the hard sciences and the social sciences, and between how the brain makes meaning of reality through the senses and how our environment, our familial, social, and cultural assumptions and perceptions dictate our behavior 'below the hood;' in other words, without our conscious awareness. Psychology proclaims that at least 80% of anyone's behavior emerges out of subconscious impulses. If we behave in ways that are driven by things we don't even notice, no wonder we are at loggerheads with each other on most issues that impact us all. All this and more is the domain of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT, hence, my enthusiasm: this is a major move in the direction of understanding how somatic experiencing contributes much more than an understanding of movement, it's trains us to refine our perceptions, be clearer in our communications, to evolve a functional life and a functional ability to survive on a planet we have compromised by our lack of understanding of these principles up to now.

Another piece of somatic understanding that was implicit, although unfortunately not explicit, at this symposium, was the importance of balancing different ways of perceiving: via the intellect versus the non-verbal, via cognition versus imagination, via information versus the arts. Some might frame this as left brain versus right brain 'thinking,' although that model is also being questioned by neurology currently.  My only suggestion to improve this event, would be to include the awareness that experiential movement could have augmented learning for both audience and presenters, by providing relief from eight hours of sitting and by instigating a mental state change to prevent intellectual overload and further cement new learning as a somatic experience.

So, although the lack of the inclusion of movement as a way of perceiving and sensing our environment, was an oversight that demonstrates the need for a better understanding of the efficacy of accelerated learning models as well as somatics on the part of the organizers, it was a really nice start to what I hope will be a continuing conversation about the intersection of understanding that can further human evolution when the linguistics department speaks to the education department, and the social sciences speak to the neurologists and when artists, musicians, poets, writers and movement educators are in conversation with philosophers, microbiologists, psychologists, and neurologists about how we shape our reality in functional ways.

This is the very foundation of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT: it's the development of a learning process that integrates our perceptions, internal and external, with our actions into a functional relationship with reality. To use the language brought into the conversation by Carl Ginsburg in his new book quoted at the beginning of this article, this is exactly how we create a agency, or the ability to direct our actions in functional ways as individuals and as a society: there can be no functional act without integration. And integration involves improved understanding of our own perceptions, sensations, awarenesses, how to augment them, how to develop them, and how to make them useful, intentional, coherent and organized so that function can occur with ease and grace like a symphony moving in apparent synchronicity.

Oh, and to add the salient question of the symposium, lest it be overlooked: 'What does being human mean to you, now, in the 21st Century?' And from my point of view, biased, I know, 'What, in your experience, does AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT lend to Being Human?'

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.

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