Writer Natalie Goldberg tells a story about how she first met the local Zen Master and found him less than impressive. At some point afterwards she went to a wedding in Hawaii where he was also in attendance. Then, a few weeks later, she went back to the Zen Center to find him wearing a vibrant pink Hawaiian orchid from that very same reception. When she commented in surprise, he said, "Yes. When you take care of something, it lives a long time."

Even so with ourselves. We are conditioned to ignore this small detail that can prolong both life and joy. Taking time, taking time out, none of these are encouraged. Instead, as a society, we are admonished to strive. As children we are prompted to succeed. As young adults we are shoved out the door and told to sink or swim.

This is all such a given we hardly even notice it.

Conditioned to strive, to succeed, to get it done, we have to actually give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves, to nurture ourselves or to do what brings us joy! This leaves a vague sense of stress, of feeling depleted, of being unappreciated. Yet, the choice is ours. We can choose to buy into this subliminal social conditioning to produce, or we can enjoy the process of our lives. In a complicated world, it's a simple choice really. To take time out to savor being in a body, to take care of our bodies, to enjoy being embodied?

Awareness Through Movement Provides a clear path to enjoyment on the physical plane. The fact that it also helps maintain smooth functionality in the body at the same time is icing! Its just that 'when you take care of something, it lasts a long time!'

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?'

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.'

 

 

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.

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

______________________________

 

 

Focus Mind & Body Events:

Come for the release from tension; 

stay for the discovery of your own path to

living your best life!