Yoga Develops Body Awareness Too, Why ATM?

How is the practice of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT different from a yoga practice or tai chi or some other form of physical movement? One of it's main characteristics is that it improves your ability to learn. As a result, you become quicker at learning other skills - any other skills that interest you. Another characteristic is that it's primary goal is to develop the kinestetic sense intentionally. Other similar movement practices do help develop the kinesthetic sense, but to a much smaller degree. Yet, what you cannot see is not evident, especially in our culture, so, most people find it hard to comprehend why these two applications of the Method have the potential to change your life completely.

In this photograph, a woman is playing a piano with her whole self. The fact that the piano is not there only serves to emphasize that her entire self is engaged. Her posture, her mind, most likely her heart, not just her hands, are all organized to meet the keys in an expression of her internal experience transmuted into sound.

For most of us, as beginners at any skill, there is always a nagging part of ourselves that is complaining. Complaining about the position we have to maintain to continue. Complaining about not understanding where this is going. Complaining about why it isn't easier. It is only after one gains a modicum of skill that a new dimension enters the fray. Enter into the zone, where all thought is lost, all consciousness of time released, all senses are channeled into the task at hand. It is a place that paradoxically is timeless and yet has incredible presence. By many, it is called flow. When you are in it, your whole self is engaged.

AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) is a way to learn to enter into the zone of flow consciously, rather than via music, or drawing, or painting or acting, or singing, or writing, or sports, or study, or tai chi, chi gung, or yoga. By cultivating a sense of what flow feels like in general, it is possible to go there on purpose instead of by accident. ATM teaches us how to intentionally generate flow, rather than have it happen as a capricious accidental experience. For those who relentlessly chase the muse, ATM is an amazing boon, for this state, like inspiration, comes more easily to those who are open to it, rather than those who pursue it.

This has some really practical applications in addition to the airy fairy ones that appeal to people with a creative bent. Life is full of tasks that need doing, tasks that are not especially exciting, like doing dishes, taking out the garbage, or getting the laundry done. Oh, boy, let me jump out of bed now and get down to the brass tacks of living. If this is not your immediate response, how can you make chores more interesting for yourself? Once you know the principles of ATM kinesthetically, you can make any activity into an ATM. An ATM is just a form, like a kata in the martial arts, that teaches you how to be more present as a primary goal rather than a secondary goal as in yoga or martial arts, for example.

Working out of a yoga studio, I often run into students who figure they are already doing things to increase their awareness, why bother with ATM? When I first started doing ATM, I too, had a pretty good level of body awareness from years of receiving various kinds of massage to deal with the repercussions of multiple whiplash and concussion injuries. I was better off than the average person on the street, but still not comfortable in my own body. Ironically, I had just enough body awareness to realize that I was doing it to myself, but no clue what to do about it. For a while I tried to make myself relax whenever I noticed I was holding muscles tight without realizing it. I almost drove myself crazy. Let me save you the trouble. It cannot be done.

One of the major differences between Yoga and ATM is that ATM generates length in the resting muscles using movement rather than stretching. Stretching is a mechanical act that doesn't change how the nervous system sets the resting length of the muscles. If you stretch often enough, the muscle will change it's resting length and the nervous system will adapt and assume that to be the norm. If you only stretch once in a while, however, often you will wake up with muscles shorter than they were the day before. The alternative is to learn to use your consciousness along with movement in the way of ATM, and what happens is that your nervous system adjusts the resting length of your muscles. It's like hitting the reset key on your computer. The nerves that control the muscles recalibrate. Since that is usually how muscles function, via a response to nerve stimulus, it seems to a rather less invasive approach. It honors resistance rather than challenging it.

Having had my hands on several thousand people over the years as a body worker, I can attest to the fact that people who stretch a lot have much more dense muscle tissue than people who achieve that lengthening via ATM. Dense is not better in terms of muscle physiology. A dense muscle has to work harder to accomplish basic normal functions like receiving nutrients and getting rid of the by-products of energy production. A healthy muscle is soft, springy and has a lot of space and fluid circulating inside it. It requires lubrication, ease of nutrient and oxygen flow, ease of ridding itself of metabolic wastes (i.e. circulation).

The first series of five ATM lessons I did was enough to realize that my body held incredible levels of tension that I had absolutely no control over. It took longer than that, however, to learn the principles of ATM in such a way that I could apply it to anything that required movement. I slowly learned to make movement in any situation pleasant and comfortable. People who have little body awareness generally carry so much tension that it's amazing they can function at all because their muscles are fighting against each other. The extensors are contracted at the same time the flexors are trying to contract and vice versa. There is no off switch. Living in such a body is like living with an accident waiting to happen. Having a sense of body awareness merely let's you in on the fact that you carry too much tension. ATM teaches you what to do about it to learn to fix it yourself. This is the most significant difference between yoga and ATM. When you learn to unkink yourself, you are able to go places you wouldn't risk going otherwise. Thus, ATM can make the journey of yoga even more of an adventure.

Living In Perpetual Postponement?

Funny how photographs can frame the environment selectively, so that there is an emphasis on a stair or a flower. Usually there is an intentional use of proportion by the photographer to create a sense of balance. Reality is like that also. Unwittingly, we see a version of the world that is framed by our vision, or our lack thereof. The problem is, the framing often is unconscious, given that we are usually unaware of the basic assumptions we make that govern what we see. Taking time for ourselves allows us a chance to start to see what is usually hidden from view.

"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes." - Goethe


Have you ever caught yourself thinking that someday you will start taking better care of yourself, or that someday you have every intention of getting into nutrition or exercise or meditation? If you live in this land of 'someday, maybe,' the question you have to ask yourself is do you really want to feel better? Superficially, you may think, 'Of course, I want to feel better.' If you take a deeper look, is there some payoff that keeps you from taking the first steps towards change? What are you really attached to? What really moves you?

Looking back on your life, how do you see it overall? What is it that you notice first? Do you see mostly the best things that ever happened to you? Or, do you see your life as a series of difficulties? These first impressions of your overall experience provide clues to your unconscious self image. In the FELDENKRAIS METHOD, it's a given that we all have preferences that govern our choices, our behavior and our results. The most startling aspect of this, however, is that these predispositions are so deeply ingrained that they even govern how we approach things we have never done before. In other words, we have habits about how we do things we don't even know how to do. AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) is ingeniously designed to use movement lessons couched in the totally unfamiliar to make those habits more readily apparent. This is a practice that can facilitate seeing the preferences that for the most part go unnoticed. Certainly the signifigance of how powerfully they affect our lives goes unnoticed.

Ben Franklin said, 'A small leak can sink a great ship.' Many such small leaks will sink it faster, no doubt. Having a self image perforated with habits of thought that lead to permanent postponement is like riding the crest of a wave in a leaky boat. There's the Scarlette O'Hara approach, 'I'll think about that tomorrow.' Today is a survival emergency. Time enough for comfort later, when the potatoes are harvested. A more modern offshoot of that is the myth of the woman who can do it all, birth babies, bring home the bacon, keep the house and bake cookies too. No time for self in that scenario. I am not suggesting that work is bad. But workaholism can be just a self-absorbed as egotism. I am not advocating self-absorption either; merely taking time to notice, periodically, what is going on under the surface. Shimmering waters can be deceptive.

These underlying attitudes usually become apparent at some point during life's less pleasant moments anyway. Why wait until your hand is forced? It's a lot more painful to wait until strong emotions run rough shod over your plans than to regularly take the time to peak under the carpet. Needless to say, a single dust bunny is easier to deal with that an entire carpet laden with dirt.

An ATM practice affords the opportunity to notice the amazing grace of life before it disappears. It brings presence to moments we let slip through our fingers. It teaches us to find the immediacy necessary to stop living a life of endless postponement. How? By the simple expedient of honing those amazing senses we so readily take for granted like life itself. We rarely think about how awesome it is to be able to see, unless, for some reason, our vision is taken away by injury or disease. Hearing can be a gift or a curse according to what the noise level is around you. For music I am eternally grateful. For now, I am focused on my own internal rhythm in spite of the construction going on outside.

Four thousand years of human experience in disciplines like yoga, chi gong, and meditation attest to the fact that amazing results can be acheived by focusing on the very act of breathing. What makes ATM different? ATM provides a frame for channeling your attention so that beginning is easy. ATM teaches you how to focus your mind, so that the overwhelming glut of information that modern living belches onto your desk no longer dominates your experience. ATM provides a refuge that is not religious, not concerned with striving, acheiving or struggle. It's part art, part science. It's derived from Martial Arts, Child Development, and the principles of Engineering as they apply to living structures moving in the field of gravity.

It's a much more gentle beginning than some of the aforementioned disciplines that have evolved over the centuries. It can provide similar benefits, glimpses into a more fulfilling consciousness, greater mobility, comfort and energy, but in a way that invites through the playful curiosity that motivates children to learn spontaneously. ATM is unique in that it concentrates on living from the inside out rather than from the outside in. It is not cosmetic like many of the values of our times, rather it is fundamental. It sheds clarity on our relationships with self, with others and with the world. In my view, this is exactly what the world needs; people skilled at seeing the big picture, within and without at the same time. The somatic approach is even more inclusive than that, for it includes vision, taste, smell, sound, feeling, and choice based on what works rather than unconscious preferences. ATM is a practice of non-judgement not out of moral superiority, but because judgement is about attachment to personal outcome, which actually hinders the ability to hear, see and feel what works.

A Somatic Approach to Patience

Managing the ebb and flow of attachment and desire would seem to be a spiritual issue, or an issue of managing the ego. But somatic theory frames it differently. How can movement be used to work with the excitement that comes unbidden when the seed of desire is sown?

"A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe fruit at length falls into his lap." - Abraham Lincoln


I will say right off the bat that this is not one of my strengths. If there is something I want for myself, I am terribly impatient about it. By contrast, I am much more resilient when dealing with others. I am endlessly patient with muscle and fascia. I can wait for the unwinding to occur as it will. Sometimes just a minute or two, sometimes more, according to the length of time the restriction has been present. When I work with others, I enter a state where time does not exist. I enter the universe of their experience as evidenced by the consistency of their musculature. The history of your everyday activities, your proclivities and your personality is all written in the warp and weft of how you hold tension and where you have none...

But working with others is different because I have no attachment to the outcome, only an endless fascination with the process. Each soma is a magnificent conglomeration of physical, mental, and emotional responses, some spontaneous, some conditioned. As such each is entirely unique. Each time the process is completely different, and yet, patterns emerge. Patterns that I also see when looking at the fabric of my own life. When faced with my own motivations to begin this project or to end that one, for example, I am entirely human. I am pulled back from the curiosity that lures me into universe of the microcosm inside another. I get confused, just as we all do, by superficial appearances. I get sucked into expectations, diverted by life and tripped up by the unexpected that seems to occur consistently when I am busy making other plans.

I forget to make a back up plan. I forget that I have options. It's only when I lie down on the floor and reawaken my own creativity in the way I have learned to do in AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM), that I regain the endless capacity for patience that is an ocean. Only in working with myself in this way, can I access the same level of presence that I am able to draw upon when working with others. Time recedes and suddenly I drift gently, like Alice in Wonderland, into a rabbit hole. Only the path is one of fascinating discovery. I drop attachment to worldly things like a worn-out toy, in favor of a glistening bauble infinitely more immediate: the universe of sensory experience.

One of my favorite sayings is, 'The map is not the terrritory.' We never deal directly with life. We deal with our interpretation of it. This is why different people experience life in such blatantly contrasting ways, even when in similar circumstances. We 'make sense' of the world by stuffing what happens into the framework of what we know, how it relates to what we have known and what we are afraid might or might not happen in the future.

Interesting idiom, 'to make sense of,' considering that the only way we can interface with the physical world is by using the information our senses provide. Our footsteps on the path give us a sense of the terrain. Our sense of smell can dictate whether to feel comfortable or disgusted. Our visual field, now more than ever before, is assaulted daily with images that make the world a larger, more aggressive place. Images of war on foreign soil burst into the tiny interior of my car before I have time to change the station.

In the places where my map is inaccurate, I get lost. We all have preconceived ideas. If I am overwhelmed by unwanted input and need to tune out just to get on with life, I loose out. If I have to dull my senses to survive, I diminish myself. My aliveness is compromised. If I live in impatient desire for some future outcome, I starve myself in the presence of abunce. I can read about eating, but it will not nourish me. I can read about eating chocolate, but it's not the same as actually biting into the silky sweetness of it. And I can read about doing ATM, I can write about it forever, but it too, will provide no sustenance until I actally lay down, put a lesson on the CD player and give myself the gift of time for myself. Ironically, time, it seems, is the antidote to impatience.

Let's Nurture the Gene Pool

Nature vs. nurture, the age old debate, has received new input based on new equipment now available for the study of neurology. Just how important is genetics? How much of a role does environment play in how we fare in life? One thing is clear, by learning to nurture ourselves, we extend our own life span. The person who stays connected to self, to nature and to others lives longer.

This is why a machinistic approach is completely contraindicated. It doesn't matter whether we are speaking in terms of how we relate to health, to self esteem, or to relationships, international or personal. To ignore quality and make decisions based solely on logic is detrimental. It ignores the innate plasticity of the brain that allows for life-long learning. The possibility of learning separates organized life forms from computers. A computer can only do what it's told based on the input it receives. Humans, however, have an ability to generate completely unknown responses that can potentially create worlds of possibility previously inconceivable. Your ability to learn is a wild card that you can count on.

In the 1940's, the scientific worldview about human development was leaning heavily towards the idea that environment was the main factor that determined a child's future talents. Scientists had not yet cracked into a way to unlock how genes might determine character traits, or susceptibility to disease. A then-famous-study of two groups of disadvantaged infants made clear the magnitude of the importance of nurture.

Psychiatrist Rene Spitz compared two groups of infants raised in two seperate institutions. One group was raised in a fondling home, the other group was raised in a nursery that housed the babies of women in the nearby prison. Both institutions were comparable in that they were clean, and provided adequate health care. The crucial difference lay in the amount of nurture. The babies in the prison nursery received lavish attention. Their prison inmate mothers showered them with affection and care during feeding, diaper changes and playtime. These babies developed normally despite the impersonal, clinical setting.

The foundling babies, however, received only little stimulation. In the foundling home, every eight babies had one nurse to care for them. Feedings and diaper changes were brief. Each baby was kept isolated from others to prevent the spread of infection. They had nothing to look at, little affection and minimal physical contact. The startling result was that a large number of them did not even survive until the age of two. The infants that did survive to become children had a surprisingly broad range of problems. Some were physically stunted, some were severely retarded, some were highly prone to infection. They were socially inept. Their behavior was characterized by withdrawal and apathy. By three years of age, most couldn't walk or talk.

Now, consider this: walking and talking is based on the ability to move. They had the muscles to do the job, they just didn't have the neural connections. Exposure to stimulation and nurture lays down the foundation for learning: if the brain is not engaged, it vegetates. This is how we learn to interact with the world around us. Spitz showed that early nurturing and stimulation was imperative for normal function.

Modern medicine is now focused, almost to the point of obsession, on decoding the genetic blueprint responsible for human behavior and disease. Everything from alcoholism to sexual orientation, and Alzheimer's disease to cancer is being related to some chromosome or other. What gets lost in the media shuffle, though, is that these genetic links merely define a predispositon, not a certain, inevitable cause. Genetics merely locates potential weaknesses and strengths, not definitive ones. Heredity is only one factor in determining the outcome of health and behavior. Given, the current trend towards sensationalism in news media reporting, it's easy to loose sight of this fact.

To give genetics so much power is to reduce the human species to the level of machinery. It denies the two most irrevocable distinctions between ourselves and other life forms. Human beings, alone, have the capacity to choose, to invoke free will. And human beings, alone, have the capacity to use conscious intention to the service of learning.

Animals choose, based on instinct, even affection, perhaps, but only if raised in domestication. Set a dog free, and it will probably choose to stay with it's master. At least most dogs come home eventually, unless misstreated. And some dogs will travel thousands of miles to be with a lost human companion. Animals, like humans, also have a capacity to learn, but it is limited to necessity. I have an older horse. I teach her new things all the time, because it's good for both of us. But left to her own devices, she would only learn what she had to for survival. She would not wake up one morning and think to herself, 'Today, I would like to learn French.' Animals do not channel their choices based on desire or ambition. They do not determine what they might like to do with their lives.

The FELDENKRAIS METHOD revolves around free choice. It's about using your intention to effect change. I do FELDENKRAIS with both people and horses. There is a difference only in that with horses, I am the one actively providing the stimulus for change. With people it can be done either way. I can provide the stimulus, or I can teach people the skill of working with themselves. That's what AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (ATM) classes are about. ATM teaches you to regroup, to reprioritize, to learn to focus on quality instead of viewing your body as a machine that will inevitably fail you. The ability to learn is as inevitable as the degeneration of ageing. The difference is, you have to exert free will to initiate it once you can just 'get by' without learning more. Do you want live life just making do, or do you want to live fully?

ATM is a process of learning to use our God given senses to the service of improving the quality of our lives. If the word 'God' rankles, think of it in terms of neurology. You can intentionally use movement with a specific level of awareness taught in ATM to foster the connection of neural pathways for improved function, learning and coordination. You could, alternatively, opt to use drugs instead. It depends on the situation. In some cases drugs are called for. In other cases, they are merely temporary pacifiers. It's an individual judgement call. I, myself, have thought long and hard on this: Do I want to tune out or tune in? Having experienced both, I choose to tune in. Not twenty-four hours a day, but as a practice. I choose to gradually refine my ability to respond to life rather than to deaden my senses. I have spent years of my life tuning out and the quality of my life deteriorated in a very predictable manner. The years I have spent tuning in have brought a completely different experience. Tuning in takes me to places I was never even able to conceive of in previous times. Why? Because we cannot know what we don't know, but we can sure intentionally endeavor to find out.

Weeding Out Dysfunctional Movement Patterns

'Now 'tis spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now and they'll o'grow the garden.'
- William Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

If you are reading this, chances are you are no longer in the 'springtime' of your life. You may, in fact, be quite set in your ways, already experiencing the 'inevitable' onset of chronic muscular problems. But muscular dysfunction is not inevitable. It occurs in recognizable patterns that are malleable. The sooner you start the easier it is, before they become so deeply ingrained that they become a part of your self image. You can recognize these patterns easily, all you need is to be willing to learn to channel your attention...

The structure of muscles moving together in patterns allows your brain to organize complex coordination immediately. No thought required. Hitting the break pedal at just the right moment means finding it with your foot without having to take your eyes off the road. This allows for a certain amount of freedom. It means you can widen your focus. You don't have to focus all your attention on driving. You can follow directions to a new place. You can see the scenery. In short, since the issue of functioning safely is handled, you can also focus on other things.

The structure of patterned movement is a framework that allows for greater freedom. It's like having a schedule. You don't have to worry about things getting done because they are already accounted for. In one of the teaching jobs I've held, I used to get these frantic calls from the administrative director at the last minute asking if I could teach this or that workshop in two weeks or sometimes in a few days. Well, yes, I had the dates available, and yes, I could do the teaching, but there is a certain amount of internal preparation that goes into teaching. Teaching is about taking information that often is available to anyone, and organizing it so that it can be easily understood. It's kind of like what cows do. You have to take the information and chew it down into bite size pieces like cud so that it is easily digestible. Then you have to organize it into a recognizable pattern so that it makes sense. The more regular the pattern, the easier it is for people to retain new information.

Discipline is very similar. It provides a framework that can be freeing. It creates a consistent set of assumptions about behavior and work ethic that allow some basic things to get handled. When the basics are accounted for, other aspects of life can flourish in fertile ground; things such as creativity, achievement and safety.

The discipline of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVMENT (ATM) as a practice, allows you to easily recognize movement patterns. Truly holistic in it's methodology, the lessons do not focus exclusively on dysfunctional movement patterns, but on optional ones as well. Kicking a bad habit by trying to stop doing it doesn't work. Substitute a new behavior, and it becomes much easier. In ATM, you learn new movement patterns. The lessons chew ordinary movements down into bite size pieces so that you can easily recogize what you normally do and what else you could be doing.

It's the 'what else you could be doing' that takes you from dysfunction into optional patterns. And somewhere in that lovely array of optional patterns is one that is optimal for you, given who you are, what injuries are, and what your preferences are. The beauty of the Method is that it is all done in a playful, relaxed state of hedonistic enjoyment. I don't know about you, but I'm in. I like to nip those movement patterns that are causing me discomfort in the bud, before they turn into chronic pain. And, yes, it takes the freedom of discipline.