Feldenkrais Post: Quotes, commentary, links, and an audio lesson

Here is a passage from the book, Sensory Awareness, The Rediscovery of Experiencing by Charles V.W. Brooks. This book, published in 1974, is based on the work of Charlotte Selver, and Elsa Gindler. I think it this passage captures the aim of the Feldenkrais Method®, i.e. using only the amount of effort needed for a given action. No more, no less.

It is a description of a cook at a lunch counter.

“The whole man stood or moved with the utter equilibrium of a fish in water, and though his movements were as swift as those of a fish, there was no hint of haste or urgency. When one could see his eyes, they were perfectly calm. His lips and cheeks were at ease, his whole form the image of well-being. No furrow of concern marked his brow, no sign of thought or concentration. But each steak was flipped or removed exactly at its moment, and each laden plate was set on the counter for the waitresses, not only without clatter, but without a sound. One could see that each movement of this man was felt and enjoyed by this man to its very end, while the end of one movement flowed into the beginning of the next with the ease and inevitability of a sleeper’s breathing.”

The author returned the lunch counter a year later and discovered that the cook had been promoted to manager, accompanied with a different demeanor. “ He still stood with grace, but his tools had been taken from him and the significance of his activity destroyed. To everyone else, it was a sign of success; for us an occasion of mourning.”

Moshe Feldenkrais was very much a man of action, and his method is grounded in action. It is a process of self-discovery, beginning with an awareness of existing compulsive habits, and a realization of the variety of options available to us. While this learning is based on movement, the implications apply equally, and are intertwined with thinking, feeling, and the way that we interact with our environment.

As profound as the learning may be in a lesson, the next, and perhaps bigger question is am I willing and able to bring a new or renewed awareness into my everyday life.

Here is a 26 minute audio of a movement sequence that is related to lessons of the last couple of weeks involving the rotation of the foot, leg and the hip joint. At the end of the lesson I make reference to the 27 bones in the foot, but there are only 26 bones in the foot.


And here’s a link to a good description of the actions of the leg and pelvis. This one is actually from Erich Franklin, and it’s well done. But perhaps it’s a good time to point out that the Feldenkrais lessons are not exercises, and we approach movement from many different perspectives.

Sensational Movement

What I mean by this title is that one of the primary aspects of the Feldenkrais Method is that the lessons we teach are focused on the sensation of movement. How we sense a movement can be quite varied. We could take the example of simply lying on the floor on your back.

1. You can sense your contact with floor from the pressure of your body. You can sense where you are making contact with the floor and where there is no contact. You might even be surprised by what you notice versus what you expected. You will likely notice that differences in the way your left side is making contact compared to the right side. Another surprise perhaps. By differentiating the right and left sides, you can notice which side feels more comfortable, or lighter, or longer’ or whatever else you sense. For a number of reasons, we tend to be asymmetrical and yet we are typically unaware of it. So really sensing these differences is something your brain can, and will utilize.

This first example would be an external orientation to sensation. The places where your skin or your outside envelope interact with the external environment.

2. You could also approach sensations from an internal orientation. You might be able to have some sense of where your bones are inside of your body. You could have an internal sense of the joints, organs. Perhaps this isn’t as clear as the feeling of your body against the hard surface of the floor, but you’d still have some sense of it. You could easily sense the inside of your mouth.

These examples are just a couple of perspectives with respect to sensation. You could sense your breathing through the movement of the diaphragm or by the sound your breathing makes. When you think about all of the places you can sense any movement, combined with which senses you are using, you have quite a large palette to work with.

You might also begin to discover that your habit, your tendency, your preference, is to sense in one particular way without realizing that there are other options. In any case you will probably find that certain areas are clear and others are fuzzy or even nonexistent. You can also sense larger patterns such as holding your breath when you start a movement, or tensing your jaw, or eyes or any number of other muscles. You might never have noticed these patterns before.

The other “sensational” thing about these examples is that your brain is quite capable of intelligently processing this new or rediscovered information. Not by thinking, but by the very act of sensing. Your brain can do something when the difference in one side from the other is noticed. Your sensory brain, being intelligent, will likely incorporate the parts that feel easier, into the overall pattern.

Therefore, the sensations themselves act as the guide toward better and easier movement. The discovery of easier movement can also bring a smile to your face and put a song in your heart, as well as a spring in your step.  The results can be quite surprising and profound.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Albert Einstein

Our culture has conditioned us to have achievement at the forefront of our attention. We then have a predetermined idea about the goal and the way to get there, which often involves much more effort than is necessary. This is quite different than the process of sensation which I have described. In the area of predetermined ideas and compulsive effort, there are few surprises, and little if anything in the way of learning. We have been conditioned to achieve predetermined results to the extent that simply slowing down and moving easily, with attention, can be quite a challenge.

Sensation can operate in so many different ways. There is virtually no limit to the ways you might perceive a movement. Utilizing these different ways will expand your abilities to perform spontaneously to meet the demands of a particular situation.

I’ll leave you with a Fritz Perls quote that I heard many years ago and have never forgotten.

“Lose your mind and come to your senses”

Finding Your Groove Again →

I recently came across this post in Scientific American and I thought it was interesting. Here's the audio link, and transcript. Then my commentary from the Feldenkrais perspective.

A good mood may put a spring in your step. But the opposite can work too: purposefully putting a spring in your step can improve your mood. That’s the finding from a study in theJournal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry. [Johannes Michalak, Katharina Rohde and Nikolaus F. Troje, How we walk affects what we remember: Gait modifications through biofeedback change negative affective memory bias]

Scientists showed volunteers a list of negative and positive words, like afraid and anxious, or sunny and pretty. Then the subjects had to walk on a treadmill while watching a gauge that moved left or right. 

But here’s what the participants did not know: if their stance—for example, slumped shoulders—seemed to indicate a down mood the gauge moved to the left. If their walk was more upbeat, say with swinging arms, the gauge moved to the right. The scientists asked half the subjects to adjust their walking style until the gauge moved to the right, and the other half so that the gauge went the left. Each group quickly learned what adjustments moved the gauge in the desired direction.

Then the subjects had to write down as many words from the list that they remembered. And those who walked with a depressed gait recalled more negative terms, while the ones who were asked to walk in a more upbeat style came up with many more positive words. 

Past research has shown that depressed people tend to remember negative words and happier people tend to remember happy words. So this study suggests that the way we walk influences our mental state. And that we can change our state by changing our gait. —Christie Nicholson

Moshe Feldenkrais was onto this idea over 60 years ago and he was way ahead of his time in understanding how the brain works. He saw thinking, sensing, feeling, movement and the environment as one whole, literally, each affecting the other via feedback loops. This study is one demonstration of that.

The first thing to point out is that it wasn't just walking that produced the effect, but the quality of the walking. The groovy walk included much more movement of the arms and shoulders and hips. You can imagine what the depressed walk looked like.

Second, is the association of the quality of the movement and the semantic aspect, i.e. the tendency for participants to remember more of the negative words with the depressed gait and more positive words with the groovy or "upbeat" gait. The movement quality was influencing thought.

Lastly, the feedback component of the experiment is what I found particularly interesting. The learning was relatively open ended, with participants making their own interpretations based on the bar moving right or left. Kind of like a puzzle to solve through the movement itself. And most figured it out. I suspect the results would have been quite different if they were told to walk in a particular way with a lot of explanation. Then it would likely have been a process of interpretation of those words, followed by effort and a judgement of success, which is a very different process.

Feldenkrais came up with these very clever movement classes called Awareness Through Movement, and also individual movement lessons called Functional integration. The design of the lessons, without going into a lot of detail, is to move through particular movement sequences in an easy, slow way, while noticing the subtle differences and changes. Also like solving a puzzle via movement through our internal feedback mechanisms. Throughout the lessons, students are subtly "nudged" in a variety of ways toward sensing these differences, and to notice when the quality of the movement changes. When that happens changes in thinking, and feeling, and sensing are also noticed. This kind of learning can be very powerful and positive, and your brain likes it.

It's a commentary on the way that we have learned how to do things in our culture that going slow and easy is one of the most difficult things that many students encounter. Our culture's way is to go hard and fast and keep score and compare ourselves to others. It's one reason we find it so difficult to experience how we do what we do. It's obscured by all of the effort.

The best way to learn more might be to actually experience a lesson. So find a Feldenkrais teacher and check it out. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Aging Well Through Movement...What Price Stability?

This article explores a common scenario with regard to safety and risk and how our brains operate. I am using a movement example, but there are others as well.

The example has to do with strategies some (many?) might begin to employ as a result of aging, or injury, or perhaps a chronic condition. Let's say this develops into a fear of falling. There are lots of stories about the consequences of falling and breaking a hip, so it represents a risk or a danger. As a result of this sense of danger a strategy of creating greater stability in standing and walking might begin. This strategy might not even be conscious, it might "just happen".

Greater stability could be gained by widening one's stance, looking at the ground in order to spot obstacles, with an overall sense of carefulness in one's gait. Given the circumstances  these strategies are not necessarily wrong in the short term, but there is a hidden cost that is often missed, and that is the cost of decreased mobility. Don't take my word for it. Take a walk, then widen your feet even just a little, and put a little more bend in the knees, and look at the ground in front of you and walk again. Do you sense the difference? How is it possible that you could find yourself walking differently without even being consciously aware of these adjustments? Here are a couple of reasons.

First, we humans are much less stable than other animals because we stand on two legs, not four. We have a big heavy head that sits on top, giving us a high center of gravity. But we have a potential for mobility that is unparalleled. The mobility and coordination of ankles and knees and hips and ribs and spine and shoulders and head and arms allows us to instantly modulate our instability and retain our balance. And we love this, witnessed by the popularity of dance and sports and other forms of entertainment. But if we lose confidence in our ability to adjust we react by seeking more stability. 

Second, protection from danger is one of the primary functions of the brain. This goes way back to when surviving the day was a big deal. And these protective functions can be automatic and unconscious. Daniel Kahneman covers all of this in Thinking Fast and Slow, which is one of my favorite books on how the human brain operates. Kahneman cites research that shows that aversion to risk is at least twice as strong as attraction to opportunities. So we have a strong urge to go for safety and security over risk, i.e. stability over mobility.

There are many examples where aversion to risk plays itself out. How people invest, which jobs they choose or stay with, relationships, and more. Ironically, one of the top things that people say at the end of their lives is "I wish I had taken more risks". 

Kahneman points out that this system is fast and automatic because we can't possibly think everything through at every moment. But he also points out that the fast brain is not necessarily right every time. We also have a slow brain system that is valuable but underutilized. Kahneman says that the slow brain is lazy and will just go with the fast brain in most cases.

Going back to our stability/mobility question, we would need to employ our slow brains to solve this movement conundrum. "Danger" is not just an idea, it is a "felt sense", so thinking might have limited value. I was having this conversation with someone a while ago and he concluded that I was talking about "mind over matter", so I must not have explained it well. Commanding yourself to keep your feet closer and look at the horizon may only escalate the sense of danger and fear. So there is more to it than that.

I think the solution can occur at the sensory level, utilizing our slow brains. You might explore the movements of standing and walking while lying on the ground, which is safe, because "you can't fall off the floor". You could explore all of the functions of walking which include rotation, flexion, extension and the coordination of the different parts, and do this in novel and unusual ways to engage the brain. If you did this slowly, with attention, differences could be noticed and changes adopted, because you could actually sense and feel the improvement. It wouldn't just be an idea or a command. Then you could actually stand and walk and employ the newfound mobility with a sense of confidence and vitality. You would very likely have a smile on your face and also see that this new learning affects thinking and feeling and sensing as well.

In fact, you might discover that you can learn to move better in some ways than you ever did, regardless of your age. Or that age has much less to do with it than you thought and that increasing mobility is the path to stability. You might discover that greater mobility allows for greater spontaneity.

You probably figured out that I have just described some of the elements the Feldenkrais Method®, (Awareness Through Movement® or Functional Integration®). There are other methods that explore movement in these slow brain ways, and the scientific research is confirming that this type of process actually changes neural pathways. I admit that I am biased but I know of no other method that so thoroughly and creatively develops the possibilities of movement re-education. 

So check it out.......meaning really try a lesson. Learning is doing. Here's a link to some short Awareness Through Movement lessons you could try at home, or go to feldenkrais.com to find classes or practitioners in your area.

Thoughts, "Felts" and Movements

Moshe Feldenkrais figured out how movement is directed via the brain and the nervous system. He also recognized that virtually all human movement is learned. Unlike other animals in which movement is "hard wired", human movement develops over a long apprenticeship after birth. Our movement patterns are formed through trial and error, and by copying others, most notably our parents. A lot of things can influence the learning process.

If you wore a brace as a child, or had a serious illness, or suffered some sort of trauma, your movement habits could very well be influenced, and remain to a certain extent, even after recovery. These experiences are incorporated into our habit patterns. The patterns become unconscious and automatic, i.e. we lose awareness of them. Once your brain learns a pattern, it doesn't want to change as it has important new things to attend to. This can happen throughout our lives and isn't limited to childhood.

As an experiment, interlace your fingers and note how you do it. Is your left thumb or your right thumb on top? However you do it, switch and do it the other way. What is your experience? It probably feels wrong, and you will have the urge to go back to your habitual way. And if I asked you which thumb would be on top before trying it, you probably would have to guess as it's something you never thought about before.

So in this sense our "movements" are built on our past experiences. The same is true for "thoughts" and "felts". They all point to the past and the unconscious habitual responses we have learned.

Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration are designed to improve how we sense movement in the present and begin to recognize how we do what we do. To make the unknown known and to experience how that feels. So in this sense I am defining "moving" and "feeling" and "thinking" as being in the present, as opposed to "movements", "thoughts" and "felts" as the habits formed in the past.

How then can we begin to explore these patterns built on the past, and explore new options? The method is designed to do just that. Moving and thinking and feeling are interrelated, so moving in new ways can trigger new ways of thinking and feeling. In this way, new options for moving can influence us in profound ways.

The neuroscience research is confirming all of this, and changes in the way we move can actually cause biochemical changes. Watch Amy Cuddy's Ted Talk about the "confidence poses".

A great deal is being learned about how the brain and nervous system operate and how mindfulness practices can literally change the brain. I would say that the Feldenkrais Method is definitely a mindfulness practice, so check it out. What have you got to lose except some of those old habits that are weighing you down?

Embodied Learning

This is from a blog that I wrote for Vital Human in February. Reading time: 4 minutes

Moshe Feldenkrais was a scientist ahead of his time. Since he wrote Body and Mature Behavior in 1949, the largest share of his theories about movement, the brain, and the nervous system have been verified with the latest findings in neuroscience. 

One idea Feldenkrais postulated was that of “the cybernetic whole,” the notion that thinking, feeling, sensing, moving, and the environment are interactive parts of a larger system. He based his method on this idea, that improvements in movement spread throughout the system, affecting thinking, feeling, and sensing, just as changes in thinking, feeling and sensing affect movement.

Scientists have done much to corroborate Feldenkrais’ ideas, especially in the area of study called Embodied Cognition, which began to emerge in the 1970s. Embodied Cognition also developed similar ideas, that thinking, bodily sensations, and movement are interwoven. George Lakoff, one of the leading researchers in this area, theorizes that because thought and language are the newest functional developments within the human brain, the construction of thought and language is literally built upon bodily sensations and movement, which are controlled by older brain structures. Lakoff has observed that our thinking world is largely metaphorical and these metaphors have orientations in the body. “He couldn’t grasp the idea” is one example. “It was over his head” is another. We might “take a turn for the worse,” “put something behind us,” or “warm up to an idea.” Lakoff and scientist Mark Johnson identified thousands of these metaphors and described them in detail in a book they co-authored, titled Metaphors We Live By. 

Another scientist, John Bargh, and his colleagues have done some fascinating research related to the phenomenon of “semantic priming.” Two groups of college students were given word puzzles that included lists of words. One group had word lists that included Florida, orange, bald, wrinkle, grey, and bingo, words associated with being older. The students were not made aware of any special significance of the words since they were included among a grouping of many other words. In phase two of the experiment, the researchers observed both groups of students walking down a hall and measured how fast each student walked. Amazingly, the group who received the unconscious priming for words associated with "old" walked significantly more slowly down the hallway than others who did not have those words in their lists. 

To understand even more about the intersection between language and bodily awareness, we have only to look at very young children who have yet to speak or think in words but who are, in fact, thinking. They “think” through their senses when they experience the warmth and eye contact of their mothers or when they react to a loud noise. They “think” by way of touch, taste, smell, seeing, and hearing, and these learned patterns become “embodied,” that is, the thinking is integrated into the child’s knowing and we see evidence of this knowing in his or her behavior. They “put two and two together” experientially through the senses.

As adults, we live in a world where thoughts and words have come to dominate, which presents a problem when it comes to self-knowledge and self-awareness. Words can mean many things and memory is known to be highly inaccurate or unavailable. Again, Feldenkrais was ahead of his time and felt strongly that movement itself is a more tangible and reliable way to learn about ourselves, and that all the patterns of our thoughts and feelings are expressed through our movements, whether we are aware of them or not. Thus, movement provides us the perfect experimental laboratory for the areas we are hoping to change and improve. 

My experience is that each Awareness Through Movement lesson or Functional Integration lesson results in greater ease of movement, which is quite satisfying and quite enough for me. But I experience much more than the ease of movement. I have come to understand that these movement patterns relate to my habitual patterns of thought and feelings. It’s an understanding that is “sensed” in the moment, as a small child might. The beauty is, I find that memory and descriptions are not even important for my understanding. The meaning is in the movement. I do the movements while carefully paying attention and before I know it, the learning is in my body with a minimum of effort. Embodied learning.