post Feldenkrais lesson

What are the after effects of a Feldenkrais lesson?
Take the case of Louise , a 73 year old retired school teacher with chronic right hip pain and sciatica, a head tilt to the right and and shortened rib cage on the right.

After the lesson, her pain was gone. She stood tall. Her head was planted firmly on her shoulders, her chest was wide and open. Her back was straight and long.There was a sense of symmetry to her that wasn't there before. She was organized more clearly around her midline, the center of herself.She felt calm, and open and centered. her feet felt more solidly planted into the ground. Normally chatty, she wanted to go home and be with the changes she was experiencing in her self.

Accessing Resources-Liquid light

We're at our quarterly Biodynamic CranioSacral therapy training segment, and the exercise is to access our resources to help titrate a pain in the body. To connect to the pain and stay in the Present at the same time, so as to titrate or lessen the suffering there. The key is resonance, feeling safe between you, as the client and your practitoner. So you can tell them what you need-i.e. her touch is too strong, she's crowding you with her intention. All in the name of client comfort and ease.

So after we've established a good relational field, I drop down and access a resource. What is a resource? A person, place or thing that gives you a sense of ok-ness-that you're allright just the way you are. So I access my resource-the beach, the ocean and immediately feel supported. A sense of spaciousness and freedom engulfs me and I feel totally free. Good start. So I bring my resource to a place in my body (my diaphragm) and again feel the sense of spaciousness there.

Now I direct my resource to my knee which has been bothering me for several months and still occassionally locks up on me, despite physical therapy and manipulation. I bring this quality of spaciousness to heal my knee. I don't go in too much or too fast. I don't want to overwhelm my painful knee. I just bring my expanded sense of spaciousness to touch on this painful knee. And then back off and go back to my diaphragm where the resource resides.

And you know what? It starts to let go, my knee starts to do what it needs to do to resolve the forces that had been placed on it whilst digging holes to put in lots of new shrubs and perennials. I had irritated the medial joint line of the meniscus and it had not integrated into the rest of my body.

I do this repeatedly. Coming up to the edge of my painful knee and then going back to my diaphragm where the spaciousness of the ocean resides. I go back and forth several times and finally I begin to feel a luminosity engulfing my knee. Liquid light ( the cerebrospinal fluid?) penetrating my knee and resolving whatever has ensnared my knee. It's gone, The painful dark strain of the medial meniscus has been replaced by luminosity. It feels clear of debis.

Finally I visualize/direct my resource to my knee, only my attention goes way down to my left foot. My left foot feels like it is getting longer and longer and is receding further and further away from me.A great sense of lengthening has occurred. I get up to walk around and check it out, and my left leg feels substantially more substantial. I can rely on it and the fear of it locking up and getting further damaged is gone! In fact it feels great.

Reflecting on Sitting Workshop

People often ask me what is the difference between Feldenkrais and chiropractic. Or even how is it different from yoga? In a nutshell, in the Feldenkrais Method, we are not trying to improve a function, i.e. sitting or reaching or looking up or bending forward. Rather we are interested in the process. How did you get to the function, to the final result, to the end point you are seeking? It is the elements in the process that constitute the function that is important. For instance, learning to sit in a dynamic way means that the ribs and chest are accessible. One initiates movement from the pelvis and hip and large muscles attached to the pelvis. There is a dynamic interplay between the parts of the Self that go into dynamic sitting. Such that the head is free to float, as one person commented upon standing up after we finished the sitting lesson.

By the way the head is not an appendage stuck onto the shoulders but is part of the spine. It sounds funny but to watch people move, it’s as if the head is separate and stuck on the shoulders as if by a finishing touch made by God. Another words when the spine and hip joints bend to one side, the head follows. It's intimately connected to the rest of the spine. When you shift your weight from sit bone to sit bone, the force travels through the spine, through the rib cage, through the chest and shoulders and into the head. The body is an interconnected whole, that moves dynamically as one unit when you move or sit or stand or walk or reach for something. When you bend down to look at something or look up, the whole spine bends, which includes the bending of the hip joints and lumbosacral spine (the lower back), the middle of your back, the breastbone or sternum, and the head and neck. Another words the whole body is moving together-doing one thing in a unified way that makes for efficient, easy to do, pleasurable movement.

Getting back to the question how is the feldenkrais method different from yoga or practically anything else? We purposely make it easy for the Nervous System to make connections. Your Nervous System connects the external environment to the Internal environment. You can't move without sensing, feeling, and thinking (perceiving). What are the conditions necessary to create learning with the environment?

How do you create the optimal conditions for learning?

By paying attention, moving slowly, pausing between movements in order for the nervous system to refresh, making small movements, reducing your effort. All of the above quiets the nervous system and makes it easy for your brain to pay attention and so bring about change. This allows for new possibilities of movement to emerge. As if by a discovery process and you are the scientist, observing your own body. This is what makes the Feldenkrais Method distinct and improves your ability to do whatever you choose to do.

Our minds and our bodies

Recently I came across some sound tapes that promised instant enlightenment-the depth of meditation that it would take a serious zen meditator 10 years to achieve..... in a single setting.
The problem for me is Embodiment. Is my mind caught up with my body or vice versa?
I may feel all floaty and good afterwards, but am I, can I function in the world and relate to others?
Can I give myself over to my work life?
Another words can the depth of my experience integrate into all facets of my being? We are just beginning to realize how plastic the brain is. That the brain can form new connections. But it needs the right conditions to learn. We need to effectively communicate with the brain .I believe the person needs to" feel " how to put the pieces together from the input it is getting. It is not a passive process. In fact it goes under the heading that the mind and body are One. Indivisible.
Just as the brain needs new information to stay vital and alive. It needs movement to form a connection between our Nervous System, our muscles , our skeleton and the environment around us. More than we may realize, we need to ground our expanded minds into our body.

Function is key-excitement vs satisfaction 

How many times do we get seduced by the excitement of something new-whether it be a relationship, a new thing to buy, a new job, the Internet?

I believe that what drives most addictive behavior is excitation without emotional contact. Another words, we're seduced by the excitement of something outside ourselves that pulls us into what Buddhists call attatchment or clinging or desire.

Rather than being in contact with ourselves , we're pulled outside of ourselves by the promise of some reward-we'll feel better, safe, have momentary pleasure, or we want to  get rid of our pain, escape ourselves.

I think it's important to watch our excitement, as it arises .Observe the sensations in our body. Are they pleasant or do you feel  gripping, fearful, tense, anxious, uneasy? What passes for excitement may be some other emotion or sensation; that if you pause long enough to get in touch with yourself may stop yourself from entering/fostering some unforseen/unproductive consequence.

Remember function-the ability to healthily experience life and pleasure and be productive and satisfied at the same time is the key.

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