The Feldenkrais Method for Somatic Awareness® has been more important than anything I have done in my life to transform who I am today. Over the course of 4 years of training I changed in dramatic ways. The following few paragraphs are intended to explain what the Feldenkrais Method is and how it has changed me.
Before entering the training I can say for certain I lived primarily in my head. I also had a body but there was very little sense of how that body interacted with the rest of who I was. As a result of this disconnect I was limited in my bodily sensations and emotional feeling capacity. These limitations affected my relationships in multiple ways. I was unable to access the basic understanding of how another person was impacting my experience. As can be imagined this caused a great deal of discord because I was unable to communicate the needs I had of another person. Thus I basically had two emotions: that feels okay and that doesn’t feel okay. The spectrum of my interior felt experience was that limited. When asked what I was feeling I was generally at a loss of what to say.
Throughout the training I spent a tremendous amount of time in Awareness Through Movement lessons. These lessons are a laboratory of bodily awareness. You lie on the ground and move very slowly gaining greater and greater awareness of how it is you experience your body. After the first month of the training I felt as though my brain was going to explode.
Luckily, my brain didn’t explode but instead I grew into a more embodied person. When I use the word “embodied,” I mean someone who is intimately connected between mind and body. We live in a hyper-rational world these days and it is rare to find someone without any awareness of his or her thoughts. However, finding people who cannot notice what appear to be obvious sensations in their bodies is much easier. I was one of those people that just allowed my mind to pull my body along all the while attempting to deny any discomfort. The problems of my body were only to be tolerated not to flourish in comfort. My body only provided me with pain and discomfort and I was aware of this only when it got to a crisis point. What the Feldenkrais Method® taught me was that it doesn’t have to be this way. Being comfortable in our bodies is something we can experience everyday. I know this now because the Method has helped me achieve that.
How does Feldenkrais® do this? Much of what I did in my life before I took the training was habitual movement. I walked, stood, sat, jumped and ran in a way that I had learned to do probably at a very early age. Every function of my life was ingrained in me and I never paid any attention to how I did it. By moving through the lessons in Feldenkrais® you begin to bring the magic of awareness to how you do things. This awareness opens up the possibility that you may not do things in the most efficient and comfortable way. As you pay more attention you begin to consider that you can do things in new ways and with more productive results. The lessons of the Method actually help you learn new strategies that shift how you currently do things. As you find these new movement patterns the pain and discomfort tends to melt away.
Feldenkrais® works on neurological movement patterns in our minds. As these patterns are shifted we begin to form new patterning based on a more comfortable strategy. Once the new pattern is secured in our minds we don’t have to think every time we decide to do something. We have developed a new pattern that allows us to move in a way that doesn’t cause any discomfort in our bodies.
The real shift in my own experience is realizing that Feldenkrais® does not only work on our movement patterns. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), who developed the method, understood that shifts in a person’s movement patterns would also shift their overall experience.
All human beings experience the world in 4 ways: thinking, feeling, sensing and moving. These are not separate but completely intertwined. As a result, if we change one we change them all. Moshe’s genius was to focus on the most visible way of seeing change, movement. It is very clear that when a person has changed their movement patterns. When someone comes to me for a Functional Integration, I place them on the table and provide a lesson with slow, gentle manipulations of their body. At the end of the lesson it is clear that something has changed. It can be subtle and it can be very dramatic but something has always changed. One of the reasons I really like Feldenkrais is that it provides a real opportunity to sense what is happening. Our bodies never lie to us. They are always telling us what we need and when we need to get it. That is why when a student I’m working with gets off the table they can very clearly sense something is different. They can feel their feet differently or notice a change in their posture. But something has changed and they know it in their bodies. Nothing woo woo about this. It is a sensation that cannot be denied.
The Feldenkrais Method is not a panacea that can help everyone. But in my own experience it has brought me to new levels of conscious awareness that have made me feel more alive and connected to the people and world around me. I have discovered that my relationships have improved, my body has felt much better and I have a better ability to focus my thoughts eliminating those thoughts that are unhelpful.
If you have pain in your body this method will almost certainly help you. But even more than that, the Feldenkrais Method can help you transform yourself to be more of who you want to be in the world.
Come transform your life through Motion. |
