Segment 4, Day 20: How To Put Yourself Back Together

Throughout our training, Angel and Richard have talked a lot about an idea called "completing your self-image". I've always known it has something to do with figuring out who you are, but it never became actually clear until about 3 pm today when Angel told us a story. I love it, so I'm going to share it here.

One day, when she was in kindergarten, Angel raised her hand to write down the answer to a question on the board. Her teacher had her come up to the board and he walked to the back of the classroom to watch. When Angel reached the board, she panicked at being in front of the class and froze. The teacher was apparently having a bad day, because he got so mad at her for raising her hand and then not answering the question that he threw a wooden chair at her. It hit the board next to her and shattered. Looking back on it, she sees that as a day when her self-confidence shattered along with that chair.

Many years later, during her own Feldenkrais training, she was in Haifa, Israel finding some peace from the city (she was completing the last part of her training in Tel Aviv). She found an open field to sit in and think, and saw a tree across the field that looked like it had blackened leaves. Suddenly a grenade went off in the distance (common occurrence there), and the tree that had appeared to have blackened leaves now looked like a tree with no leaves, because hundreds of blackbirds had been scared by the grenade and abandoned the tree. Over the next few minutes, all the birds eventually returned to the tree until it looked like it had black leaves again.

Watching all of this, Angel realized that that's what "completing your self-image" means. It's picking up all the little pieces of yourself that flew away when something traumatic happened to you. It's letting go of the leftover trauma and making space for all those original pieces to fit in again.

Segment 4, Day 19: where did this month go?

Tomorrow is the last day of Segment 4. It always sneaks up on me when I'm not yet ready for it. I've certainly got plenty to figure out between now and Segment 5 though. This has been a loaded one.

The whole segment has been about learning how to teach ATM classes. At first glance, most ATMs seem relatively simple to teach, but as it turns out, there's a lot of technique behind it and lots of tricks to learn. They're not easy tricks, either. It's a ton of information to keep track of, combined with the ability to watch what your students are doing and tweak the lesson to fit them, as well as observing yourself and staying calm, present, and conversational in your tone and manner.

I was never thrilled about the idea of teaching ATMs. FI work has always interested me more, and teaching an ATM sounded too much like public speaking to appeal to me. We found out at the beginning of the segment that at the end we'd be doing ATM practicums - teaching the entire class a lesson and then getting feedback on it. That sounded completely terrifying to me a month ago. After a month of reframing how I looked at it, and getting to know the lesson I would teach exhaustively well, yesterday's practicum went surprisingly well. Above all, I didn't panic.

Afterwards, when our group was getting feedback (we each taught 15 minutes of an hour-long lesson to 16 people), Angel told me something that I certainly wasn't expecting. She told me a few things I should work on, but also said that I have "something to share with the world". She explained a little, and I think she means that I should share myself and my experiences with the world on a grander scale than I currently do (she likes grand ideas). I don't think she specifically meant via ATM classes, but she'd definitely push it if she got the chance. I asked my mom for advice and she agrees with Angel. "Give yourself a shove and go teach", she told me on the phone.

After tomorrow afternoon and a slight delay for paperwork, I'll be certified to teach public ATM classes and charge money for them, but first I've got some processing to do.

Segment 4, Day 13: When Feldenkrais Gets Weird

We did a lesson this afternoon on learning how to expand your abdomen as your breathe in, expand your ribs as you breathe in, and expanding your head as you breathe in. Yes, I said expand your head. Basically, imagine a beach ball inside each, and as you inhale, blow up the beach balls so that all parts of your abdomen, ribs, and head expand equally in all directions. Very cool lesson.

Well, cool during the lesson. The aftereffects I'm not so sure about. I stood up and felt like I was floating (actually meant I was walking through my skeleton instead of working muscles too hard). Sometimes that floating feeling is really fun, but today it wasn't. It was really disconcerting. Along with floating, I felt like I had giant chipmunk cheeks, and some tension had let go behind and around my eyes that I didn't know had been there before. My eyes felt enormous. I didn't feel like myself and immediately started dreading the parent-teacher get-together happening at work this evening.

I got multiple comments from classmates saying I looked noticeably taller and that my eyes looked different. I went to look in the mirror, and it was true. I definitely looked taller and all the little creases around my eyes and eyebrows were gone. Talking felt strange too, as though my voice was coming from a different part of me than usual. I didn't have the same control of my lips I normally do.

The whole drive home (luckily I wasn't the one driving), I kept very quiet unless asked questions by my carpool-mates. It seemed like I was looking out of someone else's body - my eyes, my brain, my voice, but in the wrong context. I knew what was going on in this new body, but had no idea how to react to it or what to do with it.

Getting out of the car helped a lot. Walking from the car to my front door, I began to feel a little more settled in this new context. That was half an hour ago. I'm feeling a bit more like myself now, but a version with bigger more open eyes and very quick reflexes. Tonight's work event will be an adventure.

Segment 4, Day 2: vocal experimentation

It turns out that this segment will be about learning how to teach ATM lessons, the kind that looks like a yoga class. A major part of teaching an ATM is learning to make your intentions clear through your voice, both in tone and in content. We did an activity this morning that was so much fun that I'm going to share it with you here.

So, I have an experiment for you to try. Find a person to do it with. You could do it in the mirror, but it's more interesting with another person.

1. Take the list of words and phrases below and read them to one another as if you were actually in the situation presented by each phrase. Make it sound real. Make sure you look at the person you're talking to instead of at the list. Trust me, it's fun.

Yes.
I'm feeling confident. I know I can do the job.
You-hooo!
I'd like to make an announcement.
Help!
This is really uncomfortable.
Ouch!
I have a secret to tell you.
Stop it.
I don't think I can do this.
Whatever.
Hello there.
I'm cold.
I'm hot.
Oh baby.
I'm scared.
Go!
Come here.
Ohhh that feels so good.
Please lie down.
I am really angry.
Taxi?

2. Next, find the place in your voice where you naturally say "yes". Using that same place in your voice, read through the list again and see what happens.

3. Pick another phrase, find that spot in your voice, and try it again in that voice.

Ridiculously fun, and not nearly as easy as it seems like it should be.

a clean start

Final prayers have been sung, the shofar has been blown, the sun has gone down, I've eaten a giant break-fast, and I recognize many more Hebrew words at a glance than I did a week ago. Yom Kippur is over. This was a surprisingly easy Yom Kippur - I had a relatively easy fast, and I didn't have anything major that I felt I wanted to atone for. It was very different from last year, which happened when I was still in the midst of learning how to forgive my surgeon for his mistakes. That was an intensely painful process. This year was MUCH easier in comparison.

Yom Kippur came at an interesting time this year, three days before Segment 4 starts. For the past month and half or so since I realized Segment 4 was coming up soon, I've been panicking about it. I realized that since the last two segments were so physically and emotionally demanding for me, I unconsciously blocked Feldenkrais all summer. I didn't think about it, I didn't practice it unless someone asked me to practice on them, I didn't read anything by Moshe... It even got to a point where I would notice that I was falling back into some bad habit and in physical pain, but despite being able to help myself pretty easily, I didn't do anything about it. So, since August I've spent a lot of time worrying about how I would get back into it, and especially how I would find the necessary mindset.

A couple of days ago, I realized a strange paradox. If I try to put myself into a Feldenkrais mindset, I will just get worked up and worried about it, and not be able to get anywhere with it. However, if I decide to just show up at class knowing it'll be totally different from "real life", I can let the mindset find me. I'm learning how to not overthink things, so I'm opting for the second choice. It seems appropriate with Yom Kippur so close to the start of class.

return from an absence

Huh. It's been a while since I wrote here. Two months, in fact. I've spent most of that time working, dancing, and getting settled in my new apartment, and not doing a whole lot of Feldenkrais or even thinking about it. I can only guess why it disappeared like that, because I don't really know why.

Moving myself and my former roommate out of our old apartment and into our new places definitely put me in some old pain and old habits of moving that I did not want hanging around, but I didn't actively do anything about it. Maybe I needed a mental break. I got myself very deeply entrenched in the psychological aspect of my Feldenkrais training last segment and stayed there for a while, working out some of the stories that came up from my past and figuring out the physical repercussions of those stories. That was a tiring, difficult process, so maybe my two month break from the world of Feldenkrais was to recover from that. I feel like I can come back now though.

Recently there seems to be a lot of talk about marketing Feldenkrais. I recognize the importance of learning how to do that, but I'm so much more interested in the moment I'm at RIGHT NOW in my training and the process of getting to the next step that it doesn't feel very relevant. The next step is making it to Segment 4, Day 1, on September 20th. Setting up a career is not the next step, not for me at least.

A more immediate next step might be getting one of these books though - The Body Moveable. Check out the sample pages. Anybody interested in anatomy should get one of these. I got to look through one yesterday and they're beautiful, and have a great balance of basic information and as much in depth information as you could possibly want. I've been told it's far more useful than having a model skeleton to play with.

Don't Forget to Breathe

I love it when different parts of my life overlap with each other in surprising ways. It can occasionally be strange, but it's often wonderful and informative. Today was one of those good overlap days. Interlake had its annual Teacher Retreat today (also known as an in-service with a special name), and our morning guest speaker was Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. She's a trauma counselor, the director of a Spanish-language preschool here in Seattle, and the author of "Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others". Oh, and she's full of enthusiasm and she's WONDERFUL.

She spent the morning talking about how to use the idea of trauma stewardship as preschool teachers, mostly on the ways that we habitually react to stressful situations at work (of which there are many) and what to do with those reactions. The more she talked, the more I realized that what she was talking about was essentially the philosophy behind Feldenkrais. She spoke about "quality of presence" and how to keep ourselves attentive and useful. (We talk about "quality of touch" in Feldenkrais.) She talked a lot about mindfulness, and about remembering to make space in ourselves for, well, ourselves, and figuring out how to let all the other stuff go. (In Feldenkrais, you can't help someone unless you're coming from a place that's YOU and not everyone else's stuff that got shoved into you.)

At one point, Laura was talking about anger, and about how you don't really know what real anger is until you've experienced it, and once you have, you don't want to go back there. That gave me the shivers, as I remembered back to September and the anger and hatred I drowned in for a few days while dealing with the emotional leftovers from 13 years ago. What a completely awful sensation. Please, whatever powers are out there, don't make me go through that again.

I now have a signed copy of her book waiting for me to read it. It's not as though mindfulness is a new thing or specific to Feldenkrais - as Laura reminded us, it's what our ancestors have always tried to teach us. I just love parallels. I also like being reminded of things I forgot I knew.

Hip Replacement Missionary?

I just had a very strange experience. I was walking through a parking lot from the bank to my car, and a woman in her mid-thirties stopped me to ask me a question.

"Excuse me, but do you mind if I ask you a question about your gait?"

The only people who use the word "gait" on a regular basis are physical therapists, orthopedic doctors, and horseback riders. Everyone else just asks about my limp or the way I walk. This seemed intriguing.

"Sure."
"Did you have a hip replacement?"
"No..."
"Do you have hip dysplasia?"
"Yes..." (thinking: how does she know that?!)
"I used to have a gait just like yours. I had hip dysplasia and congenital [something I haven't heard of before and don't remember], and I got a hip replacement. It was the best decision I ever made."

She goes on for a bit about how self-conscious she had been of her limp (only hers was "100 times worse" than mine), back pain, etc. I mention that I'm avoiding having anymore surgery. She knows all about how that goes, but encourages me anyway. This is sounding more and more like someone trying to sell me something. Apparently a place called the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is the spot to get a hip replacement done.

She eventually finishes. "Don't wait too long like I did!" We part ways.

She was so convinced that her solution was the best solution that I actually didn't get a chance to tell her that I'm not self-conscious about my walk, I'm rarely in pain, and I have a relatively healthy hip socket, despite my gait, and that I've found other ways to help myself get through life without another surgery. She only seemed interested in selling me a Mayo Clinic hip replacement surgery, and probably wouldn't really have listened if I had told her all of that. I'm very glad she's happy, but, well... Thanks but no thanks.

Life and Bikes

I'm posting for the first time from my new apartment! In case you missed it, I'm moving from Lower Queen Anne to West Green Lake. I still only have a few things in the new place, but it's enough that I can sleep here and spend some time here without having to sit on the floor. I'll be completely moved in within the next couple of weeks.

I think living by Green Lake is going to be really good for me. My apartment is a block and a half from the lake, so I have NO excuse about not going for walks there. I took my first walk today (somehow I'd never taken a walk around the lake before - stupid me), and it's BEAUTIFUL. Maybe that's just because today is also a sunny, lovely spring day, but no, I think Green Lake is just inherently beautiful. I'm so excited to be living here.

Living by the lake is also physically inspiring for me. It's really fun watching all the bikers, roller skaters, scooterers, runners, and walkers, and it makes me want to join them. A few days ago my mom told me that she had a dream about watching me ride a bike with my hair blowing behind me in the wind (I think I had longer hair in the dream). Watching the bikers at Green Lake after hearing about that dream makes me want to bike again.

The last time I rode a bike was late in high school in an attempt to learn how to ride again after my 5th grade surgery and recovery. I never got the hang of it again. The phrase "Once you know how to ride a bike you'll never forget" does not ring true for me. I was always terrified of falling, and did fall hard a few times. It still scares me when I think about it. On the other hand, the image from Mom's dream is a very tempting one. I remember biking when I was little and loving it. Juggling the two reactions is really confusing. Probably the hardest part aside from dealing with the fear of falling is the embarrassment of not being able to ride a bike. Everyone I know bikes. If I were to learn again, I'd have no idea where to start...

Development

A major theme in our training is early child development. Each piece of movement that we re-learn is designed to take us back through our own development. We started with our mouths on day one, then moved on to our eyes, our head, our hands, rolling, rolling to sitting, etc. That makes teaching preschool while being in training really fun. It means I get to watch bored kids on their mats still awake during nap time doing EXACTLY the same things we do in class. For example, a very common bored-on-your-mat trick is to get on your hands and knees, put the top of your head on the floor, and straighten your knees, which looks suspiciously like our lessons on headstands. The difference is that instead of being taught it, they're just experimenting and playing with it.

Yesterday I got a really interesting lesson in development. (It's not physical development, so not directly related to Feldenkrais, but interesting anyway.) I was at work on a Saturday evening, providing child care for parents who wanted to attend the school's annual no-kids-allowed fundraiser auction. We had a much larger age range of kids than usual. Normal age range is 2.5-5, but we had a few 6 year olds and a 9 year old to add to the mix. We were all playing outside, and a kid got pushed, fell down, and started crying.

Normal preschool situation that would follow: A teacher comes over to find out what happened and make sure everyone's okay. If a teacher doesn't notice right away, a child who saw it happen will come and tell a teacher that so-and-so is crying or got hurt. If the child who's crying was hurt by someone else, a teacher will ask that child to "check in" and make sure their friend is okay.

Yesterday's bigger age range situation: I went over to see what happened and find out why he was crying. A kindergartener saw me, came over, and asked the boy who was crying if he was okay. As I was talking to the boy, two more kindergarteners came over and asked if he was okay, saw that he was, helped him up off the ground, and got him involved in their game.

I was totally delighted to see that happen, because we never see it in our age group. The lesson I learned - empathy develops between ages 5 and 6, at least according to what I saw.

Musings on Preschool and Preschoolers

Teaching preschool is insane. I completely recognize that. It takes more patience and energy than anyone in the world could ever muster, and I am probably not so slowly losing some part of my hearing from the volume and pitch levels kids can reach, and yet I continue. Sometimes, after a particularly hard day of whining and arguments and misplaced blame and yelling, I wonder why I'm still there, and then as soon as I'm out of that environment and can think about something else again, I remember how much I adore those kids. I can think about times when I notice changes happening in them, specific times when they've grown before my eyes, or times when they show me that they care about me too. A great example of that came from 4-year-old Owen today while picking walking partners for a trip to the park - "I want you to be my partner because I love you!"

The moments where I can bring Feldenkrais into my work there always sneak up on me and surprise me. They're always little things, such as asking myself, as I'm running around setting up morning snack, how easily can I pick up that surprisingly heavy stack of tiny chairs? While rubbing someone's back at nap time, wondering where my attention is and if my intention is actually to help that person fall asleep, to keep an eye on the other kids, somehow do both at once, or if it's somewhere else altogether (I've noticed that it's just as likely to be any one of those as another). I find myself catching moments where I'm physically uncomfortable and changing what I'm doing where I might not have before. Each of those moments makes the insanity a bit easier to handle, because in paying attention to what I'm actually doing, I'm better prepared to take on whatever comes at me. That could be grabbing a toy out of someone's hand as it's about to hit someone else. It could be a 3.5-year-old boy charging toward me in the yard, arms outstretched, wanting to be lifted into the air a split second before he rams into me. You just never know what to expect in a preschool. Rules barely apply. (Except for gravity. Lesson to be learned by 3-year-olds: if you lean way to the side in your chair, you WILL fall out and probably hurt yourself. Even 3-year-olds can't defy gravity.) Have to be ready for anything.

PS. Watching a kid get on their hands and knees, put the top of their head on the floor, and straighten their knees during a boring nap time looks suspiciously like some headstand ATMs we did...

Inspiration

Have you ever had someone tell you that you inspire them? I hadn't until recently. A friend of mine from class, Ryan, does acrobatics for fun, but a few months ago he got a bad shoulder injury that's prevented him from doing what he loves. I think at first it was physical block, and once he got past that, it turned into mental block - ie. I can't do acrobatics because I'm injured. Apparently, I was part of what got him out of that.

Ryan's told me more than once in the past few months that I inspire him. I didn't understand why at first, because what could I have done to inspire somebody? I'm just living my life. He told me that it's because I don't let my physical constraints get in my way - I do Feldenkrais, I dance, I live my life how I want to, and I've figured out how to do all of that in a way that works for me and my body. In watching me do that, he's figured out how to get back into acrobatics and enjoy it again, despite his slowly healing shoulder.

It's surreal to think of that as inspiring. Like I said, all I'm doing is living my life. I just choose to live it so that I can enjoy it, not so that I'm stuck in my limitations. I fought with those limitations all through high school and I don't want to be in that fighting place anymore. I'm just trying to move on from that. It's great if that happens to inspire somebody, but it's also strange. It makes my life feel bigger than I consider it to be, because it's proof that simply the way I live my life in relation to myself, not to someone else, affects somebody directly.

Day 20: End of Segment 3

Man, what a great end to a segment. Today was so much fun.

We finished the headstand series with a big emphasis on being happy about what you accomplished even if you didn't actually get into a full headstand, which most people didn't. I got to a point of being comfortable on my head and hands and toes, and I'm totally fine with that. Considering that two weeks ago I wasn't comfortable/didn't feel safe on my hands and knees with my head close to the floor, I accomplished a lot. I am also comfortable again in a long-lost position that I love - lying on your back and throwing your legs up in the air so you're balanced on your upper back, head, and elbows, supporting your back with your hands. I used to love to do that when I was little but lost the ability and strength to do it for a long time. It's finally back, and I love it just as much now as I did then. I can even bring my knees to touch my forehead there, not because of flexibility but because of actually having mobility in my spine and hip joints. It's totally thrilling, and hopefully I'll be able to hold onto it this time.

Oh, and in case I haven't mentioned it, it's become my life-long goal to never have hip surgery again. I'm done with it. I can take care of myself and not need the help of someone who wants to cut me open. Hip replacement around age 50 or 60, as my surgeon predicted? No thanks.

We did this amazing lesson yesterday about visualizing our spines, and I'm really enjoying the after effects. Did you know that your spine is not just the bumps you feel along your back, but a thick curvy column of vertebrae? Most people know that from anatomy books or x-rays, but actually getting a sense of that column inside yourself is a very different story. Since that lesson, I've felt very tall, very stable, and I've had a wonderful ability to curve my spine evenly and roll around on the floor without hurting myself.

More fun stuff from today... an FI practice! It went really well, not because the person I was working with felt perfect afterwards, but because we both just had fun with it. We were supposed to play with how our partner could turn, first lying on their side, then on their stomach, then on their back. When she switched to her stomach, it immediately became obvious to both of us that she wasn't comfortable that way. So, instead of going all goal-oriented and trying to make her turn, I kind of forgot about the lesson and focused on how to help her be more comfortable there. It was really relaxing to be able to forget about what I was "supposed" to be doing and instead do what my partner actually needed at that moment.

Here's a photo of us working. I'm finding out how much movement is available tipping her pelvis side to side.

By the end of the day we had all lost our minds, resulting in the first real class-wide fit of hysterics of the segment. Once we had finally settled down to do our last ATM, we heard a group of kids outside shouting and laughing. I don't know what they were doing because I was lying on the floor with my eyes closed, but it sounded really fun. Someone in the room commented out of nowhere, "I want to be doing what those kids are doing." I'm sure we all agreed. Alan told us that we probably would be by the end of the lesson. We weren't quite as loud as the kids, but we were definitely all animated when we stood up.

And that's it. We packed up, said our goodbyes, and went home to a beautiful sunny spring afternoon. As my carpool-mate Lisa said on the way home, it feels little like it should be summer vacation. Class is out, the sun is shining, and we'll all be back in September. In the meantime, I'm back to work on Monday, and most of us will see each other in study groups, regular get-togethers of students to do FI practice, ATMs, or just talk.

Podcast Recommendation

Anyone reading this blog might find this podcast episode interesting - Radiolab: Where Am I? I got it from a classmate, and it's got some bizarre examples of when things go wrong in the connection between your brain and your body. I particularly enjoyed the section about a man who lost all sense of himself in space and how to move himself from one place to another, and then found a way to teach himself to move again that sounds an awful lot like Feldenkrais. Hearing about army pilots with out-of-body experiences is pretty cool too. I'm not a huge fan of how the podcast is recorded (lots of cuts of different people talking spliced together can be a little hard to listen to), but they bring up some really interesting ideas and situations.

That's all for tonight. Tomorrow morning is Day 20, the last day of this segment, for better or for worse, and I should go to bed.

Day 16: Curiosity

We did three ATMs today. I slept through two of them. My brain has apparently decided it's overloaded and needed a break. It's a good thing, really. It means I learned a lot last week, and maybe the weekend wasn't quite enough recovery time. We spent last week learning how to do a Judo roll, although none of us really figured out where the series of ATMs was going until the last day or two. I never actually did a full Judo roll, only the very beginnings of it, but even that was enough to give me a solid idea of how it works and a lot of new information for my brain to process. This week's series is very obviously going to result in a headstand. I happen to be more interested in how to get into a headstand than in actually getting completely upside-down, so that will make the week much easier.

I listened to an interesting interview today, a recent edition of The Diane Rehm Show featuring Diane Ravitch. Diane Ravitch was an employee of the first W. Bush administration, and at the time was a full supporter of No Child Left Behind. Since then, in seeing the generally useless and negative results of the program, she's changed her mind completely and wants to get rid of it entirely. She's worried about schools turning into businesses based on competition instead of providing equal-opportunity public education, kids not getting complete educations because teachers are told to teach to the test and are forced to leave out some subjects, and teachers losing their jobs because their classes can't always meet the very high expectations of the tests. I think those are all extremely important points, but she's missing one, in my opinion.

The idea of having fun at school is mentioned very briefly in the interview, and I think deserves more time. Some discussion topics in class today were "What is learning?", "How do you know when you've learned something?", and "How can we learn how to learn?" We spent a long time talking about the last question, and the clearest answer we came up with was this...

It only becomes possible to learn when there is curiosity.

That's what Ravitch missed. We know now that teaching to the test doesn't work, because it leaves students and teachers stressed and leaves out major pieces of any curriculum, but it also doesn't leave any space for curiosity. Think back to your favorite teachers, at any point in your life, the ones who taught you the most. You probably didn't like them because they were funny, or strict, or whatever you liked in a teacher, but because they made you curious and made you think. That is impossible to do when you're teaching to a test, no matter what the test is. Whether it's a 3rd grader who has to take a standardized test or a 90-year-old who is told to do strengthening exercises, no one can learn anything unless they're curious about what they're learning. If that 3rd grader has decided they don't care about the test or about school, they might learn how to pass the test, but they won't learn anything about the information they're being tested on, no matter how much time they spend in class. If that 90-year-old has turned into a cynic from seeing too many pessimistic doctors and isn't interested in learning to walk again without a cane, they will have the cane forever, no matter how hard the physical therapists try.

If our class can remember this week to not worry about actually doing a headstand and keep our curiosity present in the process of learning how to do one, we will learn more than would ever be possible by forcing ourselves upside-down.

Day 12: Awareness

My classmates and I are all quickly realizing that the following statement is completely true: The downside of awareness is that it never goes away. Awareness is a wonderful thing, and can be very helpful in many situations. It can help you make yourself more physically or emotionally comfortable, and keeps you very tuned in to what's going on around you.

However, gaining awareness can also turn you into a stalker of sorts. I constantly find myself accidentally staring at someone on the street or in a coffee shop, not because of how they look or what they're wearing, but because of how they're moving (or not moving, depending on the situation).

An example - On the drive home today, my carpool-mate and I were driving downtown and noticed a guy at exactly the same time because his walk was so distinct. It was most obvious in his arms and hips. As he walked, his left hip swung back and forth, and his right arm swung so much that it almost hit the front and back of his body. His right hip, on the other hand, barely moved at all, and his left arm, instead of swinging forward and backward, didn't really go forward at all but swung back and up so that his elbow pointed behind him. When most people see someone walking strangely they think "Huh. Weird." and move on with life, but once Feldenkrais kicks in that's not possible. Three hours later I'm still thinking about him and wondering how he developed that pattern of walking.

Day 11: A New Perspective

We have a guest trainer for the next two weeks, Alan Questel. He's wonderful, but I'm not going to write about him now. I just want to write down some food for thought that came from him.

One of the less talked about purposes of Feldenkrais is to make it possible to like yourself more, not to the point of thinking you're perfect, but to understand what you already like about yourself, and discover what else could be improved and how. If you think you're completely perfect, you can't grow. If you entirely hate yourself, you also can't grow. There has to be some balance and space for learning.

Alan considers it his job to create that space and help people learn to like themselves more. Can we all have such noble goals in our careers?

Day 8: A Lesson in Self-Regulation

Part of the way Feldenkrais works is that by breaking down a movement into its most basic pieces and then slowing those pieces down, it allows you to access a very old part of your nervous system and change very old patterns of movement and behavior. When you access that part of your nervous system, it can bring up very old memories connected to those patterns, good or bad, and in a completely visceral way. It can be exhilarating, terrifying, painful, or a million other things, or a combination thereof depending on the particular memory.

I had one of those experiences today, a very powerful one. We were doing an ATM, one that integrates the movement of your legs into the rest of your body, so that every part of your body is involved in moving your leg to make it easier. We started lying on our backs with our knees bent and feet flat on the floor. I knew right off the bat that it was going to be a difficult lesson for me, because the first movement was to lift your right arm and right leg towards each other and hold onto your foot with your hand. I have limited mobility in my right hip, and that movement is not actually possible for me. I altered it by holding onto the middle of my shin instead of my foot to make it possible.

It got more complicated and more difficult from there. We were then directed to hold on to the right foot with both hands and roll slightly to the left to bring the right foot to the ground, but keeping the right leg bent and vertical (ie. the right leg couldn't rest on the left). That particular position is extremely difficult for me, and playing with how to make it possible brought me back to being an 11-year-old trying to do painful physical therapy after a hip surgery. That was not a happy 11-year-old. She was scared. She hurt. She was frustrated. The last time those memories came back because of an FI (one-on-one lesson), I hid in my room for 5 days caught up in the pain and frustration. All of those emotions came back again today and all I really wanted to do was stop doing the lesson, curl up on my side, and possibly cry.

When I realized where that reaction was coming from, I tried to remind myself that I am not 11, I don't have a screw in my right hip preventing me from rotating it, and that I didn't need to have that reaction. I was able to convince myself when I wanted to stop doing the lesson to lie on my back instead of on my side. Lying on my back with my eyes closed I could concentrate on my breathing and let go of those emotions, whereas if I had stayed on my side I would have hidden from the world inside those emotions. Using the lying on my back trick, I was able to stay with the lesson and finish it, taking breaks every so often to calm myself down.

In the middle of the lesson, Angel (the teacher leading the ATM) read us a Moshe quote (I told you they'd come up often...) that fit exactly what I was experiencing -

When we learn to really comfort ourselves, to manage our own comfort, joy, and well-being, then we will improve society. We will create comfort as the tightness in the brain is released. When this happens the evolution of our race will improve, and our children will experience this.

It's a relief to know that I can comfort myself, and begin to release those nasty old memories stored deep in my brain. I'll be free when those stories are free. I know that won't happen for a long time, but at least I've got a start on it.

PS. I taught my first ATM today. It was just to one person, and a lesson I'm very familiar with. It went way better than I expected it to.

Stand up straight! ...or not.

While physical therapy, massage, and yoga (kind of) focus on how a person uses their muscles, Feldenkrais focuses on how a person uses their skeleton. I just found a very clear explanation of that idea in "Awareness Through Movement". Moshe quote time!

"The nervous system and the frame develop together under the influence of gravity in such a way that the skeleton will hold up the body without expending energy despite the pull of gravity. If, on the other hand, the muscles have to carry out the job of the skeleton, not only do they use energy needlessly, but they are then prevented from carrying out their main function of changing the position of the body, that is, of movement." - pg. 68

So when someone tells you to stand up straight, all you probably do is work harder by pulling yourself upright with your muscles. Why not find a way to adapt better to gravity by letting your skeleton and muscles do what they're each made to do?

Day 3

Today was a classic sort of Feldenkrais day. We did three ATM lessons, and I had three completely different reactions to each of them.

The first was a lesson that started sitting on your mat with your legs stretched out in front of you, and pulling them towards you to sit cross-legged. I physically cannot sit cross-legged because of limited range of motion in my right hip, so as soon as I saw that sitting in that position was going to be a major piece of the lesson, I decided to lie back down on my mat and imagine doing the lesson instead. Imagination is an unbelievably powerful thing if you know how to use it, and I can often get a lot out of imagining a lesson. That didn't happen this time though, because within about 10 minutes of imagining the lesson, I was sound asleep and didn't wake up until I heard my teacher stop talking and noticed that everyone was up and walking around to go on break. I have no idea what the lesson was about.

I LOVED the second lesson. It was about organizing the way you use your torso, and involved very small, slow movements in your shoulders and hips while laying on your back to help you find the ways in which your whole torso can bend and stretch. It was one of those lessons that just fit. I got up from it feeling very tall and open to the world.

The third lesson confused me. It taught us a kind of crawling-while-lying-down movement, which was difficult to start with. The really tricky part for me is that thanks to various casts and braces, I never actually learned how to crawl when I was a baby, and then learned how to walk without swinging my arms. I didn't learn to swing my arms until I was about 8. For any developmentally normal person, a lesson having to do with crawling should be relatively easy. Since I missed that developmental step, crawling has never been easy for me. Usually when you crawl, your right arm extends as your left leg bends and left arm extends as your right leg bends, and your head swings to look toward the extended arm, and that's a very natural movement (for most people other than me). Part of this lesson was mixing that up so that when you extended your right arm, you bent your right leg, or you looked to the left. It confused me way more than it should have. It's times like that where you learn a major concept in Feldenkrais - self-regulation. Confusion like that makes my brain hurt. When your brain hurts, the best thing to do is lie down and just rest. I did a lot of resting in that lesson.

Day 1

March 1st. Here we are. Year 2, Segment 3, Day 1. Also my aunt's birthday and my sister's 21st birthday. What a crazy kind of day.

One of the things I've come to appreciate about our training segments is the schedule it puts me on. Working at Interlake is great fun, but being a substitute does not result in a normal schedule. Working full-time one week and not at all the next week when I didn't plan to go on vacation is just confusing. This puts me on a solid schedule for a full month, and it's kind of a relief. Up around 7:00, out of the house at 7:40 (7:30 if I want to stop for coffee on the way), pick up the first part of my carpool at 7:55, pick up the second part of the carpool at 8:00, a half hour drive over to the beautiful St. Edward's Park in Kirkland, a little free time, and class at 9:00. A break around 10:15, lunch around noon, another break around 1:45. Done at 3:00, home by 4:30.

Our days are spent on our mats, similar to yoga mats but wider and not quite so thick, mostly doing Awareness Through Movement lessons (ATM - a vocally directed class, looks like yoga), practicing Functional Integration lessons (FI - hands-on one-on-one work, looks like massage) on each other, talking about what we're learning, or watching old recordings of a training that Moshe taught in the 80s, just before he died. Some people also spend a lot of time sleeping, although while allowed and encouraged (a nap is time for your brain to process a change in the way you move), it's not usually intentional. I spent most of Segment 2 asleep. I don't know why exactly, although I did find out an interesting factoid today that could explain part of it. Did you know that the prefrontal cortex in your brain deals with emotion, personality, behavior, and judgement, and in doing so, uses the most calories of any part of your body? I must of had a lot of emotional processing to do that I wasn't entirely aware of. I wonder how this segment will compare.

Don't Forget to Live

"Awareness Through Movement" is not an easy book to read, and yet it's the most accessible of any of Moshe's books. His writing takes a lot of concentration and energy to decipher. It's full of long, seemingly unrelated tangents on complicated and vague topics. It can be exhausting to read more than a few pages at once unless you're feeling particularly mentally fortified.

Tonight I decided to pick it up and see if I was feeling up for it. I've read parts of it before, and decided to start again at the beginning this time. Rereading anything written by Moshe is a good idea. You'll undoubtedly catch something you missed the first five times you read it. Anyway, I did very well with it, until page 6, when I got distracted by a quote and wanted to write it down. And hey, even better than just writing it down, I could write it down in my blog! And then write about it! That's what this thing is here for, right? So, I'll get back to reading eventually. First I have a quote to share, as Moshe talks about three things that help us create our self-image - heritage (genetics), education, and self-education...

"Every aspiration and spontaneous desire is subjected to stringent internal criticism lest they reveal the individual's organic nature."

Oh god no, don't let your true self show, whatever you do. That would break down all of your carefully built masks, and could ruin any chance you ever had of becoming rich and successful and maybe even famous, and those are the most important things in life, of course. Give in to the Man.

Unless... What if you took Moshe's advice and slowed down? Not just slowed down a specific movement to examine it, but slowed down your whole life and examined it? What would you find? Would you like it? Would you like you? How could you change what you don't like? Moshe spends a lot of time talking about the ways that we live our lives. His work offers a philosophy as well as a physical practice. We get so caught up in our day to day lives and in work and school and in all of our responsibilities that we often lose sight of the things we actually want out of life and forgot about somewhere along the way. It feels really good to stop and pick those up again sometimes.

Why Does This Blog Exist?

About a week ago, around the middle of February, I noticed how quickly March was going to show up. March 1st is the start of Segment 3 of my training, where I will leave work for a month and go practice and learn Feldenkrais 7 hours a day. The Seattle Eastside Feldenkrais Training III (SEFTIII) is a 4 year program made up of 8 one-month intensive segments that happen about every six months. Segment 1 was March '09, Segment 2 was November '09, Segment 3 will be March '10, and so on until November 2012. That leaves time in between intensives to soak up everything you learned and figure out how to use it. This next segment snuck up on me, especially once I realized that since the end of Segment 2, I've done very little directly related to Feldenkrais and I don't know why. Now I feel like I have a bunch of catch-up work to do.

As I was thinking about all the things I didn't do between the two segments, all of the new ideas and physical possibilities that I let slip through my fingers, I remembered an activity from the end of Segment 2. We started talking about ways of learning - individual vs. group, structured vs. emergent, intellectual vs. experiential - and we talked about our preferences in how we personally learn best based on those concepts. We were asked to group ourselves in the room based on those preferences, and I placed myself with the group experiential learners, closer emergent than structured.

We were asked to talk within our groups and examine our decisions about where we placed ourselves and why. Personally, I find motivation from working in a group, insight from experiential situations, and access to creativity when there isn't too much structure. We were then asked to talk about how we could possibly change our habits in how we learn, and become more comfortable in a variety of learning situations. The most difficult learning situation for me is highly structured and intellectual where the responsibility for learning is placed entirely on the individual.

That is why this blog exists. Instead of trying to do a bunch of catch-up work, I thought I'd pose a challenge to myself and how I learn best in the form of a blog. Almost any writing I've done in the past year about Feldenkrais has been private, not very coherent, and definitely not intellectual or structured, so writing about it on a public blog will be a sort of test for myself to see what I can learn from making what I'm doing accessible to people who know nothing about it. It's an experiment, so please bear with me if I make no sense at times.

Here we go...

What is Feldenkrais?

The most common reaction when I say I am learning how to teach Feldenkrais is "...felda-what?", so I figure I should start with an explanation of what it is. The Feldenkrais Method is a type of body work, created by the physicist, Judo master, and inventor Moshe Feldenkrais. Its purpose is to make movement easier by increasing body awareness.

What does that mean and how does it work, you might ask? Let's say you have a particular way of standing up from a chair where, for whatever reason, you put your hands down next to your hips and push yourself out of the chair with your hands. According to Moshe the physicist, that is not the most efficient way to stand up from a chair. An easier way might be to lean forward a bit so your weight is solidly in your feet, and push from the ground. A Feldenkrais lesson based off of that idea would break down that movement into little tiny pieces, and then slow them all way down, letting you observe in yourself how each piece happens and works. As you get more pieces of the movement, you gain body awareness, and you gain choices for how you can stand up from a chair.

As Moshe said, "If you know what you're doing, you can do what you want." By giving yourself choices and options in how you move instead of only knowing the habits you've developed over the years, any movement can become clearer and easier.