Segment 6, Day 3: movable shoulders! yay!

For the first two weeks of this segment, we have a guest teacher, Paul Rubin. He lives in San Francisco, where he had his own Feldenkrais training from Moshe himself in the mid-70s. That was the first US training, and Paul developed a close mentor-student relationship with Moshe. Paul's got all sorts of good stories on him. We've already heard at least 6 in the past three days. How he got that close relationship? By bugging Moshe with statements Paul knew would make him angry, taking the heat, and then standing up to Moshe and defending the original statement.

Paul is an interesting character himself. He's soft-spoken and fairly mild-mannered (except for the occasional sarcastic crack), but he has a large vocabulary and a huge amount of knowledge about the Feldenkrais Method and anatomy, and he likes showing it all off. Luckily it doesn't make him come off as pompous, just as an authority figure with no doubt about it.

I'm having a great week with what he's teaching us so far. We've been figuring out the connection between ATMs and FIs, which is a very strong but sometimes very subtle connection that can be tricky to find. Let me see if I can explain this a little better. This week, the ATM series we're doing has all been about mobility of the shoulder and arm, and how the spine, ribs, and sternum are all related to that mobility. You can see that connection in your own body. Lift one arm and use the other hand to gently push up under your armpit and along your side. Some pressure there will make you arm automatically rise further. Kinda fun, huh?

So, as we do ATMs learning to easily swing an arm like a windmill, or how to extend our arms farther above our heads than they would normal go comfortably, we're supposed to be analyzing the lessons themselves and seeing what pieces could be translated into or inspire an FI lesson, based on the function being taught. Yes, I could teach someone to reach further over their heads, but there's more to it than that. I could go farther with it and teach that person that they have a huge number of options about how they can move their shoulder blades.

(Did you know your shoulder blades can slide around in a full circle, not just a little up and down or side to side? No, not your shoulders, those are 7th grade PE shoulder rolls. Stop that. You're making me cringe. I said your shoulder blades.)

After a lesson like that, it's entirely possible that the person won't know for a moment where his or her shoulders and arms belong in space and in relation to the rest of his or her body. Strange idea, I know, but it happens all the time. Muscles that have been working too hard for too long breathe a sigh of relief as other disused muscles take a minute to figure out what their job actually is.

I always get excited when we get to explore working with shoulders, arms, and ribs. The ways people habitually use those particular parts of their bodies fascinates me. Feet are really cool too.

new slogan?

Somehow, in class, it's a very common situation that I get paired up with tall, big guys. Not huge, just big, often around the 6' range and not skinny. I'm 5'4" and not exactly the strongest person in the world.

It tends to work out well for both parties. They have to figure out how to work really small and gently with my super-sensitive nervous system and limited mobility, and I have to figure out how to use myself really efficiently to be able to move them without hurting myself or getting worn out. After a particularly successful lesson on Friday in my mentoring class with a guy who fits the tall and big description, Angel suggested a business card tagline - "Specializes in tall men." Not ideal wording, perhaps, but it might be true. They're fun lessons for me to give because I have to pay extremely close attention to what I'm doing, no cheating allowed.

And as a side note, Segment 6 of 8 starts in just under a month. In Nancy's words, holy shit.

finding the open door

I've gotten the chance to spend a few Friday mornings this summer in Angel's studio with a small group of classmates, about 4 or 6, in our FI Mentoring Class. Here's how it works. When we arrive, Angel gives us each a sheet of paper to fill out.

Do you want feedback?

_ During my practice _ After my practice _ Neither

What do you want to focus on today?

(As of yet, nobody's picked "Neither".)

Once we're settled, she gives us a lesson to practice with a classmate and explains that the idea behind the lesson on a piece of paper is that it's like an art class. There's a model or still life, but what you actually do is your interpretation of it. She checks in briefly with each of us about what we wrote on the small sheet of paper, we pair off, and are set free to explore the lesson.

Last Friday, a couple of exciting things happened. One, after watching the lesson I gave and seeing what had changed when my partner stood up to walk around, I got a high five from Angel. It was a truly successful lesson. The funny thing was, I felt pretty clueless most of the 45 minutes I was giving that lesson, and somehow it all worked out anyway. That's where the second exciting thing comes in...

I figured out the trick to a successful lesson!

I was extremely proud of myself for this. Working with my partner, there were lots of things that I couldn't figure out - unexpected reactions to what I did, indecipherable patterns in her movement... There was one thing though that I knew I could change and that I could tell needed to change for the movement I was trying to clarify in her to work. I found the "open door" (as we called it), focused on that, ignored all my confusion, and everything else fell into place.

This has certainly happened in other lessons I've given and received, but this was the first time I was able to put it into words and figure out what was actually going on. And as is always the case in almost anything you do, the trick is keep it simple. Find something that works and go with it.

explaining the unexplainable

This weekend Angel and Richard hosted a small preview for their new training starting in the fall, and asked me to come talk about my experience with Feldenkrais. I've never thought of my story as being one worth featuring in an event, but apparently it is? I share stories here so that they're not stuck in my head, not so that I can spread the gospel, so to speak.

Talking directly to a group of strangers about what has changed and happened was a lot easier than I expected it to be. Angel pointed out when I was done telling my story that 2.5 years ago, I never would have been willing to do such a thing. She's completely right. I surprised myself in agreeing to go today.

Looking back on the preview I went to before my training started is strange. I remember not really understanding any of what the current trainees were talking about, but knowing regardless that it was important. Even though I felt clueless, I knew by the end of the first day that I needed to do the training. I couldn't explain why to myself or anyone else, but that didn't matter.

One of the guests today, Lynn, a woman who is in charge of logistics for Angel and Richard's trainings and has gone through her own training, told the group that trying to explain what it's like to be in a Feldenkrais training is kind of like an astronaut trying to explain to you what it's like to take a space walk. I hope I made some sense to those people today.

there's beauty in the breakdown

I often surprise myself at what I'm willing to share in this blog. Many of the uncomfortable situations I find myself able to write about are things I would normally only bring up in conversation with close friends or family, and yet I can write them here and not feel worried about sharing too much, despite not knowing who will read it. It continues to mystify.

An update on the last entry I wrote in here - that uncomfortable state only lasted for a couple of days, and in the past month and a half I've come to terms with this new way of existing. I've been able to find a comfortable compromise between the old and new. It's been particularly interesting bringing the changes into my dancing. Turns are a completely different creature than they were two months ago, as I learn how to keep the line of my body directly over my foot throughout a turn instead of falling in without realizing it.

The other new realization I'm figuring out right now is that I do, in fact, have some form of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Granted, I have not gotten an official diagnosis from a professional, but there's really no doubt in my mind that it's what is what going on. The idea first showed up near the end of last segment when my mom suggested that I might have it. I kind of blew off the possibility at first, but I asked a friend of mine who has been diagnosed with quite severe PTSD what she thought anyway. She suggested I read Peter Levine's Waking the Tiger to help me figure it out and for my mom to read as an explanation of why conventional therapy might not help me right now.

I spent a few afternoons last week reading that book, and yep, it's true. I do have a minor case of PTSD. I related very easily to Levine's explanations of how the human brain and body react to traumatic events, how that reaction can manifest as symptoms, and what can be done to help those symptoms. Basically, Levine says that while an animal can literally shake off the energy burst that happens during a traumatic event, humans can get stuck in the emotion of the event and are not always able to have the energy release needed to go back to regular life. This can result in any number of things - panic attacks, denial of the event or the importance of the event, dissociation from regular life, anger problems... The list goes on for a long time. Levine's way of finding a way around those symptoms is to let that energy release happen that did not occur at the time of the event.

Translation? In my case, each of the breakdowns I've gone through in class has been a piece of that energy release. Each time, I learn more about what happened to me when I was 11 and how I respond to it emotionally as something lets go physically. The more I think about it, the more situations I can remember where a bit of that energy release has happened.

Letting go, particularly of control of my body, scares me. It's good to have a context to put that fear in. I'm also realizing why "Let Go" by Frou Frou grabbed me so hard the first time I heard it, although I couldn't figure it out then. Ignore the video, just listen to the song. In case you can't understand the words, here are lyrics. That is someone's mind trying to overcome my version of PTSD.

Segment 5, Day 17: Feeling Exposed

We finished a 7-day-long ATM series today on learning how to stand over your feet by gaining hip mobility and using it to be able to stand comfortably with your feet in any position. I am completely relieved that it's over. Don't get me wrong, it's a good series, just extremely challenging and WAY outside my comfort zone.

For the past 7 days, we've been doing a piece of that series in the morning, followed by giving a classmate an FI related to the ATM, then lunch, then switching roles and having that classmate give you the same FI. It results in a very busy nervous system with way too much new information. On Friday, we all stood up from the ATM with our hips far more open than usual. Angel warned us that this way of standing can feel very powerful to some people, and to watch out for that power, because a woman once went home from this lesson, decided she'd had enough, and punched her husband in the face. I did not feel powerful. I felt vulnerable. I didn't like this new way of standing, and I was not excited to have two more days of it coming up.

Today I hit the breaking point. After 7 days of this series, I'm standing in an entirely unfamiliar way. My habit is to stand with my feet turned in a little with my weight toward the balls of my first toes, in and forward, with my upper chest a little collapsed and my head a little forward. The new way of standing? My feet are straight forward with the weight near the outside, my hips are turned open, my chest is open, and my head is directly over my spine. Physically, it's actually very comfortable, but emotionally, it's terrifying and overwhelming and not really me, as I think of myself.

If it's not me, how can it feel so physically easy to stand like this?

Segment 5, Day 5: Sharing Secrets

We've reached the end of the first week of Segment 5, and what a week it's been! This segment is focused on Functional Integration (FI), the hands on version of Feldenkrais. So far it's been lessons in how to organize your body so that you can connect with your student, (dancers - think a not too firm frame) which involves keeping your whole spine really long. It's a lot harder than it looks.

Because we've been obsessively thinking about this all week, we're all suddenly noticing all the time where and when we shorten parts of our spine. One of my spots, for example, is that when I'm cutting something on a cutting board I tend to lift my shoulders to lift my hands to lift the knife, which then shortens the part of my spine between my shoulder blades and my lower neck. If I concentrate on it and just lift my hands from my hands and let my shoulders relax, I can cut more accurately and don't have to work so hard if I'm cutting something hard.

Richard has been sharing secrets with us this week, such as, he has to find that length in his spine again every time he's with a student. He's been a practitioner since the early 90s. He's reminded us that he never knows how a lesson will turn out at the end, or even necessarily where to start, but that he does know two things - 1. He knows how to look for what to do. 2. He knows what NOT to do. It's nice to know that we're not alone in our frustrations, and intriguing to know that this will be a lifelong process if we choose for it to be.

He also read us an interesting Moshe quote this morning, explaining the secrets behind why the Feldenkrais Method does what it does. It's a little dense, but worth reading. I thought I'd pass it along.

"The motor cortex of the brain, where patterns activating the muscles are established, lies only a few millimeters above the brain strata dealing with association processes. All the feeling and sensing that a man has experienced were at one time linked with the association processes. [...] A fundamental change in the motor basis within any single integration pattern will break up the cohesion of the whole and thereby leave thought and feeling without anchorage in the patterns of their established routines. In this condition it's much easier to effect changes in thinking and feeling, for the muscular part through which thinking and feeling reach our awareness has changed and no longer expresses the patterns previously familiar to us. Habit has lost its chief support, that of the muscles, and has become more amenable to change." - Awareness Through Movement, page 38-39

So to translate, muscles memory is really strong in all of us, whether we realize it or not. Linked to muscle memory are the feelings and sensations that went along with that action, and they will always be linked through that pattern. Once you break a pattern, you open up a new range of feelings, sensations, reactions, etc, that weren't available before because the pattern blocked them.

This stuff is so freaking cool.