I'm not sure what to call this post.

In the month since Segment 7 ended (has it really only been a month?), I've made a strange and occasionally maddening physical discovery. Thanks to an FI practice we did in class about side-to-side rib movement, I've figured out my scoliosis. I can tell you, without feeling with my hands, the location of the curve and twist in my spine. (Did you know part of a scoliosis is a twist, not just a curve? That was news to me.) I can even play with very subtly changing the curve and untwisting the twist, but it takes so much concentration that it makes me feel a bit like I'm putting myself into a trance. I have to be careful with how much I play with it - too much makes me feel a little sick, but it's exciting nonetheless! I love the idea of my scoliosis not being there or at least being smaller, and knowing something about how it works is the first step to getting there.

It's been a busy month of work, dancing, gardening projects, visits with people I don't get to see often enough, a whirlwind of a trip to California, and some time spent figuring out how this whole starting a professional Feldenkrais practice thing works. Did I mention I'm graduating in 4.5 months? October and Segment 8 are coming up really fast. I'm mildly terrified of that idea, but it's becoming less terrifying and more doable as I get more advice on what to do between now and then and what to do after I graduate.

What to do between now and then? Work with as many people as I can. I need to get better at that one and actually contact the list of people I have who are interested. Continuing to journal the lessons I give will also be helpful in terms of figuring out my preferences/habits/patterns in lessons. I'm also considering asking a local practitioner if she would be interested in letting me mentor with her for a little while, to observe lessons and get more advice.

After I graduate? Marketing, marketing, and more marketing. And networking. And website building. And more marketing. I know very little about any of that, but luckily I've already discovered that a good friend of mine knows a whole lot about marketing a one-person business, and I've got a bunch of friends in the broad field of body work who I can start networking with.

I'm beginning to think I can actually do this.

Segment 7, Day 19: Vitality

It's kind of stunning how much has happened in the 10 days since I last wrote here. Feels more like a month than only 10 days. In that time, we've done 8 practicum sessions (4 as practitioner, 4 as observer), done feedback sessions for all of them, gone into to detail on aspects of lessons that weren't so clear during the practicums, observed Richard give 4 full-length lessons to classmates, been taught and practiced a number of new tricks and strategies to use during lessons, celebrated Richard's 55th birthday with homemade root beer and chocolate cheesecake, done a bunch of difficult ATM lessons, lost our minds in giggle fits, and today, watched a Moshe lecture. It's been a busy 10 days.

The lecture is what I wanted to write about here. It was on what Moshe called "levels of vitality". I found very quickly that I didn't like his idea of levels, that some people are more vital than others and are therefore better people, but the different types of vitality interest me. Oddly enough Moshe got them from Ron Hubbard, Mr. Scientology, of all people, but they're still worth thinking about.

Type #1 - The person who adjusts to the reality around them whether they like it or not. That can mean anything from someone who surrenders to a bad situation because they don't want to deal with it, or don't know how, to someone who realizes they don't quite fit and changes their own behavior to fit better.

Type #2 - The person who doesn't accept the reality around them and runs away, out of fear, anger, because they just need a new start, or countless other reasons.

Type #3 - The person who doesn't accept the reality around them and finds ways to change reality to fit them. The other extreme from #1, which can range from a person in a bad job changing what they can in the situation to a dictator changing how a country works to fit their desires.

The idea behind the different types is how people react to life, and how alive they feel based on those reactions. An activist who manages to reverse a major piece of legislation probably feels more alive in that success than the old lady who refuses to leave her house in the winter because she once broke her hip falling on ice (true story, Richard's grandmother). That's not to say that the activist lives a more worthwhile life than the old lady (although I think Moshe would not agree with me), it's just a different sort of life. Maybe the old lady likes her small life. She adjusts to it and realizes how safe it feels. The activist continues to be disappointed with government and continues to fight, successfully or unsuccessfully.

What we realized in discussion after watching the lecture was that you can't stay one type your whole life. At some point, everyone needs to settle and be okay with what they have or where they are, at some point everyone has a situation to escape, and at some other point, everyone gets the chance to change reality, even if it's a tiny change. If you only know one or two of those reactions, your life can't be full and something will go very wrong. All three are equally important and equally vital - it just depends on the situation at hand.

Segment 7, Day 9: Practicum #1

Today was our first set of practicums! Everyone brought in a guest, then handed that guest off to a classmate and received their own client, so we all worked with a stranger. We did two rounds of lessons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that if you were a practitioner in the morning, you were a facilitator in the afternoon for the person who facilitated you.

I was a facilitator first, so I got to start the morning sitting back and observing a lesson, giving tips when needed. The practitioner I observed got paired with a woman, bus driver by profession, who complained of having a tight lower back and hips while doing yoga. I found myself very surprised that she did yoga. Maybe it was the way she held herself (she was very tall and perhaps felt a little awkward about her height), maybe it was the bus driver uniform she was wearing, maybe it was the motorcycle gear she took off before her lesson... Whatever it was, she turned out to be a very different person than I would have guessed by first impression. By the time she was on the table, her practitioner realized very quickly that there was all sorts of holding going on in her torso and not a lot of movement available. I think it scared her off, so she ended up working from the woman's feet and legs instead, trying to free up her hips a little. It was a tricky lesson, and when the woman sat up she said she didn't notice any differences. What she did notice was that she had gotten a feeling of "universal love" through the practitioner's touch and had really enjoyed that sensation. Neither the practitioner or I really know what she was talking about, but she's coming back for another lesson next week, so she got something out of it...

After lunch, I became practitioner. My client was also a woman, although a very different one from the morning. She was tiny, talkative, had done a little Feldenkrais a long time ago and remembered the impacts, and was very sure of her self-awareness. She also knew exactly what she wanted me to do. After telling me "someone" had told her she had scoliosis in her upper back and neck (quite extreme, actually, I'm amazed it doesn't cause her pain), she said that she wanted me to straighten her spine. She also mentioned some deterioration of her lower spine, the kind that comes with age, and clearly would have liked me to reverse her aging and bring her lower spine back to perfect 20-year-old health. I explained to her that straightening a spine isn't something I can do, or certainly not in one lesson, but I could at least send her in the right direction.

I started the lesson not actually knowing what I wanted to do, exactly. I knew it would be about her spine, but I didn't decide what until I'd had my hands on her for a few minutes. At that point, it became completely obvious that where there should be a clear line of the spine, there was a major disconnect between her pelvis, ribcage, and head. Her head was forward and turned a little to the right, her ribcage was both shifted and turned to the left, and her pelvis also turned a little to the right. I spent the rest of the time helping her find connections between the disconnected parts of her torso along the line of her spine (ie. when your head turns right, so can your sternum and your ribcage and your shoulders AND your pelvis, imagine that), and by the time she sat up from her lesson, she said her spine felt straighter!

Ladies and gentlemen, the power of intention.

Later, already feeling pretty good about how it had gone, Angel came up to me and said that she hadn't wanted to overly compliment me in the group feedback session, but that I had done "really, really good work." Comments like that from her are excellent ego boosters. I feel pretty proud of myself.

Segment 7, Day 7: an experiment in progress

I'm not sure where to start with this entry. I should have written sooner this segment before my head was so full of information. It's been a busy seven days. I'm not actually overwhelmed yet, just trying to process what's happened so I can figure out what to write here.

In most Feldenkrais trainings, students have two opportunities to give FIs to non-Feldy people in class and get feedback from their trainers. They traditionally happen in the last part of a training, and they end up being very stressful and high pressure for the students. Then, after those two practicums, students are kicked out the door, out of the nest, off the cliff... Pick your metaphor, they're all bad situations leaving the students unprepared for starting a practice.

Angel and Richard decided that because our class did really well in the past two segments getting the hang of how to give an FI, we were ready for more than most trainings. In fact, they decided we were already ready to give public lessons and receive feedback, even though we still have two segments left. That means we have become guinea pigs for a new version of Segment 7 that has never been tried before. Instead of two practicums at the end of our training, we get four each just this month! To take the pressure off a bit, we'll be observed directly by a classmate who is there to help if we get stuck, and observed from afar by our trainers. Leading up to the practicums, we've been breaking down the structure of an FI and testing out pieces of it in a variety of imaginary and real client situations to get a handle on each piece. That way, when we get a stranger sitting in front of us with an odd request, we won't get stuck in the cycle of OH GOD NOW WHAT quite so easily.

Here's an example of the imaginary situations we've been playing with. My classmate, Gwen, as the client, goes over to a bag of slips of paper and picks one out. It says she's an airline pilot. She goes to the next bag, picks out another slip of paper, and this one tells her she has incontinence. She comes back to my table, sits down, and acts out the part. I, as practitioner, panic. Incontinence? I don't know anything about incontinence. I certainly don't know how to help it. This is really awkward. AAAAH!! I turn to another classmate, Kuniko, my facilitator, and ask her desperately for help. We chat a little. Gwen, who happens to know a little about what can cause incontinence, chimes in with what she knows (even though as client she's really not supposed to). Eventually I work out that this airline pilot sits all day on long flights. Incontinence comes from a lack of pelvic muscle control. If I give her a lesson on pelvic support while sitting, there's a chance it will increase muscle control and that might help the incontinence, and even if it doesn't, she'll be more comfortable at work.

If you were to talk to my classmate Kevin, he'd tell you that I start to glow when I talk about this segment. I got excited about it the minute I got the email introducing the idea of extra practicums before class started. Besides the fun of playing with an entirely new format, this is a very clear signal that Angel and Richard trust us. They trust that we can give them good feedback about the experiment. They trust that we have a good enough sense of how to use ourselves while giving a lesson without getting overwhelmed by the details of structure. They trust us in our ability to work with people we've never met before. I consider all of that an honor.

Our first round of practicums starts on Thursday morning. Off we go!

still here

Hello all. I know it's been far too long since I've written in here, but I couldn't for a while. I got my heart broken in October and spent the rest of October and November essentially emotionally shut off to help myself heal. I realized very quickly that just the idea of doing Feldenkrais or anything equally self-examining terrified me of the wound I'd find inside, so I stopped for a couple of months. Over my Thanksgiving vacation in Santa Cruz, my mom convinced me to give her an FI. I was extremely reluctant, but decided it was time to try to move on and gave her one anyway. It went surprisingly well, all things considered, but it also showed me that I had been right to wait - giving a lesson sooner than that would have gone very badly for all involved.

Since then I've continued letting my heart heal (getting a little better every day), and have slowly been making my way back into giving lessons. I have an assignment from class to try to give 20 FIs in the current break between segments and keep a journal on them, and I've done 3 so far, so I've got some motivation to get going. If anyone wants one, let me know. I need to do a bunch between now and mid-April.

What prompted me to finally write here again was an eye-opening experience I had this morning. My friend Bethany's cat is very sick (she's got kidney disease and a tumor in her bladder) and it means a lot of trips to the vet. To spare Bethany's boyfriend another trip so he could have some needed extra time at work, I gave Bethany and Rose (the cat) a ride and stayed with them for the vet visit. What didn't occur to me going in was that we'd be going to a veterinary hospital, not a clinic, and how similar the experience of being there would be to a human hospital.

So, in the middle of hearing about possible treatments for Rose's tumor, my brain decided to take all the familiar medical terms it was hearing and the familiar medical exam room it was seeing and twist it all around. My head started to feel fuzzy, I lost track of what the doctor was saying, the room started to feel too hot and stuffy and small, I felt all the blood drain out of my face, and if I hadn't left the room to sit in the hallway where there was a little fresh air and a kind nurse with a glass of cold water, it could have turned into a full-fledged panic attack.

Luckily I was able to stop it before it went all the way, but it was a useful reality check. It's clearly not just Stanford Childrens Hospital I have a problem with, or other pediatric hospitals. It's just... hospitals, off any sort, even if it's completely unrelated to me or my history. Too many bad memories of that atmosphere, of that pain. Must find a way to move on from this part too. No one can avoid hospitals forever.

Segment 6, Day 20: intersecting calendars

We are officially done with Year 3. That's a scary thought. It means I only have a year of this left and then I'm left to my own devices to figure out what to do with it. Luckily the sense of community that's formed over the last three years among our classmates is strong enough that no one will get left out in the cold when we graduate. It's a really fantastic group of people.

It's interesting that today, along with being the end of Year 3, is Yom Kippur. I usually really enjoy Yom Kippur services, but have decided not to go tonight. After a month of deep self-reflection in a community I feel very close to, I don't feel the need to go to services for a couple of days of self-reflection. Since I don't go to services regularly, I don't have a particularly strong sense of community at synagogue and it is not a normal social setting for me. I have to figure out what to do with myself there. If I'm awake enough for it tonight, I'd rather go out blues dancing, a normal social setting for me, and find a way to put my self-reflection to good use there.

The High Holidays are about getting a fresh start on your relationship with yourself, your spirituality, and your relationship with others for the new year. My spirituality has been very quiet lately, so for that reason I'm not drawn to services tonight. As for the other two pieces, they are a huge part of my Feldenkrais training. If you don't respect and understand yourself, you will be of no use to anyone when you put your hands on them. All they will feel is confusion. If you don't respect and understand the person your hands are on, there will be all sorts of trouble. It's all about learning how to know where you are (emotionally, physically, etc) and meet them where they are. There's no way for that to not apply to "real life".

Segment 6, Day 16: breakthrough!

I survived Week 3! It even came with a major physical breakthrough on Thursday...

For many many years, I've been working on strengthening the outside of my right hip so I could stabilize myself over my right leg. Those muscles basically shrunk away and went to sleep after my 5th grade surgery. Not being able to use those muscles means that when I stand over my right leg, it's very difficult for me to bring my left hip up so that my pelvis is situated evenly over my right leg. I tend to collapse into my right hip when I walk. It adds a piece to my limp, partially caused by that and partially caused by my right leg being an eight of an inch shorter than my left. My surgeon was fairly certain that those exterior hip muscles would be atrophied permanently. I think he even used the word paralyzed at some point.

Have I mentioned how much I love proving him wrong? If not, I really really really love proving him wrong. It's totally thrilling, even if he never finds out about it.

On Thursday afternoon we did a very odd ATM. We all sat on a corner of a seat (we used our FI tables) so that one hip was on the table and one hip was off the table. (Richard calls it the "half-assed" lesson. Hahaha.) We played with moving the hip that was not on the table in all different directions and seeing how we could coordinate those hip movements with torso and head movements. When I stood up and started walking, it felt almost like I was floating, because all of a sudden I could walk squarely over each leg with no collapsing in my right hip at all. The magic of Feldenkrais strikes again. For the few days, those muscles around my right hip felt wide awake, and the numb spot around my scar there felt itchy. Itchy numb spots are always a good sign on the road to recovery. It means there are connections being made again.

Of course, then Richard had to go and mess it all up with another ATM this morning that seemed to have nothing to do with what we did last week and just left me confused... Oh well. Good thing I've got an FI with Angel tomorrow. She can help me bring it back.