FELDENKRAIS® Center of Nevada County

When I went to BodyWorlds last year, I was, like most people, overwhelmed by the intensity of the experience... if you ever thought that human anatomy was boring, you'd change your mind at this incredible exhibition of real bodies. What they can reveal to us about our structure!

I was particularly interested to see the person with 6 toes on each foot. It was fascinating to me because many years ago, when I lived in Washington, DC, I had a client who came to me for back pain that she had endured for most of her adult life. She detailed a car accident and various other traumas that she thought were involved, and then I asked her to lie down on the table.

I was immediately struck by how her feet lay on the table, and began our lesson there. As I touched her toes, she told me that she'd been born with 6 toes. It had never bothered her and people were always curious about it. When she was in college, she began dating a medical student. His interest in her toes that went beyond curiosity, and he eventually persuaded her to have the extra toes “lopped off” by one of  his professors. And, she said, she never noticed any more about their absence than she had noticed about their presence.

I wondered as she told me this, and asked her if she'd had back pain in her teens? No, she hadn't. How about when she started college? No, not then either. When exactly did the back pain start? She thought about it and then told me what I had already  guessed –  her back pain had begun within a couple of weeks of having her “extra” toes removed!

I explained to her that those toes weren't really extraneous... they were an integral part of her functioning. To remove them without making any changes in how she balanced, supported her weight, walked, or did any of the other countless things humans do, was sure to cause problems.

Through our Feldenkrais lessons, she became aware that she was still organizing her movement as if she had 6 toes... as she increased her options, she learned to move and be safe with 5 toes on each foot, and her back pain disappeared!

This afternoon, I was listening to an especially fine recording of Beethoven's 8th Symphony. At 25, the conductor, Courtney Lewis, is certainly young, yet he seems effortlessly to bring out the best in every musician in Boston’s Discovery Ensemble. No one overwhelms any other, and together, they blend in a way that draws the listener into a state of profound awareness of every instrument, and the many musical themes. Though I've listened to it countless times in the past, I found myself really hearing this symphony for the first time -- almost as if it were in 3-D for the ear! As I watched the themes developing, instrument by instrument; I could hear them repeat, shift, expand and contract, change into something different... all the while reflecting the perfect harmony Beethoven must have heard and felt within himself as he put the notes on paper.

And while the conducting appear effortless, the every musician seemed to share in the effortlessness. I thought I would float right out of my seat from the sheer weightlessness in the air!

Fined-tuned self-awareness works in the same way. When we allow ourselves to become aware of where we make too much effort, where we don’t give ourselves a chance, when the rhythm needs to shift to accommodate a change in movement or direction, and how we stop ourselves from being able to get what we intend, then our nervous system, like a skilled conductor, takes the opportunity to correct the imbalance, restore harmony and leave us feeling more integrated, more whole, more in tune with ourselves... feeling the internal harmony that’s a universal aspect of feeling "well."

Regular participation in Feldenkrais® classes -- either Awareness Through Movement® groups, or Functional Integration® private lessons -- affords the opportunity to develop awareness and lightness, increase range and comfort and expand our potential. Taking time for ourselves on a regular basis gives us the chance to retune our inner "ear" so that we become more easily aware of imbalances when they’re small. This, in turn, lets the nervous system restore harmony quickly and easily, orchestrating our movement as if we, too, were always playing Beethoven in most desirable way possible -- by using our "instrument" with the effortless harmony nature intended.

Often in the course of a private lesson, I'll ask my student to notice excess work, become aware of it as work, and stop doing it. Almost as often, the student will say something like, "Oh, you want me to resist!" or "Oh! You want me to stop resisting!"

"No," I say, "I want you to feel what you're doing, become aware of it as work and then stop working."  After 30 years of practice, I'm ready for the deer-in-the-headlights look of general bafflement that's about to come over my student's face...

"Okay, well -- I'm resisting you now -- you want me to stop resisting?"

"Now that you're aware of it, you describe what you're doing as resistance, but you were doing it before I drew your attention to it --  you were working, without realizing you were working. Resistance and work are not the same thing."

"They're not?"

"When you resist, you do something against another force... a pull from another person, the tug on your dog's leash or your horse's reins... when you resist, another force is necessary, otherwise it wouldn't be resistance. Work is something you can do without anybody or anything else. A muscle that contracts is working. You can be aware of the work, or you can ignore it. When you ignore it, it becomes easier to do it all the time, whether you need to do it or not... and this becomes unnecessary work. You do that kind of work all the time, and that's why your back hurts. If you learn to work when you want to, and stop working when you want to, then you'll be able to enjoy your back again, instead of having it ruin your fun."

When you can become aware of what unnecessary work feels like, you learn how to stop doing it. This is the beginning of having a choice -- work, or don't work -- it's up to you! When you know which one you're doing, and how to get from one to the other, you no longer have to take what you get!  Or, as Moshe Feldenkrais would say, "When you know what you're doing, you can do what you want!"

By age 25, I'd had three major sprains to my ankles -- the one I got for my 18th birthday left me on crutches for 6 weeks, and still makes me wince when I think about it.

My cousin had decided that an introduction to skiing would be a great birthday present, so off we went to the slopes. I used to have a lot of foot discomfort, so deciding on what size boot to rent was a bit of a problem, and at first they felt a little sloppy but I stayed with the ones I chose because the smaller size was definitely tight. After I fell trying to get the hang of the rope-tow, I stopped noticing the little bit of wiggle-room... in fact, they felt pretty good, for ski boots in 1968. It was when I went to take them off that I realized why -- my right ankle had swollen to fill the boot and without the external structure of the boot, was so painful I couldn't even hobble on it!

When I met Moshe Feldenkrais in 1975, I began to discover what my feet are for... all those little bones in there -- and believe me, there are LOTS of little bones in there! -- those bones are there so my feet can move and bend and adapt to the ground as I walk on the sidewalk, on a hill, on uneven terrain. They're supposed to be changing their relationship to each other so that I can more easily carry the weight of my upper body without working too hard in my legs, my back, my shoulder, my neck... After I stopped using my foot as if it were a wooden shoe that only bent at the ankle, I realized one day that I hadn't sprained either ankle in years! In fact, it's now been almost 34 years since that first day with Moshe and I haven't had even a minor problem with my ankles!

My life BF -- Before Feldenkrais® -- is full of sad stories like this. Happily, since the first Awareness Through Movement® lesson I participated in, I've had a greater ability to be in control of what happens to me when I do something klutzy... yes, you read that right. I'm STILL a klutz -- but I've learned to move in a way that I don't get hurt very often and rarely as badly as I used to, and that's completely changed my life. 

How could being in more control of what you're doing make your life easier?