Why I still practice
Someone asked me the other day whether I still do Feldenkrais for myself. The answer is yes, Feldenkrais is my work and my life. But then the question continued: why do I still do it? Haven't I learned all the movements after twenty-five years of practice? Here's a bit of an answer to that.
Yes, I have "learned" all the movements. But do you ever "learn" meditation, journaling, or self-reflection? No, because it's a practice. Each day I am a different person, and each day I learn something different about myself.
Feldenkrais invites you to step into the laboratory of your experience. The lesson sets up variables and constraints and you run an experiment on your sensations and test what happens. Every day you learn something new, depending on the inputs and outputs of the very dynamic, non-linear process called your nervous system.
The intelligence is not in the mechanics of performing, which I can do, but in deeply sensing myself in the moment. That's why it's never a check-the-box kind of learning. I want to learn how I sense my immediate lived experience, not yesterday's interpretation. Nothing matters but today.
As Moshe says in his amazing Esalen workshop: "We cannot act but by what we sense."
Therefore, there is never a final moment in sensory-motor learning where you say, "Okay, I can perform that movement, time to move on." That would be like saying you know all the different cultures after traveling to one country. Or (my favorite), you know all the different kinds of pizza after trying just one kind. That's not possible (thank goodness). You get the idea.
Your sensory feedback is a constant exploration of how you know your inner and outer worlds, which varies from day to day. Each lesson is an opportunity to give yourself permission to ask how you feel in this moment. When do we ever do that?
That's why I do Feldenkrais: Not to check a box, but to engage in a process of self-inquiry again and again, over a gazillion discreet moments in a lifetime. This builds a foundation of empathy and kindness and, yes, it gets me out of the hunchy-back syndrome after slouching in my recliner for too long.
The benefit of so many years of practicing sensory shifts is that I shift much faster. What a relief.
This is one of those lessons you can do again and again to check in with yourself. I love doing it after being on the computer too long!
“Do one good movement and not twenty bad ones because if you do one good one, it is possible to do another one better. If you do twenty bad ones the twenty-first will also be bad, also the hundredth, and also the thousandth. Whoever does not have patience cannot learn. ”