How to move beyond your habits

Re-learning to live in one's body is a process of self-study.

In Feldenkrais you are not moving just to move, you are studying how you do it. This requires a deep interest in your own unique experience of the world, which must, by definition, be through your sensations because that's all you've got for how you know yourself. What you are doing in this method is observing sensations while moving. The Feldenkrais Method helps you discover how you feel, perceive, and sense, and how you construct your own unique world out of those perceptions.

That's what I'm thinking about when I give someone a private lesson: How does this person construct their world? What does it mean for their choices that they arrived here, in this place, with these patterns?

It can take a lifetime to get to know oneself, and it's not for everyone. Some people learn one thing about their arm and they're done. That's perfectly okay. But the bigger arc of the journey is an ongoing process of "ruthless self-inquiry," as my teacher used to say.

Sometimes it's fun to figure out the puzzle, or change our state in positive ways, but it can also be profoundly frustrating to locate our stuck places and feel our lack of awareness over and over again. Plus, many Feldenkrais lessons are mind-blowingly hard. It can take years to shift our patterns enough to approach "doing" some of the movements

If you want to move, yes, go dance, hike, run, play a sport, do whatever you want. But to move beyond your ingrained habits, you must learn how you know the world through movement, through your relationship with gravity, with awareness and deep listening.

Then, you can move with joy because you know and trust yourself. You can relate more clearly to the world and act on your intentions without holding back.

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