How to move beyond your habits
Moving is fun. But in Feldenkrais we are not moving just to move, we are studying how we do it. It's a different intention altogether, and the learning part is not always enjoyable. 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.
Luckily, doing the movement is not the goal!
It's what you learn about yourself along the way. Often it's the lessons we can't do—yet—that yield the most insight.
Re-learning to live in one's body is a process of self-study. It requires a deep interest in our unique experience of the world, which must, by definition, be through our sensations because that's all we've got for how we know ourselves. What we are doing in this method is observing those sensations while moving. Feldenkrais 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 a 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.
If you want to move, absolutely 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.