The power of relearning fundamental patterns
"If you move within your range of ability without trying to achieve a goal, you improve at the fastest rate possible."
— Moshe Feldenkrais
One of the things I care deeply about in this method is how it reworks our basic developmental patterns. As babies, we all learn to lift the head. Then we learn to roll over, bend, arch, and more.
Relearning these patterns is important because of the emotional tone associated with the context in which we first learned them. (Moshe Feldenkrais writes extensively about this level of ontological learning in his book, The Potent Self.)
These fundamental skills affect how we breathe, digest, hold our head, move our eyes, shift our weight, lean in, pull away, perceive choices, access energy, etc., etc. I could go on for several weeks on this.
What I offer is a way to relearn developmental patterns so that they do not carry the emotional tone of a lifetime of bracing.
As you practice noticing your sensations without judgment, the tone associated with the context of your initial learning starts to shift, especially as you bring compassion, kindness, and nonjudgmental listening to your experience.
After hearing many hundreds of stories from clients over the years, I can assure you that this is not how most of us initially learned to be in the world, myself included.
Instead, we push, force, strain, suffer, berate, doubt, shame, ignore, displace, disassociate, override, and pretty much abuse ourselves. Acceptance and kindness are usually not in the equation—yet. Moshe Feldenkrais always said the biggest barrier to learning anything new is negative self talk.
Big shifts for everyone
How much would you think differently if you moved through space in a completely new way?
How much would you feel differently if your muscles stopped bracing, tensing, and gripping?
You would sleep better, smile more, breathe deeper, stand taller, feel more spacious, less contracted. You would also problem-solve better, adapt easier, and make unforeseen relational connections across different parts of your brain.
When you train in sensing your entire self differently, you sense new choices. It cannot be otherwise.
Your confidence can take root on a much deeper level, too. Confidence comes not from “brute strength” in facing the world through tensing and bracing, but from a balanced relationship to gravity where you access your full power.
Can you imagine letting go of a lifetime of conditioned tension? If something is conditioned, it can be unconditioned. Our brains are learning machines. Run the experiment of this intensive study on fundamental patterns and see what happens (June, 2023).
Like psychotherapy, martial arts, getting in shape, changing your diet, or any other pursuit of well-being, the time you put in is linked to your results.
The best part for me is that relearning fundamental patterns can turn off the feedback loop in your head that says, “I am such-and-such a person,” because, really, who made those rules?
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If you haven’t listened to my note on the Foundations of Feldenkrais, here it is. Try lying on the floor to listen to it!
“It’s the only way to learn: Experience, try out, see for yourself, and do not take anything on trust.”