Meet yourself where you are
Dear Friends,
Questions are the best! They elicit new connections, draw out strategies I had never thought of before, and actually make me feel smarter by reminding me that I know more than I think I do. And, there is no one way to answer. I have a keen new student who asks many good questions.
Often, I have lots to say, but just as often, I reply with every Feldenkrais practitioner's stock answer: "it depends."
That's because each person's response to surgery, pain, injury, dysfunction, grief, loss, or chaos will show up differently depending on their history, patterns, coping strategies, stressors, and more. Therefore, in Feldenkrais, we work with each person's self-expression, not robotic, generalized assumptions trying to fit all of humanity. There is no set-in-stone decision tree, just options, choices, and constantly changing vantage points.
Just look at where any two people end up, even with the "same" kind of injury! Our ability to craft a unique response to life's experience is profoundly humbling as well as inspiring: it means we can craft a different response. If we can be conditioned to do one thing, we can be conditioned to do another, and another, and so on.
Relationships and connection
Rather than looking at the mechanics of movement, such as analyzing range of motion, strength, or wear and tear in your hip joint, the Feldenkrais Method looks at the dynamics of movement, asking how you sense your hip in relationship to your low back, ribs, neck, feet, jaw, and more.
This way of thinking is vital for your own practice, too. To access the relational part of your brain, try this:
Meet yourself where you are in this moment.
Do not fix, do not correct.
Notice without judgment.
It sounds wildly counter-intuitive, I know. You'd think that to get better, you just need to move a lot. Yes, practice is good, but not a mindless, aggressive, desperate, beat-yourself-up-just-to-get-it-done kind of practice. I can say with 100% certainty that improvement depends 95% on your attitude and 5% on actually moving.
As Moshe says:
"Anything you want to achieve in an unfamiliar situation always seems like it's impossible. The impossibility is only in how you organize yourself. It will feel impossible before it's feasible. To make it feasible, it's always the same trick: you must engage your entire being."
You can't not change
You will change by virtue of bringing novelty into your nervous system. You can't not change. You couldn't stay the same if you tried. But, you have to stop thinking and start sensing.
Trust the process: you will change by virtue of bringing novelty into your nervous system. You can't not change. You couldn't stay the same if you tried. But, you do have to stop thinking and start sensing. There is hope because unless your brain has lost all electrical functioning, novel input will change the output. If you start nagging, "shoulding," or struggling against yourself, you'll stop learning. That said, don't worry if—being human—you do start to struggle, strain, or judge. That would be meta-worry. And, as Voltaire said, perfect is the enemy of the good.
Just let it go, reset yourself, and continue to test different strategies and observe what happens. Over time, this process will become part of your repertoire for learning. If you do this consistently, with kindness and curiosity, your function will improve.
But don't listen to me, test it for yourself. Moshe always said the one thing that stops us from improving is not our dysfunction, but our negative self talk.
“It’s the only way to learn: Experience, try out, see for yourself, and do not take anything on trust.”