Calm and de-stress
When I get stressed, it all goes to my jaw. While this is not a jaw lesson, it calms the sensation of feeling buzzy and over-activated.
I literally lay down on the floor and told myself, “I’m not going to do the lesson. I’m just going to lie here and listen to it.” Then I found myself slowly moving and pulsing the hands and feet without intending to do it. It’s funny how the impulse to engage takes over.
By the end, I felt completely different, softer and quieter in myself. See if that is true for you, or if your experience is completely different.
* * *
My client this morning asked if it were “normal” to feel a pinch in her hip when she bent her leg toward her shoulder. I said well, the nervous system has so many variables and so many ways of composing patterns that we can’t say what normal is.
It’s the beauty—and the challenge—of our humanity that we have so many ways of adapting to the world.
It’s my job to help people feel more whole instead of fixing any one part. Fixing one joint in this moment is not only mechanical, it implies a static state of existence. On the other hand, a sense of wholeness can be generalized to any moment of life.
Aspiring to wholeness guides us to seek and create positive experiences. When we feel whole, we feel capable and confident.
Feldenkrais offers a process of constantly adapting and growing instead of solving or fixing and washing our hands of our “problem.” It’s a lifelong practice of finding ourselves over and over.
Life happens, of course, but it’s not as jarring when we know we can find that place in ourselves again and come home.
More lessons:
This lesson is from De-stress and Calm in the Seven Best section of the Feldenkrais Treasury.
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Quote of the week:
“There should be no routine anywhere in the human brain so that when you settle into a routine, it is the best thing you can do. This is so that you can revise your routine according to circumstances, not to make yourself perfect for anyone else, only to make your own life easier.
That’s why I am not telling you what is perfect. You will find it in your own guts.”