radical self-inquiry
I was talking to a client today about transforming doubt into trust, which requires enough experience to make the leap. We can't do it by thinking, "I must now trust this."
It's like learning to walk: When we have enough data to trust that we can stand on our own two feet, we can take a step forward. With repeated experiments, we confirm our hypothesis: "Yup, here we go, it’s true, I'm walking."
Likewise, we need to experience lots of Feldenkrais lessons to trust that life can be different, that we can have non-judgmental self-compassion, which IS the lesson, always and forever.
My story
I was twenty-five years old when I found the Feldenkrais Method. I was in chronic pain throughout college and grad school. Stressful jobs in New York City weren't helping. I could only walk a block before I had to get a cab. My feet hurt, my back hurt, and my shoulders hurt.
After seeing many doctors, teachers, and practitioners of all sorts (you know the drill), I went to a workshop in the Feldenkrais Method, which left me stunned. The slow, small movements allowed me to feel a bit better, and even I could do this stuff!
Soon, I was trekking to the Upper West Side every Thursday evening after my stressful job at a hedge fund for a one-hour class of lying on the floor. I was transfixed and totally confused.
How could these tiny movements help?
Why did moving my leg influence my spine?
What did moving my pelvis have to do with my shoulders?
What was going on?
I'd never considered that my movements could be linked to sensations. I wanted more answers. Not long after that, I joined a four-year professional training.
Learning Feldenkrais was not easy.
Because I couldn't move without pain and I couldn't sense anything, I felt at a loss. I was dissociated and disconnected. I cried through much of my training, curled into a ball on my belly, shaking. All my analytical and cognitive skills were useless for this.
Eventually, I had to let go of trying to think my way through. It was a failing strategy.
Then, I had to let go of trying to force, manipulate, or judge my experience. I wanted to be “good” at it, yet being good meant letting go of trying to be good!
One day, amidst my tearful struggle, one of the teachers came over and said, “You know, there's no moral value in how you move your leg. It's just an experience, it's not right or wrong, and it doesn't make you a good or a bad person.”
I saw then how I could allow the experience to be what it was, without adornment, labels, or expectations. My movement got easier.
I know deep in my heart that you cannot put judgements or demands on your experience. You must sit with it as it is.
Allowing the lesson to emerge out of a sense of spaciousness is the only way through.
Struggle as learning
Before I came to these exalted revelations, I was miserably watching the dancers in my training glide around like feathers on the wind while I sat there like an elephant stuck in the mud.
In the third year of my training, one of those dancers found she couldn't do a movement. She approached me and said, “Now I get what you've been going through! You are going to be a much better teacher than me because you have had to struggle this whole time.”
This turned out to be true.
My own struggles help me relate to my clients. I understand how frustrating it is to have musculoskeletal pain and not know what to do when you can't move, sit, walk, or stand easily, or even feel comfortable in your own body.
What I discovered through this process was not just how to move better (although that did happen, I now move way better), but the more important discovery was that my self-image was malleable.
I didn't have to stay stuck inside the beliefs I had about myself.
The audio loop in my head about who I thought I was just switched off. It was like seeing sunlight for the first time. My previous sense of being lost, stressed, and disconnected turned into a quiet, easeful, self-knowing.
Resetting my life
After my training, I made another discovery: I could free myself from a compulsive, neurotic, health-threatening lifestyle and make better decisions for myself! Soon after, I quit my stressful job and moved to another country.
Twenty-five years later, I continue to live my life according to what I sense is good for me rather than contorting myself to fit into someone else's—or even society's—idea of correct, right, or good.
I do not negotiate with my quality of life. And my life is gloriously mine.
Questions for you, gentle reader:
Are you ready to take down the walls and get out of the prison of your habits?
Are you ready to take a risk to liberate yourself from compulsive patterns?
Are you prepared to find your own inner compass so you can live your own wildly unique and precious life?
Thank you
Much, if not all, of my thinking about the Feldenkrais Method comes from my teacher, Dennis Leri. Dennis began studying with Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1970s in San Francisco, and continued studying with him in Israel. Through kindness, though not necessarily by answering my questions, he guided me to think for myself and discover my own answers, which is a gift of wordless value. He passed away in 2016.
Other phenomenal teachers who have influenced my teaching and thinking are Carol Kress, Arlyn Zones, Mark Reese, Deborah Bowes, Cliff Smyth, Elizabeth Beringer, and Yvan Joly.
Lastly, my first and most patient Feldenkrais practitioner in New York City, Scott Fraser, told me, after I had unleashed a barrage of questions on him, to go up to Boston and see a guy named Dennis.
I never looked back.