More Thoughts on Improving Your Posture

It's never enough to simply understand what to do
if one feels unable to put that knowledge to use.

One of the mantras of more traditional postural techniques is, "Keep your chest up!" And yet, how one is supposed to hold one's chest "up," especially for any length of time, seems to be elusive for many people.

I have found one of the most exciting and practical applications of the Feldenkrais Method is to help people experience the sense of how to do something while providing the means to incorporate that ability into one's daily life. However, for some people, even Awareness Through Movement^® lessons that are designed to activate and balance the work of the back muscles and help them to lift the chest, leave those people feeling that the lower back is working too hard. We understand that this happens because, for those people, the lumbar area of their spine is most available for (or is, in fact, already doing too much of) the work of keeping them upright. So, for me, a long-time question has been, how can I help people achieve the sense that they can effortlessly lift through the chest without overworking the muscles in the lower back?

A couple of months ago, looking for something else, I stumbled across a trio of Awareness Through Movement^® lessons that were originally taught by Dr. Feldenkrais during his weekly classes in Israel. More than any set of lessons I have encountered, these lessons answered my question. Brilliantly constructed by Dr. Feldenkrais to help the student achieve greater flexibility throughout the thoracic area, these lessons also get the mid-back extensors firing in a way that seems almost magically to lift the chest with no sense of extra effort. It's a wonderful feeling.

On November 6, I'm going to teach a three-hour workshop, Improving Your Posture with the Feldenkrais Method at the Feldenkrais Institute of New York. For the most part, the workshop will consist of the incredibly potent Awareness Through Movement lessons I mentioned above. All the material taught on Nov. 6 will be entirely different than what you've previously experienced from me in a posture workshop. For more information and to register for the workshop, click here.

Don't misunderstand, I still firmly believe in the ideas on which I've based my previous posture workshops. If you'd like to read more of my thoughts on how the Feldenkrais Method can help you to improve your posture, take a look at my blog post from last year.  Click here to read it.

Hope to see you on the 6th!

Dynamic Sitting at the Feldenkrais Institute

No matter what you're sitting on, dynamic sitting will help!

It really makes no difference whether you purchased your chair at a yard sale for ten bucks or spent a thousand dollars at a tony office furniture store. If you don't know how best to sit, the extra nine hundred ninety dollars isn't going to make you much more comfortable.

No matter what you're resting your behind on, once you learn to sit dynamically, you'll find yourself sitting more comfortably for longer periods of time. The comfort of your back, neck and shoulders will improve now and for the rest of your life.

That's what my workshop, Dynamic Sitting, is all about. Come join me next week at the Feldenkrais Institute for a three-hour workshop in which you'll learn how to sit more comfortably in any chair.

For those of you who are in for the big bucks (or who have employers nice enough to purchase a great chair for you), we'll go over some simple adjustments you can (and should) make to get the most help possible from the chair you have.

I'll identify the most "optimal" sitting dynamics and help you to experience them. You'll learn how to use simple sensory cues to find your own best sitting position. Further, you'll learn how to make small adjustments while you sit so you no longer feel "stuck" or "frozen" in your chair.

And we'll do a series of Feldenkrais exercises that will make it easier and more pleasurable to adopt and maintain your newly improved sitting position.

Don't get me wrong. There are times when slumping or sagging on a nice, soft sofa or easy chair is just fine. But if you are unable to find comfort when you choose to sit more efficiently, your poor sitting habits will catch up with you (if they haven't already) and cause you unnecessary pain and distraction.

Join me at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, September 10 at the Feldenkriais Institute of New York to learn how to make sitting more comfortable now and forever. To register click here. (Always a 5% discount for online registration. An additional $10 discount is available until midnight, September 3--$50 instead of $60.)

I hope to see you on Tuesday!

Improving Your Sense of Self

Most people come to a Feldenkrais^® practitioner or to Awareness Through Movement^® classes attempting to improve some physical condition or injury—they might have neck or back pain, sore hips or knees, a frozen shoulder or difficulty recovering from an injury or surgery. Some have heard that the Feldenkrais Method^® can help with sleep disorders or digestive problems.

Feldenkrais work does help people overcome all of these issues and many others. Because of this, the Feldenkrais Method has a reputation as a healing modality, as a form of alternative medicine. At various times, clients have told me that I have, "healing hands," or that I am able to perform "magic." I've received other wonderful, ego-stroking comments of this nature that are all absolutely untrue. Anyone who improves with my help, improves because I have helped them find the means to help themselves.

Dr. Feldenkrais said:

"The natural tendency of all living creatures is to go in the direction that helps them, which makes them better….. The evidence is that each person, when you help him find himself, becomes more comfortable with himself and more comfortable with others….

From the ignorance of all of humanity, something is done that disturbs the person from really becoming a person."¹

Dr. Feldenkrais was known as a gifted healer. People traveled great distances so that he might put his hands on them and receive a Functional Integration^®. And yet, to call the Feldenkrais Method a healing modality is to minimize his aims in creating and disseminating his work and falls far short of the Feldenkrais Method's potential to facilitate self-improvement.

Think of it this way. Dr. Feldenkrais could have written some very successful books that might have had titles like, Effortlessly Heal Your Aching Back or Ten Simple Steps to a Relaxed Neck or Breathe Better—Feel Better. But instead he chose to write, The Potent Self, Body and Mature Behavior, Awareness Through Movement and The Elusive Obvious, among others. Just the titles alone make it apparent that Dr. Feldenkrais was after much more than helping people with aching knees and shoulders. He was after helping people become better, more expansive, more effective, happier human beings. And the key to this is improving one's sense of self or self-image.

Here are some excerpts that provide only a fragmented bare beginning of Dr. Feldenkrais's thoughts on self-image from his book, Awareness Through Movement:

Only the unusual person will continue to improve his self-image until it more nearly approaches the potential ability inherent in each individual.

… social conditions allow an organism to function as a useful member of society without in the least developing its capacities to the full.

It is important to understand that if a man wishes to improve his self-image, he must first of all learn to value himself as an individual, even if his faults as a member of society appear to him to outweigh his qualities

A man tends to regard his self-image as something bestowed upon him by nature, although it is, in fact, the result of his own experience.

The establishment of an initial more or less complete, although approximate, image will make it possible to improve the general dynamics instead of dealing with individual actions piecemeal. This improvement may be likened to correcting playing on an instrument that is not properly tuned. Improving the general dynamics of the image becomes the equivalent of tuning the piano itself, as it is much easier to play correctly on an instrument that is in tune than on one that is not.²

And here's the only secret, the only magic: self-improvement does not come from the Feldenkrais teacher, it comes from you. You have the power to heal yourself, to improve yourself, to learn more, to become more, and this power never leaves you. All you have to do is invest some time, let go of some old ideas and embrace the possibility of change.

The whole process begins and ends with improving your sense of self. And we'll make a concrete beginning (or add to the work you've already done) in my three-hour workshop at The Feldenkrais Institute on July 25, Improving Your Sense of Self. Click here for registration information. You won't learn everything you need to know to make yourself a new human. It's a step along the way. Remaking ourselves is a process and because we have unlimited potential, it's a process that never has to stop. The only thing that stops our self-improvement is our own lack of desire.

Hope to see you on the 25^th.

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¹ Feldenkrais, Moshe: Awareness Through Movement Lessons from Alexander Yanai; International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris; 2000; pp. 2081, 2082

² Feldenkrais, Moshe: Awareness Through Movement, Harper Collins, New York; 1977; pp. 10-24

The Beauty of Constraint

"When you know what you're doing, then you can do what you want." --Moshe Feldenkrais

When you take Feldenkrais^® Awareness Through Movement^® lessons (ATM^®), you are encouraged to find your own way of moving, to keep the movement comfortable for you. You are often told that there is no "right" way of doing a particular movement, that however you can best follow the teacher's instructions is the "correct" way for you to do the movement at that moment. And while all of that is true....

Awareness Through Movement is designed to improve your ability to move.

It is easy to confuse what's comfortable with what is familiar. And if we only explore movement within the parameters of the familiar, our improvement will be much slower than it will be if we comfortably move ourselves into the realm of the unfamiliar, exploring the possibilities for movement in ways that we rarely or never do.

One of the most frequently used tools in the structure of ATM lessons is constraint. There are many types of constraints built into lessons; 1) verbal, including constraints on timing or speed or the quality of movement; 2) physical, including holding onto a particular part of the body while you do a movement, adopting and holding a physical shape, or changing orientation to make the floor a constraint; and 3) imaginary, including holding onto something that isn't there while moving, or imagining that someone helps you to do a particular movement.

In my experience as a teacher I frequently see students unknowingly thwart the intent of a constraint in order to move farther or faster or in a way that is more comfortable or familiar. People usually don't disregard these constraints intentionally. They do it because they don't understand the intent or structure of the constraint.

In my workshop, to be given at The Feldenkrais Institute of New York on June 25 (for details and registration information, click here), you'll learn how to recognize various types of constraints that come up in lessons and how to use them to direct yourself to move in places and ways that are unfamiliar. Once you know how to effectively use constraints you'll more quickly find different, more functional ways of moving. Through experience, you'll learn to intellectually understand the intent of a particular instruction so that your movement explorations can become better self-directed in a way that will lead to more movement options, faster improvement and greater movement health.

In other words, this workshop will help you discover, in a more concrete way than ever before, "...what you are doing [so] you can do what you want."