"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."
