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