I finally attended my first Feldenkrais class last week. For
those who do not know, Feldenkrais is a body movement / awareness technique.
Really, it is more of an awareness technique. In many ways, the Feldenkrais
method is the antithesis to modern culture, and that is its beauty.
We live in a world where bigger is better. Exercise fanatics
say, “no pain, no gain.” Feldenkrais is the opposite – how small can the
movement get where you still feel a change? Can you simply imagine a movement
and notice?
The answer is yes. And therein lies the power.
The human body is incredible. It holds answers to so many of
our ailments and protects us from ourselves. We hold our emotions, fears, and
excitements in our body. From it, we derive pleasure and pain and everything in
between. Our bodies are our greatest tool for understanding. It is through our
senses that we understand the outside world, but we have an additional way of
understanding called proprioception.
Proprioception is our
understanding of how our body fits together and moves relative to itself.
Proprioception is about understanding ourselves so well we
can relate better to others. It is the minutest form of understanding, but when
we can understand on that deep of a level, the macro understandings become
easier. It is similar to how meditation works – if we can slow down the mind
enough, we can understand it better, and then the mind becomes an ally instead
of an enemy. But as I explore more and more, I am beginning to understand how
important the body is to that process. It is, I think, why yoga became such an
important part of my life. It became the way I could meditate most easily. But
now, with my body not cooperating, I have had to find ways other than through
an asana practice . . . and my understanding has grown exponentially.
More and more, doctors of western medicine are realizing how
connected the body and mind are. They tell us that stress can cause ailments like
ulcers. I believe it will be a long time before the run-of-the-mill MD writes
the word disease as dis-ease, but the tide is turning. My
yoga/proprioception exploration has shown me a deeper level. The body and mind
are not connected – they are the same thing. There is no separateness between
them that needs to be connected.
I have known this for years, but I have never been able to
articulate it or to fully understand it. I have read countless books about it,
but somehow the Knowing did not come until recently. It was not until I opened
my mouth and said it one day that I realized how deeply this went.
And it was then that I also realized how deeply this affects
our lives. My experience of body therapies has always been my access point to
experience the mind and spirit. The concept of proprioception was, in some
ways, another way of accessing qi or prana, the life forces of Traditional
Chinese Medicine and Yoga. I have come to understand how important it is for us
to move slower in life and as we make change to make it in simple and quiet
ways. As we notice the body, we notice the world.
We live in a world where Cross Fit and Bikram Yoga dominate
our mentality. There is nothing inherently wrong with either, but the more I
come to understand, the more I see how important it is to come at change from a
different angle, a simpler angle. This is, perhaps, especially important when
dealing with the spirit and emotions. Society tells us it is inappropriate to
share our emotions with one another, to express true anger and sadness. Even
true happiness is considered out of place in expression. So instead of
expressing our emotions, we suppress them. We hide them deep within ourselves,
and they try to appear, but we hide them more.
This can lead to a variety of types of dis-ease, and
sometimes accessing our true emotional and spiritual state helps bring us back
to a place of ease. But it is like taking the cork out of a champagne bottle.
We can do it quickly and explode the cork across the room, potentially taking
out someone’s eye with it. Or we can be calm and slow about it and open the
cork in such a way that we can access the goodness inside calmly and safely.
The first step here is just to notice. Notice how moving
your head from side to side moves other parts of your body. Notice how you can
feel simply by imagining movements. Notice, notice, and then notice some more. The
irony, of course, is that the smaller the movement, the greater the shift. It
takes incredible conscious awareness to notice the smallest movements, and that
consciousness is what shifts. When we get away from momentum and move toward
true awareness, the world comes into focus. That does, of course, require
slowing down.
Are you willing to give it a try?
Namaste!
©
Rebecca Stahl 2014, all rights reserved.
The
post, The Subtlest Movements, first
appeared on Is Yoga Legal.
