the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter

This week sees my 86th Dad’s birthday. He’s one of the oldest ever Alters – from our family at least. (If I’ve got that wrong, I’m sure he’ll let me know when I see him tomorrow.) The picture was at his 80th. There were 80 candles – it was pretty warm! Max, the restaurant owner had a fire extinguisher handy just in case Dad didn’t manage to blow them all out! You’ll be glad to know there was no problem with that, and impressively only two big puffs were needed.

Modern medicine is keeping us alive longer than ever. So thinking about how we age becomes ever more important. We can’t avoid ageing, (it’s better than the alternative, at any rate!) But how we age, we can do something about. We can improve the way that we do things. Everything we do movement. If we improve the way that we move, we improve the quality of every area of our life.

The Feldenkrais Method offers us a great way to do this. In each lesson, we explore how we move. Some of the things we look at include:

• Our habits: Getting to know which movements feel familiar. Maybe we always sit with our weight on one sit-bone. If we sit the same way day in and day out, it wouldn’t be surprising to then have pain in one side. Our movement and postural habits can lead to discomfort.
• Improving your awareness (your superpower): If we’re not aware of what we do, we can’t change it. Conversely, “if you know what you’re doing, you can do what you want.” (MF)
• New options: In a Feldenkrais lessons you have the opportunity of moving in new ways. Over time, most reduce the repertoire of your movement. As adults we tend to move less. So taking time each week to play with unusual movements feeds our brains. Over time, we improve our range and ease of movement of what we can do.
• Moving with quality: A few years ago, I was fortunate to study with Ruthy Alon, a doyenne of the Feldenkrais world. She was one of Feldenkrais’ original 13 disciples. She created Bones for Life – a spinoff of Feldenkrais for helping revitalise bone in older age. She even worked with the astronauts at Nasa!  She was in her 80s, and moved like a 16 year old. It was beautiful to watch. Her Feldenkrais practice meant she was mobile and active until the end. It wasn’t that she didn’t have any issues, when she was teaching us, she had a difficult hip. But she had studied how she moved, so had resources to deal with it, and to stay moving.
• Improving the quality of how we move: Smoothness , continuity of movement are the defining factors of movement quality. One of my teachers at the Royal Northern School of Music used to say we can all play bars as well as Itzak Perlman. When you look at a virtuoso violinist the high quality of how they move is evident. It’s part of what makes it possible to be that good. We can’t all play the violin like him, but we can learn to be the Perlman of our everyday movement.
• Enjoyment: Children move because it feels nice. And as adults we forget this aspect of moving. In lessons we pay attention to making movement feel good. So we can take on the improvements we make in a lesson into life off the mat.
• Improving connections: Being able to sense our whole self is an important part of our self image. It’s crucial to being able to move well. If you can feel all your vertebrae with the same nuance that you can feel your hands, you’ll move your back better. Another way to think of it is the Feldenkrais increases the number of pixels we have in our self image. We learn to see ourselves more clearly. Both the human limits, and potential for growth.
• Non-judgement: Many of us have a pretty strong Inner Critic.  It often holds us back, or makes what we do more complex than it needs to be. I purposely keep good/bad or right/wrong outside the door when I teach. When there’s simple sensation, without judgement, it’s easier for our nervous system to take on new learning.

Feldenkrais is about learning after all. It might have different applications. Whether it’s improving the way we move, our self image. Or simplifying what we do so there’s less in the way, it become easier to take action. What we do in the lesson permeates into how we learn everything.

Everything is movement after all.

We’ll be continuing the theme of easy walking this month,

Would you like to work with me? Contact me for a free short discovery consultation.