I find the original recordings of Moshé Feldenkrais quite tedious to listen too, boring as well as overwhelming at times, but—generally speaking—also very interesting. Actual speaking conveys a lot of information: rhythm, pace, intonation, pronunciation, pauses, phrasing and re-phrasing, the latter especially interesting to me as a teacher, it’s all there in these voice recordings.

Furthermore, in some recordings Moshé Feldenkrais was teaching in the English language, therefore nothing is lost in translation. I transcribed the first 2 minutes of recording #4, titled “Tilting Cross Legs”, from his Esalen Workshop (1972):

Please lie on your back, spread your feet, slightly, bend them, bend, spread them, spread, your feet, your legs! Bend them, bend the knees, bend the knees and let the feet stand on the floor. Ok. Now. Some of you are having the feet much too close together. You see, when we say, spread your feet with no other indication, the distance between the feet should be at least the width of the pelvis. Otherwise, obviously that person uses his adductors in such an abnormal way that it’s … you should pay attention.

Now. Cross the right leg over the left, cross it over. The right leg over the left.

And very slowly tilt both legs, both knees, in the direction of the floor to the right, of course, to the right.

Now bring them back to standing position, and keep on tilting the legs like that. Right, always to the floor and back to the middle, back to the neutral position. Slowly.

And now just listen to your body. What happens to the right hip joint? Which part is lifted off the floor? Which parts in the back, in the chest are lifted off the floor?

And the soft part between the pelvis and the ribs on one side is being stretched, on the other one, is being compressed. The ribs on one side are pulled apart, on the other they are pulled toge… pushed together. Just keep on doing it.

Parallel to that exist the Judith Stransky Notes (held in private collection by the International Feldenkrais Guild, purchasable only by their members), a collection of transcript-like notes from the same Workshop (Esalen 1972). I find it interesting to compare the original audio recordings to the Stransky Notes. Even more so since for many years I only had access to the Stransky Notes, not the audio recordings.

In these Stransky Notes some parts seem to be written almost verbatim, while other parts are shortened. Furthermore, there are things added that Moshé Feldenkrais did not say at all, and which might change the movements, the student’s self-organisation and learning, say the lesson as a whole, considerably. Isn’t that interesting? Makes me wonder all the things my own students hear that I did not say, or do not hear even though I said it repeatedly. And, of course, makes me wonder just as much: how much do I myself hear, mis-hear, miss and make up—without me noticing? But compare for yourself:

Lie on your back. Spread your feet a little apart. Bend the knees so that the feet stand on the floor.

Cross the right leg over the left.

And now very slowly tilt both legs towards the floor, to the right. The weight of the right leg will draw the legs down to the right.

Bring them back to the standing position. Do this movement a number of times, tilting towards the floor and back to the middle. Do this slowly.

And now listen to your body. What happens to the right hip joint? Which part is lifted off the floor? Which parts of the back and the chest are lifted off the floor?

And the soft part between the pelvis and the ribs on one side is being stretched, while the other side is being compressed. The ribs on one side are pulled apart, and on the other side they are pushed together. Keep on doing the movement a few more times.

Client, 45f, wealthy looking of Asian descent, with a sharp pain running from the back of her neck down the outside of her left arm. She’d already seen a number of massage therapists, including chiropractic services. She seemed somewhat disoriented, besides herself. She donned a light and short summer dress of black silk despite having come in for a movement lesson – which is just as inappropriate as showing up in Scuba diving gear for a Gala dinner. 

She did not have prior experience with Somatic Education, or anything of the psychological realm. I allowed her two hours, even though she only paid for one hour. After 20 minutes of conversation I guided her through movement explorations and sensory awareness exercises for the better part of 90 minutes. At first she couldn’t lie comfortably on her back at all, so I asked her to assume her favoured sleeping position, which was in side-lying on her left side. 

Within the lesson the tight muscles in her neck and upper back, some of them at first hard like the tires of a bicycle, became soft like the flesh of a baby. Her range of motion in her neck and shoulders increased considerably, I would say in some parts by as much as 45 degrees. Step by step the isolated movements of her shoulders connected to the movements of her spine, chest, pelvis and knees. A strained, isolated movement of a shoulder became a movement supported by and presented in her whole self. “Can you feel the difference?” And last, but not least, her inability to let go of her shoulders was replaced with the ability to confide her shoulders to the pull of gravity. “Now hold your shoulder deliberately, and now let it go. Do you notice how well you can distinguish between the two now?”

However, what would have been an epic session with someone well embodied turned out to make no impression on her at all. The discoveries we made, the views that I shared, the difference the lesson made should have struck her as nothing less than monumental. Yet, she felt nothing special has happened, and perceived no differences.

“How would you describe what you sense right now?” I was sitting behind her, at the head end, like good old Sigmund Freud. She was lying comfortably on her back, with arms and legs spread, needing only half the cushioning she asked for at the start of the lesson. I had to rephrase my questions several times, until an answer came.

“The right arm feels normal, healthy, like it should. The left arm feels painful, not normal.” She was resting unwavering, her answer showing a surprising lack of compassion and sensitivity towards herself. I was not able to get any details, no description with adjectives, no sensory cues, nothing. The game of questions, storytelling and waiting for answers went on for a couple of minutes. I tried many different ways, but it all came down to “the right arm feels normal and the left arm feels not normal.” I asked her if she can sense anything at all, anything, to which she answered, “if someone would pour hot water on my right arm or pinch it, of course I would feel it”.

The situation occurred to me as if her body was some sort of device or machine, like a car with a faulty door she would drive in to a garage and have it fixed. All the while she was sitting in that car and waiting. She had no hurry to drive off. I wasn’t sure if she enjoyed my care, teachings and attention, or if she was merely waiting to finally get her money’s worth.

I’m not sure if she’s done her homework either. After the session I gave her a link to my video, “Good night shoulder circles”, and before the session I urged her to have a look at my Youtube series “Tight Neck? Here’s Help!”, which she did not. She did not look up anything about Feldenkrais or Somatic Education either. I’m still wondering how she found me on Facebook, and why she insisted on having a session with me.

This session made me realise, once again, how very different we humans are from each other. How far apart our ability to learn and differentiate can take us. It made me realise, once again, that we cannot assume anything about another person’s state or abilities. It made me think of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. We practitioners think of mindfulness and embodiment, of movement and culture, of meditation and dreaming and feeling and sensing, we say “people are like this, people are like that”, but are they?

She asked me if she will need another session. I said I leave that up to her. I was thinking, “I’m not going to sell you sessions like the chiropractor you were telling me about.” Besides, why should I tell a grown up person what to do or what to buy? “If you liked it, if you found it interesting or even slightly helpful, come again, why not?” Usually people who seek me know what they want, and have at least some knowledge of developmental psychology… or have read some of the work of Moshe Feldenkrais, FM Alexander, Ida Rolf… or at least have read some articles from the realm of psychotherapy… Freud, Reich, Jung… Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Elsa Gindler, Charlotte Selver, anything really.

A few hours after the session I was thinking: the way she was describing the pain in her left arm, at the beginning of the session, made it sound like a problem of tension and posture, or a nerve impingement from a lump in her neck (which was already ruled out via medical imaging.) But was it? Why could she not feel a difference after my session? My work as a movement teacher is as good as it gets, she will not find any better. Therefore I was thinking, “Maybe her way of sensing and describing her pain was inaccurate?” I recalled that at the very end of the session she lifted her left arm and said, “Stretching the left side eases the pain.” In light of this and her general disorientation I sent her a last message, and advised her to go get a proper cardiovascular checkup. “Or maybe she should get another X-ray or MRI and have it read by a doctor, not a chiropractor,” I was thinking.

Disengage your parking brake before you drive off the ramp, and drive carefully. I will post again if there’s new tidings.

“Interviewer: How do you know where to go on each person? Moshé Feldenkrais: When you will have my experience and knowledge you will also know. Interviewer: Obviously it comes from your experience and years of work with this. Moshé Feldenkrais: No, it comes from the theory, first of all. Many people work with bodies; why don’t they do the same thing? Nobody does what I do. Obviously it doesn’t come from working with people.” Quote from Embodied Wisdom, the collected papers of Moshé Feldenkrais.

In a Youtube comment on one of my videos I was asked if there’s a video series on the movements from Moshé Feldenkrais’s book The Potent Self. I answered, “Not that I know of, but interesting idea,” and then went to flip through the book to see what the movements are.

And while flipping the pages, once again I was thinking, “Say what you want but this man knew how to put thoughts in a row.” What I did not find, however, was an explanation of his process of how he put his ideas into practice. How did he go from thoughts, theories and hypotheses to movement instructions?

In his book The Case Of Nora, Moshé Feldenkrais writes “The freedom to learn is a great liability, and a restriction from the start. There is no freedom of choice or free will where there is only one way of acting. Learning makes it possible to choose among alternative ways of acting. The ability to learn is synonymous with free choice and free will. But once learned, the choice is made, the die is cast, and the tabula rasa is no more. Herein lie the liabilities as the restrictions.” How did he turn that thought into a lesson? I mean, of course, I can see it in hindsight, it’s in every lesson. He put this thought to practice in literally every lesson. To loosely quote Peter Elbow again “Experience is what you end up with, not what you start out with.” So how did he come up with his theory, and how did he turn that into his lessons?

I exaggerate: Unlike EVERYONE else, I have ALWAYS left it to my clients to make up their own minds. I’ve NEVER told them what it is they are experiencing. But as of lately I wonder if that’s actually a good thing. Maybe people NEED guidance. Maybe they NEED someone to tell them what it is they are experiencing and looking at. Well, maybe not people in general… maybe it’s my business who is in urgent need of something like that.

At least, that’s what I have been thinking about yesterday night, shortly before falling asleep. And in my mind’s eye I have seen two apples:

Both apples were EXACTLY the same, but the second was labeled, “A juicy, sweet, delicious apple.” Which one would you pick? To what degree would the label influence your experience of picking, handling, smelling and tasting the apple? To what degree would the label influence, soften or strengthen your final judgement of the apple?

Oh, and while you’re at it: Right now you are reading the GREATEST blog there is in the whole wide world about Feldenkrais and Somatic Education. It’s an ABSOLUTE delight to read it. It’s a joy and almost feels like a privilege to peek into the mind of one of the MOST talented and MOST congenial teachers in the world, Alfons. You reading here is not just serendipity, but a definite sign of how bright, quick-witted and perceptive you are. You can tell something beautiful and of value when you see it. You are marvellous. Enjoy your day, my dear!

Idea for a long video, part 2 of my new hip joint series: gripping with the toes, stomping the feet, extending the pelvis. 

So I was lying on the japanese rug in my living room, trying to figure out the next best moves to add to my new Hip Joints series. I was, like, staring at the ceiling, I mean, not like staring staring, but gazing. So I was gazing at the ceiling and thinking, “Oh boy”, and, “Oh boy this is all so complicated, how am I going to break this down into components”. And so I was bending a bit left and right, and had my legs like this and like that, and…

…and you need to know that I made it reading into the third book of George RR Martin’s book series A Song Of Ice And Fire. In the second book (which has 1009 pages) there was a really big battle fought at land and at sea, with words and with swords, with great trebuchets, gauntlets, warhorses, spears, arrows, men-at-arms and galleys and all that. And the battle ended at the end of the second book. But then two years later George RR Martin released his third book of the series, and it seemed strange but there was an introduction in which he wrote

A Note On Chronology

“A Song of Ice and Fire is told through the eyes of characters who are sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles apart from one another. Some chapters cover a day, some only an hour; others might span a fortnight, a month, half a year. With such a structure, the narrative cannot be strictly sequential; sometimes important things are happening simultaneously, a thousand leagues apart.

In the case of the volume now in hand, the reader should realize that the opening chapters of A Storm of Swords do not follow the closing chapters of A Clash of Kings so much as overlap them. I open with a look at some of the things that were happening on the Fist of the First Men, at Riverrun, Harrenhal, and on the Trident while the Battle of the Blackwater was being fought at King’s Landing, and during its aftermath…” – GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

It occurred to me, what George RR Martin wanted to say is this: there was a lot more to be said about that time and that battle than what went into the second book (which has 1009 pages). Turns out his third book ended up having 1216 pages and had to be split up into two books. And for the hip joint series it’s just the same. I have uploaded a whole lot of videos already, but there’s a lot more to be said.

So I was gazing and thinking, and pushing a little bit with my foot against the floor, thinking “we already did that“, and rolling the pelvis “we already did that too“, and tapping the foot, “we already had that as well”, when I started gripping my toes, and stomping the foot, and lifting my pelvis on one side. “Oh that’s interesting. A novel approach to the carp jump.” And then discovered the connection between gripping the toes and extending the knee. The good old flexion-extension cycle in a completely new light!

The rest of the movements came together pretty quickly, within an hour, and then I filmed myself in a quick run through, which took 7 minutes, and so I think I might be able to squeeze that into a sub-thirty minutes video. I guess. I hope. It’s amazing. I was absolutely stocked and thrilled what I came up with.

When we were in the foetus stage, almost all the way back at the beginning of our lives, still in the womb, our first movement was flexion (or so they say), and then there was extension and stomping and pushing (much to the surprise and maybe dismay of our mothers). I think this movement sequence will match our physical development like a tailor made glove, and will make our hip joints and pelvis area feel so much better, and thus give us a wonderful feeling and satisfying experience overall.

What I have so far:

• Part 1: bringing the foot to stand, gripping with the toes, stomping the heels and feet
• Part 2: exploring the bony parts of the pelvis and the leg
• Part 3: pushing the floor with the foot and hip extension
• Feel the difference in standing. Stomping and pushing in standing.
• Part 4: same with the other leg
• Part 5: symmetrical movements

This is never gonna fit into 30 minutes. Never.