For some strange reason – I have not fully figured out yet – producing well formed sentences works a lot smoother in writing than in speaking. At least for me, in my second language, English.

Today I was trying to film a short video – the one for the shoulder, the one I mentioned yesterday. I couldn’t get the sentences to sound quite like I wanted them to. I recorded the introduction more than seven times, and still, the sentences didn’t sound right. They didn’t flow to my liking. Furthermore, my face was all over the screen, like, when you take the lid off a pot of popcorn that’s just popping. Why do I move that much when I’m talking to the camera?

At the current stage of my development I do edit my blog posts 30 to 60 times over. This I have to mention to my defence. But still. Why is the difference between writing and speaking so conspicuous?

That last word, conspicuous, I chose it from a range of words that Google suggested when I just now looked for a word more descriptive than „big”. I probably should have picked „pronounced” instead, which would have been in my active vocabulary. Would have saved me some time. Would have been easier to pronounce.

Is it my memory? I probably would struggle to reproduce the last five sentences I’ve just made up, if you would hold me to it. I mean, down to the very last minute detail. Is it? It might be. I don’t want this to be the problem, though. Trying to improve memorisation power is no walk in the park. Or maybe it is? Literally. I’ve heard that walking helps with memorising stuff. I will keep thinking about it. Maybe I’ll start with… repeating myself more often. Maybe I’ll start with repeating myself more often.

Or maybe I shouldn’t compare myself to great movie actors, and other really talented and well trained folks. Maybe that would be a good start. Maybe that would be a good start.

„A fool, a jester, a simpleton full of wisdom, a laughing stock who in the end wins big, a character of traditional folklore stories that are passed through generations by word of mouth.” – Wikipedia

Once upon a time, a fool was walking from one town to the next. Suddenly, noises, hoofs of horses, approaching quickly from behind. Loudly, a carriage came to stop next to him.

The coachman, in great hurry, called out sharply: „Behold! How long to the next town? Answer, quick!” The fool replied: „Sir, you’re almost there. Driving slowly, it will barely take you five more minutes. But if you hurry, it might just take you half the day.”

„You fool!”, yelled the coachman, cracked his whip to urge his horses, and hurried away in fast gallop.

The fool continued his stroll, leisurely, down the long stretch of the road. Then came around the next bend, where the road had many potholes. He spotted the carriage stuck in the ditch at the side of the road, the front wheel broken, the coachman cursing, busy repairing, throwing an angry, reproachful look as the fool passed by.

The fool, grinned, winked, said: „Told you. It’s five minutes, if you drive slowly…”

I put this story together in English language, inspired by Middle Saxon folklore. I want to use it in my next Youtube video, a short routine to improve range of motion in the shoulders. A great, little short routine to deal with chronic shoulder pain or frozen shoulder, problems that do not easily respond to traditional therapy.

The key strategy of the lesson is the reversal of proximal and distal: instead of walking the hand (of the painful arm) up a wall, the client keeps the hand in place and squats down. Both motions result in an extension of the shoulder joint, but the reversed motion is usually much better tolerated, as it does not trigger pain; or at least not in the same way, thus instantly providing more range of motion, and a successful movement experience. Often times the results are quite spectacular, miraculous even, big improvements happening in a short time.

The essential movement quality in this lesson is to move slowly. And to stop before pain occurs. Before the carriage derails into the ditch and breaks its front wheel, so to speak.

The most important metric on Youtube: „Click and watch.” The longer people keep watching a video, the higher its monetary value.

The same goes for publishing houses and their quest for best selling books: „Open and read”. The more people read, the more they invest themselves, „I couldn’t put this book down”, the deeper they fall in love, the higher the monetary value. Margaret Atwood, for MasterClass, tongue in cheek, boiled all theories on writing successful novels down to one phrase: „Hold my attention.”

For the music industry it’s „Click, listen, repeat”, for restaurants „Order, eat, come again”, for Youtube „Click, watch, click again”, for publishing houses, ”Open, read, buy one more book.”

The things people come up with in order to make other people hold their attention, the crimes they commit.

„Is there any thing that cannot hold attention?”, she cries out loud. Is there a single thing, a single motion, void of the ability to capture and hold attention?

It’s a serious question, „What on Earth” cannot be used to hold attention? There’s people who sit down to stare at the space in front of empty walls, pioneers of holding attention, some of them, forcing even formlessness into dropping some coin.

When you buy one package of cow’s milk you don’t get to drink the milk of one cow only. It’s not as if you went through the factory hall and noticed, „Oh, this cow has beautiful eye-lashes, I want to drink her milk!” or „Hey, I found one without udder infection, can I have milk from this one?” That’s not how it works. You always get to drink a mix from dozens, if not hundreds of cows.

That was an odd start for this blog post. I wonder if the following story would have made a better choice:

When I was in my single digit years my father’s career looked pretty good. We moved to a better neighbourhood. The type of housing development where every family has their own two-story house with a big garden, next to hills with forests, yet close enough to the city. 

All of the neighbours were doing well. One row above us lived the guy who wrote our Austrian president’s presidential speeches, and he did the same for some of our ministers. My mom said that’s his job. For two decades I didn’t know what that meant, but this man was for sure dressed very well, better than everyone else. Later, when I first heard Obama on Youtube, I was like, „Wow, Obama can speak pretty well”. I thought Obama’s speech writer Jon Favreau did a splendid job matching his writing to Obama’s natural style of speaking. And when I read some of Trump’s tweets on Twitter, I imagined his Twitter account manager and tweet-writer must have been a character like F. Tony Scarapiducci from Netflix’s Space Force.

„A congressman randomly hugs General Naird before a budget meeting and F. Tony urges him to just go with it. General Naird goes on to awkwardly hug a congresswoman he had never met before and she’s not comfortable with it at all. General Naird and Dr. Mallory get mad at F. Tony for his suggestion and F. Tony mumbles to himself: Why Am I In Trouble Because Boomers Are Weird Around Women?”– from Space Force Fandom Wiki

Wow, that was even worse. 

I shouldn’t touch on politics. A friend once advised me, strongly: „Never write about religion or politics, especially with your limited knowledge about these topics.” Maybe the following paragraph would have been a better choice? Whom can I ask, who will choose for me? Ok, I chose. Here it is:

We don’t know which words in Raymond Carver’s essays have actually been written by Raymond Carver, the famous American short-story writer and poet. 

Sometimes „Gordon Lish’s edits improve minimally, give shape to what’s there, or alter a phrase. But at other times the feeling is very different – the characters can be more brutal, for instance, and less is made of the women. Many stories are cut by 50% to 70%.” writes The Guardian, and goes on by reporting, „Tess Gallagher has written by hand her suggestion for the last paragraph [of the essay „Errand”]. If you compare this page to the story as it was eventually published, you’ll find that the very last words of Carver’s very last story were Gallagher’s.”

The Guardian’s continues (I quote loosely): „More than 20 years after Raymond Carver’s death, Tess Gallagher, with the help of the Carver scholars William L Stull and Maureen P Carroll, is bringing out the manuscript of Beginners. She describes the process as a restoration, and says it has taken 12 years for Carver’s words to be exhumed from under Lish’s hand, so extensive were his marks. In this sense she is offering up Beginners as an item of interest rather than a finished piece of work – a bootleg if you will.”

My Feldenkrais Book also underwent the taming – as well as inspiring – choices and suggestions of a human editor (the talented Heidi Woehrle). However, in this blog all posts are original, single sourced, „bootlegged” if you will. You can witness me changing, from blog post to blog post. My learning process becomes more obvious than with edited, published writing. More „authentic”, in the sense of „unaltered”, „unedited”, „not shaped to match a certain personality, spirit, or character”. And maybe, nowadays, this is something people are interesting in seeing.

It’s also one of my favourite things in my movement classes. I can see the process of learning and exploration and development in students. Their authentic selves become visible. And it’s ok. I love that.

Some scientists say that there’s as many causes for back pain as there are people. But in my experience there’s patterns and similarities, people make similar mistakes. Bending the lower back when you could have used your hip joints instead, is such a mistake. Give it enough time and repetitions, and there’s your lower back troubles.

It was in a railway station, five levels below the Earth’s surface, in Vienna, Austria. The train was crowded. Slowed down, stopped. The doors opened. People pushed each other. There were no smiles. It was winter. Cold, dark, damp Austrian weather. We matched our clothes to the weather. I moved along with the crowd, small steps. I felt uncomfortable. Like a stranger in my own hometown. I felt the unhappiness and the emotional distance all around me. I was like everyone else. I stepped out of the train onto the crowded, narrow platform. That’s when I saw the guy.

I can’t say if he was good looking, or handsome. That wouldn’t be the point anyways. But he had long, thick, fair, blonde hair. Not particularly well groomed. Can’t say he looked freshly showered either. But the color of his hair was stunningly vivid.  And he had absolutely healthy looking skin. Radiant. An unusually upright, yet relaxed posture. Lightly dressed in just a pressed shirt, no jacket. Long trousers, light footwear. He was tall. His age? Maybe in his late twenties. Or mid thirties. Can’t really say. His steps had a smooth spring in them, his walking looked effortless, almost like as if he would be floating.

I couldn’t help but to stare at this guy. I stared at him like any sane person would stare at a brand new Aston Martin DBS or Maserati GranTurismo Sport, if it came into sight right in front of them, suddenly. I don’t know what it was. He looked… healthy. Like, really, really healthy.

He had a little bit of panic in his eyes. That’s when I noticed: everyone, I mean literally, EVERYONE, was staring at him. The whole sad, slow moving crowd had one visual target. As if he was an extra interesting TV commercial, or something.

Back then there were no face masks. I could see the puzzled faces all around. People knew they were staring. In Austria staring at strangers is considered being offensive. I could see that conflict in their faces. But they couldn’t help it either. It seemed like everybody knew that they were staring at that guy, but nobody knew why they were staring at him. The whole scene felt like straight out of the movie „Inception” (the one with Leonardo di Caprio, where people in his dreams would turn and stare at him).

For a day or two I was wondering if I could ever achieve this level of healthiness myself. Then I discarded the thought. There’s just no way. Ever since, I’ve not seen a similarly radiant, healthy looking person again. I’ve probably passed-by half a million people in my life. Maybe more. But so far it was a one-of-a-kind sighting.

I told this story numerous times, right after it happened.

I was taught not to use absolutes. But nobody took my account at face value. People would discard this experience as exaggerated. „Well he was the only one not dressed in black, probably was on a stop over from Italy or Spain.” Quick to jump in with an explanation. Some would even throw me an offended look after hearing this story. Or would not listen at all. What an odd story.

I stopped telling this story. Haven’t told it to anyone for almost 20 years.

You will need to come to lie down onto the floor. And as I see it, most places may not be cut out for this. There might be no good default place to lie down onto the floor. The narrow strip on the cold bedroom floor seems uninviting, and even the best interior designers pack the living room carpet with as many sofas, chairs, coffee tables, end tables, and flower pots as they possibly can. The things I’ve seen. 

The floor has been neglected, feared even, to such extended that the Chinese invented several movement methods where you touch the floor strictly with your feet; in socks and shoes. This includes, probably, most variants of Tai Chi and Chi Gong. The floor is lava.

But we need the floor. Lying down is liberating. It liberates us from many burdens gravity bestows on us; it enables us to have a fresh look at age old movement habits, and to let go of rigid postures. There’s no need to hold balance, and no fear of falling – because we’re already lying on the floor. Lying down on a firm surface, not too hard and not too soft, is a gateway to introspection.

Students tell stories to other students, and Moshé Feldenkrais is said to have asked: „What was the greatest contribution of Sigmund Freud to Psychology?”, and his answer is told to surprise: „He asked people to lie down. Freud himself was sitting behind his clients, letting them rest reclined and experience themselves, without feeling observed, controlled, or manipulated. From all the great many things Sigmund Freud has discovered, this was by far his most important discovery, and also the one most overlooked and least understood.” So it is told.

You will root for the floor too, soon.

Yoga on Youtube, the COVID lockdowns, and Apple Fitness+ have already helped a lot in this regard. Clear yourself some space. But don’t limit yourself to a six by two feet (180 x 60 cm) hard plastic mat. Spread out a big, snuggly blanket and line up all the pillows and towels you could possibly need. Claim your big, cozy, warm, safe space on the floor. The space should promise an enjoyable experience. Without draft wind coming from under the door or window. It should be spacious enough for you to be able to fully stretch yourself out. „Yourself”, this includes your arms, out to the sides. Wide enough so that you could roll to your left and your right, maybe even all the way onto your belly. You shouldn’t run danger to hit your head, and shouldn’t have to stick your feet under a chair or a bed or a side-board. And when your nephew comes running in, the swinging door blades shouldn’t leave bruises on your legs.

So you have your space.

Then please come to lie down on your side. 

And they will tell you which side to choose. But I’m telling you: your two sides are not equal. In fact they might be as different as with two different people.