School was dreadful. Talk of a total lack of appreciation. How did it come to this? I grew up in Austria, Europe, in the 80ties and 90ties, in a middle class family, and was given free, middle-class schooling. I was not sent to labour in sweat shops or factories. I was not sent to charity schools with educational overlords who use shouting, belts and sticks to help students focus. I was sent to good schools with properly trained and certified teachers. And yet it felt so bad I questioned the sanity of almost every teacher and hated almost every minute of it.

Hate is a strong word. Maybe the following would be a more mature expression: The first couple of years at school I was frozen and in shock. Then I was chronically displeased with schooling pedagogics and some of the teachers’s puppet-like self-submission to the broken system. Then I was disappointed. And then I was angry. And then I was broken.

In 14 years of compulsory schooling (plus 4 years of university) – if I think really long and hard – I could only think of very few teachers I liked and could relate to. One of them was a maths teacher of all subjects. A late, soothing experience at university. She brought me from barely passing math classes to being a straight A student. And that was not basic algebra. That was proper mathematics, with probability problems and integral wavelet transforms.

This stands in contrast to the old-school maths teacher I had in the prestigious federal high school I had to attend. I had absolutely no idea what that teacher was talking about when he tried to teach us elementary algebra. In fact, his teaching was so un-relatable that I failed to understand even one word he was uttering – while he was trying to talk me senseless. Like in all classes, I had to sit in his class for endless hours, in total silence, motionless, obedient. Like everyone else, I was only allowed to talk when addressed (and usually had nothing to say then) and only allowed to move when asked to demonstrate on the blackboard. I understood the „do not move” part, but I failed to give the right answers to his incomprehensible questions. As a result that teacher wanted to have me transferred to a school for children with special needs. A dead end road. Because to his mind I was too dumb to add up a couple of numbers.

At that time I didn’t know what any of that meant. I just tried to follow what I was told to do – as good as I was able to understand (because really I did not understand much of their world). It is only now, as an adult, that I can look back and express my helplessness I experienced back then, in anger. I feel lucky that I’m grown up now, and that I don’t have to go back to school.

I don’t know which clown of a teacher said that flashcards need to have pictures on them. Multimodal learning and hacking the brain and all that nonsense. Maybe it was not even a teacher who said that, but a marketeer who was trying to get more views. No bad intentions, he probably was just trying to make more money. And who doesn’t love more money?

Anyways.

On the same note a lot has been told sold about “daily blogging benefits”. In consequence this produced 14+ million blog posts titled something like „Five reasons I recommend daily blogging”, „10 benefits of daily blogging”, „The Hidden Benefits to Writing Daily and Blogging”, „Unexpected Benefits of Blogging Daily”, „The 20 Biggest Benefits of Blogging”, „7 Reasons Daily Blogging Is Worth Doing”, and so forth… you get the idea.

I just don’t see it.

I sometimes look at old video recordings of Moshé Feldenkrais. In between movement instructions he sometimes just sat there and was forming thoughts and sentences. „Denken-Sprechen”, we say in German language… speaking new thoughts and fragments of thoughts out loud without filter. In this way we can peek into his mind, and watch his process of thinking. While entertaining, thought provoking, and maybe even inspiring, I have the feeling many people came mostly for his actual lessons, his movement sequences. Not for his rambling, not for his stumbling over words, not for his raw thinking.

I feel the same with blogging. While it is a daily statement (and selection) of the things I’m currently looking at and pondering, it just doesn’t give me the same satisfaction (and benefits) of actual teaching. And of actually producing, finishing, and shipping products. Finishing a blog post gives me a mini-high, a mini-satisfaction, but the feeling doesn’t come close to my „real” work.

Maybe I will continue with blogging for a while. See, observe, feel, how my experience develops, my judgement forms, my opinions change over time.

When I finished the first draft for the text portion of „My Feldenkrais Book”, back in 2008, I gave it to my friend John Walker for a first feedback. He’s an experienced Yoga teacher with a love for continuing education and science based publications. I regarded myself lucky to have him look over the draft.

I can’t remember if he actually made a whole lot of annotations, but when he returned the loose pile of pages to me a week later, he just smiled at me and said amicably, „You have a lot of work ahead of you.”

I knew I had to look for a better structure. I researched the popular literature at that time and found two books for inspiration: „Purple Cow” by Seth Godin, and  „Rework” by Jason Fried and DHH.

These authors (and a whole bunch of others at that time) did something exceptional, something that stood out: for each chapter they identified a central concept, and phrased that concise-ly, strong-ly, and very memorab-ly. These were their chapter titles. Then they supplemented each title with a couple of paragraphs. Usually with examples, quotes, and stories – creating a renaissance for story telling along with it. All very tangible. To explain what they mean. Get their point across. Cement their objective into the hearts and brains of their audience.

For me, a pretty novel concept by then. And a bit annoying by now. Because for a whole while everyone seemed to be doing just that. And some are still doing it today. A few weeks ago I bought a copy of the bestseller „The Algebra of Happiness” by Scott Galloway: a headline plus a few paragraphs of text, then the next headline, mostly unrelated to the previous, plus another few paragraphs of text. However, for Scott Galloway I think we need to appreciate the fact that he doesn’t ramble about a single topic for more than a few paragraphs.

I still love „My Feldenkrais Book”. I think the structure held up nicely.

I think the choice of movement sequences is great, the presentation of central concepts compelling. In fact, I flip through it frequently, and I do still recommend it. In fact, I think I should write more of it.

„Language acquisition does not require extensive use of conscious grammatical rules, and does not require tedious drill.” – Stephen Krashen

Now that’s something I can work with. And it’s backed by science. What a change in perspective!

We must remember that most of us went through compulsory schooling, and thus have been strongly indoctrinated into accepting many unhealthy and highly inefficient practices when it comes to learning.

For second language acquisition we have been made believe that the study and memorisation of grammatical rules is an absolute must. Most text books indeed have more grammar rules, technical tables and word lists than conversations and prose. And that’s just one of the many things that always put me off in language learning classes.

The same, I guess, is true for movement learning. Studying anatomy is not an absolute requirement, neither are the numerous, standardised functional movement assessment tests and techniques.

We simply need comprehensible input. And an environment that supports our quest for learning. In other words: Love and understanding. Meaning and purpose (if those two are separate things).

Our bodies are a puzzling kind of thing: we can be flexible, but we can also be stable. We can’t be at both extreme ends of these opposites at the same time, though. We can be stable enough to push a  heavy door open in one moment, and then be flexible enough to bend down to tie our shoe-laces, in the next moment.

This can be, for example, explained in terms of soft matter physics, or in terms of Bio-Tensegrity.

But still, we are not too far from hard matter physics either: momentum, torque, distance, trajectory, rotational inertia, acceleration, displacement, weight, pressure, counter-weight, resistance, friction, … we can think in these terms too. They can help us to some degree, while learning, sensing, moving and improving.

To get me into thinking: two questions.

As physical beings we are not indestructible: material fatigue, structural damage, stress intensity, fracture toughness, yield strength, sheer stress, dislocations, overloading, … these terms apply to us just as well. And we can think in these terms too. They can help us to some degree, while learning, sensing, moving and improving.

The two questions:

How long can we safely remain in any of the two opposites: how long can we safely remain stable, how long can we safely remain flexible?

How fast can we safely transition between the two opposites, or in other words: how and how long should a transition between these two opposites be?

„Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.” – George Carlin

This might be one of mankind’s biggest mysteries: Why do one’s own farts smell like roses while everyone else is leaping for their FFP3 air filter-masks?

Similarly: even though for oneself it smells like roses to speak out those feelings of grief, suffering, resentment, or criticism, hardly anyone enjoys listening to other people’s endless laments.

Except! Except when they are presented in a funny and concise manner. Then we can relate. And have a laugh, together. And maybe some healing.

“The evidence shows that the difference between children who get bedtime stories and those who don’t, the difference in their life chances, is bigger than the difference between those who get elite private schooling and those that don’t.” – from the book The Enchanted Hour, by Meghan Cox Gurdon.

I need to quote this finding time and time again. This scientific revelation has one message: Our schooling system is to some degree obsolete. Everyone can improve their life chances significantly, even without entering elite schools: all it takes is to read more books. And according to Stephen Krashen, for children to do so, it takes only 10 minutes of reading every day.

Stephen Krashen made it his life’s mission to investigate into the very process of language acquisition and how humans learn to read. In his lecture „The Power of Reading”, at UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education, Professor Krashen states that there are two main factors that get children (and people in general) into reading books:

1. One successful reading experience with a self chosen book
2. The availability of books

With the second factor being the far more important one. There need to be books – in order for people to be able to read books.

Now. Books are expensive. In the same way music records used to be expensive.

If you – just like me – were born a handful of decades ago, then you can remember that owning music records was a sort of a luxury. There used to be only a few people around who could afford an extensive music record collection. Or they were individuals who dedicated their lives to music. They invested every penny they had into music.

Then, in the year 1999, along came Napster.

This changed everything. Napster liberated music, and it liberated people. People could finally listen to any song they liked, at any time. No longer were they dependent on the playlist of the local radio, or on a friend who bought a music record, or on their own financial dedication – in combination with their local record store actually being able to order that record. Napster changed the world.

Of course the music industry had to react to that. But after a decade of them brawling, we can now have more or less any song at any time in our ears, for a $10 monthly music subscription with one of the many services like Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube Music, Amazon Prime Music etc.

Now. Books.

Books are still expensive, and unaffordable for the majority of the world population. But reading is trending. If reading is trending, and the availability of books is the one main factor for getting people into reading… How can that be?

In the year 2020, along came Z-Library.

This project, just like Napster, is changing the world from its grounds up. This illegal pirate website, just like the now defunct Napster for music, puts (almost) any book at the fingertips of every child – no matter rich or poor. Provided the kids have access to the Internet, it provides everyone with the same chances for growth and personal development.

The message of Z-Library is clear and absolute: Pick a book you like. Start to read.

It will be interesting to watch how the book industry and compulsory schooling system will react to this challenge. If people read again, to the extend they watch TV-Series (which do nothing for a child’s brain, according to science) there might be an interest by the entertainment industry to provide books to people.

If Apple can afford to spend $6 billion upwards on a row of TV Series, they would surely be able to spend a few billions on book licenses too, and advertise that library accordingly.

I read that librarians the world over are very quiet about Z-Library. Maybe they know that such a service is necessary to set the stage, to create momentum, to get a critical mass of people back into reading books.

I myself I’m lucky enough to be able to purchase books. Plus there’s Project Gutenberg with over 60,000 classic titles (the Top 10 books of all time are usually all classics), available legally and for free. However, I’m very much looking forward to a $10 monthly subscription from Apple Books, unlimited Kindle Unlimited, or Barnes&Nobles, Spotify for Books, or whomever, that will put any book at my own fingertips, with no lending limit.