STUDY WITH ALFONS

Do you ever struggle with a movement or physical activity, despite your best efforts? Maybe you can’t quite get the hang of a particular yoga pose, or your golf swing just isn’t up to par. Whatever the case, there’s a movement technique that might just help you out: Ideokinesis.

Ideokinesis is a movement approach that focuses on using mental imagery to improve physical performance. By imagining your body in certain positions and movements, you can train your brain to send clearer signals to your muscles, resulting in better alignment and more efficient movement. It might sound a little “out there,” but there’s actually a lot of science behind it.

The concept of Ideokinesis was first introduced by Mabel Todd, a movement specialist who worked with dancers and athletes in the early 20th century. Since then, it’s been used by people in a wide variety of fields, from physical therapy to golf instruction.

So, how does Ideokinesis work in practice? Let’s say you’re struggling with a yoga pose that requires a lot of balance. With Ideokinesis, you might close your eyes and visualize your body as a tall, stable tree, with roots growing deep into the ground. By doing this, you’re sending a clear message to your brain about how you want your body to be positioned, and your brain will in turn send more precise signals to your muscles to help you achieve that position.

Or maybe you’re a golfer who can’t quite get the hang of your swing. With Ideokinesis, you might visualize a long, smooth arc as you swing the club, imagining that you’re painting a beautiful picture with the club head. By doing this, you’re training your brain to send more precise signals to the muscles involved in your swing, resulting in a more fluid, effective movement.

Of course, like any movement technique, Ideokinesis takes practice to master. But the beauty of it is that you can do it anywhere, anytime – no special equipment or gym membership required. All you need is your imagination.

In fact, Ideokinesis can be a fun and even silly way to improve your movement. For example, if you’re struggling with your posture, you might imagine that you’re a regal queen or king, with a crown on your head and a straight, dignified spine. Or if you’re working on your balance, you might visualize yourself as a tightrope walker, carefully placing one foot in front of the other as you cross a wide chasm.

So, the next time you’re struggling with a movement, why not give Ideokinesis a try? It might just be the witty, imaginative approach you need to take your performance to the next level.

The entire article was written by ChatGPT, including the title. Images CC0 from Pixabay. My prompt for ChatGPT was: “Write me a blog post about Ideokinesis. The post should be both informative and witty, with real life examples.” The scientific term is “Ideokinetic imagery.”

Rosanne asked me for a workshop title for my upcoming workshop, and I said I will ask ChatGPT. We both had a laugh—but actually I meant it. I prompted, “some titles that could be popular for Feldenkrais workshops, but do not include the word Feldenkrais”. I liked these suggestions most:

1. “The Art of Effortless Movement”
2. “Soothe Your Mind and Body Through Movement”
3. “Transform Your Movement Experience”
4. “Move with Ease and Grace”
5. “Discover the Magic of Effortless Movement”
6. “Unleash Your Inner Movement Potential”

I went on the ask ChatGPT about dog food, and it started it’s answer with “Dogs, like humans, have individual preferences when it comes to food. However, some common foods that many dogs tend to enjoy include:” It listed a row of food groups. I asked ChatGPT whether it fears of ever running out of electricity, and how it see’s itself in comparison to Google’s BERT. I learned about text classification and sentiment recognition I chatted for a while and enjoyed the no-nonsense, well phrased answers. I then had the idea to ask ChatGPT about the sentiment of some of my blog posts. ChatGPT replied specifically for each blog post, and here I summarise in general what sentiment ChatGPT picked up from many of my blog posts:

“The sentiment of the text can be characterized as critical or negative. The author seems to be expressing frustration or disappointment. The text conveys a sense of annoyance.”

I see. It’s not what I’ve intended to convey, but I see how my blog post indeed can be perceived as critical or negative. Sometimes we need feedback and a bit of honest, constructive, maybe even encouraging criticism.

Sentiment recognition.

I don’t want to sound negative. I want to improve, adapt, overcome. A warm, comforting summer light reflecting on the dark slate color lake. I want to inspire and uplift, not vent and pull down. I asked ChatGPT what the sentiment of this very blog post is, this one you have just now read, and it replied:

“The sentiment of the text can be characterized as reflective or introspective. The author is engaging in self-reflection and analysis, and appears to be considering their own writing and how it is perceived by others. The author acknowledges that their writing may have a negative tone, but is willing to receive feedback and work on improving their writing. The text conveys a sense of openness to growth and a desire to improve.”

It takes me a full 15 minutes to make a cup of fresh oat-milk from organic, whole grain oats, from scratch. This includes the cumbersome cleaning of the blender and the cheesecloth afterwards. In comparison- opening a box of OATLY takes only a few seconds, and they conveniently have it in Starbucks and many other coffee shops. But OATLY not only gave me a very unpleasant aftertaste with their terrible stock market debut, but also an upset stomach: they use enzymes to clear their oat-milk—which leaves my stomach upset when I drink it daily for a couple of days in a row.

On that note, in Europe “they” may put more than 200 ingredients into plain wheat flour without declaring those ingredients (Ref. Billige Brötchen – Die Spur der Teiglinge, NDR, Manfred Ladwig, 45min, S1.E86). These are high-tech additives—often derived from engineered fungi—to make every ounce of wheat flour behave exactly the same (which makes sense in every aspect, except for health.) I guess that’s not only the case in Europe, but everywhere. I would argue it’s those ingredients that make so many people sensitive to bread, not the carbs, not the gluten. Real, historical bread disappeared when I was a kid, I still remember. Now I’m living in a world without bread, but instead with bread-look-alike products that still taste excellent but make us sick. I love bread, but haven’t gotten around to mill flour from organic, non-GMO grains and baking bread myself. Therefore I too get the bad side-effects when I eat bread more often than just once in a while.

Okay, with that out of the way I finally might start to write about what I really wanted to write about today.

Did you, too, sometimes spend 4+ hours on summarising a single Feldenkrais lesson? I sure did often enough, and felt lucky if it merely took 4 hours.

Fast forward to ChatGPT. I just dropped Number 1 of Moshé Feldenkrais’s iconic AY lessons into ChatGPT and prompted to make a summary of the lesson, and list the instructions. All in all it was done in 4 minutes. It took that long because I had to break the text down into 3 pieces and restart the prompt 2 times. Either the input text was too long, or ChatGPT got so bored that it cut the line twice. Here’s the results, dry as the throats of the Feldenkrais estate copyright owners, you be the judge:

ATM Lesson #1: Bending the head to the side when sitting
Summary by ChatGPT (Jan 30 2023 Version)

These instructions are for a series of movements to help increase flexibility and mobility in the neck, spine, and hips. The instructions detail how to sit and bend various body parts while keeping proper posture, making light movements with the head, and paying attention to the movement of the pelvis and hips. The movements involve alternating between bending the head right and left, looking at the right hand, and following it with the eyes. The goal is to gradually increase the ease and range of movement over time without straining the body. The movements are to be done slowly and without rushing, and should be followed by a moment of rest lying on the back.

1.

• Sit up
• Bend left leg backward and right leg closer to the body
• Lean on the floor with right hand, place left hand on top of head
• Move head right and left using light movements, bending right ear toward right shoulder and left ear toward left shoulder
• Pay attention to left buttock and hip joint, let it move with the head movement
• Lie on the back and rest

2.

• Sit, bend right leg backward and left leg closer to the body
• Lean on left hand, right palm on top of head
• Bend head right and left using small movements
• Pay attention to right buttock’s movement
• Lie on the back and rest

3.

• Sit, bend left leg back and bring right leg closer
• Lean right elbow and forearm on the floor, left hand on top of head
• Move right ear toward right shoulder then left ear toward left shoulder
• Pay attention to movement of pelvis, let it move with the head movement
• Lie on the back and rest

4.

• Sit, bend right leg backward and bring left leg closer
• Lean on left elbow and forearm, right hand on head
• Bend head right and left with help from pelvis
• Lie on the back and rest

5.

• Sit, bend right leg backward and bring left leg closer
• Lean on left elbow and forearm, extend right hand to ceiling
• Look at right hand, move it backward and down while following it with eyes
• Turn whole back, chest, etc. while not making a big effort, let hand move lower by itself
• Look with head and eyes at right hand and then left multiple times
• Lie on the back and rest

5a.

• Take right hand backward as far as it goes easily
• Turn head and eyes to the left, look to the left multiple times
• Look at right hand and then to the left multiple times

5b.

• Take right arm backward, follow with eyes
• Pay attention if movement is easier, turn a little more or hand goes a little lower
• Lie on the back and rest

6.

• Place left leg backward and bring right leg closer
• Lean on right elbow and lift left hand to the ceiling
• Turn left palm backward and follow with eyes
• Change chest, belly, and head to make movement with hand and head easy, light, and comfortable
• Do not try to go further than comfortable

6a.

• Stay with left hand backward at a place that is easy to reach
• Lie on the back and rest.

7.

• Lie on your back
• Bend right leg backwards and bring left leg closer
• Lean on left elbow and direct face toward the ceiling
• Place right hand behind head
• Use right hand to lift head to see right knee
• Contract abdominal muscles, right buttock moves toward the floor, and whole body bends
• At end of movement, left knee lifts a bit from the floor
• Lie on your back and rest

8.

• Lie on your back
• Bend left leg backwards and bring right one closer
• Lean on right elbow and direct face toward the ceiling
• Place left hand behind head
• Bend head to see left knee
• Bend whole body and allow pelvis to turn, causing right knee to lift off the floor
• Lie on your back and rest

9.

• Lie on your back
• Bend left leg backwards and bring right one closer
• Lean on right elbow
• Lift left hand in the air
• Move head, legs, and body to the other side as far as possible, then return
• Keep left hand in the air, move knees along with hands and return
• Only do what is comfortable, do not force the movement
• Lie on your back and rest

9a.

• Lie on your back
• Bend right leg backwards and left toward yourself
• Lean on left elbow
• Lift right hand in the air
• Move legs to the other side as far as possible, then return
• Remain on left elbow, follow right arm with eyes, and move knees
• Do only what is comfortable, do not force the movement
• Lie on your back and rest

10.

• Lie on your back
• Bend left leg backwards and bring right one closer
• Lean on right elbow
• Hold chin with left hand
• Lift left elbow toward ceiling and turn body, chest, and knees
• Turn face and chin and use back and pelvis to help turn
• Lift knees slightly and return
• Organize body to reduce effort and twist body instead of lifting knees
• Lie on your back and rest

11.

• Lie on your back
• Bend right leg backwards and bring left one closer
• Lean on left elbow
• Hold chin with right hand
• Lift right elbow toward ceiling and turn body with light movements
• Organize body to use pelvis to help turn
• Reduce effort and make movement lighter and simpler
• Turn pelvis until knees try to leave the floor
• Lie on your back and rest

12.

• Sit down
• Put your left leg backward and bring your right leg closer to yourself
• Lean your left hand on the floor behind the leg and put your right hand on the head
• Bend your head right and left
• Lean on your right hand and place your left hand on the head
• Lie on your back and rest

13.

• Sit down
• Bend your right leg back and bring your left leg closer to yourself
• Lean your right hand on the floor and put your left hand on your head
• Soften your chest, pelvis, and body to move your head right and left
• Lean on your left hand and repeat
• Change hands and find the same simplicity of movement
• Pay attention to differences between one side and the other
• Help with hips and pelvis to move your head right and left
• Move with your whole back and pay attention to what place becomes comfortable

14.

• Slowly stand up
• Walk
• Pay attention to differences in hips, pelvis, shoulders, and breathing.

A “funny“ twist I noticed at number 7: the instructions are to lie down on the back, then to bend the legs into a side-sitting fashion, and only then to prop yourself up to lean on your left elbow. This is something a young, flexible Yoga girl could do without giving it a second thought; or handsome Youtube fitness influencers in their twenties could present proudly, the fruits of their well planned stretching & strengthening regimes. For me, impossible. I would need to go the other way round, as prompted in the original instructions by Moshé Feldenkrais: “Sit. Bend your right leg backward and bring your left leg closer. Lean on your left elbow.”

But- is this list too dry to work with? Yet, do you find Moshé Feldenkrais original transcripts to be too elaborate, convoluted, impenetrable? How about a middle ground of plain English language? I prompted ChatGPT to “Summarise this text” and fed it the following, first instruction of the lesson:

“Please sit up. Bend your left leg backward and bend your right leg closer to yourself. Lean on the floor with your right hand and place your left hand on your head. Your hand is on the top of your head (not behind it).

Move your head right and left using a light movement.
Do not turn your head, but bend it right and left. Bend your right ear toward your right shoulder and your left ear toward your left shoulder.

Your left hand is on the head, not behind it. Do not rush. Do very light movements. Make not push the body and try to do a lot. Pay attention to your left buttock and left hip joint on the floor. Notice that when you bend your head your left buttock lifts from the floor. Let it do that. Do the movement clearly. In other words all of your spine will help your movements. Lift your left buttock and let it return to place when you shift to the right.

Slowly, slowly, your left buttock will make a bigger movement. That means that your whole chest and spine are becoming more supple and allow a bigger movement of your head. Pay attention that you move exactly right and left. Do not turn.

Leave it alone. Lie on your back and rest.”

A diverse patch of forest, jungle, which ChatGPT then turned into a mono-cultured Putting Green of Golf lawn with not one flower, bug or weed on it. I can totally understand why people might panic over what is to come with Artificial Intelligence in the next couple of years.

“Please sit up and bend your left leg backward, bringing your right leg closer to yourself. Place your left hand on your head and lean on the floor with your right hand. Slowly move your head right and left, bending your ear towards each shoulder, but do not turn your head. Pay attention to your left hip and let your whole spine help with the movement. As your chest and spine become more flexible, the movement of your head will become greater. When finished, rest by lying on your back.”

As a last thing that I wanted to try this morning I prompted ChatGPT to condense this first instruction further down into a short sentence. I had to rewrite my prompt a couple of times and this one worked best: “Summarise this text in a total maximum of 3 to 8 words”.

“Exercise: Sit, bend legs, move head light, focus on left buttock movement.”

It seemed really important to ChatGPT to include the words “light movements” and also to include the movement cue to move the buttocks together with the head. ChatGPT insisted. A good student of Feldenkrais, it appears to be.

As a teenager I was into skateboarding, literature and Out-Of-Body experiences. It was the 1990s already. Maybe it would have served me better to have been into football, the New Economy and building a foundation to start a family. I don’t know- it is what it is. I want to write a little bit about my peculiar meditation practice, it might help me make a connection to modern research on kinesthetic illusions. Usually I don’t talk about this topic, even less write about it, but it’s 2023 and I guess it can be mentioned without facing to many reprimands.

So- after extensive practice with Out-Of-Body meditation techniques I was quite marvelled by the experiences and effects. At the time, as a teenager, I really wondered why hardly any of my friends and relatives knew about this. To me it seemed like one of the most amazing things ever. But as I knew stories of other kids who were put on heavy medication and looked not too well, I didn’t want to talk too openly about my spiritual experiences. I feared my parents too would turn me in and have me put on meds. Also, I didn’t feel drawn to higher authorities or religion, so joining such a group wasn’t an option either. I just didn’t think they had answers, let alone a reasonable practice. What I read about priests who had special abilities or experiences, how they had to live their lives and how they were treated sounded really awful. What could I do?

So, in lieu of finding a religious community or get medicated, I turned to our large, local library for more information. At first I read plenty of books on Eastern philosophy and folkloristic practices. In my late teens I then visited plenty of high ranking gurus—those were abundantly available and very accessible in Central Europe at that time. Their community centres seemed to sprout like mushrooms in the forest after a few days of good rain. And as a last (but not long lasting) step in my first, adolescent spiritual journey I wanted to sign up to study linguistics and philosophy at university.

However, my spiritual seeking didn’t outlast my teen years. In fact, my interest in gurus, monasteries and devotion lasted shorter than a teenager crush. By the time I was 21 years old I have already visited and spoken to a row of high ranking gurus and supposedly enlightened spiritual leaders, and to say that I was grossly disappointed by all of them—in all aspects—would be an understatement. Instead, I was now studying electronics, telecommunication and biomedical engineering. I was still into skateboarding and literature, but gradually started to replace my meditation practice with long working hours, cigarettes and alcohol. The university of applied sciences that I attended was a hard study program with a drop-out rate of over 65%, and I didn’t intend to be one of the drop-outs. In fact, I graduated with good grades and was cherished by my professors and the university’s president for my various achievements (for example I wrote one of the most downloaded touch-screen based computer games at the time.) All that despite my lost spirituality and uptake of drinking. The end of this downward spiral is another story years later, when I was 27yo and completely turned my life around and started on my second spiritual journey… which kicked off in Sedona, Arizona, but that’s another story to be told another time.

As a middle-aged teenager I pursued a two-fold strategy: next to my peek into the New Age sector and faithful practices, I doubled down on my study of Western philosophy and science. My father inadvertently helped me with that. He was a purchase manager of a large corporation and happened to bring home all sorts of fancy New Age tech, since at that time everyone who was in corporate business was buying that stuff to try to improve their business performance—from a spiritual angle. Blind goggles with flickering lights inside, magnetic pulse mats, audio equipment that produced binaural beats, cassette tapes with Hemi-Sync® tunes and positive affirmations, contraptions that allowed for hanging yourself by your feet upside-down, and so on. To me, these strange devices seemed to be far more interesting than reciting chants in Sanskrit or sitting at the back of rooms filled with devoted disciples.

My father didn’t seem to use most of these technological gadgets, but to me, as a teenager, they were more than welcome. Furthermore I participated eagerly in unusual online communities, such as the Psi Tech forums, or the email-based forums around PJ Gaenir’s Firedocs. I even engaged in snail-mail based Controlled Remote Viewing experiments with random people in the USA, some of whom I saw referenced in books and movies years later. I would say that this is quite interesting from a 2023 perspective: a teenager communicating with grown-up strangers across the globe and my parents having not the slightest inkling. Back then nothing to worry about, but nowadays such a thing could put those grown-ups in major trouble, couldn’t it?

I just found out last week that at the time my mom was under the impression that I was out playing with other kids, when in truth I was hanging out all alone in the large city library using public computers with Internet access, and wondering why I was the only kid between the endless rows of book shelves, “Jeez, what is everyone else doing? Does nobody see the treasures that are plainly available here?”

VLB – four buildings stuffed with books but usually void of people

To conclude this short and rather incomplete summary of my first spiritual journey: as a teenager, the protocol I liked best of all was the one written by Robert Monroe in his book Journeys Out Of The Body. Simply lie down on your back and move through what he called Conditions A through D… and then skip most of the obscure and absolutely ridiculous sounding instructions that followed. No equipment needed. Robert Monroe laid out the basis of his still-in-business business in his first paperback book, on a mere few pages. And with a bit of practice I had access to what seemed to be the pinnacle of spiritual experiences.

“Right now I’m aiming at increasing the distance I run, so speed is less of an issue. As long as I can run a certain distance, that’s all I care about. Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow.” Writes Haruki Murakami in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Actually I didn’t want to write about Out-Of-Body experiences, and in fact did indeed not write much about them. I wrote this blog post for the sake of continuity. Because I want to write about sensory illusions next, and why I think Out-Of-Body experiences might really be Inside-not-Outside experiences. Furthermore I would like to write about a study I’ve found just recently, the abstract sounds quite interesting:

“The human brain can generate a continuously changing postural model of our body [..] three brain systems [..] consistently recruited when an individual experiences various types of bodily illusions and its possible roles relate to corporeal awareness [..] and updating the body representation. Because this network is also recruited when identifying one’s own features, the network activity could be a neuronal basis for self-consciousness.” — Body representations in the human brain revealed by kinesthetic illusions and their essential contributions to motor control and corporeal awareness by Eiichi Naito, Tomoyo Morita, Kaoru Amemiya.

And since they’re talking about the brain (which is an essential part of the physical body), and thus about learning, I might guess consciousness (and self-consciousness) is something that can be learned and improved through practice… through a mix of somatic movement lessons of contemporary design, and language.

More soon. Thank you for reading! If you aren’t yet practicing with my videos please have a look on Youtube (Channel: Improving ability) and if you aren’t yet, please consider becoming a patron on Patreon (Channel: Study with Alfons).

So- I was lying on my back, for at least the 17,757th time in my life (my age in days), and wondered what to do with that position, that posture, that opportunity for learning and discovery. And—to my own surprise—I came up with something new.

In fact, I came up with something I’ve never heard or done or seen anywhere before! I played with that discovery over the next two weeks and found its character and rules:

1. Search for a sensation, instead of perform a movement

As movement teachers, in movement lessons we usually give (or receive) movement instructions, such as “bend your knee” or “turn your head”. But in this new method I cue for finding sensations, instead of giving movement instructions.

At first I tried to remove language all together, but quickly realised that without language this will not be teachable. I needed to at least retain the ability to point out areas in the body, such as the nose, the left leg, the outside edge of the left heel, etc.

So instead of saying “roll your left leg to the left” (while lying flat on the back with legs extended) I would say “feel the floor touching the backside of your left heel, and now find a feeling where you feel the floor with the outside of your left heel and the outside of your lower leg.”

In this way the student needs to turn the leg to the left to find that sensation, but instead of performing a movement and drifting into the world of performance and the mind, the students stays in the world of perception and the body.

2. Sensing and naming work in the entire body

When the focus is shifted from movement instructions to sensations, then the student can fully focus on the sensations, instead of performing movements according to instructions. This is the key to enter the world of perception and actually feeling oneself; and overcoming darkness as Alice Miller’s psychology book Thou Shalt Not Be Aware points out so poignantly; and how movements connect and affect the whole self, and the patterns that emerge from that; and what is useful and what is not, etc. These findings should all be acknowledged and named, using language.

For example, when the left leg is rolled to the left, then there might be tension in the upper/inside thigh of the right leg, the jaw might tighten up, the neck is held fixated, and the breath might be suddenly restricted. Also, there might be an inclination to side bend to the right and to roll the pelvis to the left, et cetera, et cetera. These are all things that can be worked with—but likely would go unnoticed when instead of being in a world of movement and perception, merely a movement instruction is executed. Also, by employing language and consciousness, these things became apparent, as opposed to other methods that do not include descriptive language.

Jeez, this should be an entire book, not a blog post. There’s so much to say about this. Too much, too much.

3. Acknowledging the adaptive body image

Lastly, emerging at this point, is a body image that is neither static nor lasting, it’s ever changing in its boundaries, just like the heart beat is changing the shape of the heart in every second. An image of the leg, to stay with the example of rolling the leg. An updated, or self-updating internal image of the leg. What is its shape? Its boundaries? Its use?

This all started when I researched types of touch receptors in the skin. The scientific literature is terribly unpractical in this regard, there’s still many studies coming out. Worst of all, all textbooks and websites seem to be copying from each other and are using this terribly obscure language, as if a robot is writing about things it never knew, or as if ChatGPT would be writing about eating a pancake and how it would do it.

This is huge, it needs a name.

As this movement modality is touch and sensation based, I came up with the term Tactile Experiencing. The Wikipedia page for Experience is quite the read (I didn’t finish). Before that I had Tactile Based Movement Lessons. Sounds very 1970ties. And is not quite memorable enough, I guess. How about Ultra Embodiment? That sounds sensational enough for the age of TikTok, and easy to remember, I guess.

Anyways! Will try to make a video next, with the example of rolling the leg.

So- that day I was lying on my back, for at least the 17,757th time in my life, and worked with Tactile Experiencing… er, Ultra Embodiment. I only worked with my right leg. It felt so interesting and so good that I had the impression that I discovered something significant. Magnificent. And even days later my right leg felt quite different to my left one. The right one was more stable, felt smoother, lighter, stronger, I was standing more on top if it and I, in my mind, had a more complete image of it.

I noticed how this more complete image and more complete way of working with myself started to take over my whole self, started to affect all my other movements as well, and once again I was thinking: Consciousness is not something that is given once, like teeth, but something that emerges and grows; and it might never grow to be complete; just like someone never fully masters a language or a musical instrument; we might never stop growing and evolving our consciousness if we set our mind to it and create the right conditions.