STUDY WITH ALFONS

When we grew up, my mother always found it important to have a piano in the house. Therefore we always had a piano sitting in a corner, mostly unused.

From time to time my mother would tell me how adorable I was as a preschooler, when I took piano lessons with that Japanese teacher in Vienna. She said I was hitting the keys already quite joyfully, and that I loved the classes so much. They were all about exploration, being playful, and enjoying getting to know music, and at the same time making progress and learning something.

My mom’s story about me taking piano lessons ends with what happened next: we moved to the other side of Austria and my new teacher unfortunately was no good, he killed any interest I had in music. She always adds that she didn’t know at the time, and that she’s sorry for that poor choice of a teacher.

I’m now grown up, 47 years old. In a recent videocall with my mom we talked about her newfound joy for playing the piano herself, and she said that if I would like to pick up learning piano again, too, and therefore needed a piano, she would like to invite me to one. I just need to chose the one I like best, she’d send me the money, her treat. I didn’t accept, yet, but it’s safe to say that this was the most adorable offer. We all like to grow and unfold, heal and progress. I love my mom so much.

I asked her, “How often will I need to practice squatting per day in order to be able to squat as well as you do?”

She said, “That’s not how it works.”

I might need to mention that I currently live in the South of Vietnam, where seemingly everyone seems to be rather flexible and well able to squat. And for the girl I asked, she’s Vietnamese as well.

And therefore, I want to look at what people here in Vietnam do differently than people in other places (and cultures) where people in general are not flexible and not able to squat well; not able to fold their legs with ease and for extended periods of time.

Now, if you don’t live in a country like Vietnam yourself, it might be difficult to look for such differences. And furthermore, difficult to verify my thinking. However, I think it would be necessary to see for yourself, in order to even consider making the bold changes I’m suggesting in this post.

For example, I often see people here in Vietnam sit on chairs in Indian fashion, with both legs up and crossed on the seating platform, or in variations thereof (for example with one or both feet on the seating platform and the knees in front or to the side of their chest.) Or they sit on very low chairs, chairs that look like LEGO-versions of chairs, as low as a couple of books stacked on top of each other. Or they literally use a brick or small block of wood as a chair. That’s how low they often sit and they fold their legs, that is they fully bend their knees and hip joints. In Vietnam you might see people squat frequently and everywhere. They often squat when they wait (instead of standing up straight or leaning against a wall), and they even squat on top of benches, curbs and walls. Or they sit on the floor altogether, maybe on a piece of cardboard on a sidewalk, or on a thin cushion at home. Some even take lunchtime naps on top of their motorbikes on the side of the road, with their legs somehow pretzeled up to fit on the seat of their ride. And all that looks perfectly normal.

Here in Vietnam, in public, I see people fold their legs frequently. Whereas back home in Austria, Europe, I hardly ever (close to never) saw anyone fold their legs like that in public.

In Austria, a western country, we have Yoga and stretching classes, and fitness and movement classes, with very clever exercises to learn and maintain how to fold the legs, and twist, and stretch and extend ones spine. However, these classes are attended only by a small portion of the general population. And even for the few who care about folding their legs and getting into unusual postures, they don’t—and can’t—use these movements and postures much when they are outside of class.

I just wrote »unusual postures«. But, unusual for whom?

Culture is strong. Going against one’s culture does not only mean NOT to carry on one’s culture, but to betray one’s culture. We’re asked to uphold and maintain our own cultures, but to whose benefit? At what cost? To what ends!

Side-Note: I recently saw a Youtube video by Ben Patrick, a famous fitness coach in the US, famous for his bending-the-knees workout system. In that particular Youtube video he filmed himself stopping his car while on a long commute, getting out of his car, and exercising with weights next to the highway, in order to maintain his leg’s flexibility and strength. This was such an odd behaviour (albeit perfectly rational and relate-able) that I’m still thinking about it often. Why do we Westerners have to resort to such extreme measures?

So, the next time you’re invited to dinner with your grandparents or parents, or your boss maybe, you might not want to place your feet on your seat, nor stick your knees in between your torso and the table… in order to respect THEIR culture and THEIR upbringing — and all the things THEIR parents told them over and over and over (and over and over) again what to do and what not to do.

Sit straight,
don’t put your feet on the seat,
don’t lean with your elbows on the table,
don’t slouch,
put both feet down on the floor,
stop shaking your leg,
sit still,
make a friendly face,
answer me: “How was your day?”
and be surprised when all they get is, “It was ok”.

And finally, the ones who complied and learned all the rules expect that everyone else does the same as well. This is how a culture teaches itself and maintains the behaviour of its members.

But if you want to attain and maintain normal function of your knees and legs… when you’re on your own, or amongst your own (to say it harshly), you might want to think about creating your own branch of culture, and form habits that are in alignment with your own goals and your own thinking.

“Now you start to sit like me”, she observed.

“I try to”, I replied.

I once asked Moshé Feldenkrais, “What are you going to teach today?” He replied, “I always teach the same movement—only with a different sauce.” – paraphrased from the book “Bone, Breath and Gesture” by Don Hanlon Johnson

So I was writing a new set of cards, and the first card went like this: „Lie on your belly, in prone position, with your legs extended, your toes standing, your hands standing next to your shoulders. Bend and extend your ankles to create a push up your spine towards your head. Rock your head with your feet.”

And I was thinking, „Hm, that’s odd. What is a push?” Here’s that first paragraph as an animated image:

Is a push something like „wind”? Something fleeting, invisible? Something that becomes visible only through the things that are being pushed?

I can’t quite see it in the image though. It looks more like a rocking, the rocking of the legs and entire spine, with the help of the ankles and… arms… somehow, innit? What is it?

I recalled a series of animated images I created years ago, a by-product of me studying the Feldenkrais Method, something to help myself to understand David Zemach-Bersin’s hands-on work. I never published these images due to copyright reasons, but to give you an idea, they looked like this:

I insert one of these animated images here just for the sake of illustration, I guess that should be covered under Fair Use (this specific video of David has been published on Youtube and has been visible to the general public for some time in 2012, even though it has been unlisted since then and now seems to be a purchasable on his website).

In this animated image the push is generated by David (as it looks like by his arms, which push against his stabilised trunk) and then travels into his student’s right foot up through her right leg and her pelvis and further up into her left upper rib cage. And it does all the things a push does, including pushing some parts closer together while pushing some other parts further apart from each other, which looks like rotation and side-bending and that sort of things. And then David spends half an hour with all sorts of other movements, which eventually all sum up to improve the push… which actually aren’t about the push at all. They are about a useful thing: the ability to better lift the right arm on up. No pain, just joy, whoops there it goes up!

Of course, returning to the first picture, we could self-push ourselves asymmetrically too, for example only bend and extend the right ankle, maybe place the foot a bit out to the right to have a more pronounced push vector, and then let that push go from only one foot up on upwards, wherever it goes. Where does it go? What does it do, what does it do? What does it move, what pieces will it take up? And which areas will go untouched, like a cut off branch of a river or a dead architectural space where no wind will ever go in? Is it the push that brings life to our bodies, or is the push proof that we are alive?

On the other foot, wouldn’t it be nice to have someone create a push for us? Would that be easier to feel, to understand, to integrate? Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

In the previous video we were lying on the belly, and rolled the pelvis a little bit to the left and to the right. Here’s a screenshot from one of my prep sessions:

How your pelvis connects to your head (UP9.1), youtube.com/watch?v=XOxG5hDnstk

A fairly simple move, yet my video for this movement is half an hour long. And I would think it could be much longer than that. It could be an entire workshop. This movement looks simple, but it’s quite complex. Just for example: during pregnancy women should feel their baby move at month 5 at the latest. The baby is starting to use its legs to push against the inner lining of the womb (which she might feel as kicking), and in this way the baby starts to learn how to use its legs to change position. In movement classes we can mimic this developmental stage by, for example, by lying on the back and pushing with one foot (or both feet) on the floor (or on a wall, or ball or anything really) to roll or lift the pelvis and change position. However, when we are lying on the belly, we can’t make use of our feet and legs in this sense. It’s a more challenging situation that reflects a later stage in our developmental and movement learning process.

Now, for my next video. First of all, I was browsing through my personal notes and got inspired by one of Moshé Feldenkrais original lessons, AY385, Increasing the spreading of the knees (which could be tagged #scout series, and snapshots of some movements thereof would resemble the Yoga Pigeon pose). Here’s a screenshot from one of my prep sessions:

It’s basically the same movement as in the previous video, rolling the pelvis a little bit to the left and to the right in prone position, however, with one leg bent (which we need in the „From The Ground Up” series).

And yet, it’s such an utterly different situation that it completely changes the lesson and how I need (to learn and) to teach it. Well, maybe not for everyone. But if you are like me, and your legs and body in general is not in mint condition anymore, which is to say does not provide normal service anymore (to paraphrase Moshé Feldenkrais), which is to say that you can’t do every humanly possible movement with ease and a complete sense of taken-for-grantedness anymore (like a duck takes to water), then it’s an utterly different situation.

Well, who is.

So, for my next video, I spent the last two weeks trying to learn this movement, and moreover, trying to figure out a way how to teach it. For most of the time it didn’t look like I will succeed. I had issues with my knees, and I had difficulties getting to the bottom of the lesson, and I had somewhat of an existential crisis (which is probably less because of this movement lesson, and more due to two years of ongoing lockdowns and living in a foreign country with little to no chance to ever learning the local language or becoming fully integrated in society, and yet no way I’m going back to the mess my home country Austria has become).

But at last, finally, after two weeks of approximations and pursue, it looks like as if I’m successful in this process of creating a new lesson. I finally have a clear understanding of the movements and how they fit in the overall pattern of the series. And I found a way to prime and protect the knees, which I think is a rather big insight. It might change how I will teach most classes in the future, and how I understand movement learning in general. And I’ve already taught the movements to two very different students, which yielded important insights on how to teach this particular lesson on Youtube. I think I will soon be able to film the video.

This post originally aired as a patron-only post on patreon.com – Support your teacher, become a patron.

During the past week or two (or three?) I got almost depressed. Maybe I really was. The reason being: I couldn’t see how I could go on with my „From The Ground Up” series.

The reason being, from the comments on the videos I could see the difficulties some viewers have with the folding of their legs, with the loading of the folded legs, and with folding the knees in combination with extending the hip joints (talk about strong opposites). I read how even some long term students got into pain instead of wellbeing. And for me, the same. Click click went my knees. Don’t do that to us, said my knees.

I couldn’t see a way.

I feared, and frowned upon, that I may need to revert to regular, saver, more innocent movement sequences. The like you would find anywhere. Good, honest movement combinations, the sequences you would find in most public Feldenkrais-inspired courses. Nothing wrong with that, I love those movements. But after all I have been trough, what I’ve created and done, what I’ve published on Youtube so far… I don’t want to go back. I want to go on, go further, I want to progress.

And then, at last, just yesterday, I found a way.

The thing is… our movement problems don’t only come from sitting on chairs. Yes, sitting on chairs for extended periods of time is bad. Even if we sit as recommended in so called ergonomic guidelines; or maybe sitting in chairs is bad because of such ergonomic guidelines.

And it’s not just because we might sleep like Count Dracula. Yes, sleeping like a log for the whole night is bad—with both legs extended downwards—the position they put us in for our last rest in a coffin.

However, the worst things we do in terms of movement, I think, is the things we don’t do. The lack of sitting crossed legged, the absence of sitting and lying with folded legs, bent, twisted; the lack of sitting and working in the many squat positions; the thousands, maybe millions of movements we don’t do, that’s the problem.

And then there’s strengthening exercises.

I don’t think that the good thing about strengthening exercises is the actual strengthening. How many repetitions of Toe raises and Toe curls and one legged heel raises with bent forward knees do we need to perform? How many Roundhouse squats? How many of these fun and beneficial knee and leg exercises do we have to do for how many times? Personal trainers are done with counting single repetitions, nowadays they count the hours („I tried exercise X for Y weeks and this is what happened”).

However, I do confirm, yesterday I verified and concluded for myself that in order to restore function we need strengthening exercises. In places where they aren’t yet, we do need to build them into our Feldenkrais-inspired movement practice as safety and priming movements, in order to be able to recover from all the harm and damage done, and in order to be able to progress.

We need the repetitions. But I might not think of these exercises as strengthening exercises. Instead, I think they are a practice of repentance. They are prayers for redemption. They are a way of making up for all the things we didn’t do. For all the years we didn’t squat down, for all the times we sat stiffly on a chair like a good girl or good boy or good office worker, without pulling our legs up into all those forbidden postures like cross legged sitting or sitting with one foot on the sitting platform and one foot on the ground.

Now. Oremus in motu. Let us pray in movement. Let’s make it up to ourselves.