FELDENKRAIS WITH ALFONS

Setting up the room: 20 minutes. Filming: 60 minutes. Editing: three hours. I stopped editing not even halfway into the video. I abandoned the recording and decided to retreat. I will make a new attempt to film this video lesson on another day. My worries over the lockdown and state of the world spoiled my recording. Or, regarding my storytelling, I’m just not there yet.

That evening I started to work on my poem »Why not«, and was finished twenty-four hours later. With that out of the way I continued to work on my new movement sequence. Crawling. Detailed and quiet. I’m still wondering how I could turn this into a video. I was going slower. I was sensing more, asking more questions, establishing more connections. I was going deeper, committing myself to all that I am. An intense work with patterns as old as humanity itself. Deep trauma release. Deep enough to catch me off guard even under good circumstances.

But the circumstances are not good.

Last year, in March 2020, governments around the world have started to follow… maybe that’s not the right word… have started to implement some of the same draconian practices as China: they locked down tens of millions of their own citizens, at once. You know the story. The story of the one deadly virus and the things that have to be done. You know how it is, how things work. You’ve experienced the same. You’ve seen long standing venues closed for months at a time, or going out of business altogether. You’ve heard of people dying, alone, neglected the right to be comforted by their loved ones. Alas, I hope that this is just something you have heard of. You’ve felt the social distancing, seen the disappearance of faces behind masks, and the divide of every nation into WUHAN-virus COVID19-vaxxers and COVID19-anti-vaxxers. And the strange sight of empty shelves in grocery stores.

»Look, today they have strawberry jam! For the first time in weeks!« I tell myself.

Last year I’ve been naive. In October 2020 I was still thinking big media is pushing the virus story merely to take off some heat from the US elections. How wrong I was, how ignorant.

Last year I was lucky. When the lockdowns started I happened to be traveling, and decided to stay in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, until everything is back to normal again. Vietnam, protected by some invisible number magic, seemed to have been spared by the virus machine.

Now the tables have turned. I’m in the 4th lockdown. I’ve sat through six weeks of light lockdown, where we were supposed to stay at home, but could still go out for shopping, or for taking a walk. Two weeks and three days ago they turned that into a hard lockdown for 35+ million people. Since then, being caught outside can lead to high fines, Visa troubles, or being locked up in a government supplied facility. Big media and well placed social media clips delivered the scary stories that now keep the streets empty, and people policing each other.

But the numbers still do not satisfy the leadership. Therefore, last Friday they added two more weeks of hard lockdown. For our own good.

Biologists estimate that 380 trillion viruses are living on and inside the human body at any given moment—10 times the number of bacteria. Some can cause illness, but many simply coexist with us. I trust in my risk factor profile, in my genetics that have developed over millions of years and found its place in between millions of other species, in balance, in the proteins of my own immune system, in my starch based diet, in getting enough sleep and exercise. I trust in the ability to trust and to love.

Meanwhile, some 9,626 km away, this Sunday morning my two times AstraZeneca vaccinated 79 year old father found a field of chicory flowers. They grew next to the side-walk up the street in front of his house, they appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He advised me to use all that I know, everything I have ever learned, to take good care of myself to make it through these difficult times.

My father sent me a picture of the small flowers he loves so much. To me they look like as if they are always growing, growing up, taking one step at a time, step by step, towards the light, higher and higher. Or the other way round, »It’s almost as if the deep blue sky that you only see in the clear air on a high mountain has been spirited into the plant and shines at you in its many flowers«, writes Craig Holdrege, of The Nature Institute.

Stay strong, my friend. Keep on keeping on.

Let’s say you’re resting on your back, and you’re holding your right knee with both of your hands.

Let’s change that: let’s say you’re resting on somebody else’s back. For example on Totoro, a very big, loveable, furry, spirit creature out of a famous Japanese animated film. And you’re holding your right knee with your left hand.

Ok, let’s not bring Totoro into this. Rest on your own back. But just for the mental exercise, how does resting on your own back, on the hard floor, feel like compared to resting on a big, benevolent, breathing plush figure?

Once you’re on stable grounds again let’s continue with the questions that shall undo the abuse of thousands of hours of sitting still on school and office chairs alike: how would you pose your right leg to be able to hold your right knee with your hands, in comfort? And how would you pose your left leg, assuming it’s not made from dead driftwood?

And what’s different between holding your right knee with

• your right hand, 
• your left hand, 
• your both hands?

Find three things to observe and describe how each is different in each of the just mentioned three ways of holding your right knee. Or skip this exercise, up to you. However, this exercise will put you mind-to-mind with your own great mind, why miss this precious encounter?

“Reading teaches nothing more important than the state of mind in which you find yourself absolutely alone with the thoughts of another mind, a matchless form of intimate rapport available only to those with the ability to block out distraction and concentrate. Once you trust yourself to go mind-to-mind with great intellects, artists, scientists, warriors, and philosophers, you are finally free. In America, before we had forced schooling, an astonishing range of unlikely people knew reading was like Samson’s locks [..]” – excerpt from John Taylor Gatto, “The Underground History of American Education”

And if I were to ask you to move your right knee, in which direction would you chose to move it first? To the right? To the left? Up closer to your right armpit? Down further away from your chest? Diagonally, like shooting arrows? Will you be shooting from the same position each time?

The lesson continues: circles with the knee, then circles with the foot’s ankle and toes, then circles with the foot and lower leg, then combinations thereof. Then the same with the left leg. Then a roll of the pelvis, a twist of the torso. Things like this. 

And afterwards the hard floor behind your pelvis might feel as soft as Totoro’s wonderful fur. And you might fall in love all over again with the beauty of this Earth, our home.

I wanted to add a couple of illustrations to my new poem, the one about the iPad, which actually is a poem about the joy of movement. But then, somehow, the drawings didn’t fit the poem. So I went ahead and made this post.

Oh, and I also drew a carrot:

And a black swan with the head of a snake:

Yesterday I finished watching David Sedaris’ MasterClass. Bestselling American author David Sedaris teaches humour, where to find meaning, the art of personal storytelling, openings and endings. In fact, of the 14 video lessons spanning 3 hours and 23 minutes he spent a good full hour on re-writing openings and endings. David recommends to learn a few endings by heart. I did my rolls and twists and side-bends, and then he sent me off with a memorable and encouraging ending that he himself had learned by heart. David Walks-His-Talk Sedaris won my heart all over again.

Back to the topic of forced schooling: A lot of bad things can be said about schooling. The deeper I get into John Taylor Gatto’s „The Underground History of American Education”, the more I become aware of the world that has been pulled over our eyes, to blind us from the truth. Neo: What truth? Morpheus: That you are a slave, Neo.

I must object. The image painted in the movie The Matrix is simply not true, we are not slaves. Neither are we unenlightened beings living behind a veil, as depicted in some New Age books. Far from it. As I understand it the classical dichotomy between liberty and subordination was our own choosing, and has been written into our collective imagination by Locke and Hobbes. Forced schooling creates standardized thinking and standardized behaviour, which in turn creates a predictable society with a predictable future. The downside is that not every heart can bear it.

John Taylor Gatto writes: „Barbara Whiteside showed me a poem written by a high school senior in Alton, Illinois, two weeks before he committed suicide.” His poem touched me dearly, and since it is otherwise hard to find, I will quote it in its entirety:

He drew… the things inside that needed saying.
Beautiful pictures he kept under his pillow.
When he started school he brought them…
To have along like a friend.
It was funny about school, he sat at a square brown desk
Like all the other square brown desks… and his room
Was a square brown room like all the other rooms, tight
And close and stiff.
He hated to hold the pencil and chalk, his arms stiff
His feet flat on the floor, stiff, the teacher watching
And watching. She told him to wear a tie like
All the other boys, he said he didn’t like them.
She said it didn’t matter what he liked.
After that the class drew.
He drew all yellow.
It was the way he felt about
Morning. The Teacher came and smiled, “What’s this?
Why don’t you draw something like Ken’s drawing?”
After that his mother bought him a tie, and he always
Drew airplanes and rocketships like everyone else.
He was square inside and brown and his hands were stiff.
The things inside that needed saying didn’t need it
Anymore, they had stopped pushing… crushed, stiff
Like everything else.

I set the book aside. This poem speaks of profound clarity at heart. Why did he – or she – commit suicide? Why didn’t he sit through the minimum term, aiming for an early release? Mark Twain, Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nicole Kidman, Steve Jobs, Charles Dickens, Jay Z, Alicia Keys, Tiger Woods and Magic Johnson, Jackie Collins, Brad Pitt, H.G. Wells, Thomas Edison, William Faulkner, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and many others took an early exit on schooling, not on life itself, and lived quite well.

Moreover, this high school senior not only took his own life, but had us all come up short. As great and insightful his poem is, there will be no more from him.

Today is the beginning of the 5th week of the 4th lockdown here in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. All shops are closed, all parks are closed, all big supermarkets are closed. The few coffee shops, small restaurants and grocery stores that are still open are only available for takeaways. There’s rumours that starting this Wednesday there will be a total lockdown of everything, the whole city under quarantine for an additional four weeks.

I found a small pond that has not yet been locked away. I took a picture. Then I set my smartphone aside and watched the wind play with the water lilies.

I set out again on Google and DuckDuckGo to find something about writing and movement. Writing not just for the sake of getting across a row of instructions – but writing to inquire about movement, to solve problems of language, communication, and learning. I’m looking for people who have thought of that before. There must be.

After some searching and sifting through scientific articles I found the relatively new field of Contemplative Pedagogy, „A Quiet Revolution in Higher Education”, as Arthur Zajonc put it, a physicist and the author of several books related to science, mind, and spirit, professor emeritus at Amherst College, and former president of the Mind and Life Institute.

However, I was disappointed about the omission of Somatic Education in Zajonc’s list of classroom practices. It only lists practices such as Mindfulness, Concentration Training, Yoga postures, Pranayama, Sitting in Silence, etc, which all have one thing in common: the absence of movement learning – and acquisition – in the sense of Somatic Education.

Considering the „unreformable” nature of the schooling system (to quote John Taylor Gatto) I can’t help but wonder about Arthur Zajonc’s et al attempts to shine some light into the schooling system; their attempts to change it from inside. The schooling system with its „short-answer tests, bells, uniform time blocks, age grading, standardization, and all the rest of the school religion punishing our nation”, to quote John Taylor Gatto again, from his book „The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher’s Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling”.

Instead of „Contemplative Pedagogy”, wouldn’t „Time Scheduled Focus Drills” have been a more descriptive name? Another brick in the wall? Another attempt at getting students to finally be quiet, fit in, and „shut up”? (to quote John Taylor Gatto’s prologue „Bianca, You Animal, Shut Up!”) Or are we indeed witnessing „A Quiet Revolution in Higher Education”? One might still dare to hope.

In Christy I. Wenger’s book, „Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies: Contemplative Writing Pedagogy”, due to its academic nature, I found plenty of references, and also a single 2-page example of contemplative writing about movement, in „Interchapter Three: The Writer’s Breath”, of all chapter titles. I quote:

„»Alright, everyone knows what to do,« I say. »Be sure to sit up straight in your chair and plant your feet firmly on the ground, letting that connection give you a sense of stability and rootedness, like how you feel in tree pose.« Some students shift with these words, but many remain still, already practicing the attentiveness we’ve been cultivating over the past few weeks. They have learned that being relaxed and being attentive are not separate states but can be coupled for greater awareness, and they are using their bodies to achieve this harmony.” – Christy I. Wenger, from „Yoga Minds, Writing Bodies”

This is an interesting find because it’s not a book written by a movement professional, but by Dr. Christy I. Wenger, „Associate Professor of English, Rhetoric and Composition, Director of Rhetoric and Composition” at Shepherd University, Shepherdstown, West Virginia, Department of English and Modern Languages. Therefore, it’s an insight into academia and the state of affairs as of 2015, when this book was published.

Professor Wenger chose to use what I might call „Yoga language”. I have no better name for it, but it seems like most Yoga teachers express themselves like this. It’s a kind of Directive Language, spoken from an expert and authoritative point of view, with very floral metaphors, exaggerations, and claims that would put any vitamins seller to shame if taken at face value.

„Yoga language” might be somewhat the opposite of objective descriptions. To paint a picture: in Realism (arts) we would not „plant” the feet firmly on the ground, and that „connection” would not give you „a sense of stability and rootedness”, considering the facts that the feet bear less than a third of the body’s weight in sitting, and that (in the above quoted exercise) a considerable part of the nervous system would be occupied with trying to wilfully sit up straight. This is not a criticism. I would guess that at the beginning of the 20th century many people welcomed Expressionism, and the appreciation of the individuals’ emotions. Where there is light, there is shadow. And even today such floral language might be the counter-weight to, an escape from, the cold and uncompassionate language of scientific studies on movement, range of motion, and biomechanical functioning.

”Realism, sometimes called naturalism, in the arts is generally the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding speculative fiction and supernatural elements.” – Wikipedia, on Realism

„Expressionism is a modernist movement. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.” – Wikipedia, on Expressionism

Paintings: 1. Gustave Courbet, 1849, Les casseurs de pierres (The Stone Breakers) 2. Edvard Munch, 1893, The Scream 3. Henri Biva, ca 1905, Matin à Villeneuve (From Waters Edge) 4. Wassily Kandinsky, 1903, The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter)

I would like to be able to quote Wikipedia on „Yoga language”, but there’s no page for that… yet. I do believe that writing about movement, and to put movement learning – and the experiences thereof – into words, could be something of interest to more than just a few; more than just a few out of the 7.9 billion people that move about on planet Earth as of 2021. After all, all of them, each and every one of them, without exception, had to learn how to roll, turn, sit, twist, stand, walk… move in the way they do.