STUDY WITH ALFONS

So here’s my latest movement sequence lesson. Or at least… it was my latest, before I sketched out two more of them. Quite a productive morning I have to say. I will try to word this one out as concisely as possible, while retaining intelligibility and more importantly not to bore myself doing so. So here’s my sequence:

Starting position

Lie on your right side, legs bent, stand your left hand in front of your chest.

Reference movements

For later reference: Move your left shoulder forwards and also backwards. See what you do notice about these movements while doing them.

Shift awareness to the components of the movement

Now bring your attention to your nose, the tip of your nose. Roll your head as if you would like to approach the tip of your nose closer to the floor. But don’t touch, just move into that direction. Lower your nose towards the floor and distance it from the floor again, a couple of times. Observe how you do it, observe what you can discover, comprehend, learn about this movement.

Then bring your attention to your mouth. Roll your head as if to approach your mouth closer to the floor. Even more so, do it as you would like to touch your tongue to the floor. Of course, don’t actually touch your tongue to the floor, just aim into the direction. The floor is ice-cream. Try to find the most simple, most straightforward way. 

Then bring your attention to the back of your head. Help with your hand: touch the back of your head with one of your hands. It’s not the top of the head, not the neck, but somewhere in between. It’s not  a small area. Find the point that you would name the tip of the back of your head.

Then, with your left hand standing in front of you, roll your head to the right, by lifting the tip of the back of your head further away from the floor. 

Combine movements and observe kinematic linkage

Bring your attention to your left shoulder again. Move your left shoulder forwards, observe whether or not your head is rolling to the right, your nose is approaching the floor and the back of your head is lifting away from it. Feel how your chest is rolling, how you roll over the right side of your chest. Observe whether or not your pelvis is rolling too, whether or not your left knee is sliding forwards or not.

Then reverse the direction, pull your left shoulder backwards.

Observe how changes in arm position influence the same movements

Then continue with these explorations of pushing and pulling and rolling, but rest your left arm in various positions: behind your back, downwards on your left side, upwards over or on your head.

Reference movements

Return to the reference movements from the beginning of the sequence: move your left shoulder forwards and backwards. Observe what has changed. Observe how your way of observing has changed. Going full blown meta here.

Rest on your back to give yourself the opportunity to perceive more differences, improvements, observations.

Now stand up and see how it is in standing.

Some notes

I put this sequence together from various building blocks, or elements. I have no name for them yet. Somatic elements? A simple, goal oriented, habitual rolling of the head becomes a mindful exploration, an experiment even: the attention is shifted to the tip of the nose, and bringing the nose closer to the floor, and at the same time the back of the head further away from the floor. This creates, or requires, a skilful process of observing several things at the same time, without reacting stressful over it. This is still a turn of the head, but now we have many things involved, including perceivable distances. How far is the tip of the nose away from the floor in every moment? We become conscious of how this movement is performed, and thus can improve the movement itself.

Could such an element be a lesson on its own? Should it be? Would this be the base for an extensive catalogue? What would the elements of such a catalogue be called? Movement-mini-games? Mini-lessons? Somatic elements? What would the criteria for inclusion and exclusion be? How would every element be indexed and tagged? What are the use cases?

On its own it would be a mini-lesson about how to turn the head. However, by connecting it to the next adjacent, significant structure, the shoulders, which in turn connect to the chest, which in turn connects to the pelvis… it becomes a lesson about turning the head in a more integrated way. „Integrated” means it doesn’t stand on its own but is part of the whole self. And thus the experience is deeper, more significant, more relevant.

This mini-lesson could be expanded even further. There could be additional elements in other, every day postures, for example in standing or sitting. It could be a build up to more functions such as reaching and pulling.

But then it’s not a small 10-15 minutes lesson anymore, then it’s a workshop with many lessons, maybe even an entire training course. My hypothetical questions remain: what does qualify as a somatic movement element? What are the brush-strokes, styles and colours of a lessons? When do we need to add more, and when should (or could) we stop?

Yesterday I got a new carpet. You can see it in my video „Drawing Lines with the Shoulder and Pelvis”, from May 23, 2021. „Big deal”, to quote Christopher Walken. I already wrote about the prime importance of a cozy and safe space to practice. A cozy carpet, a ready-to-roll safe space, no extra setup required, makes a big difference. It’s like an invitation to lie down on the floor and do more. „Come on down here Alfons, this feels so nice, how about some Shoulder Circles?”, says my new carpet every time my eyes catch sight of it.

In sports and traditional dance and in most types of physical therapy and in strength and conditioning training and in most other such modalities, if you followed the given instructions to the point you did a good job.

In sports, if someone excels at following instructions to the point, and keeps doing so without breaking, he will be rewarded big, both emotionally and physically – with strong social integration, an expansive network of contacts, fame, and big money. He will fly private and will get to chose intimate relationships with whomever seems most attractive. #pronouns

Therefore, there’re legit questions for someone who would consent to such a submission: How does someone learn to follow instructions so successfully? How must such a child or person be furnished genetically, socially, psychologically – what is immutable, what can be altered, and how?

And is this limited to sports? Or would following instructions to the point – and being able to sustain the submission – lead to such a wealth of rewards in other fields too?

I came to that question because I was pondering the characteristics of cognitive structure, as defined by Frank Smith, and the term „lesson” in regard to movement instructions. I’m not sure if I find the word „lesson” a good choice. I will have to think about it some more. However, Feldenkrais practitioners – and professionals from similar fields – do call their material „lessons”, not „instructions”. 

In dictionaries a „lesson” is defined as a unit of instruction, a period of learning or teaching, an activity that people do in order to learn something.

„Lesson” sounds a bit broader than „instruction”. „Lesson” is shorter and therefore more handy than „guided learning hours” or „assisted time for discovery and comprehension”.

„Machine language instructions” is something for robots on the assembly line. I find the orchestra of robots shown in video clips of Tesla’s Gigafactories fascinating. Humans often are required, and do have the capacity, to follow step-by-step instructions as well. Even though humans will never fully excel at that – compared to robots. I’m looking forward in anticipation to the first Robot Olympics, and I’m curious to see how humanoid robots will nail upright walking, jumping, running, crawling, cycling, swimming, and skating… their movements free of love, hope, gratefulness, resignation, resentment, belongingness, emotional history. We have never seen this kind of organisation in a humanoid body before, and in terms of efficiency, and biomechanics, and in probably many more aspects, we will be able to learn quite a bit from them.

One challenge of writing is this: I can strip my „lessons” down to the point that they look like mere movement instructions. And yet they are not: the „lesson” is all the things that are not the movement instructions. 

But can there be a „lesson” – experiment, discovery, comprehension, and all that – without movement instructions? Can there be learning without movement?

I was reading how children learn to make sense of the world, how they learn about the world, how we learn about the world. How we know that Paris is a city, and a chair is a chair, and that we can sort postage stamps by – for example – country, size, colour, or type of illustration.

“Everything that a child can perceive—whether a piece of furniture, a dog or a cat, or a letter of the alphabet—must be represented by a different category within his cognitive structure. If he has no system in his mind that separates dogs from cats, then he will perceive dogs and cats as the same kind of animal.” – excerpt from Frank Smith, „Comprehension and Learning”

I felt so excited while reading this. Oh, this makes so much sense! Oh, this is so interesting!

“When the topic is the human brain, there is a natural tendency to talk about categories that have names. Categories that have unique names are often referred to in psychology as »concepts«. But it is not necessary for a cognitive category to have a name. We can distinguish many kinds of objects for which we as individuals do not have a name. Infants distinguish classes of objects from each other long before they have names for them; in fact it is generally necessary to have a cognitive category before a name can be learned.” – from the same book

I was thinking, „Oh! I know this one! Babies try to put everything into their mouths and they discover what is edible or inedible, that’s categories without names.” Edible items: banana, breast-milk, water, porridge, french fries. Inedible items: big toe, fist, blanket, mom’s nose. I guess: at some point early in our babyhood we had our first successful, sufficiently pleasant, sensory only „this is edible” experience. And shortly after an equally successful but disappointing „this is inedible” experience. And thus we found out about the existence of „categories”, something that doesn’t exist physically, but does exist somehow anyways, and that has the power to group items into edible and inedible. A powerful discovery. I guess that night we slept very well.

I was excited to write a commentary and relate this to what I know about movement. How would I categorise movement? Would I sort it by functionality? Or group it up according to adjectives? How could or would or should I do it?

I did a Google search to see what others have thought of so far. Planes of motion. Primary movement patterns. Rotation. Flexion. Extension. Anti-Rotation. Anti-Flexion. Anti-Extension. Anti-Lateral Flexion. Hip Hinge. Hip Dominant. Vertical Push. Rotational and Diagonal. The movement direction of an exercise. The primary joint lever.

Ok, there goes my motivation and excitement. Reading these technical descriptions in isolation, all by renowned researchers as well as strength and conditioning coaches alike, made me feel tired. I find these bland lists, even when connected to strengthening and stretching exercises, hardly exciting. At least not at a first glance. I find it immediately more exciting to read about apples:

„The primary products of the oxidation of apple phenolic compounds are o-quinones, and the resulting colour of the cut fruit surface will depend on the type of phenol oxidised. Use of a short heat treatment (70-90°C) to inactivate the enzymes, or ultrafiltration to remove the o-quinone products, are two ways in which discolouration can be minimised in commercial products.” – excerpt from Apple Facts by Quadram Institute

That’s how they do it! I wondered why stuff nowadays stays looking sharp on the shelves. Growing up on the countryside, 30 years ago, sliced apples weren’t like that at all.

So I found that out about myself. There’s something else, something deeper about movement, something that connects it to my soul. The soul. Maybe that’s why we have this »concept« of »the soul«, to know if something touches someone’s soul or not. How come Moshé Feldenkrais’s movement sequences touch my soul, but learning how to correctly lift a barbell – and name the muscles and primary movement patterns involved – does not?

In my reading aloud morning reading session today was this sentence: „A remarkable working definition of memory might be the accumulated totality of all a person’s knowledge of the world.” From the book „Comprehension and Learning” by Frank Smith.

I paused. I read it again. Then I was relating it to myself and to what I already know. The term „memory” always – kinda – had a bitter connotation to me: „Stuff that is forced or required to be remembered, and I am – somewhat – able to reproduce as requested or needed.” I noticed that there’s not only bitterness, but also resentment in there. However, resentment is not a desirable feeling, even less so a feature of character. „Grateful, yes, but nobody wants to teach their children to be resentful”, Professor Peterson said in the podcast I listened to yesterday (The Psychology of the Psychedelics | Roland Griffiths – Jordan B Peterson Podcast – S4 E20). He was talking about Cain and Abel and how Cain became resentful over all his work that went unappreciated.

„Memory is the accumulated totality of all a person’s knowledge of the world.” I like that. Soothing. Yes. Why all that resentment?

The paragraph I read then was equally life-changing. I quote again from the book „Comprehension and Learning” by Frank Smith, „I would like to conclude with a word of guidance to the reader: read to comprehend, not to memorize. As long as you understand, read on, and where you meet difficulty try to go forward rather than backward. If I were asked to summarize the message of this book in one sentence, it would be that the effort to learn is an effort to comprehend. The principal implication for teachers, therefore, is that the effort to teach must be an effort to make comprehensible. My aim has been to interest rather than teach.” 

Finally a professor who values comprehension over memorization. What will the far future of education hold in stock for us in terms of values? Proficiency? Elegance, enjoyment, and ease? After my final graduation from my country’s schooling system it took a good two decades for the nightmares to disappear. But I’ve just realised that the absence of nightmares is not the end of the healing process.

Oh, and one more thing: when I study the movement sequences of Moshé Feldenkrais sometimes there’s movement instructions I can’t quite comprehend at first. In such cases I don’t know what he wants or what he’s talking about – since the audio recordings and transcripts are missing the live aspects of his classes. But afterwards, through my comprehension of the lesson in total, these instructions that were unclear at first will come together nicely. That’s a process I re-modelled for my videos. Sometimes I re-create these ambiguous moments of confusion by asking open-ended movement-based questions, or by not showing a movement, or by giving movement instructions first and moving myself later. Feldenkrais Sudoku.

I worked too much yesterday. I started out right after getting up and fell into bed at midnight, exhausted, headache during the night.

The hours I „bought” yesterday, I had to pay for them today.

Today went like this: the morning was lost. Brain fog, zombied out. The client call via Skype at lunchtime was all right, but I was terribly tired. Had a clear broccoli and cauliflower soup with cashew nuts and two bowls of rice. Then slept for one and a half hours, which threw me further off rhythm.

The evening was better. Watched and moved to one of my Youtube videos, then played with the movements from the Skype call earlier. Ate two small bananas and a toast, listened to a psychology podcast. Went for a walk in the sweet summer night and bought a durian fruit from a supermarket nearby.

„Would you please come to sit on the floor,” with your legs long, your knees extended. See if you can sit upright comfortably. „How far can you spread your legs apart from each other, comfortably?”

Point and roll to the left

And then lean on your left hand. Lean a bit back onto your left arm, as it was a bicycle kick stand, and you would park yourself like a bicycle. Then raise your right arm up at shoulder-height in front of you, as if you would point to the ice-cream truck in front of you. Not that there is one, but let’s just say. So, there we have ourselves the starting position for this movement.

And let’s just say that a movement is like a paragraph in an essay. „A paragraph should present a single idea. All of the paragraphs have to be arranged in a logical progression, from the beginning of the essay to the end.” to quote Professor Jordan B. Peterson’s Essay Writing Guide.

Then the ice-cream truck starts off to the left, around the corner to the left, to disappear behind you to the left. Think of all the delicious calories in ice-cream. Track the truck with your right hand, with your eyes, with your shoulders. Allow your right buttock to lift, allow yourself to roll onto your left buttock, allow your right knee to bend. All that. 

And how does your movement change when the calories are not delicious, but malicious? Is this a different way of pointing and turning?

Point and roll to the right

Then do the same thing to the right. But this time there’s no ice-cream truck. Focus solely on yourself. On your movements. On your contact points to the floor and to the air all around you. On all that is happening and not happening in yourself, with yourself, on all the things you’re thinking of, the things you could notice… Where do you initiate the movement? What’s the kinematic linkage, the timed sequence of parts involved? How much and when does your spatial orientation change? Where do you feel safe and comfortable, and where do you feel strain?

Or don’t. Maybe just do the movements without thinking, in a sort of attentive, receptive blank space, the same space we’re in when watching Netflix. But you’re consciously with yourself. You’re aware and present of yourself. You’re the main show.

Lift the right foot

„Would you please hold your right foot with your right hand,” and you might want to lean on your left hand again, probably place the left hand slightly behind you, a bit to the left of your left buttock. And if you want to be super stable you would point its fingers away from you, and if you would be ready to jump up to standing or roll backwards onto your back you would point its fingers more towards yourself. It all depends, it all depends.

Lift your right foot, extend your leg. Find a way to do this, to organise yourself. Once your leg is straight and your right foot up at shoulder-height (or higher) in front of you, that’s the new starting position. 

But somehow you need to get to the starting position first. Without pressure, without performance anxiety. Actually, if the knee doesn’t straighten out fully it’s ok too. It would be better for your lower back if you wouldn’t force it.

And then the movement: move your right foot a bit to the left, and to the right. See how far out to the right you can move your right leg. While it’s suspended in the air. You are still holding your right foot with your right hand. „And by the way, what’s the best way to hold your foot?” From inside your knee or from the outside? Would you hold your foot by its toes? By its big toe? By its arch or heel? What does make sense, what doesn’t? And why?

Lift the left leg, and both legs

Then do the same with your left leg. „What is it that we just did?” And then please lie down and rest on your back, get hold of both of your feet, and do the same thing with both legs.

Your left leg to the left, your right leg to the right. And if you would like to roll around and do all sorts of fun explorations, „Please be my guest.”

Rest

Remember to take rests in between. Whenever you need a rest lying on your back, for example. Or a rest by getting a glass of water. Something like that. Then continue.

Push and point and roll to the left

„Would you please come to sit on the floor,” with your legs long, your knees extended. Just this time lean on your right hand, as if your right arm was a bicycle kickstand. And lift your left hand up to shoulder height.

And again, turn to your left. Where’s the ice-cream truck? Where’s my ice-cream? This time the ice-cream is inside an Amazon drone, which is flying off to the left. Flying off. Up. Up!

Move your left hand to the left, up and around yourself, and your head, and your neck, and your sternum, the front side of your chest, all up and to the left. And again, your right buttock will lift, and you will roll on your left buttock. Your right knee might bend, and the instep of your right foot and some toe-nails might turn to touch the floor. Help with your right arm, push down against the floor with your right hand. Help yourself to roll. Where is the best place for your right hand? How do you have to organise yourself to do all that with ease?

Push and point and roll the the right

Do the same thing to the other side, to the right. This means: stand your left hand on the floor, lean on your left arm, push the floor with your left hand, and lift your right hand up, up and to the right. And all that.

Review

So here you have it. A whole bunch of ideas to play with. Try to find meaning in all this, and how the movements, the paragraphs, the ideas, connect. There’s a bigger story to it. A story of spreading the legs, of sitting upright, of twisting and arching, of feeling, noticing, and discovering. Some other day we might use the same movements to have a look at the Yoga Pigeon pose, the Feldenkrais Scout lessons, and the splits.

„My intention is to provide a broad framework, to encourage the development of a thoughtful and psychologically flexible person, rather than a programmed one. I try to present ideas from which implications flow naturally. Perhaps the greatest difference between this and more conventional exercise instructions is the almost complete absence of »implications and applications«. This is not a collection of helpful hints.” – this paragraph inspired by and partially quoted from Frank Smith, „Comprehension and Learning”

Alongside all of this, if you play with these ideas on a regular basis (whatever that is) you will, little by little, start to notice that your upright sitting might get better. Your hip joints might feel better. You might feel a lot better in many ways. But don’t take my word for it. This is not a hypnosis session. Try. Practice. Look for yourself.

On all fours, lift one leg at a time

„Would you please come to stand on all fours, on your hands and knees,” like in the balanced-table position in Yoga, or cat-camel or bird-dog position in fitness classes. And lift one leg, and then the other. And there’s different ways of doing so. As long as you extend your hip joints, and as long as you don’t arch your lower back instead of using your hip joints, an unreasonable use of your lower back so to say, all is good.

Then get up and walk. Enjoy your day, or the thing you were about to do before you came by this post. 

Cheerio!