STUDY WITH ALFONS

„The meaning and value [of a Feldenkrais Functional Integration lesson] may have nothing to do with the improvement of movement, but with something much deeper, more powerful, and more important to the person.” – David Zemach-Bersin

Live classes

A teacher of Somatic Education provides an environment where everyone – including the teacher – can learn to be comfortable, explore and study without rushing towards defining processes, pinning down explanations or fixings things rather than acknowledge and live in the process. With the process being „all that is and that occurs in the time of a lesson.”

Video recordings

I don’t know of any recording where Moshé Feldenkrais was teaching without speaking to a specific person directly. He alone on his own, solitary with a video camera or microphone – such probably never happened.

He seemed to always have at least half a dozen people around him, at least, either for support, or to learn from him, or to be with him in some sort of master-apprentice sort of way. 

Moshé Feldenkrais always seemed to teach in group settings, and therefore there were always group dynamics. And even though „Awareness Through Movement” classes were audio only spoken instructions, students in class would get plenty of visual cues – either from gestures of Moshé Feldenkrais himself, or by looking at fellow students. 

And as it is with visual information competing with auditory information, some spoken instructions probably have been skipped or omitted, and neither the camera nor the microphone could catch all the things going on in the room.

Audio recordings

While most sensory information is lost – like temperature, scents and smells, air pressure, the energy of the room, moisture, and all visual information – audio recordings still can capture a lot. You could probably reconstruct a fair bit of the mentioned sensory impressions just by listening deeply, by immersing yourself in an audio recording.

In fact, as Fritz Perls and audiobooks are proof, audio is a powerful category on its own. I can’t believe I just threw Fritz Perls and audiobooks randomly together. The hour is getting late, I already did 8+ hours of writing today. #jollies

Transcripts

Written text, the language of those not present. Lost in transcription. Things that don’t lend themselves easily to transcripts:

• Much of the quality of speaking (warm, cold, rushed, laboured, enthusiastic, bored, cheerful, encouraging, compassionate, …),
• Much of the pacing and rhythm
• Other things I can’t think of right now

Benefits and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of transcripts:

• Highlight-able,
• Searchable,
• Can be revised many times over before being published; the same could be said about blog posts #tongue-in-cheek

Summaries

This is a good one, could be a blog post on its own, bear with me. Here it comes: hardly anyone would summarise, for example, the Shoulder Circles lesson into something like this: 

„In this lesson you will learn that about thirty slow, light, and short movements with your left shoulder are sufficient to change the fundamental tonus of the muscles, which then will spread to the entire left half of the body. Thus the action becomes easy to perform and the movement becomes light.” – inspired by the book ”Awareness Through Movement”, Lesson 3, by Moshé Feldenkrais

In short: people usually don’t summarise on such an abstract level. It would take quite a bit of experience and/or training to understand. That’s why people will more likely summarise on a lower abstraction level, like this: 

„In this lesson you will be side-lying on your right side, and move your left shoulder forwards, backwards, up, down, make clockwise circles, and lastly counter-clockwise circles.”

Which is very different, and in turn lacks the abstract layer of insights and effects.

Maybe I would need to distinguish between descriptions and summaries.

(10 mins) In side-lying on your right side, move your left shoulder 

• forwards,
• backwards,
• forwards-and-backwards, 
• up, 
• differentiation: while shoulder up towards your head, your left ear down towards your shoulder (lift head), 
• down,
• up-and-down, 
• clockwise circles, 
• counter-clockwise circles,

Rest on your back, feel and observe. Which shoulder feels better, which one feels more like you would like it to be?

Which one sparks joy?

„And, by the way, can you feel any difference in your face between the right side and the left side? And your hip joint, doesn’t the left side, in general, feel different from the right one?” – Moshé Feldenkrais

Stories can be presented from various narrative points of view, in various timelines and structures, and in various styles, such as ornamented or plain. 

Could similar things be said for movement sequences?

Almost two decades ago, when I first studied the works of Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais in a professional training program, most of my teachers and fellow students didn’t seem to worry much about it, but I think how you address people makes a huge difference. Not just in terms of social class, but also on a psychological level in regards to how well a lesson will work to inspire, empower, and „restore each person to their human dignity.”

When I’m giving movement instructions, not making observations, but giving actual instructions, and I instruct you to „The shoulder moves forwards”, instead of „move your shoulder forwards”, what does that make you? What does that make me? Did you ever think about that?

„The shoulder moves forwards”, the disembodied shoulder moves on its own, and you as the owner of that shoulder are a mere witness, a silent observer. Who am I to support, maybe even create, this kind of silent disfranchisement? Did you sign a consent form before class that would allow me to subliminally objectify your shoulder?

Well, maybe, it’s a small thing. But keep your eyes peeled. When teaching I might make such statements too. And you, as my student, on that occasion, should remember to actively choose if you let that shoulder run like some young dog in a park, or would rather slide your shoulder around your ribcage.

Also.

In Austria, speaking ze German language, when we teach to groups, we need to choose between the singular thee and the plural y’all. 

When I would say to the group „Please move your shoulders forwards”, I would address all of them as a whole, like a flock of birds. Ontogeny, Phylogeny, boy scouts and classes, to-may-to, to-mah-to. 

People come to me on their individual paths. And even though they are all in the same room, flocked together, in mutual respect, and likely making new friends all along, they didn’t come for the purpose of forming a formation. I’m not training fitness nation, not a military platoon. This is why in teaching to groups I prefer the second-person singular over the plural you.

In a group class I can still see each person as an individual. I can see each student learning, I can see her (or his) physical movements, and to some extend even her (or his) mental activity and emotional state – as reflected through her (or his) movements and physical expressions. And through that strange thing that has no better name than „her (or his) energy”. 

And even though there might be 20 people in the room, and even though you might have chosen to lie down in the row furthest away from me, cozily curled up behind that support beam, next to the wall heater… „Please move your shoulder forwards”, or maybe even better: „Please move thy shoulder forwards”, I may not disturb nor judge, but yes, I care about you and… I see thee.

Over the past two decades I’ve experimented with multiple ways of writing down movement sequences. My journey started with the popular stick-figures-with-arrows format, commenced to screenshots with annotations, to multi-column spreadsheet variants, to verbose transcript-like documents, to my wonderfully concise and visually appealing study cards. 

My two books „My Feldenkrais Book” and the „Getting Better Day By Day” workbook are both part and product of that journey.

What is my question? 

I think I need a couple more blog posts to find out what my question is. Finding the right question is just as important as finding the right answer. Sometimes a question is „on the tip of my tongue”, and won’t just roll off yet.

„What will you teach tonight?”
„Shoulder circles.”

Some movement sequences have been taught by so many teachers, so many times, and in so many ways, that they have a title people can immediately make sense of. Which people? All people? Is the lesson titled „Shoulder circles” really unambiguous?

„What will you eat tonight?”
„Italian.”

Fair enough.

„Little red riding hood. Let’s start the story in a different way: It was dark inside the wolf.” – Margaret Atwood for MasterClass

Me looking into how to teach reading in order to learn more about how to teach movement – and sensing, and feeling, and thinking – was a blissful ride so far. There’s plenty of quality research on how-to acquire literacy skills.

I can’t say the same about story writing. Googling „How to write down a story” is just as poor of an experience as reading the News Feed on Facebook, or stepping out of an airport in a developing country, or any other place where people scream for attention in order to sell you something. And not always to the best of your interest.

Most „resources” about story writing, the best ranking ones on Google that is, assume that you don’t have a story yet, and need to develop all its elements from scratch. But what if you already have your story, just too many questions on how to write it down? Sure, it’s possible to adapt to any kind instructions, but where are the proper resources, the research, the delightful teachings of seasoned essayists?

Out in the wild (children’s playground or shopping mall), one of the first rules my mom taught me after I’ve learned to walk was this: „Whenever you lose me you walk back to the last place we’ve seen each other, and you stay there and you wait for me.” To go back to the last place where I wasn’t lost and take it from there, how’s that for a story? One of the first storybooks my grandparents owned, and one of the first storybooks I’ve ever read, was a collection of stories by the brothers Grimm. Maybe I should track back all the way to the brothers Grimm and see what I can learn from them. Let me google that…

„The rise of Romanticism during the 18th century had revived interest in traditional folk stories, which to the Grimms and their colleagues represented a pure form of national literature and culture. The Brothers Grimm established a methodology for collecting and recording folk stories that became the basis for folklore studies. Between the first edition of 1812–1815 and the seventh (and final) edition of 1857, they revised their collection many times, so that it grew from 156 stories to more than 200” – Wikipedia, the Brothers Grimm

Holla die Waldfee! This path looks promising.

The day passed by like… like… like my youth. At times I thought there’s so much I can still do and time is plenty and life is long and looking back it was over in a blink of an eye.

I lost a lot of time in my morning session in the coffee shop. Instead of working I was reading up on the life of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose novella Carmella I read on the weekend. I even found a little bit of conspiracy surrounding the circumstances of his death in 1873, just one year after his Vampire novella got published. I felt perfectly entertained. Ah yes, and I watched a bit of Jeff Cavaliere’s AthleanX. I’m particularly interested in how he’s teaching one-on-one. I’m very impressed by his mastery of the English language and how he uses it to crush it on Youtube. Side by side to the genetically gifted players of The New York Mets Jeff looks totally like an underdog.

What else did I do?

I filmed AND edited a video. I call this a success. A more comprehensive version of the shoulder-and-hip-circles class was on my personal wish list for over a month now. However, after listening to two audio recordings of Moshé Feldenkrais today (both from ATM lessons for Elder Citizens) I reconsidered my big plans and went for a 10 minute version.

Now, with the help – and burden – of daily blogging I’m improving my English language skills a little bit myself as well. No big jumps or anything fancy, but enough to see my shortcomings, to see and hear things I previously didn’t. Decades of watching TV series and movies in English, as well as using English in my profession, didn’t seem to yield much progress beyond the level I was stuck at. Years and years was I scouting the shelves of libraries and book stores – and the Internet – to try to find out how to become better at English. Much to my disappointment I found very few books that I liked or trusted in being able to live up to their highly promising covers. I bought two dozen or so books on the topic, including an ESL preparation textbook the size of a cupboard, but most of these books were just dead collections of phrases, grammar, dead-boring exercise drills, and pages that could suck any reader’s life-force right out of their eyes. Surprisingly the ultimate answer to improving language skills was not in a particular book, but in the medium „book” itself: All it takes is to read more self-selected literature, preferably fiction, preferably read aloud. Forget about that speed-reading and flit-through-100-books-per-year nonsense.

It’s almost midnight already, I finally finished my blog post, but I’m still uploading my video to Youtube and working on the meta data (thumbnail, description, filling out the upload forms). Tomorrow I want to produce a transcript of today’s video, and then I want to improve it, re-write it. And then I want to film the same lesson again.

I enjoyed today’s filming quite a bit. And the thought of improving it, and with it my way of teaching, my language, my phrasing, my precision, it excites me. It sparks joy. Maybe it is a way of tidying up, and all the pleasures and possibilities that come with it. At the end of the day there is another day, and enough time.

Regardless of what millionaire motivational gurus shout out loudly: Writing a blog post every day is not perfectly normal. At least Sundays should be off.