STUDY WITH ALFONS

„Working titles are used when the official title has not yet been decided upon.” – Wikipedia

I’ve transcribed a few minutes from an audio recording by Moshé Feldenkrais, for writing a commentary. A mental as well as a writing exercise. A strategy to solidify the thoughts of my supersaturated soul. A pathway to equilibrium.

The commentaries crystallized effectively. Sentence by sentence. Minute details. Each word is a sponge that soaks up time. Three days in, no end in sight.

My first idea for a working title was „An autopsy of Shoulder Circles.” The wording. An emotional derailing, a critique to the fact that most of Moshé Feldenkrais’s live works (audio, video, and transcriptions thereof) are „buried” on private grounds (unfunny pun here); only purchasable under certain conditions, with usage restrictions, and for these reasons „dead” to the general public. Excluded from popular culture. Cut off from the blood stream. His books and recordings like driftwood: although impasse, some people can see something in it, find inspiration, some even build furniture from it.

„An autopsy”, this title never saw the light of day. Of course. I never called it like that.

Sometimes a question might be as weighty as a statement, but not as dangerous as a statement. When a question is stupid, it’s just a stupid question, but when a statement is stupid, people might hold you accountable and next thing you know is you’re hanging by your neck from a tree, looking at the tips of pitchforks.

Physical movement is like the structure of written text. The letters itself, the straight lines and curves, and how these are arranged into groups, and written line by line, they might even be visually appealing, but for the large part the inking itself is meaningless.

The meaning is somehow connect to, evoked, triggered by the structure. Only known to the writer and the reader. As humans we are constantly searching for meaning. Our souls are searching-for-meaning supercomputers.

The same could be said for spoken words. Even though the sound of someone’s voice might be pleasing, soothing, wonderful to hear, if they are speaking in a language we don’t understand their voice is more or less meaningless. But THERE IS meaning behind the actual sounds. We use speech as a vehicle for meaning.

I close the loop: some Feldenkrais teachers sometimes make it sound like as if there was some sort of mysterious magic behind all those movements. And that the movements themselves are not at all that important. Is that 70ties-style marketing talk? Or is that a way of saying that, much like text and speech, movement has BOTH structure AND meaning?

Garfield, the cat from the American comic strip created by Jim Davis, once said: „There’s no cat behind the cat.” What did he mean by that?

Maybe there’s nothing deeper, nothing more powerful, nothing more important to any person than being able to move well, without discomfort, without pain?

„Movement” as in the vigorous movements of playing sports, in the minimal movements of sleep, the moving in unison with another person, or the pleasures of taking a walk in a group, the movements necessary for your work, for leisure, the movements for chewing food, or the movements for passing stool, or the movements necessary for visual perception, or rolling the eyes, throwing the hands up, speaking, laughing, sending flowers to your mother, or sending a kiss, all the thinkable and unthinkable movements.

Maybe there’s nothing deeper, nothing more powerful, nothing more important to any person than being able to use movement smoothly, as a vehicle for purpose and meaning?

Does movement have both structure and meaning? If true, I could say this: Improve the way you move… and let me throw this one in too: „improve the way you think about movement”, and you will improve your life. True or not?

„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.