STUDY WITH ALFONS

I was driving down a narrow two lane street. The car in front of me was going slower and slower and slower. Then it blinked to the left while pulling over to the right, and came to a halt at the right side of the street.

Why did he blink to the left when he pulled to the right? I figured the driver used his signal lights NOT to indicate that he is going to the right, but to signal me that I shall pass him on his left side. 

Interesting. „Creative use” of his car’s turn signals. Made me question traffic rules and our common agreements on the use of traffic signals altogether.

I notice something similar in movement classes. 

When we are standing, or sitting, then everyone is very clear about:

• Up is where the head is.
• Down is where the feet are.
• In the back is where the back is.
• In front is… in front.

However, I often start my movement classes with lying down on the floor, supine in a horizontal position, lying on the back with legs extended. In this position, suddenly, the „creative use” of directions starts:

• Up is suddenly no longer where the head is, but where the ceiling is.
• Down is no longer where the feet are, but gets reassigned to where the floor is. 
• In front is where the ceiling is. Double tap here. 
• In the back is still in the back, but now that’s also where the floor is. Two is better than one, huh?

Maybe that’s not even a re-assignment of directions. Maybe that’s how many of us see the world, our position in its coordinates, the sky is up and the floor is down, always, invariably so, not coupled to our own orientation.

But how can I lead a beginners movement class, when a good half of my students erased two directions from existence?

„In true dialogue, both sides are willing to change.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

There’s a famous monk here in Vietnam, the father of Engaged Buddhism. He has published over 130 books, including more than 100 in English language, which have sold over 5 million worldwide.

Unfortunately, in November 2014, he experienced a severe brain hemorrhage, which put him in a wheelchair. Since then he underwent multiple — I quote Wikipedia – „aggressive” therapies. He’s still being wheeled around though, and is said to be still unable to speak.

After spending most of his life abroad, these days he’s back to his home in Vietnam. However, for his medical care they are flying-in famous doctors from abroad, to administer their medications and needles. It’s complicated, because of the COVID-19 situation. But they have the means, so it’s possible.

I just don’t know how mindful someone can swallow pills and how mindful a therapist can stick needles into their client. And how much of „aggressive” treatment someone can take (or needs) before looking for something better.

I’m in Vietnam too. Just a short domestic flight away from him. It’s quite ironic. Even though I’m not specialised in stroke patients, nevertheless, with the teachings of Moshé Feldenkrais I could open a new world to him. After all I’m regarded as a distinguished, accomplished Feldenkrais practitioner, approved of by many. For the famous monk it would be very soothing, healing, magnificent even; a big relief to experience this kind of becoming aware, learning, and improving ability again. Western vegans have a track record of living well beyond 100 years of age. He might even take a few steps again. Maybe write, or dictate, a new book.

But there seems to be no way to bring us two together. More to my disadvantage than his, I guess. With such a teaching success I would benefit much more than he would. Allowing me to work with him would put me on the map of history and secure my livelihood for all years to come.

He on the other hand, even if unable to walk and speak, his new way of sitting and silent teaching touches upon all our souls, and I guess he’s happy inside, no matter what the outside world presents to him.

Something has changed. After something like 42 days of daily blogging I no longer have to look for topics. The topics are storming into me. They try to tsunami out of me.

„Here is the key distinction. If it’s work, people try to figure out how to do less. And if it’s art, we try to figure out how to do more. And when we put kids in the factory we call school, the thing we built to indoctrinate them into compliance, why are we surprised that the question is ‘Will this be on the test?’ Someone who is making art doesn’t say, ‘Can I do one less canvas this month?’ They don’t say, ‘Can I write one less song this month?’ They don’t say, ‘Can I touch one fewer person this month?’ It’s art. They want to do more of it. But when it’s work, when it’s your job, of course you want to do less of it.” – Seth Godin

Suddenly this quote from Seth Godin’s TEDx talk „Stop stealing dreams”, which I always thought I understood, suddenly I experience it. I’m living it. My bones are moving.

I did invent a couple of  movement sequences before, just the way Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais did. I designed them from scratch, and I was very happy with them, just as I was very happy with some of my blog posts.

However, I never committed myself to invent a new movement sequence every day, day after day, as a practice. But this is what Moshé Feldenkrais is said to have done. And I guess, after some time, the movement sequences just spurted out of him. Over time he created hundreds, some say well over a thousand, of his brilliant lessons.

Researchers have put The Word Gap of children from different social backgrounds somewhere between 3 million words and 30 millions words. How many millions is it?

Officials might throw such big numbers around just in order to collect money for their NGO programs (and of course, probably more importantly, for their management fees). Just saying. But that’s another story. There’s strong arguments for the existence of The Word Gap. It is real.

I looked up some numbers: 130 words per minute is a very comfy speed for speaking, listening, or reading. That’s 7800 words per hour. All seven Harry Potter books combined contain a total of a bit more than 1 million words (1,084,170 words to be precise). You do the math.

That’s something like five months of daily reading out loud for one hour.

I’m pretty certain that such a gap exists for movement too.

However, the currency seems to be a different one. In The Word Gap we’re looking at life chances and most importantly The Income Gap. With movement, I guess, the currency is not „money” but „wellbeing”.

In terms of closing The Movement Gap by systematic, guided means, looking at my numbers I can report this:

Movement sessions work both as a) DIY approach from my videos or audio recordings, or b) as personally guided sessions – or as a combination of a) and b). Especially with hands-on the second approach might be faster, a bit more efficient, and probably more personal.

My clients are usually at least 25 years old. And equally distributed over all age groups above that. I guess below 25, movement related problems (as in „mathematical problems” and as in „medical problems”) are attributed to a lack of sleep, drugs, choice of friends, or luck. Once a critical threshold is passed, people find out that it’s 1. something else 2. they can do something about it. Some people realise that before 25 years of age, or at any age above that. And some, obviously, never.

It usually takes 5 to 10 of my guided movement sessions to be able to see significant improvements in overall movement patterns and movement quality. Clients feel these differences usually in (or after) the first session, in the form of much reduced pain and much elevated comfort. But it usually takes 10 or more sessions before they realise they have improved in very deep, significant ways.

Some clients get hooked on this realisation and do many more sessions. Which, of course, sets them significantly apart from everyone else. It’s like the seeing walking amongst the blind. Although, obviously, the blind couldn’t care less.

There’s more to it. There’s a big cultural component.

Usually children are inspired by the people around them. They learn to move like „them” – like the people around them move. They become part of a family, „he walks like his father”, or they say „she has the smile of her mother”.

They also become part of a location based culture. People from Italy, in general, walk differently to people from (just for example) China, Cambodia, Japan, Germany, or England. These differences in movement are so significant that forensic experts can attribute the shape of human bones to their respective culture of origin. I don’t think it’s genetics only. I assert that form follows function, to a significant degree.

Now. If (for example) 90 % of an adult population has acquired spine deformities and faulty movement patterns through a lack of movement or an overemphasis on specialised movement (such as sitting), then their children will still learn from these adults, and copy their problematic patterns.

Yeah. This sounds bad. I wish I could say „April Fool’s”.

There might be a safety layer in between though. Maybe it’s like with overfishing: if we would just leave the Oceans alone for a bit, they would recover. Maybe it’s the same with children. And adults. If we would just allow them to move a bit, and not confine them to indoor space and chairs all day, then they might recover.

„Mature people need to discern by themselves what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what it is doing to them. They must decide if it is good or not good.” – Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais

In 1902 the Federal Council issued binding „Rules for German Language Spelling” for the entire German Empire. The new spelling was introduced by decree on January 1, 1903 in the authorities and on April 1, 1903 (not a joke) in schools. It was also complied to in Austria and Switzerland.

Before 1903 everyone would write pretty much in any way they could, found fit or found pleasing. What a time to be alive!

After 1903 in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, what is correct spelling and what is incorrect spelling has been defined. And went straight up to debate. Since that time people have been arguing vigorously, heatedly, some respectful, some full of anger, on what is correct and incorrect. #oxfordcomma

I feel for every child that went through a decade (or longer) of compulsory schooling. For having had to sit quietly at the mercy of whomever was in charge of their factory-like processing at any time. I understand that this might have wiped some children’s personality clean of the ability to protest, freed the brain of quite a bit of its original creativity, destroyed dreams, and wrapped and invisible iron cast around the children’s bodies and minds. In some statistics less than 5 % of children graduate without spinal deformities. These deformities were acquired while in school. But who is measuring deformities in their feeling and thinking, in their creative abilities?

For a great many children, long before the end of their schooling process, one main, fearful question was already successfully imprinted into their brains, whatever the task at hand may be:

„Am I doing it correctly?”

Did Picasso ask this question when he painted? Did Bighead and Lil Pump check with their music teachers if the lyrics in their song Gucci Gang are correct? (Youtube flagged their mumble-jumble as age-restricted) Does Plasteed check if his dance moves are correct? Does Lil Buck worry if he uses his feet correctly?

In recent years Austrian writer Wolf Haas became very famous in German speaking countries. For his crime stories. The stories itself are great, but what is remarkable is the language he uses in his books. He omits words, cuts sentences shorts, uses spoken language in writing. This makes his writing very easy to read, and his words come alive vividly.

Technically it’s all wrong. Writing like this? He would have failed to graduate from school. But now he’s a bestselling author. That’s a bit of a problem for the system. Thus, a lot has been written about Wolf Haas’s writing. Linguists went full throttle at it. A whole bunch of academic papers have been published about his use of language.

To me Wolf Haas is a national hero. Not because of his bestselling books. I love his books. But they don’t make him a hero. Wolf Haas is a hero because he had the nerves and the guts to stand up against the schooling system. Wolf Haas is a hero because he gave millions of children, all generations to come, the permission to write in novel ways. To invent their own style of writing. No matter what the overlord teachers in charge of the processing-of-children are saying. Because they, too, read bestselling author Wolf Haas.

Btw, I certainly do check if my spelling is correct. And I do check if my movements flow well, and connect well, when I’m rolling on the floor.

„Please hold your leg below the knee”, trips up many beginner students in Feldenkrais lessons. Whose fault is it? The student’s? The teacher’s? Or may we blame language itself?

The famous psycholinguist Frank Smith said, „Nothing is neutral; there is no room for free or idiosyncratic variation. With language every difference makes a difference.” The longer I ponder and play with this statement, the more I can relate to it.

„Last night I saw an elephant in my pyjamas. How he got in my pyjamas, I’ll never know.”, Groucho Marx’s classic joke, a prime example of syntactic ambiguity. „When the alarm sounded, I saw her duck. How her red-billed teal duck got into our house we’ll never know.”, to expand on Richard Nordquist’s textbook example. He said, „I know a little Greek”, while he watched her paint with enthusiasm.

Ambiguity can be used for laughs; and it needs to be precisely put in this regard. We can only truly laugh at a joke when we understand it.

„She opposes rules which hinder personal growth”, does that mean she opposes all rules in general? „She opposes those roles which hinder personal growth” would make it more specific. Was the ambiguity simply an oversight? Or on purpose? An omission in favour of brevity? We need to know, what is she up to?

The Devil’s representative in Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles, is especially fond of ambiguity, and uses it often.

Martha: „Speak frankly, sir, none is there you have met? Has your heart ne’er attach’d itself as yet?”

Mephistopheles: „One’s own fire-side and a good wife are gold and pearls of price, so says the proverb old.”

Trying to get a straight answer from Mephistopheles is a hopeless endeavour.

This was a long excursion.

Which knee is it now? The left knee or the right one? And which hand? And where is „below the knee”? How far below? Provided that „behind” and „below” are two different locations. Behind and in front, above and below. As they are so well aware in the business of Real Estate: „location, location.”

These differences do make big differences. Not just physically, but also culturally. People take such things very seriously. Think of the difference between writing with either the left hand or the right hand. In his 1914 textbook, The Hygiene of the School Child, Stanford University psychologist Lewis M. Terman concluded that up to half of all stuttering among school children resulted from attempts to transform left-handed children into right-handers. It’s outrageous.

Sometimes there’s ambiguity in my movement classes simply because I made a mistake. But if I use ambiguity on purpose I would, for example, do it for such reasons:

• to challenge students to keep the context in mind,
• to provide a wide variety of options, spur creativity, leave things in the open, maybe in order to drive students towards self-proficiency, help them to improve their process of self-inquiry, and ultimately, opening a road towards a feeling of mastery

It’s like giving students paper, colours and a topic, „Let’s draw raindrops on a lake”, and let them explore, find, try, learn, have an interesting time. And also let them decide if and how they want to critique their movements and movement qualities. I will observe how they calibrate, or not, before I provide more specifics towards the achievements and objectives I had in mind.

In November 2017 (for the record) I attended The Comedy Workshop with Leanne Davis, at the formidable Youtube Space London. These studios are located directly under Google, in the same shiny new building. High security measures upon entering. For pre-registered, background-checked attendees with 10k+ subscribers only. Gave it kind of a VIP feeling. Cheerful crowd of Youtube professionals and high performers. Made me feel 10% VIP and 90% unbaked cookie dough.

One of the assignments was to create some funny sketches, and then perform them for the other participants. I preferred just to watch and cheer, because for my life I wouldn’t be able to come up with an impromptu sketch.

Three weeks later, in the safety of my home, inspiration finally came upon me. This is what I wrote (again, for the record):

Scene 1. Fisherman I

A fisherman at a small lake, sitting on a mini-chair, fishing. He’s waiting patiently, when suddenly the line catches. He howls in his catch: a small fish. Carefully, not to hurt the fish, he removes the hook. While throwing the fish back into the lake he says: “I let you off the hook this time”.

Scene 2. At a market

Someone strolling by a small fruits & veggies market stand. She looks at a bowl of apples. She likes what she sees. Next her gaze falls onto some oranges. However, the oranges do not look fresh, one even has a mouldy patch on it. She complains to the shop owner: „Why do these [pointing at the apples] look so fresh when those [pointing at the oranges] look so old?”. The shop owner replies: “Sorry madam, you can’t compare apples to oranges”.

Scene 3. In an apartment

A home-owner type of guy comes home with a big bag flung over his shoulder. He walks through the living room and passes by his wife. They kiss Hello. She asks him about the bag over his shoulder, “What’s in there?” she asks, „Nothing really”, he answers, „just a couple of sports clothes”, he lies. He seems to be relieved when she lets him go and he continues his way into the bedroom. He closes the door. He sits down onto the bed.  He opens up the bag and there it is: a very cute, little kitten. Meow. The guy says: „I let you out of the bag now”.

Scene 4. Fisherman II

A fisherman at a small lake, sitting on a mini-chair, fishing (just like in the previous fisherman scene). He’s waiting patiently, when suddenly the line catches. He howls in his catch: a small fish. Disappointedly he looks at the fish in his hands, then the camera zooms out and we can see two more people: a bystander, and another fisherman, a few feet away, who just pulled out a much bigger fish. The bystander points his finger at the other fisherman and comments: „He has a much bigger fish to fry”.

Scene 5. Ice skating on a lake

Close-up of a woman’s face. She’s shouting: „I told you once and I told you twice. If that happens again there will be trouble! Just think about what your father would say. It’s really time to pull yourself together! Take this as a warning! …” While the shouting continues the camera zooms out further. Now we can see her shouting at her little boy, who’s in skating shoes in front of her on a frozen lake. Camera zooms out some more and a sign becomes visible, saying „Danger – Thin Ice”.