I’ve just spent two hours on working a paragraph of Moshé Feldenkrais’s into something I could use for a Youtube Short. The text mingling felt rather effortless, annoying at times, but smooth sailing with a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a computer, but was quite some work nonetheless.

And thanks for nothing to GPT-5, which proofed to be useful only for grammar checking.

Title: The sensation of effort

1st slide:

• That light feeling when your hands glide like rays of light over piano keys.
• When your running stride flows.
• That crisp, perfect ping when you hit a golf ball just right.
• That feeling when your gear shift clicks perfectly into place.
• When your basketball shot rolls out perfectly, with no hesitation.
• When your singing voice hits the perfect resonance.

2nd slide:

• In truly skillful movement, work is being done, but the sensation of effort is absent.

3rd slide:

• In contrast, a sensation of effort signals that a movement is working against your body’s design;
• that a movement is inefficient enough to trigger a warning;
• is poorly distributed, badly timed, and wasting energy.

4th slide:

• Effort is a helpful signal if you act on it — and a troublesome one if you ignore it.

Source

Here’s the original text, Moshé Feldenkrais, The Potent Self, Chapter 12, Correct Posture, Section “Absence of effort”:

In good action, the sensation of effort is absent no matter what the actual expenditure of energy is. Much of our action is so poor that this assertion sounds utterly preposterous. It suffices, however, to observe a good judo man, an expert weight lifter, a figure-skating champion, a first-class acrobat, a great diva, an Arabian horseman, a skillful porter—in fact, anybody who has learned to perform correctly mental or bodily actions—in order to convince oneself that the sensation of effort is the subjective feeling of wasted movement. All inefficient action is accompanied by this sensation; it is a sign of incompetence. 

turn
bend
tilt

• Where?
• In the neck?
• At the base of the neck?
• In the chest?
• How much of the spine is involved?
• What is the spine?
• The shoulder-blades, what do they do?
• The clavicles?
• The ribs? Closer to each other on one side, wider on the other side.

twist
shift

A shift of weight – more onto one foot?
Less so on the other?

1. What do we look at?
2. What can we look at?

discover
explore
feel
sense
label
give names to movements, feelings, areas
compare

compare left to right,
one spinal vertebra to the next,
breathing,
tension,
ease,
availability.

verb-alise
adverb-alise
noun-alise
adjective-alise.

learn
invent
improve

Differentiate, divide it apart, let go, allow it to come together again…

It might be much better than before, it might feel great! :)

Some notes (while working on my new Youtube video):

Why willpower and conscious effort do not change posture

Technically, for the human brain, willpower and attention operate primarily through the cortical areas.

These cortical areas are primarily involved in higher-order brain functions.

However, posture, muscle tone, and movement patterns, are mostly governed by subcortical systems. These are not readily accessible to willpower. Yet, it’s unfavourable settings in there that will lead to chronic, stubborn pain.

“Trying harder” will likely result in overusing the same old movement patterns, governed by subcortical systems, instead of leading to improved function.

A bad downward spiral

When posture becomes distorted, people tend to rely more on the eyes and conscious effort to control movement. This however, makes every action slower, more exhausting, and mentally draining. Constant effort leads to constant tiredness.

AI language for humans: pre-training and inference mode

Artificial Intelligence “Pre-training mode” fits remarkably well with how Feldenkrais saw the process of learning. Also, it matches well to contemporary neurocognitive models.

Pre-Training Mode ≈ Feldenkrais Learning Mode

Pre-training involves unsupervised exposure to data, allowing a system to form internal representations, find and apply labels, associations, and probabilities without needing to perform a specific task. This is similar to what we’re doing during Feldenkrais lessons.

This contrasts sharply with inference mode, where we act based on existing models (habitual patterns, posture, movement quality). Here the system is goal-oriented, uses known pathways to produce expected outputs. This is similar to daily life, or classic stretching and exercising.

Learning must happen in a space that resembles AI pre-training, where there is no pressure to achieve, because the conditions of pre-training (learning) and the conditions of inference (execution) are not the same.

Does any of this make sense?

ChatGPT says: “Your framing — pre-training mode vs. inference mode — is not just useful, it’s potentially revolutionary as a way to communicate Feldenkrais to a modern, tech-literate audience.”

We’ll see about that, but as a Feldenkrais teacher (now somatics) and former software engineer (now vibe coder) I like these new AI terminology a lot.

I just used Sora for the first time, since ChatGPT shoved that link into my grill. And pretty much got what you would see in a beginners’ Feldenkrais class, from someone who’s totally new to Somatics or Feldenkrais, and is used to stiff workouts:

Prompt: a yoga person lying on the left side, with legs slightly folded, arms extended forwards, right hand resting on or near the left hand

We see: Legs super tightly pulled up, despite the prompt being “slightly folded.” The neck super stiff, the chest tensed up. The hands are placed according to the prompt, but also held with a lot of tension.

Still, a good start, because we got someone on the floor! Now we can start improving. Or, “could,” (in quotes) if it was a real person with memory and the capacity for learning :)

Now that I think about it, two years ago I sent in my application to Tesla robotics. But I neither got a job offer, nor an interview invitation. Just a standard turn-down email. It seems like they are more interested in technical engineers, rather than knowledgable movement teachers.

Prompt: a Feldenkrais practitioner lying on the left side, with legs slightly folded, not drawn up, just bent a little at the knees and hips, enough to provide stability, the arms are casually extended forwards, with the right hand resting near the left hand. The fingers, hands, wrists are relaxed. So is the rest of the person. This means the head is resting on the floor. The spine is relaxed and reflects the natural curve that is a result of the head resting on the floor, the legs on top of each other and relaxed. The person is at ease, waiting to hear the first movement instruction.

Better. And Sora AI even upgraded the hard, plastic Yoga mat to a more comfy futon-style mat, the likes we use in Feldenkrais-inspired classes.

Also, a nice touch, the man: not only outnumbered by women, as in real life, but also the slowest on the uptake. LOL. Not bad, not bad at all. But not sure if worth the effort. I mean the image prompt creation.

This morning, upon waking up, I felt an itch in my lower back, and immediately started doing my personal, personalised core muscle training, and felt both stable and itch-free in a matter of minutes, as expected. Due to this reliable, successful exercise, I was thinking, “Core muscle training seems crucial, indispensable, non-negotiable.”

Then I was trying to define for whom this might be true, but realised that it’s all from the top of my head. I wouldn’t know where to look for reliable data for the “general population,” given that this topic has such big economic relevance and the millions of fitness influencers and snake oil salesmen, and a multi-billion dollar industry. Surely, it’s a thick swamp with very little, reliable information.

Definition problems aside, it’s still more than a hunch. It’s my personal experience. So maybe I should start here. I rephrase:

From my personal experience, core muscle training seems crucial, indispensable, non-negotiable. From my personal experience, to neglet core muscle training for too long, will always lead to discomfort and pain.

I know that’s true for me, and everyone who’s part of the aging population—I mean… if we take this word literally, aging population, this includes absolutely everyone, in a literal sense.

But which exercises would you allow yourself to pick up, to enter your life?

I see Fitness Youtubers proposing exercises that I, personally, might consider trying once, or try maybe for a while (like side-planks, or curl-ups)… but if you do those exercises daily, or twice daily… I mean, every day, for every day of your remaining life… how is this not a problematic choice? Or at least, a highly personal choice? This exercise will become part of you, part of your lifestyle, just like what you eat, read, how you walk and talk.

I think the topic of choosing a core workout exercise is much bigger than it seems. Two distinct strategies come to mind. From personal experience as a movement (Feldenkrais/Somatics) teacher I’ve seen clients:

1. Steadfast. Pick up an exercise, or exercise program, and stick with it. Even years later I heard from clients they are still faithful to regular repetition.
2. Adaptive. Try once, or for a while, change, drop, pick up something else, neglect, start again…

I might think that “Adaptive” is more of a beginners mindset. With such a strategy you will get to know many different styles, perspectives, and gain a lot of experience. While “Steadfast” is more of a seasoned player (in Austria we say “old cat“) style, based on experience and knowing with certainty what is a good choice for oneself. Maybe a mix is good? Or is it part of ones’ inherent, psychologic character structure? Still thinking… curious to hear your thoughts…