"Do a little less than your utmost while learning... continuing to do a little less than your utmost, you go on improving.... The wisdom of doing a little less than one really can pushes the record of achievement further and further as you come nearer to it, similar to the horizon that recedes on approaching it."
This is Chapter 20 from Feldenkrais Illustrated: The Art of Learning, excerpts from the writings of Moshe Feldenkrais, edited and illustrated by Tiffany Sankary.
"We are beginning to place enormous emphasis on creativity, but there is a tendency to think that being creative is limited to “producing” something. I would suggest to you that the basic creativity of the human being consists in his working toward his own fullest development, the realizing of his own potentials, the allowing himself to grow. What we create first is ourselves and it is out of ourselves that the producing comes.” - Mary Whitehouse
We can improve the use of our eyes but not without improving all of ourselves. Feldenkrais said:
"...we have to learn to listen and think and feel and feel the length of our body and the width of the body and feel the movement and the voice and the thinking that we do and yet move your eyes."
Age gracefully I’m so inspired by my Feldenkrais teachers in their 80s. They continue to improve their movement habits even as they age – just as others their age seem to keep declining…
Feel More. Update your habits. Learn to slow down. Improve your brain’s map of your body. Discover the gifts inside pain. Grow your attentional flexibility. Be mindful and spontaneous. Become yourself…
Learn to respect your physical sensations as intelligent signals. By doing Awareness Through Movement, you will begin to learn to identify the sensations that precede your pain or discomfort. Then, you will be able to take the radical, proactive step of stopping whatever you are doing, and with a few minutes of ATM, interrupt the cycle of habitual stress and pain. This is what learning to take care of yourself means.
“The first principle of life is that everything changes. Every millisecond, and in every direction, we are surrounded by changes, and often the changes come not an abrupt binary switches but in gradient spectral shifts, slowly morphing, with the infinite variability of widened eyes." -Stephen Nachmanovitch, The Art of Is
Create new metaphors to counter the "war on pain"→ movement towards curiosity as an approach, rather than self-violence. Deborah Bowes shares her thinking behind her self-paced Feldenkrais Series: Curiosity, Self Image and Pain
Feldenkrais Podcast #4 with Deborah Bowes
We talk about:
• How Feldenkrais reassures the limbic system
• The relationship between pain and self image
• The phenomena of pain
• Feldenkrais is a bio-psycho-social model and pain is a bio-psycho-social experience
• The importance of empathy and compassion in changing neural pathways
"It is possible to sense the action before you actually do it. There is a tiny gap of time there where you can intervene and change the action. For Feldenkrais, that was called awareness. That's what happens in the tiny gap between intention and execution, or intention and action, where you can sense and do or not do, and do it differently." - Aliza Stewart
Feldenkrais Podcast #3 with Aliza Stewart
We talk about:
How the movement of self is similar to the movement of sound
How the nervous system makes order out of chaos
How the Feldenkrais Method® influences the experience of anxiety
What it means to have a good life
Orientation, creativity, improvement, independence
There is always a choice