How to benefit from these lessons
I've always been a big-picture thinker, wondering where any domain of human activity fits into the larger meaning of life, no matter how you define that. It's no different with Feldenkrais: About twenty years ago, I wrote a little note called, "Foundations of Feldenkrais," to give students a way to understand what we're doing, and why.
I like to do a lot of background reading myself, so this is me projecting that there are other folks who do, too. (If that's you, check out the longer articles under New to Feldenkrais in my blog, or my list of relevant books.)
In this day and age, no one's going to find that one document on my website, so I recorded a little explanation of why we do these lessons and what they're about on a deeper level. The answer might surprise you!
Movement and grammar
I've learned a few other languages in my life, and I always want to understand the grammatical structure first. I've been told this is the wrong way around, but my mind just needs the organizational bucket to put the content in.
All humans try to fit new experiences into pre-existing paradigms. Unless we can't, and our brains explode with unrecognizable data and we have to rebuild our structures, move the buckets of understanding around, or find new ones to put stuff in. (I have a very basic model of neuroscience...)
For example, I learned Arabic in my early twenties (way before it was cool, interesting, or relevant) and its triliteral root system and the declined inflection on the words that indicated case was way outside my knowledge base. I had no idea what all that was. I had to throw everything I thought I knew about grammar right out and start over. Not to mention reading and writing backwards.
(I love grammar because its constraints and structure help us communicate more clearly. Otherwise, human communication devolves to gibberish. It's similar to how mechanical constraints limit the total possibilities of the joints to guide us through space—or how constraints and limits work in any dynamic system. But that's another article.)
It's the same with Feldenkrais: The paradigm is not one we know. It's not a dance performance, it's not athletics, pilates, yoga, stretching, anatomy, or mechanics. So what is it? I suggest you throw out everything you have known about movement out the window and consider building a new grammar, a new way of understanding what these "movement lessons" are about that doesn't rely on performing or correcting or right and wrong or good and bad.
Coming back to my big picture question: Why are we doing this? What is it all about? If it's not about the movement, then what? Listen to my short note to find out.