Release hand and wrist tension, part 2, 31 min
My dog, Eppie, near Pikes Peak in Colorado
If you did last week’s lesson, do this one next. It will change the way your hand and arm feels, especially if you’re at the computer a lot, driving long distances, or anything else that requires hand and arm dexterity, like weaving, woodworking, fixing your bike, giving massages, or, if you’re me, washing your dog after she rolled in something awful!
(From Soft hands and wrists in the FeldenkraisTREASURY.)
Thought for August 22: Do not concentrate
Here we are back on Dr. Feldenkrais’s ten points: #8: Do not concentrate.
This might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s not. It’s actually using your perceptual abilities to their fullest.
8. Do not concentrate
Do not concentrate if concentration means to you directing your attention to one particular important point to the utmost of your ability. This is a particular kind of concentration, useful as an exercise, but rarely in normal occupation and skills.
Suppose you play basketball and concentrate on the basket to the utmost-you will never, or nearly never, have the leisure to do so unless you are alone in front of the basket. When there are two teams playing, the opening for a throw is a short, fleeting instant in which you have to attend not only to the basket, but to the players around you, and to the balance and posture that enable you to perform a useful throw.
The best players are those who attend to the continually changing position of their own players as well as of the opposing team. Most of the time, their concentration is directed to a very large area or space; the basket is just kept dimly in the background of their awareness, from where it can- at the most fleeting opportunity-become the center of attention.
The best and most useful attention is similar to what we do when reading. When we see the whole page, we cannot perceive any of the content, although we can say whether the page is in English or some language we cannot read. To read, we must focus on a minute portion of the page, not even a full line-perhaps, merely a single word, if it is a familiar one and rather short. If we are a skillful reader, we keep on picking our word after word, or groupings of words, to be attended to by our macular vision, which is only a minute portion of the retina, with sufficient good resolution to see small print clearly.
The good way of using our attention is, for the most part, similar to reading. One should perceive the background (the whole page) dimly and learn to focus sharply on the point-attended (concentration) rapidly before the next so that reading fluently means reading 200 to 1000 words a minute, as some people can.
Therefore, do not concentrate but, rather, attend well to the entire situation, your body, and your surroundings by scanning the whole sufficiently to become aware of any change or difference, concentrating just enough to perceive it.
In general, it is not what we do that is important, but how we do it. Thus, we can refuse kindly and accept ungraciously. We must also remember that this generalization is not a law and, like other generalizations, it is not always true.
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