Part 2: Super light arms, lengthen whole self, 30 min
This week’s thought:
"Learning to think in patterns of relationships, in sensations divorced from the fixity of words, allows us to find hidden resources and the ability to make new patterns...In short, we think personally, originally, and thus take another route to the thing we already know." --Moshe Feldenkrais
This week feels like the January doldrums, with endless brown grass and mud here in Colorado. Luckily, I am going out for fish and chips this evening, possibly my favorite meal!
I grew up in Seattle, so fish and chips remind me of childhood.
Plus, it fills my six-month quota of fried food!
Moshe Feldenkrais says that repetitive, compulsive movement is like eating potatoes (or fish and chips) your whole life.
I remember when I discovered, through Feldenkrais, that my actions did not have to be repetitive. I could take another route to the thing I already knew, like lifting my arms.
Dr. Feldenkrais also talks a ton about spontaneity. It’s his lifelong dream that we become potent enough in our movement to be able to free ourselves from the box we put ourselves in: the fences we surround ourselves with in the form of ideas from our family, culture and society.
If you’ve hung out with me at all, you know I hate boxes. Seeing people in their boxes, whether it’s your own self, your children, spouse, sibling, dog, whoever, means they can’t grow into their best self.
Our brains are designed to learn, find out, discover, delight. It’s compulsive action that keeps us in a box.
Use this lesson to discover new patterns in yourself. Use the ribs and back in new ways to move the arms, then find another, and another, and another, until your brain has busted out of your habitual box.
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Note that this lesson is the follow-on from last week. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them in order, you can do this one first. Or, if you want, you can do the first one, see below under “Recent posts.”
* * *
Note that this lesson is the follow-on from last week. Don’t worry, you don’t have to do them in order, you can do this one first.
To do them in order, see below under “Recent posts.”
More lessons:
This lesson is from Light, Easy Arms in the Feldenkrais Treasury.
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Quote(s) of the week:
“Why, what is to live? Not to eat and drink and breathe,—but to feel the life in you down all the fibres of being, passionately and joyfully.”
“Sometimes,’ said Pooh, ‘the smallest things take up the most room in your heart.”