3 Goals of the Feldenkrais Method
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On last week's episode, I shared with you the radio interview I did with Kelly Cordes of my local radio station WJON in central Minnesota. In preparing for that interview, I thought through what are the goals of the Feldenkrais method. And spoiler alert, it's more than about moving better. Some of this topic made it into that interview, but I thought I'd take some more time to
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Let's dive in. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwinghammer, and this show talks about the Feldenkrais method and how it can help us pursue our goals. On this episode, I want to talk to you about this framework, the three goals of the Feldenkrais method. These are all definitely interrelated goals, that is, each one makes the others possible.
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And I hope by breaking this down into three categories, we can illuminate some new and less obvious spaces between the ideas. The three goals of the Feldenkrais method I will explore today are outer work, inner work, and life work. Let's get started with the first one, outer work. So the Feldenkrais method is a semantic movement modality.
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That means the method looks at how we use our movement as a primary starting point. We're interested in paying attention to the choices we make because our muscular habits are tied deeply with our thinking and emotional habits. Also movement is essential to life. Every action we take has movement a part of it.
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The Feldenkrais lessons lead a person to discover for themselves new movement patterns, new possibilities, and these explorations lead to clearer balance and support from the ground. The movements, their movements, become more functional. More functional means two things. There's less wear and tear on your body, and more bang for your buck. So the first is you are less damaging to yourself over time,
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and the second is you get more output for less effort. Where my emphasis has been lately in my own personal learning is beyond functional movement, what are the ways in which we can express ourselves to be spontaneous and flowing with your emotion? What hinders our expression is a muscular act. By that I mean what limits us is a maintained muscular pattern.
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that makes us feel small or limited. Do you have any of the following experiences? Do you hold your shoulders tight? Do you clench your jaw? Is your face stuck in some continually stern look? Do you act standoffish and retreat from others when you actually want to be close to others?
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to be more freely expressive in a way that is to our own taste is explored in this work too. To be nimble between emotional expressions and functional movements, that nimbleness is the outer work. Nimbleness means we can shift from this to that, this to that, that to this easily, right? That's the fluency. And that nimbleness is choice.
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is greater choice. But choices aren't just on the level of movement, on the level of outer work, so to speak. Let's go to the second goal. The second goal of the Feldenkrais method is inner work. It is very common to think of Feldenkrais as a way to help people with achy bodies, or to overcome injuries, or to achieve some greater performance in sports, music, or theater.
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But it's not uncommon to hear people say in response to that, that it's not just about the movement. Right, okay, so the movements are obvious, they are surface level, they are the most graspable thing to witness when looking at the work. We can all look and watch a person move and see how they move. And so the flip side of the outer work is the inner work.
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We have the opportunity to practice how we want to be. How do we desire to take care of ourselves? We've learned to take care of ourselves by witnessing our parents, our teachers, and other caregivers take care of ourselves. But their job is done. It is our responsibility now to take the work forward. So we can practice skills such as non-reactivity, compassion.
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and curiosity. Really, who is the person that you desire to become? Do you find that how you've learned to be is so compulsive? Right? I mean, for so many people, including myself, we can get so hard on ourselves, we can get so focused on the right answer. But the flip side is we can continue to learn and learn how to be more gentle with ourselves.
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We can stop treating ourselves as unruly learning mules that we have to whip to get into shape. We can give ourselves tenderness. And when we do that, a whole world of learning emerges. Here's the thing, you can't keep thinking the same way that got you into trouble if you want a different result. You can't keep acting the same way in relationships if you want a different result.
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This is the work about treating yourself with positive regard. Treating yourself as someone worth caring about. It's about treating yourself as someone who can continue to grow till the end of your days. And you can become a greater and greater steward of that growth. Now let's take a look at the third goal. Life work.
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from my dad. He loves this phrase. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Perhaps you've heard this one. It's a good one. But here's the rub. Most of the time, most of us are doing the same things over and over and we have no idea what we're doing.
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Our habits of action, thought, feeling, moving, perception, cycle over and over. This is the water the fish swims in. This is your water that you swim in. These are the moments when you feel like you're on autopilot and you don't know what else to do. You don't know how to change. You're stuck. We get so wired deeply by our experience.
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Right, so there's many ways to call it. So some people call it being wired, or being conditioned, being molded, or shaped, or programmed, whatever term you like. So we are the children of our family system, of our culture, of the time we live in right now. But we don't have to be limited to that, to our past experience.
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Ideally, the environment in which we grew up would wire us to be well prepared for the future. That's not always the case for everyone. We learn how to be in relationship with others based on the environments we grew up in. But as we grow up, there are so many other more complex environments in the world. You go to school, you go to work, you're in the dating pool, you travel to other countries.
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You meet so many people through your life, and all of those are complex new situations. And into every situation, we bring our past learnings into it, whether or not they fit the situation. You could say we walk with our past. It's like baggage that we bring with us into every situation. It's our shadow that follows us.
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It's our curse. So that's going to be there. You could say we embody our past experiences. Every person you cross on the street is presenting the sum total of their life experience, including their hurts, their wisdom, their beliefs. And it comes out through how they move, too, the choices they make. In the Feldman Christ Method, in the process of moving,
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in the process of making new movement choices, and choosing how we want to relate to ourselves, that inner work, we inevitably come up against the rough edges of our history. So that means we might say something like, damn it, I'm doing that thing again. Over time, that can soften into, oh, I'm doing that thing again.
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And that can further soften into, I've done this in the past, but I'm choosing this instead now. So that some total of our life, all of those stories, we can begin to learn to act independently of that history. And to do that, we have to inhibit the past. Inhibit means to stop, to not do.
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catching the compulsive habits, this is awareness here, catching the compulsive habits, recognizing their texture in our experience, sensing the related pieces, and then we find ways to tinker, to play with, to stop and start, and vary the intensity, vary the initiation of the movement. So we stop that.
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Okay, how about this instead? Or this? Or this? Oh, how about this? Now, this is a long path to take, but this is the path that helps us put the past to rest. We can break the curse. We can open ourselves up to new possibilities and more and more in the direction of the future we desire.
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Felton Christ lessons are designed to situate you right at the intersection of your history and new choice. The place where you see your habits, your story, your history, and then invites you to try something new. Oh, here is a new avenue to take. When we create new functional movement patterns, when we practice the way we want to be, we
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and how we want to treat ourselves, this leads to less rigidity and greater resilience over time. We get to shape the life path we desire, the one where we are vitally engaged in life. To recap, the goals I described today are outer work, inner work, and life work. The outer work is playing with movement possibilities to develop greater, more functional, and
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and expressive movements, and this is the basis for us to become aware. In that awareness, we can develop our inner work. How is it that we want to practice attention, intention, and our attitude? And third is life work. This is us taking the responsibility to rewire ourselves, to steward.
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our growth, our learning. As we pursue the outer and inner work, we have the profound possibility of observing our deeply ingrained habits and inventing new options for ourselves. We can become less rigid and more malleable. And of course, this work is a life practice.
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I invite you to share these ideas with a friend. What was interesting or surprising to you in this episode? What resonated for you? And what resonates with your friend?
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If you find the show valuable, it would be a huge help, a really big favorite to me, if you would consider giving the show a 5 star review, or however you want to review it of course. Each new review helps other people find the show.
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The question I would like to leave with you today is, which of the three goals I described interests you the most?
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Thank you for your attention.
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