Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:01
The gym teacher yells at you, feel the stretch, feel the burn, work it, work it. And the promise is that with all that working hard and efforting and stretching and strain, that you will make those gains, that you will make some improvement. On this episode, I want to question, do we really need to strain that much for improvement?

00:30
What if we could make gains, not by working harder, but by working smarter? In this episode, we'll explore how this is possible in our bodies. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwinghammer, and I'm a Feldenkrais practitioner. On this show, we explore a radically different way to think about how we move, act, and relate to others, through the lens of somatics and embodiment.

00:58
specifically through the Feldenkrais method. If we do the same thing over and over, we get the same results. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus rolled an immense boulder up a hill day after day. It was his punishment. And he strained and efforted, and at the end, the work was undone. The boulder would roll back down and he would have to start again. All that straining didn't add up to much for him.

01:29
So we're going to question how necessary strain is to making a change. Maybe instead we need to do something different. Maybe instead we don't have to push that boulder up the hill anymore. But don't get me wrong. I'm not going to tell you not to use your muscles. I'm not going to tell you to not use your power, develop strength. All of that's good. You're free to do as you choose. Of course, what I would like to do is illustrate another way of improving.

01:59
through different means. So if we're not going to feel strain or feel the burn or stretch, what is this other way that's available to us? Let's turn to a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lesson to explore this idea. Before we get started with this movement exploration, I'd like to share a few things, especially if you're new to the Feldenkrais work. Here's what you need to get started.

02:27
do less than you think you need to do. Don't push through any pain, and please take care of yourself. You can always take a longer rest or additional rests if you need to. And if you want, you can just hang back and imagine the movements or just listen. In this specific lesson, I will be using directions related to your right arm and shoulder. So if you have right arm issues,

02:54
and the right arm just doesn't work for you in this lesson. No worries, just flip all the directions and work with the left side. Mirror all the directions to make it work on the left.

03:06
This lesson will be in standing, but if you want to have a chair to sit in during the rest, that's okay too. So please come to stand anywhere you like, provided you are far enough from any wall or furniture. And where you are standing now, please look to your feet and just note where your feet are. We will be coming back to this position time and time again, so it's good to be clear about where we're starting.

03:35
and then look forward and notice where you're looking forward in relation to your room. Please imagine yourself on a clock. You are on the center of a large clock and in front of you is 12 o'clock. To your right is 3 o'clock. Behind you, 6. And to your left is 9 o'clock.

04:02
So every time you come back to stand in this place, you'll want to orient yourself to the center of the clock and to 12 o'clock specifically.

04:12
Before we get into the meat of the lesson though, let's do a bit of a reference check. In the Feldenkrais method, we do references. We check in with how we are periodically through the lesson, especially at the beginning, to create a sort of a baseline. How am I right now? And how does this lesson affect me as I check in later?

04:40
Sense any differences in the way your feet touch the floor. Does your weight go more to one leg or to the other? Are you more on your heels or your toes? Sense the quality of support between your two legs. Bring your attention to your fingers. Does one set of fingers seem closer to the floor or further from the floor? Please sense your shoulders.

05:07
Sense the distance from the right shoulder to the right ear, and compare that with the left shoulder to the left ear. Does one distance feel longer or shorter? Okay, great. Now, please with your right arm, lengthen it and point it forward. Your hand is pointing towards 12 o'clock. And then with your eyes on your hand, please make a movement of turning. So your arm, your eyes looking at your hand, your arm...

05:36
turns to the right, you rotate, and see how far you can turn easily. And be honest about this, what is the easy range you can go before you strain? So you turn with the arm, you sort of reach it around to the right, staying within what is easy. You can move with whatever part of your body, provided you don't take a step with your feet. Okay.

06:05
Try that once or twice, you turn, bring your hand out to the right somewhere. What is easy, what's not effortful? And then go as far as easy, and then pause. Notice where your finger could point at the wall. How far to the right do you look? Great. Now, I don't want you to actually do this, but you could imagine if you wanted to turn further around you.

06:32
where you would have to engage more effort and thus feel some strain to make it happen. If you had to, you could torque yourself around, but there's no reason to right now. Okay, please remember where your hand is pointing to at the wall. We'll come back to this later. Come back to forward, look at 12 o'clock. All right, so as I said earlier, we're interested in not straining.

07:02
not using excess effort to get what we need done. So what would be an appropriate attitude to have? Well, I invite you to be nonchalant. Like, this is no big deal what we're doing. No big deal. We're just going to do some movements, whatever. Nothing to worry about. Not only am I asking you to reduce physical effort, I'm asking you to reduce mental effort too.

07:32
Alright, so you're looking forward, you're at your spot, you're looking at 12 o'clock. Please bring your hand up, your arm straight towards 12 o'clock, and keep your arm there for a few moments here. And please turn your head to the left and return. That's it. Your head looks left and return. And as you do these movements, please go slowly and softly and sense the movement internally. What's going on?

08:02
What's happening in the shoulders, in the ribs, your pelvis, the weight over your feet? Cool. Pause a moment. You can lower your arm.

08:15
And when you're ready, please bring your arm back up to 12 o'clock. And now keep your eyes looking at 12 o'clock and then bring your arm out to the right. Your right arm travels to the right, but your eyes stay forward. Do that a few times. You move and you feel, you move, you sense, nonchalantly. All right. Bring your arm down and pause a moment.

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when you're ready please bring your right arm to 12 o'clock once again and now we're going to do two things at once your arm goes to the right and your head goes to the left they go apart from each other and then they come back to 12 o'clock and here would you try and match the timing so that they go at the same speed

09:13
They return at the same speed and even at the same moment they come to stop at 12.

09:20
Nice, very good. All right, you can lower your arm. Please pause a moment.

09:29
and check in. How are you doing? Sense into some of those details that we explored earlier, the sense of support in your feet.

09:43
the distance from your fingertips to the floor, and if that's changed on one side, the distance from your shoulders to your ears, you can bear left and right. Okay, cool. And then please bring your right arm forward. And then looking at your right hand, please move your right arm out to the right like you did before and see how far now you can go easily.

10:12
using the same effort that you did before, minimal effort, how easily can you go to the right? And you can try it once or twice, go right and return, right and return. And where now, when you go to the end of the easy range, where can you point at a wall? And has that changed since the first time you checked in?

10:35
Cool. All right. What's going on for you? What are you noticing? Has something changed? All right. Before we do another experiment, please go for a walk around the room. Walk around, see what it's like to take steps. How does the right foot meet the floor? The left foot.

11:00
the way your upper body turns with each step. Is there some preference to walk to the right or to the left? Cool. And of course, you have full control, so you can always pause and take a longer rest if you like. So come on back, come to standing, find that point, the center of the clock, and look towards 12 o'clock again, please.

11:27
Please bring your right arm forward so it points at 12 o'clock. Have your eyes at 12 o'clock. And while keeping your eyes at 12 o'clock, slowly move your nose left and right. Yeah, so your arm stays pointed at 12, eyes stay at 12, but the head is moving independently of the eyes. This is an important idea in Feldenkrais. We're using differentiation.

11:56
parts moving in different relationship to each other. All right, cool. Which side is easier, by the way? Is it easier to turn your head to the right or to the left?

12:09
which range is more available for you to turn. Alright, bring the arm down. Pause for a moment.

12:21
Check in physically what's going on. Okay, cool, take a rest. And then bring your arm forward again. So your hand is pointing to 12 o'clock, and then have your nose pointed at 12 o'clock too, and then just your eyes look left and right, left and right a number of times.

12:46
Go real easy. This might be very new for you.

12:54
All right. A few times softly, gently. And how was your breath, by the way?

13:04
Great. Pause, you can bring your arm down for a moment. Take a mini rest here.

13:15
And when you're ready, please once again bring your hand to 12 o'clock.

13:20
And this one might be a little tough, so take this one easy. So your hand is pointing to 12. Have your head and eyes move in opposite direction. So if your nose goes to the right, you look with your eyes to the left. Cool. And if your nose goes to the left, your eyes look to the right. And you do that a few times.

13:47
And it's not just the head that moves, right? Your head's connected to your spine. What happens down in your ribs, down in your pelvis? Great. You can bring your arm down and rest a moment.

14:06
Alright.

14:11
sense some of those details that we were looking at earlier. The sense of your feet on the floor, the sense of support coming up through each of your legs.

14:24
Sends into your shoulders, your shoulder blades. Is there some change emerging between right and left?

14:34
sense the distance between your shoulders and your ears on the left and right.

14:43
the distance from the fingertips on the right hand to the floor versus the left. The changes that we experience as we do these movements is our brain reorganizing ourselves. Our brain is redoing the map of ourselves and how we move.

15:03
Please bring your hand to 12 o'clock. Your arm is straight. And do that reference again, please. So with your eyes, you're looking at your hand, and then you turn. Your arm goes out to the right side. And staying with the quality of ease. See how far it is you go now.

15:26
You can try once or twice and then stop at the end of the easy range. Where on the wall now do you point?

15:39
And my hunch is your hand is once again pointing at a different place on the wall. How did that happen? Wait, did you, did you effort a lot? Did you strain? Did you stretch? Did you feel the burn? Huh. How is it that something like this could change?

16:05
Right, it's not something about strengthening the muscles. Something else happened. It's literally the mind has changed how it communicates to the musculature. Go ahead and take a walk around. See what it's like to walk, to step with each foot.

16:25
And you can keep walking as I talk or you can rest. You can sit down and rest, it's up to you. So we've worked asymmetrically. And we did this with the right arm going to the right. If you were feeling symmetrical at the beginning, my hunch is you feel asymmetrical. Or you might have evened out an asymmetry that you were feeling, I don't know. Everyone has an individual experience, so I can only take guesses at what your experience is.

16:55
So whatever is happening for you is true for you. If you're feeling particularly asymmetrical, I invite you to enjoy it. There's no damage done feeling a little bit off-kilter. It's actually great for your mind to integrate this new information and to recalibrate. But if you want to even yourself out, that's cool too. You can just play this lesson again and flip the directions.

17:25
That was a brief version of this exploration. I have a longer version that you can download in the show notes. I just wanted to give you a taste here of what's possible. So Sisyphus was forced to roll the boulder up the hill for it to only come down again and again and again. He did the same thing every day and got the same results. Now he was punished in a mythological sense, so I get that. But what if Sisyphus could have done something new?

17:56
that you did something different than pushing the boulder up the hill. That's what I'm pointing at, to do something new. And the movement explorations we just did are a way of moving in non-habitual ways. And that led to a change in how you, your mind, your brain, imagined and performed the movement. And by doing so, you changed how far you can comfortably move.

18:25
some gain was made without using strain or pain or effort to achieve it. I hope this exploration helps you embody this idea that we don't need to strain, we can have a lot more ease in our life. And when we find a greater sense of ease, we can find flow and clarity and from there improvements we can't even imagine yet.

18:53
Please let me know your thoughts on this lesson. Please check out the longer version too, if you want to explore more. Because having conversations about what we are learning helps us to make new associations and further our learning, please talk with a friend about the ideas in this podcast. What do they think about them? What sort of changes do they experience?

19:17
My final question to you today is, where in your life do you feel strain that could possibly be replaced with ease?

19:29
Thank you for your attention.