Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

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Do you have a memory of a time when you were a kid and you had to run away and hide? There was something so bad and you felt so terrible that you just had to get away. Does that memory still linger with you? You know, it arises from time to time? Oh yeah, you think. That was a really rough moment. You can still taste the feeling. You can still taste that sensation.

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inside of you. Our responses to difficult moments in our childhood can continue to stay with us, shaping our bodies and our decisions. That's what we're going to talk about today. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwinghammer. On the show, we explore how we move, think, feel, and sense in the world through the lens of the Feldenkrais

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I will share two true stories. A story about living with giants, and a story about a small boy. Then we'll talk about how this is relevant for us. But first I want to quote Jeff Haller. I had him on as a guest a number of episodes ago, and I also interviewed him for our Felling Christ documentary. And in that interview I did with him for that, he talks about trauma.

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I'll read what he says. He defined trauma as, an experience where one doesn't have the resources to meet the moment. If you have the resources, then there's no trauma. But it's not only that you don't have the resources to meet it, it also changes your brain. Then he goes on to say, in reference to the film's subject, and she may never had something that anybody would call a trauma.

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but she has the trauma of being born into this culture, into this society, into this educational system, into the family that she was in. Here, Jeff Holler is pointing to how our environment molds us, teaches us, places demands on us, it both enables and ennobles us, and it can also overwhelm us.

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Our culture, our society, our educational system, our family, all leave impressions on us.

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Alright, here's the first true story. You're teleported to the land of giants. These giants are two to three times your size. You crane your neck up to see them. Their power is magnitudes more than yours, and they are in charge. You've come to this land with nothing to your name. No tools, no equipment, no resources. There's a couple of giants who see and take after you.

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They offer you food and warmth. It's good that the giants can be kind. And sometimes these giants get angry and yell and storm around. Sometimes these giants are gone all day and come back in the evening. Sometimes the giants threaten punishment if you don't do what they say. Some giants are cold and standoffish. Some demand you act perfectly.

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What do you do, small human? These giants are in charge of your world. They have the power of your fate. If you're not 100% sure that you were loved and accepted by your most important giants, what do you do? So you act that you can get attention or care. Maybe you hide from the angry ones. Or maybe you show your teeth and yell back.

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Maybe you seek attention because you don't want to be alone. Or maybe you put in so much effort working that you want the giants to know that they shouldn't smash you. All of us had to navigate this world of giants, basically bootstrapping our resources, our responses, because there's always something new in giant land. These responses become

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ingrained into our habits. And this collection of habits we eventually call our personality. We eventually become giants too. We've learned to act like the giants we knew when we were small. It's the way we've done it, so I will keep doing it. Or some people reject the past and say I must do it a new way as a giant.

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To Jeff Holler's point, there is the trauma of being born into a culture, into an educational system, a society, a family. We had to find some way to fit into this land of giants. As we attempt to navigate this land of giants, we are still small, and we don't really know what we're doing, but we do the best we can.

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Here's another story. It's a true story too. Years ago I knew a couple. The woman had a child from a past relationship. And this boy was around five when I knew him. This kid was wild. So loud. So active. He always loved wrestling and playing and running around. But to everyone's dismay, he also liked to throw things and punch you.

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To keep this story anonymous, let's give him a name. Let's call him Cory. So I worked with the stepfather for some time. They lived close to work, and so on the rare occasion, the boy Cory would come visit his dad at work. On one day, I witnessed an event that struck me. While the stepfather and I were loading a van, Cory came by.

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He was loud and climbing in and around the van. It was like a jungle gym for him. And this wasn't safe because we were working with some heavy materials. The father tried to get his attention with calm words, which then escalated quickly. With a cutting tongue, his stepfather yelled, Damn it, Cory, what did I tell you? Get out of here. Cory, feeling punished.

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ran away and hid behind some boxes. He curled himself over and hugged his knees. His head was tucked down between his knees. His back was rounded, his face obscured by his moppy hair. And he rocked himself back and forth and cried. From what I know of these two, this was probably not an uncommon conflict. I know they were at odds often.

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I didn't know what to do at the time, and I'm not sure if there was much I could do. These patterns in families can be deeply entrenched. Perhaps the two of them repaired later that day. I hope so. I don't know. I don't know what this means long term for Cory, but I would like to focus on the shape that Cory took. That roundedness plus that intense feeling.

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which may have been shame or anger or loneliness or overwhelm, I can only guess, that shape and that feeling, all of which would be encoded together as a memory and a shape, a physical shape, which will influence future events, future decisions he makes. Back in episode 16, which is called Don't Touch Your Face, an anatomy of a story,

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I explored a less dramatic story where a student learned the lesson from his school days that he shouldn't touch his face because he would get acne. A couple decades later, the story still persisted in his behavior. Through a quiet exploratory process in a lesson where the lesson asked of him to touch his head, he could feel that story manifest.

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as a resistance in his movement and a resistance in his thinking. And here's the thing, he could catch that moment, he became aware. In Cory's story, I recognize similar moments for myself in my own personal history, feeling intimidated by an angry adult or feeling confused and disconnected around their standoffish, sarcastic humor.

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And then there's also the weight of unspoken expectations. I don't know what will happen for Corey, but if I were to extrapolate based on my own experience, I imagine a few things will continue to persist in his choice-making, which includes movement. He may continue to choose to run away and seek solace. He may hold distrust towards adults and others.

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He may learn to process emotions alone and not with others. Because of the strong emotional association, which creates a sort of urgency, I must do this, I must do this, that might mean that rounding that he took, that protective rounding of his body to hug his knees, may continue to persist in his posture. He probably won't realize this.

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And this will turn into a habit, an invisible habit, like his multitude of other habits that have become a part of the fabric of his being. That is, until he becomes aware of it, and interested enough to make a new decision, and hopefully does so with the support of caring people around him. We all get shaped by life, but eventually we can become the ones who decide

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how we will shape ourselves.

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To conclude, we all can't help but be impressed by our experiences of the world, especially when we are young. We did our best around the giants, but when we become giants, we can make new choices, learn new approaches, and fill in the gaps that our giant caregivers missed. Finding out how our childhood shaped us and continues to shape us, and then changing that

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is the sort of discovery process offered to us by the awareness through movement classes in the Feldman-Christ method. As we observe our movements, we find our hidden habits maintained from childhood. Sometimes we have explicit memories that bubble up. Sometimes it's just a feeling. But all of that can soften and subside, and we can show that part of ourselves, compassion.

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What in these two stories are true for you? Please consider journaling about it, or talk with a loved one. By having conversations about what we're learning, we can deepen and expand our understanding. Before we wrap up this episode, I invite you to check out my free guide called The Nine Surprising Benefits of the Feldenkrais Method. Most people, when they hear Feldenkrais say, Felden what? Feldenkrais?

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Failed in one more time, one more time. And then when they find out it's about movement, they think, Oh, I have my own movement practice. I'm good. Don't make this mistake. You haven't moved like this before. My guide is to help people understand what are the benefits of continued practice in this method so that you give it a try. You can find the guide in the show notes.

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The question I would like to leave with you today is, what's a story from long ago that still shapes your movement and your choices? Thank you for your attention.