Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:00
We act in accordance with our self-image. This is the first line of Moshe Feldenkrais's book, Awareness Through Movement. So, self-image. It's a big concept. What is it? And what can we do about it? Welcome to the Expand Your Ability podcast, the show that looks at your human experience, how you think, move, feel, and sense. We look through the lens of the Feldenkrais method.

00:29
In today's episode we will be talking about the self-image. The self-image is something we all have. It's something that governs all our behavior. It's an idea that helps us frame what we're doing when we learn and grow. But first, a brief description of where this idea came from. So Moshe Feldenkrais, the creator, founder of the Feldenkrais Method.

00:59
He was a judo black belt, a physicist, a pioneer into what we now would call neuroscience. He was exploring the mind-body connection years ago. He passed away in 1984. His work consists of two aspects, awareness through movement and functional integration. Awareness through movement is also the title of one of his books, where he intros some

01:29
and offers some lessons too. He opens the book with, We act in accordance with our self-image. This image, which in turn governs our every act, is conditioned in varying degree by three factors, heritage, education, and self-education. So he's pointing at that within you that drives all of your behavior.

01:58
It's a really big thing. It's all-encompassing. It's kind of the big umbrella. A way of describing what guides our behavior. This umbrella contains our belief systems, our history, our experiences, our views of ourself, of what's possible, what's not possible, and what we desire, what's valuable in this world. Here's

02:26
two metaphors to explore this idea. The first is, imagine you have a slope. And on that slope are some bumps, are some obstacles, and you have two things you're going to roll down that slope. The first is a sphere, and the second is an egg. And you can just imagine, like, you've seen an egg, you've seen a ball, how both navigate gravity differently.

02:56
They roll, the egg has more of a bias to one side, the sphere moves in any direction easily. There's something different that's possible for the ball compared to the egg. They will end up in different locations. And so it's like that for us. Our shape, our internal shape of who we are, makes it so we make different decisions as we approach the terrain.

03:24
our environment, other people. And what is that shape? What is that? What is it within us? And can we change that shape? Can an egg become a sphere? Can a sphere become an egg? Another way to think about the self-image is through the metaphor of role-playing. Perhaps you've played a role-playing game, either a video game or a board game, and you choose your character. Often these are fantasy, right? So you could have the ranger, the

03:54
the paladin, the healer, the magician, etc. And is there one that you naturally gravitate to? Is there something about that character that, yeah, no, I want to be the ranger. No, I want to be the paladin or the warrior, the barbarian. They have a way of approaching the world. They have certain ideas and framing that resonate with you. So that can give you an inkling into your self-image.

04:23
how you view yourself, because other people might choose a completely different character. And again, are these characters born into themselves? The warrior is born a warrior and will never become a magician? Well, some games you can adjust the stats that, well, I'm low in strength but I can increase that, or I'm low in dexterity and I can increase that. And then that

04:54
Okay, so back to the self-image and its three factors. He says heritage, education, and self-education. Those are the three factors of the self-image. By heritage, he means your biological heritage. And I will quote him here. This is the form and capacity of his nervous system, his bone structure, muscles, tissue.

05:23
glands, skin, senses, they are all determined by his physical heritage long before he has any established identity. This is what you're born with. This is the built-in aspect of your self-image. Next comes education. This is what culture has given you. This is your school education. It's your parental education.

05:51
your social education, it's what you absorbed as, you know, from day one, and actually probably before day one too. It's the ways of moving and thinking and feeling, it's... This is those characteristics, as he says, that are not characteristic of mankind as a species, but only of certain groups or individuals.

06:19
It is within our education that we feel a lot of social forces to conform, to be more alike others. Which makes sense, right? We have a society, we all need to collectively have some sense of who we are, that we can get along. And so these pressures push us towards a uniformity, often. Not sure where you said this, but Felonchrist, I think, said...

06:46
that the job of the infant is to assimilate into the family, to find his or her role in the family, and fulfill it. Next comes self-education. I quote, self-education progresses as the infant organism grows and becomes more stable. The child gradually develops individual characteristics. He begins to choose among objects and actions.

07:15
in accordance with his own nature. He no longer accepts everything that training tries to impose on him. Imposed education and individual propensities together set the trend for all our habitual behavior and actions. Without question, our education from society informs the direction of our self-education.

07:41
So we are born into this world with our heritage, our biological endowment. Culture shapes us. Our society, our family, our relationships shape us. And then we also direct our own learning, our own self-education. And that's where we have the possibility for change and growth in the way that is most in accordance with our individuality.

08:09
Something that Feldenkrais says here in the preface of his book is often self-education is directed towards becoming more in alignment with the culture and moves us away from our own organic desires, our own organic understanding of ourselves. And that creates a dilemma in the person where they seek success.

08:38
from the cultural propositions, the cultural ideas, the societal construct, and disregard their own internal organic needs. Self-education is what can help us find our way into who we really are.

09:02
Who are you beneath your cultural conditioning? Beneath the specificities of where you grew up, who you knew, who your parents were, and so forth. We all come from different points on this globe, different points in time. But who are you, and what path are you on? And do you like the path you are on? Do you want to change that path for any reason?

09:32
This ties into what we talked about last episode, about how you do one thing is how you do everything. That's another way of pointing towards the self-image. Within our self-image is this bias, this habit, this behavior towards a type of functioning. And that can work out for us, and that can not work out for us.

10:02
and it can be subject to change. It's malleable. We are all malleable to some degree, and that is through self-education that we can mold ourselves into who we want to be, how we would like to be, that we have the satisfaction of our own behavior, of who we want to become. And just like we explored last week,

10:30
How you do one thing is how you do everything. There is an invisible quality to the self-image. The self-image doesn't contain everything you can explicitly say about yourself. It's much more than that. It includes all of that which you are unconscious of. It includes the multitude of all of our habits, our ways of thinking, moving, sensing, and feeling.

11:00
Our self-image is the representation of who we are and how we move through the world. And if we want to change it, it requires self-education. And what are ways to go about self-education? There are many ways. And Moshe Feldenkrais offers to the world the Feldenkrais method. He offers awareness through movement. His approach is through movement.

11:29
and sensation primarily. Now, our self-image includes everything, and if we improve one portion of our self-image, those improvements will cascade out to the rest of us, and so in that way we can affect our movement, our sensing, change our relationship to our physical

11:56
and that can cascade into all of our being and change our path in life. So I guess what I'm saying is, through awareness, through movement, you can go from an egg to a ball, or a ball to an egg. It's a goofy metaphor, I know. The self-image is a fundamental idea, and so I will be bringing it back in and in again.

12:26
in this podcast. So please hit the subscribe button so you can get every episode as it drops. And also check me out on Instagram. I will be posting related ideas to each of these episodes there. Also, I would love for you to take these ideas and share them with a loved one. What did you learn here? What is interesting about this self-image idea?

12:53
Through conversations we can deepen our learning. I have one final question for you. What is your self-image like? Make a first approximation. For example, if you were a character in a role-playing game, what kind of character would you be? What do you excel at? Be generous here, what do you excel at? And where do you have room for improvement? That's it for now.

13:23
Thank you for your attention.