Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:00
Welcome to the Expand Your Ability podcast. And on this episode, we're going to be talking about the second reason for why movement, the second reason of nine that Feldenkrais offers in his book, Awareness Through Movement. And this reason focuses on quality. He says, it is easier to distinguish the quality of movement. Is that true? Let's talk about it.

00:29
My name is Jeffrey Schwinghammer and I'm your host here on the Expand Your Ability podcast. This podcast explores the Feldenkrais method, what it means for us as human beings that move, think, feel, and sense in the world. So in this episode, we're going to talk about the second of nine reasons Moshe Feldenkrais offers for the benefits of using movement to explore and improve our experience.

00:59
Last time we talked about how, quote, the nervous system is occupied mainly with movement. So Feldenkrais divvies up our experience into four categories that we all use, movement, thinking, feeling, sensing. And of course, we use words and we divide up the world. But all four happen at the same time.

01:29
One being, one nervous system, one human essence with these four aspects. Well, one aspect can influence the others. And so he's interested in using movement to help people, not just to move better, but to think better, to have a higher quality of sensation and feeling. Really, I think the

01:58
The high end goal of this work is to become incredibly discerning and competent and capable with our own vessel, with our own being in the world, that what we imagine that could be in the reality of how we act, become more and more in accordance with each other. I think another piece of this is...

02:27
becoming connoisseurs of our own experience or becoming artists with our movement and with our thought and feeling that through discernment we can develop greater and greater expressions of ourselves. So one thing that gets in the way of course is our previous expressions of ourselves.

02:56
The ones that are really sticky, that are habitual and compulsive, those sticky experiences reassert themselves. That we're not quite aware of what we're doing as we're doing them. So, Feldenkrais created the awareness through movement classes, which helps us develop awareness of what we're doing, and he's using movement. Right?

03:25
He's using movement as the way into the human experience. And so in this second reason he offers, he says, it's easier to distinguish the quality of movement. And then he adds on to that, we know more clearly and certainly about the organization of the body against the pole of gravity than we do about the other components.

03:53
We know much more about movement than about anger, love, envy, or even thought. It is relatively easier to learn to recognize the quality of a movement than the quality of the other factors. And once again here, the other factors are thinking, feeling, sensing. So the four factors in total, movement, thinking, feeling, sensing.

04:22
He says the qualities of movement are easier to distinguish. So what are some qualities of movement? Well, I made a list here. I'll just run through it briefly. So speed, direction, orientation, counterbalance, ease, flow, comfort, even distribution, lights or heavy.

04:49
smooth or jerky, rigid, small or large or expansive, balanced or symmetrical or asymmetrical, is there an emotional charge with it, is it playful or serious? And I think just hearing these qualities, that's pretty concrete for you. You've probably seen that.

05:16
countless times through your life, especially in theater or in dance, or in sports, that you've seen these exhibited at a high quality. It's easy to imagine. And that's another benefit here. This is very concrete. We can all...

05:37
point to movement and say, hey, I see that or I sense that. Of course we can have some different subjective opinions on it, but it's more relatable. In this reason for movement, Feldenkrais doesn't talk about sensation, but I think sensation is a very close companion to movement. Right? So when you move quickly or you move.

06:06
rigidly or you have a sense of a symmetrical balance or asymmetrical balance, anything like that, you have an experience in your body touching the floor or moving through the air that I think sensation really informs movement and oh if I were to add an addendum

06:33
Awareness through movement and sensation.

06:38
I think we can improve our ability to sense to a greater and greater degree. That's certainly the case for me. You know, people who are connoisseurs of wine or cheese or music, they've really tuned in to noticing differences, right? Whether it's the smell, the flavor, the quality of whatever it is that they're attending to. That's a connoisseur right there.

07:08
You certainly can learn to become discerning about sensation. And it might not be as immediately obvious as movement, something we're so trained in as movers in the world. Let's think about feeling. So learning to discern the differences in your feeling, giving them words.

07:37
is super important. I've learned this, I've been in multiple sort of learning spaces to explore this myself, and it's so important to be able to distinguish what it is you're actually feeling, because when we're feeling something it's often a mix of feelings. So I'm 100% on board learning

08:07
is going on internally in this moment. But when it comes to distinguishing the quality of emotions, it can be kind of tough because it's not immediately easy to know what someone else is feeling. We can definitely get better at interpreting that. But there's a sort of distance we have with what I'm feeling and what they're feeling.

08:36
Right? Like, is the word I put to my feeling, uh, the same word that they put to their feeling? Right? There's just, there's a bit of a distance there. And I think it's really important to minimize that distance as much as we can. But I think to Felling Christ's point, it's not the easiest thing to distinguish in our experience. The aspects of anger.

09:04
envy and love he says. Part of it is emotions come and go. At one moment I might be angry, really furious, and all of a sudden something can snap me out of it. I see something beautiful, I get surprised, I...

09:25
Someone acts particularly kindly and I realize, oh, I've been up in this emotion, right? The emotion itself can blind us to distinguishing what that emotion is. We tend to act out of our emotions until we learn how to relate to them and be more in the driver's seat. And if we were to think about thinking...

09:54
How do we determine quality thoughts? We can definitely improve the quality of our thought. And it's also not necessarily obvious if we're thinking poorly, right? Because I think sometimes our thinking seems so right as we think it. And then later on, oh, no, I was missing something. So aspects of good quality thought.

10:22
I think would include a logic, an intuitive felt sense as well. Somehow your gut is participating. I think there's a sort of sense of expansiveness, like have you considered many different options? Have you accounted for them and spoken about them? Often thought is really hammered out over time.

10:50
When you read someone's essay, or their dissertation, or their book, that has been hammered out over a long period of time, right? The thought has thought about itself and crystallized something better through the process. But in the moment of thinking, how do you know if you have a quality thought?

11:15
What inside you says, hey, this is a pretty good thought. And I think that's actually more related to feeling and sensing in ourselves, that our body gives us feedback, gives us this mirror to our thinking. Hey, is this true or not? Well, we can be true in a logical way. But is it also in alignment with our experience?

11:45
What I've found in my own personal experience is that by moving, being more in touch with how I move and discerning the qualities of my movement, I am training my attention. I'm training my experience to be a better discerner. And discernment then becomes a skill that I can bring to these other realms.

12:14
to emotions, to thought, to sensation. And why be interested in discernment? Why be interested in all these qualities? Well, if I can discern more clearly what something is, what my own experience is, and I can discern some of the factors that led into it, the results that come out of it, then that begins to open up choice.

12:43
From new choices comes new results. I'll read Moshe Feldman-Kreis' passage here again. We know more clearly and certainly about the organization of the body against the pull of gravity than we do about the other components. Thought, feeling, sensing. We know much more about movement than about anger, love, envy, or even thought.

13:12
It is relatively easier to learn to recognize the quality of a movement than the quality of the other factors. So as human beings, I say, let's go out and improve our experience across all four of these components. Our movement, our thinking, our sensing, our feeling. Yes, let's explore. Let's become more discerning.

13:42
And what I think Feldenkrais here is offering is that movement gives you an advantage in this study. You might not have even thought about movement before to help you with your thinking, to help you with your sensing or your feeling. Don't ignore it. There's something there, something that could be really helpful. That's it for reason number two. Soon I'll explore reason number three.

14:12
As always, thank you for listening. I'd like to invite you to check out my free guide. It's called the nine surprising benefits of the Feldenkrais Method. So not just benefits like feeling taller or feeling lighter or more grounded. The Feldenkrais Method offers a lot of benefits that can surprise you. And I lay them out in this guide so you can check that out. The link is in the show notes.

14:41
Teaching what we learn to others is a great way to continue to learn. So I invite you to take the ideas in this episode to friends or family and talk them out with them. Is it true that movement is an easier way to distinguish quality? I mean, is it? Find out, share your experience with others, get their input too.

15:09
The question I would like to leave you with is, where is quality already important to you? Are you a musician, a chef, an artist, a writer, a filmmaker, a mechanic? Are you a designer of some sort? Where is quality important in your relationships, like with your spouse or with your kids? Thank you for your attention.