Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

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On today's episode, we're going back to the book, Awareness Through Movement, for another look at why movement? Why movement as a way toward personal development and transformation? Through movement, you can understand what's going on in the nervous system. This is what we'll explore. Welcome to the Expand Your Ability Podcast. I'm your host, Jeffrey Schwinghammer. This show explores how

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curious and playful movements are a way to transform your life. I'm a certified Feldenkrais practitioner and lifelong student. Feldenkrais was deeply interested in how we become more conscious with our choices, how our years and years of accumulated habits, that is how we walk, how we talk, how we relate to others and make decisions, all of that is in our unconscious.

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And they're good in some sense, they're efficient, but they're invisible. But if you want to change our life path, change where we're headed, we need to become more aware of what we do and invent new habits. Fowling Christ's approach is through movement. But why movement? Can't we just read some self-help books and just call it a day? Well, self-help books are helpful.

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but they miss a whole wonderful world of sensation and movement that's available within our bodies. In his book Awareness Through Movement, he offers nine whys for movement. I've covered the previous five whys in previous episodes, and in this episode I will cover the sixth why. You can start anywhere you like, listen to this episode, and go find the previous ones. That's totally cool.

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The section is a brief paragraph that I will read from the book line by line, and as I go through it I will expound on it. Alright, let's get started. The section is, movements reflect the state of the nervous system. He goes on to say, the muscles contract as a result of unending series of impulses from the nervous system.

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For this reason, the muscular pattern of the upright position, facial expression, and voice reflect the condition of the nervous system. Obviously neither position, expression, nor voice can be changed without a change in the nervous system that mobilizes the outward, visible changes. Alright, so I think he hits this idea very directly in his opening two sentences.

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Your musculature is at the service of your central control, your nervous system. That means if you have tension patterns, let's say your neck is tight or your back is stiff, or you have some difficulty in walking, that's reflective of how your nervous system is putting together the movement. It is reflective of how the nervous system is. A key term to know in the Feldenkrais method?

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is self-organization, or sometimes used in a phrase like, how are you organized? This refers to the muscular contraction throughout the body, and the positioning of the skeleton as a sturdy structure interacting with the floor or whatever surface you're on. Also included in your organization is your orientation, that is, where are you looking?

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What are you or who are you relating to? What are you moving towards or away from? And it's also in your timing, the speed or rhythm of your movements. And it's also in the rigidity you maintain in your body. Could be the tightness you have in your hips or in your shoulders or the way that you kind of curl over most of the time. Anything.

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How you are organized is the central curiosity that the Feldenkrais method opens the doors to. In the Feldenkrais method, we explore what is your organization and how can you organize yourself in a new way that you like, that benefits you, that is easier, more comfortable. All right, let's get back to the book.

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He says, then when we refer to muscular movement, we mean, in fact, the impulses of the nervous system that activate the muscles, which cannot function without the impulses to direct them, right? So when we're talking about muscular movement, we're actually talking about the nervous system, how the nervous system organizes the movement. The muscles are, you could say, kind of dumb.

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they do their good job because of the information they're getting from the nervous system. But they're not making the decisions. It's that internal map of organization that's in your nervous system. It's how your nervous system is responding to the moment. And so through movement, we can actually point to how the nervous system is functioning.

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Alright, back to the book. He says, though the heart muscles of the embryo begins to contract even before the nerves that will control it have developed, it does not work in the way familiar to us until its own nervous system can regulate its action. I think this is an interesting point he's making. I think he's trying to address a possible counterpoint. That someone can say

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Yeah, yeah, okay, the muscles don't do the work, the nervous system makes them work, but like the heart beats on its own. Yeah, I think he's like agreeing that it does beat, but it is until the nervous system connects with the heart that gives us the necessary experience that we have as living human beings. It's the nervous connection that is what we are familiar with.

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Okay, back to the book. He says, From this we may derive a conclusion that seems paradoxical at first sight. Improvement in action and movement will appear only after a prior change in the brain and the nervous system has occurred. Okay, I think that one's worth another read. He says, From this we may derive a conclusion.

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that seems paradoxical at first sight. Improvement in action and movement will appear only after a prior change in the brain and the nervous system has occurred.

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All right, so that means when we experience a change in awareness through movement, that change that we sense in our bodies is the result of our nervous system updating, changing. Our brain is somehow in a new state. We're no longer in that habitual mode we were in at the start of the lesson.

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We have changed the brain in some way, and we feel the results in our body. On to the next line. As such, changes are invisible to the eye. Their external expression is therefore considered as purely mental by some people, while others will consider them purely physical. I think Feldenkrais must have been responding to a debate he saw happening at the time. Right?

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Are these changes happening because the muscles are changing, or is it something purely mental? Well, it's a reflection. They're related to each other. In therapy, I've experienced moments of great insights and ahas, some sort of breakthrough in my story. And because of my refined bodily awareness through the Feldingkrais method, I can track

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that there is something in fact changing in my musculature. Something in my sense of my size, my shape, the muscular tone in my body, my breath, where my eyes look. And I will catch in that moment of a ha or that insight, something will also shift in my body. Oh, I don't have to hold on to that anymore.

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or I don't have to hold on to that story. And you know what else I'm not holding on to? That same muscular tension I felt in my body, that was the reflection of holding onto whatever that story was. It was maintained in my muscular tension as well.

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The bodily shift reflects the change in the nervous system. The body is the mind, and the mind is the body. And we are far more malleable than you might think. In an awareness through movement lesson, when you're teaching, you can actually witness how people's nervous systems are changing or updating through the lesson. You see it in how they have more fun.

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or how the movements get more integrated and smoother, or you see how their breath deepens. You can also see it in how students float out of the classroom joking with other students with a big smile on their face.

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Feldenkrais believed that a fundamental and universal language for nervous systems is movement and touch. So how can you speak with your nervous system?

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In conclusion, awareness through movement is brain work, it's nervous system work. We're not interested in building muscles or strengthening in that kind of way, we're interested in creating new connections in the brain that lead to better quality movement, and more choice in what we do, more integrity in who we feel ourselves to be.

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and we're using the body to change the brain to then change the body. And so we can just drop that distinction and say we're working with ourselves in a way that gets deep down into the fabric of who we are, and then we add in a little bit more space. We add in a little bit more grace.

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Alright, are you ready to see what this work can do for you? If you're feeling stuck and powerless to do something about it, this mind-body exploration could be what you're looking for. I'm offering one-on-one online coaching packages now, and we will work together to find your embodied strength and creativity. You can find a link in the show notes to set up a free consult call. I'm working on more offerings too in the future.

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You can find the latest information by signing up for my newsletter in the show notes. As always, I invite you to talk about these ideas that you hear in this podcast with a friend. Conversations are a great way to make and strengthen new connections. So I have one final question for you today. If our bodies reflect our nervous system, based on how you experience your body,

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What do you think is going on in there?

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Thank you for your attention.