Expand Your Ability: Embodiment, Somatics, and Feldenkrais

00:01
So, there's something you want to improve about yourself. So you might initially think, hey, I'm gonna go get a book. I'm going to go take a class. I'm going to go read something and learn something about what I'm doing and I will get better. If I read the book, I will find my way. And yeah, there's merit to that. There's definitely something good in that process.

00:32
And the awareness through movement process offers something that's through movement, that there's a learning you can have through movement specifically as a way to improve yourself. Well, that's interesting. Why movement? What does movement provide that, well, books don't, reading doesn't, thinking doesn't? Well,

01:02
Let's find out on this episode of the Expand Your Ability podcast. My name is Jeffrey Schwinghammer. This podcast is about you. Your body, your relationships, your world. In this episode, I want to explore why movement. Why movement as an approach to improvement of our own experience. And I'm going to turn to...

01:31
Moshe Feldkrais' book, Awareness Through Movement. And in this book, it's a really great introduction to a lot of the ideas and the method. He offers nine reasons for why movement. And this will be a series of episodes where I go through them one by one. He begins in this chapter called Where to Begin and How.

01:58
is that there's been a long history of human development, many different practices, religious practices and others that have aimed at improving the individual in some way. What's important is not to think of you as a collection of bricks in a building.

02:26
that, oh, I need to change out this brick and put in this brick. Instead, your interest should be in seeing yourself as a process and that you have a quality of your process. How can you improve the quality of your process of living? You can't really break yourself into distinct components. But you can look at how you are and how you go about things.

02:55
and then find ways to self-correct through your process. For his first argument for why movement, why movement is a great way as an approach for improvement, he says, the nervous system is occupied mainly with movement. The nervous system is occupied mainly with movement. He goes on to say,

03:25
Movement occupies the nervous system more than anything else because we cannot sense, feel, or think without a minisided and elaborate series of actions initiated by the brain to maintain the body against the pole of gravity. At the same time, we must know where we are and in what position. Okay, that's a lot there. Let's go through that bit by bit.

03:52
Movement occupies the nervous system more than anything else because we cannot sense, feel, or think without a minisided and elaborate series of actions initiated by the brain to maintain the body against the pull of gravity. So, let's say you are in some sort of situation, anything, really, even if you were just reading that self-help book.

04:21
and all of a sudden you fell out of your chair. You just crumpled onto the floor and whacked your noggin on something. Like, you wouldn't survive very long if you were to collapse easily. Right? There's something in you that keeps you upright at all times. It's not quite accurate to say that you're static when you sit, even though you're not moving very much.

04:49
there is the active movement in stillness. And so your nervous system doesn't want you to fall. If you were to fall, it's game over, especially when you have your most precious resource at the top of your body, your brain, your eyes, your ears, your cognitive function. If you were to tumble, like it's game over.

05:16
So that's always happening, because gravity doesn't take a break. Gravity is always happening, and so our body is always sensitive to where we are in space and what we're doing. When you wake up and you have that moment of disorientation, where it doesn't happen all the time, at least not for me, but maybe you've experienced this, where you wake up and you go, oh, where am I? I don't quite know where I am.

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and then takes a moment, oh yeah, I know where I am. Like, maybe it was a crazy dream and kind of catching up with yourself. In that moment of finding where you are, there's a, you have lost orientation for a moment and that's okay because you get it back really quickly. But if you were to lose that during your waking states, in conversation, in reading, in walking around your house, like that's...

06:15
not very safe. Right? And so, our nervous system is constantly attentive to where we are, what are we doing, what are we oriented to? Are we oriented to a teacher, to a TV, to the kitchen, kitchen top? Who knows? And that helps us make the next action. And we'll continue reading here.

06:43
In order to know our position within the field of gravity with respect to other bodies, or to change our position, we must make use of our senses, our feeling, our power of thought. In order to know our position within the field of gravity with respect to other bodies or change our position, we must make use of our senses, our feeling, and our power of thought.

07:10
And so once again we come back to this idea that, yeah, we can separate out our experience, abstract our experience into four different categories. Movement, thinking, feeling, sensing. And they all come at one. They all are at the same time. And to move around your environment, you need to think. You need to feel. You need to sense. And they all come together.

07:40
And so that means when you explore how you move, well, there's an opportunity to explore how you think and sense and feel that they're coming with. I'll continue reading. The active involvement of the entire nervous system in the waking state is a part of every method of self-improvement, even in those that claim to be concerned.

08:06
with only one of the four components of the waking state. The active involvement of the entire nervous system in the waking state is a part of every method of self-improvement, even for those to be concerned with only one of the four components who claim to be concerned with only one of the four components of the waking state. So, in some sort of therapeutic or self-improvement or

08:35
some sort of process, hey we're going to improve your thinking or we're going to address those difficult feelings you have. Even if they claim to focus on just one of those, the whole nervous system comes with all of it. Your movement comes with your thinking, your feeling, your sensing. You can't get away with just doing one. Now,

09:03
I'm reminded of something one of my teachers, Jeff Holler, talked about is that when Moshe considered Freud's work, he thought one of the biggest things that Freud did that maybe he wasn't quite aware of, I'm not sure, but Freud in his psychoanalysis had people sit back and lift their feet from the floor and rest.

09:30
in our creature bodies that are very sensitive to gravity and to movement, to sit back, put your feet up, is to be in a very different state. You're more supported, you have more contact with the couch. And that means your nervous system as a whole is less preoccupied with falling. If it's less preoccupied with falling, then it's more open

10:00
to thinking, feeling, sensing, all the things. So if we explore into this through movement, what are the ways we can set up our body, set up our mind, our experience, to be more open? Well, if we're attentive to our movement and how we find support from the ground, then that opens the doors to much more.

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Another example of this is autosuggestion or hypnosis or self-hypnosis, where you are invited to right before sleep lay back and get really quiet, and in that quietness suggest to yourself some improvements. The autosuggestion comes from Emil Cue, who was an influence on following Christ in his early years.

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It is by reducing the overall stimulus that we become more open. You can think of that as a continuum between openness to suggestion and activeness. When you're really like if you're running, if you're running, how open are you to learning something new? Right. But if you slow down to almost complete stillness, you can listen to the details more.

11:26
Another thing to consider is that our evolutionary origins give us, and well, all creatures, the ability to move gracefully and efficiently because your prime directive as a creature is to live long enough to have kids, and part of living long enough is getting food and escaping being food. So you don't want to

11:56
You don't want to get caught. That requires movement. Quality movement meant creatures lived longer. A child, when it's just born, doesn't really have the capability of philosophy or complex mathematical thinking, legal thinking, like logic. Like...

12:24
It takes a while for a child just to learn how to move, to play with all these different variations of moving the arms and legs, and then the center of the body and lifting the head. All of that comes first before actual speaking, and then even later down the line is more complex cognitive abilities. So movement is there in the beginning, before

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speech before thinking. So in that way movement is at the root level, at the foundation of us.

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That's the first reason of why movement. The nervous system is occupied mainly with movement. Our ability to navigate our environment also includes thinking, feeling, and sensing. No question about it. So within movement is access to everything else. This is the first of nine reasons why

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Moshe's book Awareness Through Movement. Stay tuned, I'll be continuing to explore these ideas. If you would please, hit the subscribe button, so you can get these episodes as they are released. Follow me on Instagram, at expandyourability to get more of these ideas as well. An important and necessary aspect of learning is having conversation.

14:04
and sharing ideas and talking through them. So I invite you to take these ideas and talk about them with your friends. The question I'll leave you with today is, is it true that movement is in everything you do? Is it true? I've put it forward as something that is true, but is it actually true in your experience? Check in throughout the day.

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Does this involve movement? Thank you for your attention.