MOVING BEYOND MEDIOCRE ~ Developing your power from the inside out
Healthy Beginnings Magazine
BY CAROLE BUCHER, BA, GCFP, RENO FELDENKRAIS INTEGRATIVE MOVEMENT How body awareness and movement can improve your life.
Our bodies are amazingly intelligent, strong and resilient — almost certainly the most complex and extraordinary device that we’ll ever own. Yet most people are unconscious of the body’s remarkable qualities and don’t know how to access or develop them. Being disconnected from innate bodily strengths can interfere with fulfilling one’s potential and can affect the choices one makes in life. So how can we turn this dilemma around?
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In his most famous book about movement and human development, Awareness Through Movement1, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais describes how one’s development can be stymied by, “coercive and repressive educational practices” that can undermine our individuality and motivation. People learn, at least in the short term, to be satisfied with external approval and stop moving toward their personal dreams and desires. Uninspired effort can become the acceptable norm in relationships, business, and education. Add to this being disconnected from our physical selves — meaning we live in our heads and not our bodies — and the recipe for modern existential angst appears. We don’t question our perceptions; we lose self-confidence and spontaneity, and the natural human sense of freedom and joy begins to disappear.
“If we feel awkward, dull, or somehow shameful, we will behave in an awkward, dull and shamed manner. Feeling free and uninhibited, we will behave spontaneously.”
When the demands of life get harder or more complicated, stress, self-doubt and physical, mental, and emotional overload can result. We become more fearful and lose the ability to function effectively in high-pressure situations. Employers everywhere have to deal with this by finding ways to motivate and empower their employees to higher levels of confidence, creativity, and performance. And this is exactly the place where one’s physical body, the skeleton in particular, comes strongly into play as our best resource.
With 206 living bones that perform some surprising and crucial life-support tasks, the healthy adult skeleton is the foundation of our health. These tasks include:
When the skeleton is well-aligned it does two other really important things:
A) It provides bodily support with virtually no energy expenditure. Imagine how well-stacked blocks resist the force of gravity. When bones are aligned, they support in the same way, with almost no muscular effort. When you stand with knees straight, the femur stacked above the tibia, the downward force of gravity is counteracted with minimal muscular effort, like the blocks. Should the knee bend… a great effort by the thigh muscles must be applied to prevent falling.
B) It transfers upward and downward forces through the body, creating directional force and power. Think about lifting carry-on luggage into the overhead compartment in an airplane. Your feet and legs generate power from below: the lower legs extend and push into the femurs, which push the pelvis up into the spine and shoulders, and move and lift the arms upward and under your luggage, powering it into the compartment.
This reorganizational support of skeletal work and power is very different than laboring to build stronger muscles or lose weight to change one’s shape to some subjective ideal.
At the deepest level, the skeleton plays a central role in our health and wellbeing by generating a sense of grounded support and optimum, dependable functioning in the whole system. We are able to tap into the strength of our bony structure, where a higher level of performance (thinking, feeling, moving, and acting) can take root and flourish. When body- and self-awareness improve, one’s movement and actions become stronger, more efficient, and comfortable too.
This linkage creates a deep sense of safety and self-confidence at the core of our being, unlike anything else. It improves our posture and our moods and can liberate our mind, heart, body, and spirit.
For information about The Feldenkrais Method®, Awareness Through Movement® classes and Functional Integration® lessons, please visit and use the contact form at Renofeldenkrais.blogspot.com.
REFERENCES:
--Feldenkrais, Moshe, Ed.D., Awareness Through Movement, Harper San Francisco, 1972.
--Verin, Layna. The Teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais: Seeing Movement as the Embodiment of Intention. The Graduate Review, Section II, Body/Mind. Berkeley, June 1978. --medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320444.php, BONES: All you need to know. Jan. 11, 2018. --Hargrove, Todd, GCFP, PT. A Guide to Better Movement: The Science and Practice of Moving with More Skill and Less Pain, 2015. [Feldenkrais Method] |
Best wishes and love,
Carole
Carole Bucher, BA, is a Guild-Certified Feldenkrais practitioner/teacher and owner of Reno Feldenkrais Integrative Movement and teaching ongoing Feldenkrais classes in Reno and Northern NV, since 2009.
Please visit renofeldenkrais.blogspot.com to learn more about classes and private sessions, or to use the contact form. |
