Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais said,
“We function as we sense, not as we are.”
What did he mean?
I experienced the most profound example of what he meant during an individual session that I gave last week. A student, came to my office with back pain. Let’s call her Alice, which is not her real name. Alice has worked with me for about a year and has become much more aware of her body in the process. She’s a bright woman with a deeply curious mind and is as intrigued by learning as I am.
Alice began her lesson by sensing her habitual way of standing. Particularly how she distributed her weight in each foot. She tended to carry her weight on the inside edge of each foot, her arches were flat. With this as her base of support, her body, in a its infinite wisdom to keep her from falling, compensated by adding muscular action in her back, calves, and neck that would not be necessary if her weight was carried more functionally by the bones and arches of her feet. Her experience was stiffness and pain in the overworked areas. That’s pretty typical.
Muscles that work extra hard to maintain our balance become painful and feel inflexible. When we are organized so our bones support us, our muscles are free to move us, not brace us.
Alice did a guided Awareness Through Movement Lesson that had the effect of strengthening the muscles of her feet and gave her motor cortex more choices of how to use them. In it’s infinite wisdom, our brain will chose the most functional way of moving that is available to us. If the brain didn’t make the most functional choices available, we would not survive…for instance the ability to safely cross a street or drive a car. One caveat is that there are mental and emotional states that determine what choices we believeare available.
Toward the end of Alice’s lesson, I offered some movement possibilities of the fibula. That’s the smaller bone on the outside of the lower leg. It’s next to the tibia or shin bone. (See picture at the end of this article.) When our foot rolls to its inner or outer edges, a healthy fibula has the capacity to swivel. For many of us, our fibulas are stuck. Stuck fibulas inhibit our feet from rolling, therefore endangering our balance on uneven terrain.
When Alice felt her fibula move, she had gigantic AHA MOMENT. She realized that in the past she imagined her lower leg as just one solid piece instead of two bones with one of them capable of twizzling. In Dr. Feldenkrais’ words, the way she imagined them was how she used them. Keep in mind that she often felt stiffness in her calves, low back, and neck. If she were treated locally for each of those problems, not much would change because she repeatedly used her legs the way her brain imagined them to be.
For me, who was holding her fibula in my fingers as she had the AHA MOMENT, the results were astounding. I felt her fibula immediately rotate in a way that matched the movement of her foot. The accuracy of her awareness and capacity immediately translated into functional use of her leg, ankle and foot.
Said another way…the motor cortex creates a picture, for lack of a better word, of where our bones and joints are and what we have available to use. Our movement is then matched to the internal picture, sometimes called our self image. (In the physical sense, not in the psychological sense.) When that self image is made more accurate through awareness then we function considerably more efficiently, with more grace and more comfort. In Dr. Feldenkrais’ words, “We function as we sense, not as we are.”
Let’s return to Alice’s story. It is very important that Alice sensed, not just intellectually knew, that she had a potentially movable bone in her leg. She brought her unconscious idea up from the unknown into consciousness. At that moment, it seemed me that there was magic in the air because I felt something like an electrical charge all around me and at the same moment her bone began to rotate under my fingers. During the lesson, the pain in her her back subsided significantly and when she got up to walk, she experienced greater comfort and fluidity. She was using her arches in a much better way.
Then, because Alice is such a consummate learner, she made another connection…As a piano teacher, she has often worked with her students to free up the radius bone of the lower arm. It’s an analogous bone to the fibula. She did this to give her student’s hands more capacity to roll over the piano keys and to keep their hands from doing too much of the work. When Alice made this association, she understood her legs and feet more clearly. More importantly, she generalized her learning to a very useful place in her life.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
Then we come to the next level of what this is all about. Since our internal image is unconscious, we don’t ever think about its accuracy. We just assume what is so. As long as our assumptions stay unconscious, they are not available to change. When conscious awareness is discovered, we are open to new possibilities. Once Alice realized that her previous sense of herself was inaccurate, she was able to make the shift. This is the magic of awareness. I’ve said many times, awareness in and of itself is transformational.
Are you curious about what you don’t know?
I’m always curious about what I don’t know. What doorways are you willing you pass through to find out? Your new learning may not be new. It might be something hidden inside you that has been there all along…just waiting for you to re-discover it.
AHA MOMENTS are like flashes of light that spontaneously ignite. It comes upon you when you least expect it, not through force or trying, but through ease, curiosity and self compassion. These are the qualities that greet you when you have a private session with me. You are invited to explore with me any time you are ready.
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