A Deliberate and Intentional Practice
A Deliberate and Intentional Practice
Welcome to another new year, where we pick up on our learning and self-awareness.
How do you focus on your interests, especially those you are engaged in on a regular basis? Attending to the little things through your conscious awareness improves your results. What gets your attention? Can you find a place to start your attention and notice if it’s easier to be aware of these things? It’s the small actions we do consistently that affect our results. When we turn our soft attention to this process, notice the difference in your outcomes.
“I believe that the unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning.” — Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method® is a dynamic learning system where we slow the process of movement down. This allows you to intentionally pay attention to what is happening, especially when you do it every day. Does the quality begin to suffer? Are there glitches or a sense of pushing? Over time, if ignored, your body will create heat, friction, wear and tear that leads to tissue deterioration. Unchecked, this leads one into a diagnosed pathology.
Do you tune out because what you are doing becomes a pattern? Some patterns we develop over time are good unless we dissociate and stop listening to the feedback. This indicates whether you are better organized or creating interference in the process. Tuning out and allowing the pattern to evolve can limit your ability to recognize if you’re creating fatigue and potential discomfort.
Be aware that pushing into resistance to finish a task creates friction. Take your time and give yourself pauses, not because you’re fatigued. Tune in to the quality of how you do the known task so you can refine and optimize. This is the learning process of curious people who explore to improve. It makes no difference whether an athlete, performer, writer, or scientist gets curious and continues to enhance the quality of their actions. We are intelligent beings, Feldenkrais is the process of learning to inform us of a better path forward.
I invite you to join in this process through Awareness Through Movement (ATM)® lessons or private sessions, whether live in person, hands-on, Functional Integration (FI)®, or Guided Learning. Here, a skilled practitioner can offer information that might not have dawned on you in the doing to help provide ways to compare your own experience. This is offered to help give you a bit more nonjudgmental information.
“In my lessons the student learns to listen to the instructions while he is actually carrying out an exercise and to make the necessary adjustments without stopping the movement itself. In this way he learns to act while he thinks and to think while he acts.” Moshe Feldenkrais, ATM book, pg 160
I hope I have earned the privilege of your time and attention, and I hope to have you join me in moving into more ease and comfort. It’s possible, I know from my decades of experience, so I hope to enable you to have your own experience to sense and feel what’s possible.
Warmest,
Peggi
