Low-stress Computing: Using Awareness to Avoid RSI, a Feldenkrais Perspective

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Ralph Strauch Part 1 : Reducing Behavioral Stress Preliminary Edition

Low-$tess Computing Using awareness to avoid I{SI A feldenkrais t Perspective

Ralph Strauch Part L: Reducing Behavioral Stress

Somatic Options-' ...t0

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in your body

Low-Stress Computing Part L: Reducing Behavioral Stress

Copyright

@ 1997

by ttalph Strauch

All Rigfrts Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced it *y form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, includqg photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of Somatic Optidns, except as indicated below. If you \utg purchased the electronic editioft, you may keep one coPy on a single ggmpgter, and make one addtional copy for backup, If y9u own either the printed version or electronic versionr /ou may make additional copies upon payment of a copying fee of $5 Per copy. This notice must be included in those copies. Payment *uy Pe made by -*3il to the address below (US funds only), or by email to , authorizing me to chaig" your First Virtual account and including your First Virtual PIN. tf you also include the neunes and addresses of recipients, I will notify them of updates, additional materials, etc. If you acquire a copy on which the copying fee has not been paidr-and you retain and use that copy, you must pay the copying fee of $S as indicated above. For information on site licenses or other large-scale distribution, please contact Somatic Options. The terms Feldenkrais Method, Functional lntegration, and Awareness Through Movement are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild. Some illustrations were prepaled with Poser 2, @ L996by Fractal Desigrr. Some illustrations are drawn from the LifeART Super Anatomy Colle.Iiorl,

O 1991 by Techpool Studios.

Somati. Options P.O. Box L94 Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 [email protected]

www.somatic.com

Table of Contents Tablg Of COntgntS............ r........................................................ii-iPfefaCg

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Chaptgr 1": Introduction.o...... j.oo...r....i..................o..o..'.............1 Am I "blaming thg victim?" ..............................................3 Scope and tgrminology. . . .. . .. r. . . . .. ... . ... . ... ... .. . .. ... a......... .... 4 Causes & prevention of RSI..............................r,..........,...6 Environmental and bghavioral strgss . .....,... ......... . ... r.. . . . B Ovgrvigw of what's to come ........... r....... r.... o........,......... 1 1 Stpporting yoursglf in gravity.... ... . ... ........ o........ . . . . 1 1 Broadening your awareness . o.. ..... .... . . .. . ........... ...... ..I2 Acting as an integrated system ....,................... r..... r. 13 Maintaining your center.. i.................. r..................... 13 .

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Chaptgr 2: Excgssivg gffort............................i....................... 15 The "Work FIard" fallacy............................................. ...I7 Emotional strgss and repressgd fggling,.....................,.. 18 Feeling is the interpretation of sensation............... .I9 Fggling as a dimgnsion of experigncg.................... ..21 Thg gffort-injury conngction...o.................r......,........... ...24 Somg basic anatomy and biomgchanics..........o..... ..25 Musclgs producg force and movement........,i,..... ...26 StabiLization and cocontraction . . . . . ., . . r,, ., . .. . . . . . . . . . .27 Excgssivg tgnsion and mgchanical strain........... .....29 .

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Chaptgr 3: Poor body organi2ation....o........o..........o...........,31 Stpporting yoursglf in gravity............,..r....................... 33 Poor alignment of your skglgton.... o........... o.................. .34 Trgatitg your body as a fragmented systen1....*....... ....36

Chapter 4: Lack of sglf-awareness ..oo..o.o..........o........o...r.. ....gT ftrstinctivg vs. lgarngd bghaviof .....................................38 Habifual and non-habitual intgr1acing................., ..gg Functioning requires informatiofl. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . ... . . . . . . . . . 42 "Sit still dontt squirm" o.. o........ r... o........,.. o........... .. 4g .

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Chaptgr 5: Synergies bgtween sourcgs of stress.i............. ..45 Chaptgr 6: Reducing Behavioral Stress ........ o........ . ......... . .. . 49 The action / awareness cyclg ................r......o..o......o........ .52 Turning your hgad ATM 1gssofl.............e..r.......o....... 55

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Chaptgr 7:The process of somatic exploration............... ...69

*Tff;#i,r:{&{ffi.:::..:.::.::.:::::..'..:::::::::::::22

T'ai Chi................................ t....r..o.. o.. o.. r.r........ ro.....68 Othgr awareness practicgs .....o...........o...,............ 68 Itrtegration practicg r... ........ o.. ... . .. . ...... .. r. .. . o.... .... ..... ..70 Triggers for practice.o.o....................oo.......o..r...r..... .....72 Sourcgs of guidance ......, ........... . r....... . ........ .... o..... .....73 Devgloping your sense of rightness............... ...Ts Conceptual shift. . . . . . . . . . . . . . o. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . .. . . o. .. .. .. . r. . . .. .. . .. .. .77 "Demanding" is not thg same as "difficuIt.".......... .....78 Thrgg Dimgnsions of Bghavioral Changg .o..o...........,....80 o

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About thg Author.... t.........o..o........oo......rr....o......................o...83 Acknowlgdgments . ... r..... r. i ... i.. . .. o. r........... o......... o.. o...... .. ....84 Aulargness Through Moagmgnt audiotapes . . . . . ... . . .. . . . . .. . . . . . . . 85 Sglgcted Articlg Rgprints.................r............o.o...................o ..87 Dgscription of Thg Rgality Illusion..............o...................o...88 r

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Order form r......o...... o...r..r...........o..........o.....o........r f ..... o.......... 89 o

Preface

This is a prelimirury version of Part 1(the first seven chapters) of a book on Low-Stress Computing: Using Awareness to Aaoid RSI, AFeldenkrais Perspectiue.I am publishing it in this form to make it available now/ because of the severity of the problem of RSI and the need for this kind of perspective on how to reduce your vulnerability to ftSI. I am continuing to work on the remainder of book and accompanyi^g Awareness Through Moaementlessons, and will make those materials available in coming months.

When I began this project I had a clear vision of what was required. The concepts I needed to communicate seemed apparent to ffi€, as did the exPeriences that I needed to provide to make those concepts meanittgful. At that point, however, those concepts existed only in a vague and indistinct form, more kinesthetic than verbal. Th"y were meani.gful to me, but far from the conceptual framework most people use to think about how we move and function. I had conununicated those concepts successfully to others, within the context of my private practice. Ther€, I had the luxury of being able to tailor my communication

vi

Low-Stress Computing

to each person individually, combining verbal exposition with direct experience transmitted through my hands-on work. This commurtications channel has a much higher "bandwidth" than the printed page.

I'm finding the task of transforming these nonverbal concepts into the clear and logical verbal framework necessary for a book to be a daunting one. This material will ptobably be revised in the futurE and your feedback would be appreciated, should you care to give it. Copyright restrictions notwithstandirg, the ease with which both hard copy and electronic versions can be copied ensures that copies will be made. I can't stop that, but I do want to offer those who would like to be hbnest about it away to pay for copies they make. See the copyright page for details. Pacific Palisades, California March,L997

Chapter

t

Introduction

Once upon a time, the term "hazardous occupations" applied primarily to occupations like wgrking in a Titte, loggin1, or bridge building jobs rryolYitg the risk of su-d-dei, violent lniury or death. Today, the term must also be applied to office wofk, computer Programmilg, newspaper writing, and working as a nrpermarket occupations that superficially uppear to have checlier few hazards associated with them.

The hazards in these occupations are not sudd€il, massive, and violent. On the contraU, they are insidious a thousand tiny taps instead of a single and cumulative massive blow. They are the hazards created by doing the same thing over and over again, so that individually negligible stresses accumulate to the poitl of ml91y.Someone typing 60 words per minute will strike 20,000 perhaps 12A,A00 keys in the course of a keys per hour day, accounting for breaks. .

The injuries and disabilities resulting from these hazards are described by names like repetitiue stress injury

2

Low_Stress Computing

(RSI), repetitiae strain injury (also called RSI), cumulatiae trauma disorder or syndrome (CTD or CTS), an d oaeruse syndrome. These injuries disable millions of workers, at least temporarily, at a cost to the economy of billions of dollars per year.

The usual explanations for these injuries focus on the repetitive nature of the work (e.9., on Vping or handlirg groc,eries at the check-out counter) or the design of the workstation (biomechanically poor chair or keyboard design, etc.). These factors are significant, to be sure, but Lh*y don't tell the whole story. R"petitive stress injuries flow from the confluence of the nature of the work, ihe design of tlte u)orkplace, and the behaaioral habits that you bring to the task and use (albeit unconsciously) to organrze the way you do the job. Nature of the Work

Design of the Wo

RSI

Behaviorial Habits

Sources of RSI

Our focus here will be on that third branch of the stream the unconscious habits which or garrLze your actions and the unconscious choices which support those habits. We will explore the ways those choices iffect your actions, and how you can learn to change those choices and work in ways that impose less strain on yourself. Most people work too hard at what they do, in the sense $ut they exert more effort than the jnb aitually requires. This extra effort doesn't dissipate harmlessly into the ether. It produces compressive forces within the body,

lntroduction

3

which impose the extra mechanical strains that eventually lead to RSI. You do this because of a lack of selfyou literally do not know what you are awareness or what alternatives are available. That doing to yourself, can change.

Am I "blaming the victim?" Because I focus on what you do to yourself, rather than on what the workplace does to you, I have been accused of "blami.g the victim i' of being an aPologist for heartless employers who aren't willi^g to provide a safe workplace .That is not my intention. I don't see what I say asblaming someone who suffers from RSI. Rathet,I see it empowering them to change their condition, irrespective of what anyone else does.

When I say you can do things differently, I'm not saying that you should haae been doing them differently all along. I'm asking you to question deeply ingrained cultural habits, ways of thinki.g and acting that we all learned as children and accepted uncritically as how things &re,without ever thinking about the fact that we had choices. I'm suggesting that it's time to rethink those habits, to see if we want to continue to pay the prices they extract from us. If not, then it's time to change them. I will show you how to do that if you choose to.

If your own behavior contributes to your RSI, then you can reduce your vulnerability to RSI through your own action, whatever your workplace environment. This doesn't mean that your RSI rs "your fault" and your employer has no responsibility for it. It doesn't reduce your employer's responsibility to provide a safe workplace, and to modify that workplace if necessary to make it safe. It does suggest a new tool which employers can employ to achieve a safer workplac education to

Low-S

4

_rutino

make employees more aware of the behavioral changes that will reduce their risk, and support for them in making those changes. To provide this kind of support, employers must become more knowledgeable about the problem of RSI and the sources that contribute to it. Those that do so should become more sympathetic to the problem and more willing to address it, rather than to ignore it and hope it will gn away. The approach I advocate does not excuse or apolo grze for employers who are unwilling to deal with the problem. On the contrdty,I see it as a *ay of encouraging them to do more about it, and as providing new tools to support that.

Scope and terminology People apply many different terms to the kind of difficulties we're dealing with here, and different people define those terms with different degrees of specificitf. I'm going to use the term RSI as a generic term for injuries

resulting from repetitive activities like typing, shelving books, or working on an assembly line. I'm avoiding terms like syndrome or disorder, because these terms have medical diagnostic connotations. I will not be dealing directly with medical diagnostic categories such as carpel tunnel syndrome, thoracic outlet syndrome, or ulnar nerve impingement, but will be looking- at the problem through a somewhat different lens. concerned with how you organize yovr movements, actions, responses to the world, and how that organrzatron imposes stress on your body. And I'11 be concerned with how you can change that organizatton to avoid or reduce that stress. I'm calling this way of looki.g at the issue a "Feldenkrais perspective" because it grows out of my experience as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais I'11 be

lntroduction

Method over the past 13 years. Later on I'll draw a more explicit comparison between this perspective and the more familiar medical perspective, to see how they both contrast with and complement each other. For the time being, though, I'11 just let the ideas unfold as we come to them. This is a different lens than you may be used to looking through when you look at these problems, and may require some conceptual shifts and new conceptual categories. I'11 lead you through experiential explorations intended to help y.u facilitate those shifts and make them meaningful. Please take enough time with these explorations to allow that to happen. The benefits from this approach come from changes in thg *1I you experience yourself. If you approach what I have to say from a purely intellectual perspective those changes won't hupperl. I'11 use the term exploration to describe short exploratory experiences which I will guide you through, and later to describe the larger overarchi.g process of change on which I hope to induce you to embark (which I'11 call somatic exploration.) I'11 use the term lesson (as in Awareness Through Moaement Lesson) to describe more structured learni.g experiences with specific learning objectives. I will uoe a ditrerenf, LyVefaca, like Lhie, for direcLione which I ho?e you will follow and ex?erience.

I am deliberately avoiding the term exercise, which is sometimes applied to experiences like these. My reason for this is to emphasrze the learning aalue of these experience s. Exercise carries a connotation of "something you can do without thinking about it, in which the benefits are derived from the effort you put into the mechanical performance of the act." That is not the case here. The benefits of these explorations and lessons derive

Low-Stresg Cqmputing

from the information you acquire from them, and the learning which that information makes possible. Effort is not desirable, because it often interferes with learning. Causes & prevention of [tSI Let's look at the term RSI, or repetitiae stress injury, and what the term itself can tell us about the problem it describes. see

o o

Repetitive

-

somethi.g you do over and over

Stress (or strain) that imposes stress (ot strain) each time you do-it

o htjrry

-

leading to injury or disability

Broken down into it's components like that, the meanirg of the term is obvious.

Doing something over and over in ways that impose stress or strain each time you do it will eventually lead to i.iury. Typing is a highly repetitive act. If you type at an average speed of 60 words per minute, you will strike the keyboard 20,000 times per hour. If you put a little extra strain on your body with each keystroke, it can add up. I'm not going to take a position on whether the "5" in "RSI" should stand for "stress" or for "strain." The term is equally descriptive (and valid) either way. In physics, the term stress refers to an external force which tends to deform a physical system, while strain refers to the resulti^g deformation. In the current context a similar distinction appears useful. I will apply the term strain to negative impacts on body tissues, such as tension in muscles and tendoils, friction between tendons and the structures they move against, pressure of one tissue

lntroduction

against another, etc., and the term stress to the stimuli (both external and internal) which produce those impacts. Thus strain is the direct cause of *jtty, while stress, in turn, is what leads to that strain. We can sum up the relationship between stress, strain, and injuty, then, as follows:

Repetitive Stress + Repetitive Strain--+RSI This analysis suggests two approaches to reducing and preventing RSI:

(1) reducing the stress associated with each individual action, and

(2) reducing the ffictiue number of repetitive actions. I've included the qualifier ffictiT)e rn (2) because it may

not be possible to reduce the absolufe number of repetitive actions required by the job that needs to be done. Typing that manuscript sitting in front of you may require a half-million keystrokes, and there's no way of getting around that. The impact of those half-million keystrokes on your body can be significantly reduc€d, though, by breaking them up into smaller bunches and giving yourself a chance to rest and recuperate between the bunches.

Our principle focus will be on (1), on understanding how you can reduce the stress associated with each individual action the amount of force you put into each - for example, or the tension with individual keystroke, which you move the mouse. In this wa1 r, you can turn your current high-stress, RSl-prone style of comPuting into a more low-stress, RSI-free computing style.

B

Low-Sfress Compulng

Envirorunental and behavioral stress The stresses that working at your computer (and indeed, life in general) impose on you fall into two classes enuironmental (or external) andbehaaioral (or internal).

-

Enuironmental stresses come from the world around you. Sources of environmental stress include poorly d e s i gne d furnitur.* ry d" e qu ip Tgr,tl l.u 4:^ qu a te I i ghtitg, excessive work schedules, and the like. Environmental stresses are important, and the whole science of ergonomics has grown up to deal with them. Behaaioral stresses are those you impose on yourself by the way you work and the way you organize your body as you work" These include the stresses you produce by slouchirg or holding yourself rigid as you work, for example, or by typirg with your wrists bent and too much tension in your arms. They also include the stresses you impose on yourself by hurryirg (which, we'll see, doesn't really get things done any sooner after all); by being angry ?t y-"ur bos:, your mat",-o-r your kids; or bpr going around all duy with tight shoulders and a locked Jaw.

Common approaches to reducing work-related stress focus on reducing envirorunental stresses through things like split keyboards, ergonomic chairs, and better lighti^g. If behavioral stresses are addressed, it is likely to be wittrenvirorunental solutions gonomic chairs to improve posture, wrist braces to support your carpel tunnel when you type, etc. The underlying behavioral patterns that produce behavioral stress are taken as giv€n, as part of how people are and impossible to change. That isn't true; you can learn to significantly reduce the behavioral stresses you impose on yourself. Significant behavioral change is not easy. It often

Introduction

try to change, the more stubbornly unwanted behaviors resists change. Admonitions like those you heard as a child to "straighten up and don't slouch" only seem to make it harder to comply. This is because you attempt to make change at to change the surface behaviors, like the wrong level - with bent wrists, without attending to slouching or typi^g the underlying behavioral substrate on which those behaviors rest.

seems like the more you

You slouch in part because excessive tension in the front of your ribcage pulls you forward and down. When you try to "straighten lup:' you tighten your spinal extensors to pull yourself upright, while maintaining the tension in your ribcage. The muscles in your chest and the muscles in your back fight against each other, one pulling you down and the other pulling you up. You may temporarily overcome the slouch and "sit up straight" with effort, but it takes more effort than you can maintain over the long rlln. The slouch isn't really the problem. Rather, tt is a manifestation of deeper systemic habits. That chronic effort in the front of your ribcage is one of those habits. As you habituate to that effort, you become unaware of it. The effort and the tension it produces blend into the background, &s unnoticed as the pressure of your clothing against your body,

Trying to "sit up straight" doesn't work because it focus on the surface behavior (the slouch). The underlying behavioral substrate is not easily accessible to direct volitional control. To truly change, you must change that underlying substrate. That must be done indirectly. The direct approach doesn't work. The approach developed later will be based on

changirg that underlying substrate through increasing

Low-Stress Computing

10

self-awareness. By consciously noticing how you move and how you act, you make new information available to the subconscious processes which organize and control those movements and actions. Your nervous system can use that information to improve your movement. Conceptually, the process is simple, though implementirg it is not necessarily easy.

One of the tools you can use in this process is a somatic (body-oriented) teaching technique known as Arnareness Through Moaemenf' (ATM), developed by an Israeli physicist named Moshe Feldenkrais. Awnreness Through Moaemenf uses gentle movements and directed attention to enhance your awareness of how you move and what you do thai gets in your way. You discover new ways of moving and acting. Layers of habitual tension relax and melt away, and your movement and action become easier and more fluid. As you integrate these changes into everyday activity, you reduce the behavioral stress you impose on yourself. This, in turn, reduces your vulnerability to RSI.

A series of Autareness Through Moaemenf lessons on audiotape

will supplement the later chapters of this text.

Moaement explorations within the text lead you through experiences similar to those in the ATM lessohs, though in a shorter and less comprehensive form. These lessons and movement explorations will allow you to experiences changes in the ways you organuze your action and your awareness. The accompanyirg explanations will help you understand those changes and give you strateges for

integrating them into your daily life. This form of learning can take place at very deep levels, levels initially below the threshold of consciousness. This produces something akin to an "operating system upgrade ," ar'd will do more than just reduce computer-related injury. The changes thus

lntroduction

11

produced can gener aLtze and extend to other aspects of life as well, increasing ease and fluidity and makirg life more comfortable and rewarding.

Ovenriew of what's to come Three primary sources of behavioral stress contribute to the mechanical strains that eventually lead to RSI.

o o o

Excessive Effort

Other forms of Poor Body Otganrzation, and Lack of Self-awareness

.

The next six chapters will focus on understanditg these sources and the ways in which they contribute to the mechanical strains which lead to RSI. We'll see how each comes about, and how it increases your vulnerability to RSI.

We will then look what you can do to reduce behavioral stress, through a process we will call somatic exploration Simply put, that process involves noticing how you move and using the information gained to improve the quality and ease of your movement. We'll examine some tools you can use to facilitate that process. That will conclude this part of the book. Additional chapters will be released in coming months. The first of those chapters will be organized around somatic themes which have a strong impact on your vulnerability to RSI. The specific themes we will examine are

Supporting yourself in gravity

Srpporting yourself in gravity is one of the most basic and fundamental of human activities. So fundamental is it, in fact, that it becomes largely automatic, and you probably have little awareness of how you do it.

Low-Stress Computing

12

Your physical support in gravity is divided between two systems your skeleton and your muscles. Ideally, the weight of-your body should be balanced on your skeleton. The prim ary role of your muscles should be to align your skeleton to provide that balanced support. We will explore the mechanics of this support experientially,allowirg you to feel the role played by different parts of your skeleton and the patterns which connect those parts. As you learn greater awareness of balance in gravity, effort and strain decrease and everything you do becomes easier and more fluid. Broadening your awareness Your perceptusl field is the field of awareness through which you experience yourself and your interactions with the world around you. That field can be broad, or narro'w. In fact, it's breadth changes constantly as you move from one activity to another. These changes are largely unconscious, and much of the time your field is probably narrower than it should be for optimum functioning. We will examine the way you manage your perceptual field, and explore the changes that take place as it broadens and narrows. You will be able to experience the limits that a narrow perceptual field impose on you, and begin to develop the skills necessary to maintain a broader awareness as you work. The relationship between awareness, tension, and the

perception of time plays a particularly important role in behavioral stress. Tension narrows awareness, and narrowed awareness makes time seem to go faster. This leads to what I call the hurry-up fallacy , the illusion that you can get things done faiter by teniing. We will examine this illusion and it's consequences, and see what you can do to overcome it.

lntroduction

Acting

as an

13

integrated system

Everything you do involves all of you, whether you are aware of that or not. \A/hen your perceptual field is narrow, you tend to fragment yourself into pieces. You hold most of yourself rigid, and fight against the natural connections between different parts of yourself. This fragmentation is a major source of mechanical strain

within your body. We will explore the experience of fragmentation, and of using your body as a more integrated whole, and show you skills which will help you learn to function in a more integrated way.

Maintaining your center We will tie these ideas together through the theme of maintaining your center. When you are balanced on your skeleton, broadly aware, and functioning as an integrated system, you experience yourself as having a clear center around which everything you do is organized. As you tense and narrow your awareness you lose that center, and the focal point of your activity shifts elsewhere. We will explore the experience of being centered, and of losi.g and regaining center. You will feel the stresses that the loss of center imposes on lou, and reduction of those stresses that regaining center brings. We will introduce you to the skills necessary to maintain more of your center on a more ongoing basis. The written explorations provided in the text will be supplemented by Awareness Through Moaement Iessons on audiotape, exploring the material in greater experiential depth. I hope to make these lessons available on the Internet as RealAudio files, but haven't actually played

Low-Stress Computing

14

with the technology yet to see if that's possible. Additional chapters will deal with a range of issues and questions about aspects of Low-stress Computing not otherwise cover€d, and about the relationship of LowStress Computing to other ways of dealing with RSI. Those chapters are not fully mapped out yet, but the subjects to be covered will include:

o

The relationship between the perspective developed here and

the medical model,

conventional exercise programs alternative therapies such as acupuncture, bodywork, nutritional therapies, etc.

o

The relationship between behavioral and envirorunental stress€s, and what the ideas presented here have to say about ergonomic changes.

o

The nature of habitual behavior and what is

involved in changing it.

o

Strategies for change, and specific tools to help.

One of the advantages of workirg on the book in parts is that I'11 have a chance to get reader feedback while I'm still writing. This will allow me to address questions raised by readers in these last chapters as well. Reading this book won't keep you from getting RSI , ot cure you if you have it. The patterns of behavior that this book addresses are deeply ingrained habits, and can't be changed overnight. Th"y cfin be changed, though, and reading this book should show you how to embark on the path to change, if you choose to do so.

Chapter 2 Excessive effort

Using excessive effort in the ordinary activities of life and work is one of the major ways that you impose behavioral stress on yourself. This effort is usually completely unconscious, just blendi^g into the background of "how things are." Tick u? a ?encil and wrif,e you r name. KeeVtn7 Ihe eame ?reeeure on the ?encil IhaN you used to writ e wibh, lift you r hand off the ?a?er and r,ilr, you r wrief, oo f,he pencil ie elraiqht, uV and down, Coneciouely reqiet er the ?reooure of you r finqere a7ainsf, Ihe ?encil. Now reduce thal ?re6sure by half . Keduce iN by halt aqain, and aqain, unf,il the ?encil dro?o throu7h your fi nqero,

If you were holding the pencil with just enough pressure to keep it in your fingers, it would have dropped with the first reduction. If it dropped the second time you reduced the pressure, you were using roughly t*ice as much pressure as you needed; if it dropped the third time,

Low-Stress Computing

16

roughly four times as much. If it didn't drop until the fourth time/ you were initially applyirg roughly eight times as much pressure as you needed to hold the pencil. Most people won't drop the pencil until the third or fourth reduction in pressure. They grip the pencil between four and eight times as hard as necessary! Th"y often press harder on the paper than they need to, as well, further increasing the total effort that they exert in

writing. Contrast this with writing Chinese calligraphy. Calligraphy is done with a brush, so you can't exert the excessive pressure on the paper that you can with a pencil or ballpoint pen,If you tr!, the brush will simply collapse into a blob. Your grip on the brush should be lighter, as well. When you're doing calligraphy well, someone should be able to lift the brush out of your fingers without hardly possible if you're disturbing your hand grippi.g the brush the-way you just gripped the pencil. Now lhal you're oenEiLized Lo the amounN of Vressure you use when you write, try it bolh way6 and exVlore the difference.\NriLe your naffia, and ?oeeibly a ehofr, ?araqraVh. Do iL firel wiLh you r hand relaxed, Lhen wibh the amounl of Leneion you normally u ee. )ee how each feelE, and how each looke,

Ae a variafion, Ewitch bef,ween a flo-LiV ?en or a eofr, Vencil and a ball?oinL or hard ?encil. 1ee what kind of difference Lhe wrilinq inslrumenT, makeE in how much ?reooure ie required.

What do you normally write with? Would changing from a ballpoint to a flo-tip pen allow you to reduce the effort you use in writing?

Sources of Behavioral Stress

17

The "Work Hard" fallacy The extra unnecessary effort that most people put into holding a pencil or pen exemplifies a larger tendency to use more effort than necessary in most everyday activities. This is something almost everyone does, across a wide range of activities. There are different reasons for this, but one is the homily that we all learned as children.

The harder you work, the more you will accomplish. This sounds plausible, and superficially it seems to if you exert more effortr /ou should be able make sense to get more done. As a child, you probably heard it parents, repeatedly from authority figures in your life teachers, and the like. You internalized it without giving it a second thought, and you run your life accordingly. But it is wrong! In fact, the opposite is true. Working harder is more likely to reduce the amount you accomplish than to increase it, and it certainly increases your .iror,.es of injuring yourself in the ptn.ess. F{ow can that be? FIow can something that seems so plausible be so wrong? To understand that, we need to understand what it means to "work hard:' and how your body manifests that intention.

As a biological organism , fou do rnorkby contracting muscles. Your nervous system measures how much work you do b_y measuring how much muscular contraction without regard to you produce throughout your body what that contraction accomplishes. -As you programmed yourself to "work hard," ynuwere programmi^g yourself to interpret muscular contraction as a good thing in its own right, and to produce lots of it in everythi^g you do.

If you're choppi^g wood or plowing behind

a

mule

1B

_

Low:Stress Computing

more muscular effort may result in a greater output, so "workirg harde{' may actually accomplish more. But what if you are reading, writing a report, talking to a client, or worki.g at a computer terminal? These activities don't take much muscle effort, and additional contraction won't accomplish them better. "Working hard" at tasks like this can be unproductiv even counterproductive. To see this more clearly, imagine someone "working hard" to read and understand material they find difficult? What do they look like? Do you see a furrowed brow, tight ju*, rigid chest and held breath, p*rhaps tightened buttocks? None of this tension contributes anything to the process of transmitting information through the eyes into the brain. Neither does it help the person understand what he or she is reading. It represents effort, but excessive, useless effort. This is the child's way of saying "look teach€r, I'm trying as hard as I can. If I can't understand, it's not my fault."

I call the idea that you can accomplish more by worki^g harder the "workhard" fallacy.The fallacy lies in the implicit unquestioned assumption that increasing effort brings an increasing return. For most contemporary human activities, and certainly for workirg at a computer, that assumption is wrong. Most of the effort that people produce by "working hard" is unnecessary, nonproductive effort. It does not yield useful output in the external world, but simply creates internal tensions within the body.

Emotional stress and repressed feeling Emotional stress and repressed feeling constitutes another source of excessive muscular effort. This might seem strange when you first think about it, because we tend to think of mind and body as distinct, and of feelings

Sources of Behavioral Stress

19

"mind" tather than "body." That dichotomy is artificial, however. Mind and body are really

as somehow related to

different sides of the same coin, different aspects of the same entity. To the extent that we can separate that entity into its mental and physical aspects, feeling is at least as much a part of the physical as of the mental. Feelings result from the interpretation of physical sensation within your body. Vvhen you're not comfortable with a feeling, you block it out with muscular effort and tension. That effort and tension then become part of the effort load that you carry, just as surely as does the effort from "\A/c)rking hard."

Let's examine that process in somewhat greater detail. Feelingis the interpretation of sensation What do we mean by feeling? Think about all the things to which we apply the term. We feel body position and movemen| the textures of things we touch; physiological drives like hunger and thirs| characteristics of the environment like hot, cold, or windli emotions fear, or love; and things that combine such as joy, several of these categories, like sexual elements of "ng€r, excitement. We even use the term feeling to apply to intuitive judgements such as "it's OK i' or "it's too risky." This range may initially seem diverse and unrelated, with little in common among its elements. Some reflection, however, shows a common thread. Each of these "feelings" involves the interpretation of proprioceptiae sensa tion, i.e. sensation occurring within your body. This is immediately clear for body position, textures, or physiological states. It may be less obvious for emotional feelingS, but it is true for them as well.

Youfeel an emotion by subconsciously organLzrng

20

Low-Stress Computing

your body in a particular waf r then "feeling" the resulting body organization. lmaqine beinq anqry aT, someoflo, and notice how you tenee your shoulders, neck, and belly.lmaqine beinq afraid, and feel your body conf,rac|, and withdraw. lma7inejoy aI qreet,inq a Central lover, and 6en6e youreelf Nervous \ System o?eninq and eoft,eninq,

Emotions may initially arise in the limbic system deep within the brain, but that's not where you experience them. Rathet, your musculature amplifies them for your sensory cortex in much the same way that your stereo system amplifies music. What you "feeL" are these amplified responses.

Conscious

Subconscious

This can be illustrated schematically as shown. An emotion initially arises within your central nervous system, at the edge of or below the level of consciousness (t). If you are conscious of it at all at this stage , it will have little emotional intensity. The emotion is translated into a motor command (2) and sent to your muscles. You sense and interpret the resultant muscular activity (3) as your experience of the original emotion (4).

Without this neuromuscular amplification the emotion would seem muted and less compelling, &s the following exploration illustrates. Lie down and cloee your eyee. Allow yourself f,o relax and sink inlo Ehe au??ofiinq eurtace. LeI qo of ae

Sources of Behavioral Stress

21

much Leneion ae you can Wh en you are feelinq calm when you and relaxed, recall a hiqhly charged evenL were quite anqry atr someone, Verha?o, or suddenly frighLened, Allow you r body T,o reo?ond freely to Nhie memory.NoNic e lhe VaIIerne of fenEion f,haL a??ear in you r body ae lhe memory comee floodinq back.

Now try a variation. Let qo of fhaL tension and reLurn lo a calm relaxed elaLe again. Notic e your body, lhe Vallern of ?reeoure it makee aqaineN Lhe eu?Votring eurfaca, Lhe even rhythm of your breathinq. F ocuo on ref,aining Ihat calm relaxation, while you brinq the oame memory (or anoLher hiqhly charged memory) back inLo consciouonesz. 1ee if you can remain relaxed, ralher lhan t eneing ae you did the firef, Lime. FIow did the two experiences compare? Did the second seem less emotionally compelling? Most peoPle find that a relaxed body softens the emotional charge, allowi.g them to experience the situation more objectively. Many remark that it would be easier to handle problems in that state, and they would be more likely to respond in ways that served their interests. Feeling as a dimension of experience. Feeling is a sensory dimension of ongoing experience, much like vision or hearing. But while the senses of vision and hearing have localized sense organs (the eyes and ears), the sense organ for feeling consists of the entire body.

Though distorted and poorly developed in most people today, feeling is among the most important of your senses. It is the sense through which you know yourself.

22

Low-Sfress Computing

When you are unable to fully feel, you lose touch with yourself, with who you are, and with who you might become. The kinesthetic sense of body position and movement, so important to fluid and efficient movement, is one component of feeling, in much the same way that the ability to understand spoken language is one component of the sense of hearing.

In an optimally functioning nervous system, feeling should be processed and completed in real time, just as vision and hearing normally are. That is to say r lolt should completely experience your current feelingperception as it occurs in the present moment, instantly letting it go to move on to the next present moment. You do this with vision. As you read, for example, you see these words. But if you turn your head to look out a window, the words disappear and are instantaneously replaced by the window and the scene it contains.

A"feeling" should manifest in a similar way as a transient pattern of Neuroneuro*rrrcllar excitation, a "bIip" temporary on the field muscular of consciousneis. It should, as excitation the Buddhists sa/, "arise, persist temporartly, and then fade away."

Feeli ng pattern

|

I

I I

I

Time----l

This is the way it is biologically meant to happen. Unfortunately, though, it's aiil",ostimpossible to reach contemporary adulthood with a fully ftmctioning feelirgsense.

Instead of allowing a free flow of feelings, you were taught to "contr ol" your feelings (or at least to try to control them) by blocking out feelings that were too intens€, too scary, or otherwise unacceptable. You block a

Sources of Behavioral Stress

23

feeling by imposing a blocking pattern that prevents its completion. Like the feeling itself, the block is also a pattern of neuromuscular excitation, manifesting as muscular tension. You tenS€, in other words, to hold back the ripple of muscular activity through which the feeling would otherwise manifest. The blocked feeling does not simply disappear. It pattern feeling pattern can remain as a potential in beginning Blocking your nervous system, t\ pattern ready to pop back into your current experience if the blockirg pattern slips. The amount of ongoing Time effort required to keep the feeling blocked out will be may carry a constant for different Some people. different muscular tension for years, even for life. Feeling

Uncompleted

Being conditioned in childhood to control your feelings is one source of tension from emotional blockege, but there are others. Two major sources are pest emotional trsuma and current emotional stress. Past emotional trauma can include things like sexual, physical, or emotional abus€, in childhood or later in life; combat experience; or a major natural disaster like an earthquake or flood. Trauma occurs when current experience is too threatening and overwhelmi.g to bear, so you do what you can to shut it out.

You can't stop the traumatic external events, so you do what you can to stop the experience. You may close your eyes to shut out the visual experience, and put your hands over your ears to shut out the auditory. You shut out the feeling dimension of the traumaby tensing your body, and that tension can remain in place for years.

24

Low-Sfress Computing

Current emotional stress, on the other hand, is a response to something going on in your life right now. It can come from your work environment extreme work an or schedules, overbearing boss. It can also come from something else going on in your life, like worrying about a sick child or an upcoming tax audit.

-

The relationship between body and emotions is beyond the scope of this book, but is discussed in greater detail in my article "The Somatic Dimensions of Emotional Healing. " For our purposes here, the important thing about that relationship is that you block emotional feelings with muscular effort. That effort then contributes to the behavioral stress you carry. This, in turn, increases your vulnerability to RSI.

The effort-iniury connection What huppens to the muscular effort you use to "work hard," ot to block out emotions that you don't want to feel? That effort does not accomplish anything useful in the external world. In that sense , Lt is unproductive. So the best we could hope for would be that it is simply wasted, and that it does no damage. That is not the case, unfortunately. Excessive unproductive effort can hurt, and often does. It produces tension within your body. That tension, in turn, imposes compressive forces and other mechanical strains on joints and other body structures. Those strains, repeated often enough, produce itjrry. This leads to what we might call the effort-injury connection, which we can diagram as follows: Excessive Effort

->

Tension

Excessive effort usually manifests in the form of cocontractior, i.e., opposing muscles worki.g against each

25

Sources of Behavioral Stress

other so that they cancel each other out. To understand that mechanism more fully, we'Il look first at how you employ muscle contractions in the normal activities of life, then go further to see how they become dysfunctional. Some basic anatomy and biomechanics

You are a biological organism. You live in (and interact with the world through) a physical body made of flesh and bone. That body is an extremely complex system, on many different levels. For now, we will concentrate primarily on the muscular/skeletal system. Your basic shape is determined by your slceletln, a collection of more than 200 bones of various shapes and sizes. These bones connect to one another at articulating joints, which allow varying degrees of movement between the bones making up tl/l ll i1 the joint. Your hip joint, for example, is a fla ball-and-socket joint that allows movement ffi in all directions, while your elbow is a f, hinge joint that moves only in a single plane. The ultimate limits on your mobility and flexibility are those imposed by your skeleton, though few of us even get close to achieving those limits. Your muscles animate your skeleton making movement, action, and even lifepossible. Muscle fibers have the ability to contr act, and to exert force (and hence to do work) as they do so. Your most complex activities arsbuilt up from coordinated patterns of these simple contractions. These patterns of contraction are monitored, controlled, and organtzed into complex actions by your central neraous system

ihCt

!gr n

EIKruI4

rif .tlfl atlr

>t

: 94

ffl

re ffire

t*! 4Et

Etr ffifi lt,tt

f

Et

nf

E]&

nkt

IIT

EN

i

26

Low_Stress Computng

(CNS), consisting of your brain and spinal cord.

Muscles produce force and movement

Your muscles perform four basic functions in your day-to-day life.

o o o o

Producing movement

Exertirg force against external resistance Stabihzrngjoints

Srpporting your body in gravity

Strictly speaking, the last of thes€, supporting the body in graaity, could be defined in terms of the first three. ft's important enough, though, to be worth considerin g a distinct function. We'll examine it in more detail in a later chapter. For now, let's look at the first three. We'll begin by considering a simple hinge joint,like your elbow. Your elbow can move in only two directions; it can bend (which is called flexion), and it can straighten (called extension). Muscles which tend to bend the joint are called flexors, and muscles which tend to straighten it are called extensors.

Your biceps muscle (on the front of your arm) is your principle elbow flexor, and your tricep,s muscle (ot the outside of your arm) is your principle elbow extensor. hr the absence of any resistance, contracting your biceps will bend your elbow, and contracting your triceps will straighten it.

@ Triceps ""-#im,,W-

Biceps

!Ebv

W

In the presence of external resistance- for example,

Sources of Behavioral Stress

27

when you flex your arm to lift a heavy object or extend it movement occurs as you to push somethi.g away first begin to contract the muscle. Instead, the contraction will produce increasing tension within the muscle, creati.g force against the external resistance. Movement will occur when that force becomes strong enough to overcome the resistance. ExVerimenL wiLh thio youreeJf: bend and lhen eLraiqhten your elbow, while you reeief, f,he movemenl eliqhtly with you r olher hand. Feel Nh e conLraction of you r bice?e and f,hen yo ur frice?e a5 you do oo.

The muscle will tense before your elbow moves, with the amount of tension depending on how strongly you resist the movement. This is how you produce the force necessary to affect objects in the world, which you can use to lift objects, throw a ball, or do other useful acts.

Stabilization and cocontraction Contracting the flexors and extensors simultaneously is called cocontraction.If you cocontract both muscles equally, no movement will occur. The pull of one muscle against the another holds the arm fixed and compresses the joint. This compression increases the friction within the joint, further restricting movement.

Coconlracl your bice?6 and triceVs at the oame time and feel how rigid your arm becomeo. Stabihztngyour elbow like this can be a useful act in the world. It can let you use your body weight to push open a heavy door with an outstretched arm, for example. Unless you're a very unusual persofl, you routinely produce far more unconscious cocontraction than you need for joint stabilizatton. Cocontraction is how you produce the extra effort toworkhard at what you do.

28

Low-Stress Computing_

The opposing muscles cancel each other out, allowing you to do work that has no external effect. Your nervous system registers this as "trying hard," and that can feel satisfyi.g even if you don't accomplish anythi^g by it.

Even though the basic function of cocontraction is to stabilizejoints, movement can occur in the presence of cocontractiolt. You just have to put more tension into one side of the cocontraction than into the other. ExVerience this by bending and eLraiqhteninq your arm while you keeV it, Lenoe. NoLice how much more effart, iL takee Lo do if, thie way, and eto? immediaLely if you

feel Vain.

Moving while the joint is compressed like this imposes strains that can ultimately produce irjrry and pain. Your elbow is a simple hinge joint, capable of moving in only one plane. Your shoulder and hip joints are balland-socket joints that can move in many directions, with correspondingly more complex sets of muscles surrounding them. Your spine, ribcag€, and pelvis form a complex interconnected system which can move in many different ways, with a highly elaborate musculature to produce those movements. In these more complex systeffis, just as in your elbow, movement is produced when the appropriate muscles contract while opposing muscles relax, and stability is produced by cocontracting muscles which oppose each other. The unnecessary cocontraction that you produce by '.'wotking hard" results in chronic excessive tension. This imposes mechanical strains on your body, makes movement more difficult, and increases your chance of injury. It's a little bit like having one foot on the brake as you drive. You can do it, but it takes more effort than it should and imposes wear and tear on the vehicle.

Sources of Behavioral Stress

29

Excessive tension and mechanical stram Excessive tension produces mechanical strain in a range of anatomical structures and tissues. We'll look at some of the more localized impacts here, and examine some of the more systemic ones later.

o

joints: Most of the moveable joints in the body are synovial joints. The joint surfaces are covered with a smooth cartilage, and the contact between these surfaces is lubricated by synovial fluid. This allows the joint to move freely and easily during relaxed movement. Cocontracti.g the muscles surrounding a ioint compresses the joint surfaces against each other. This compression squeezes out the lubricating synovial fluid and increases the friction between the surfaces. The resulting increase in wear and tear can contribute to osteoarthritis, or exacerbate its effects if it is already present.

o

Muscles: When you keep your muscles chronically contracted, they don't have a chance for the rest and recuperation they need in order to remain healthy. Lactic acid and carbon dioxide build up within muscle cells, contributing to trigger poinfs and other areas of muscular tenderness. Muscles under tension are more susceptible to tearing or other form of injury.

o

Tendons: There isn't enough physical space around some joints for the muscles needed to move them. Nature's solution to this problem is to locate the muscles where there is room, then run " cables" to where they are needed. These "cables" are called tendofls, and they connect the bones to be moved to the muscles which move them .Tendon sheathes are the cableways though which these cables run, bursa act like spacers to keep the tendons away from bones they otherwise might rub against. All these structures are stressed by excessive

30

Low-Sfress Compulng

tension, and made potentially more vulnerable to injury. The major muscles necessary to move your fi.g"rs are located in your forearms. If these muscles were m your hands, your hands would be Finger F)exotg, ,.Qr too big and clumsy to accomplish anything. Your Finger Tendons Extensors extensors (that open your hand) lie along the upper side of your forearm,

while your finger flexors (that close it) lie along the underside. Cocontraction of the finger flexors and extensors creates tension on their tendons and increases the friction between those tendons and their sheaths. The resulting strain is greatest where tendons go around coffrers. This excess tension contributes to friction and irritation between tendon and sheath, and can lead to irritation and inflammation (tendonitis).

o

Nerves and blood vessels: Excessive muscular tension compresses the particular joints around which it occurs, but it can compress nearby tissues as well. The "bulking rtp" of muscles under tension further restricts surrounding tissues. Nerves and blood vessels passing through an area under tension may simply not have enough room. Compression of blood vessels can reduce circulation, while compression of nerve pathways can produce problems such as weakness and loss of control, tingling, and pain. (In the upper ribcage and shoulder girdle this compression can produce acondition known as thoracic outlet syndrome (TOS).)

Sources of Behavioral Stress

31

Chapter 3 Poor body organrzation

I'm going to usebody orgfinization as a general term to describe the way you position and organize your body to like typing, sitting, walking, driving, or just do things Your body is a highly complex being-in-the-world. system, and there are many different ways of organizing anythirg you do. Some ways of performing a particular act, like Vpi.g, may be easy and efficient. Others may be highly inefficient, and may impose significant mechanical strain on your body. When this huppens repeatedly, RSI may result. Each of the bones makirg up your skeleton is jointed to one or more others. You move these joints by contracting muscles, but you don't control the contraction of an entire muscle as a single entity. Rather, you exercise control over collections of motor units, each made up of one motor neuron and the muscle fibers it controls. When the motor neuron fires, the muscle fibers in the motor unit contract. The number of muscle fibers in a motor unit may range from just a few, in small muscles requiring delicate control, to several thousand in larger muscles requiring

32

Low-Stress Computing

less differentiated control.

The simplest act,like picking up a glass of water to take a drink, involves myriad choices about which joints to move and which motor units -to fire to move those joints, how hard, how fast, and in what order. You make those choices unconsciously,but they are choices nonetheles s. Body organization encompasses those choices and the consequences they have for ways in which you move , act, and just be in the world.

If you hold your torso motionless and move just your arm to pick tp a glass of water, that's a different body organrzatton than if you lean forward and include your torso in the movement. If your breathi.g continues uninterrupted throughout the movement, that's a different body organization than if you hold your breath while you reach. If you move with easy, fluid movements, that's a different body organization than if your movements are stiff and jerky. One form of body organrzatton is more efficient than another if it uses less effort to accomplish the same task, or imposes less mechanical strain on the body in doirg so. Efficient body organ tzatton makes move-"rrt and action eas|, fluid, and enjoyable. Inefficient body org anrzation can feel stiff, difficult, and uncomfortable, and can lead to injtyy. Excessive effort, which we discussed above, is such an important form of poor body organization that we choose to consider it separately. Other forms of poor body organtzatton we will be exploring include:

o

Stpporting yourself in gravity with your muscles instead of your skeleton

o

Poor alignment of your skeleton for the task at hand

o

Treati.g the body

as a

fragmented rather than an

Sources of Behavioral Stress

integrated system

Putting things in a list like this makes them appear separate and distinct. They are not. As with most of the factors we'll be considering throughout this exploration, there is considerable overlap between them. You support yourself with your muscles instead of your skeleton because of poor skeletal alignment. That, in turn, comes in part from treating your body as a fragmented system, and is a form of fighting against yourself. These different factors, then, are really interrelated ways of looking at the way in which you organrze and use your body in life.

Supporting yourself in gravity As you walk, sit, type, eat, and otherwise be-in-theworld, the weight of your body should be carried by your skeleton with minimum muscular effort. When it is, you feel light and balanced; you experience movement as easy and fluid. You use your muscles to align your skeleton to maintain that balanc€, rather than to support your weight directly. Traditional Chinese T'ai Chi writings describe this way of bei.g as " a body so light that a fly alighting upon it will cause it to move."

A T'ai Chi mast€r, or perhaps a slack wire walker in the circus, may approach this ideal. Most of us, though, are far from it. We carry ourselves clff-balance on our skeletons, using muscles to support the off-balance weight. This requires chronic, ongoing tension and adding to the burden of effort we carry, and to the mechanical strains which flow from that effort. Among computer users, the tendency to lean in to the computer screen as you work, &s a way of somehow getting closer to your work and getting it done faster, puts your body further off balance and adds to the muscular loading. This disrupts the proper support of your arms

34

Low-Sfress CompUlng

and hands, requiring more effort to hold them up, adding to your muscular loading in that way as well. It doesn't really get things done any faster, either. That's a perceptual illusioil, which we will explore as part of our examination of broadening aTn(treness in a later chapter.

Most of us will never achieve the balance of the T'an Chi master or the slack wire walket, but we can learn to become more balanced. By so doing, we can reduce the muscular load that we impose on ourselves, and with it the mechanical stresses that lead to injury.

Poor alignment of your skeleton If your skeleton is aligned to carry the weight of your body in a balanced wdf r you need less muscular effort to support yourself and you impose less strain on your body. The same principle applies to other tasks. Most tasks require that you apply force against an external resistance. This is true of typir'rg, pushing a door open, buttoning a button, dialing a phone, or cutting up your dinner. To apply force efficientlyr /our body should be or ganrzed so that the path of the force passes cleanly through the n Direction of Direction of push Push

skeleton."Flo,

alignment can ctelte shear forces across

that path, requiring extra muscular effort to hold the skeleton in alignment and -------ostrain rplacing on the joints.

,--* No shear force

->

"';;#;;;i

Skeleton aligned in pusn

v

Shear force

Skeleton misaligned

for direction of push

35

It's easier to push a door open, for example, if your arm is aligned in the direction of the push. Otherwise, you have to exert effort to hold your arm steady, in addition to that required to open the door. It's easier to type if your fingers gently curve down to the keyboard than it is to type with fingers overly extended, as some women do who are trying to protect long fingernails. It's easier to type if your hand lies in a natural extension of your forearm than if your wrist is flexed or hyperextended. Poor alignment of your wrists while you type can create mechanical strain on tendons and other tissues. When your wrists are naturally extended, your tendons have a straight path from muscle to skeletal attachment. When your wrists are bent, your tendons have to go around a corner. This imposes additional friction and stress on the tendon, as well as reducing the mechanical efficiency of the muscle action. When your wrists are straight,iour muscles operate near th"e middle of their range of length. This is where they operate most efficiently. When your wrists are bent, your muscles operate nearer the short or long end of their ranBe, which is less efficient.

Natural extension

good organization

Hyperextension poor

organization

Flexion poor organization

These separate inefficiencies combine synergistically to increase the strain and potential for injury. The decreased mechanical efficiency resulting from poor skeletal alignment encourages cocontraction, because of the greater effort required. The additional tension produced

36

Low-Stress Computing

by the cocontraction, in turn, increases the friction and strain between the tendons and the surfaces they rub against as they go around those corners.

Treating your body as a fragmented system Your body is an integrated systern, and should function as one. Your feet, legs, and pelvis provide the base of support on which your upper body rests. That support is transmitted up through your spine to your ribs and shoulder girdle, and thence down your arms to your hands and fingers. The movement of your fingers when you Vpe depends on that entire system of support, not just on your finger muscles. Lifting your hands to the keyboard is an action that should start from your pelvis, and moving your hands over the keyboard should involve your arms, shoulders, ribs ahd spine. The movements which occur in your torso may be small, but its freedom of movement is important to the overall efficiency of your action. When you split yourself into pieces, holditg your torso rigid while you restrict your typing to your arms, wrists, and fingers, you impose unnecessary strain throughout the entire system. You expend effort holding the rigid parts fixed, and then expend additional effort in the moving parts to make up for the missing participation of the rigid parts. You end up unnecessarily fighting against yourself.

As we noted earlier, this is a bit like driving around with one foot on the brake. You can do it, and it may even provide an illusory sense of greater control than you would have without it, but it is counterproductive and ultimately destructive of the vehicle involved.

Sources of Behavioral Stress

37

Chapter 4 Lack of self-a\Arareness

Excessive effort and poor body organrzatton directly produce the mechanical strains that contribute to RSI. Lack of self-awareness plays a less direct, though nonethe-less central role. Your ability to act in an efficient, organtzedway depends on the kind and quality of information which your nervous system uses to organuze your actions. When that information is inadequate, your hctions will be inefficient and disor ganrz€d, producing mechanical strain and leadi.g to RSI.

Your body is like a large complex organtzatton, h which action results from the combined activities of many interrelated components. TyPing isn't simply u matter of moving your fingers; you also move your arms to place your hands in position over the keys, and positiqt your bhoulders to support your arms. You align your head to aim and focus your eyes to see what you are typing, all the while performing ongoing maintenance activities like breathing and supporting yourself in gravity.

Ary complex organizatton requires information in order to function. Different parts of the organrzatron must know what other parts are doing. A corporation needs

3B

Low-$Uess Computing

communications between manufacturing, marketing, and distribution. In military or ganLzations, the intelligence, operations, and supply branches must talk to each other. Your body is no exception. To type efficiently and without stressr /our arms and shoulders must know what your hands are doing. You must detect the pull of gravity on your body, and align yourself within its field with a minimum of effort. Background activities like breathing must be coordinated with the foreground activity of typing, so that these activities are mutually supporting and reinforcing, rather than impeding and interfering with each other. Your nervous system is responsible for collecting, processing, and distributing the information needed to support your functioning. The human neryous system is a miraculous instrument, potentially more sensitive than most scientific instruments and capable of organrzrrrg and directitg skillful behavior like that exemplified by sliilled acrobats and neurosurgeons. It is also capable of producing the kinds of effortful, inefficient, and stressful behavior that can lead to RSI. What accounts for the wide range of sensitivity, skill, and efficiency we see in people? Why do some people move with grace and fluidity, and others with stiffness and effort? It's not that one group is inherently that much better or more capable than the other, but thai they have learned to use their nervous systems differently.

hrstinctive vs. learned behavior Behavior can be divided into two basic types: instinctiue arrd learned. lnstinctiue behaaior is built into the tthard-wired" in, nervous system as it were. It occurs in the same way in every member of a species, whenever the conditions which trigger it are present. In cattle and other

Sources of Behavioral Stress

39

herd animals, walki.g and runni^g are largely instinctive. A calf can be up and runni.g with the herd soon after birth, sometimes within minutes. This helps the calf survive in the environmental niche to which it is biologically adapted, but limits its ability to adapt to a different environment. Learned behaaior, on the other hand, is shaped by experience and by interaction with the environment. This makes different members of a species more responsive to their local conditions, allowi.g the species to flourish in a wider variety of environments. Human beings are helpless at birth, and begin to walk only after a long period of learni.g lasting about a year. This allows us to develop different ways of walking (and other behaviors) in different circumstances. Fluman beings have a tremendous capacity to learh, which makes us one of the most adaptable species on earth.

There's a downside to this ability to learll. Learni^g involves weedirg out and losing possibilities, as much as it involves gaining new ones. Learning to do something in one particular way excludes others ways of doing the same thing. When a culture encourages effort and discourages self-awareness, ds this one does, people learn effortful and inefficient ways of acti.g. Much of this learni^g takes place subconsciously, so they may never know what they lost.

Habitual and non-habitual interlacing lnterlace you r finqere, lhen juEl eiL and noLice what thaL feele like .

That's a natural way of sitting, one most people find familiar and comfortable. Look down and nolice which index finqer ie on f,oV, lE iL

40

:

Low-Sttess Computjng

your righL or your left? Take you r hande a?arf, and ?uL them back together interlaced in Lhe opVoeile way, with the other index finqer on loV, How doee Lhaf, feel? People often describe the difference with words like "stran Ber" "weir d:' or "uncomfortable." Notice how much of your body feele bhe difrerence, lE iL juet you r hande, or do your arme and ehouldere feel different, ao well? Can you feel ir, in yo ur back, and Verha?e even in the contacl of your but,Locke with your chair? Swihch back and forth a few Limoo, beLween you r habitual and non'habitual inT,erlacinqo, and take in the6e difference; ac you do oo. ltVhat's going on here? Why would one interlacing feel so different from the other? Indeed, why does the nonhabitual interlacing feel so strange? Your hands are mirror images of one anoth€r, so there is no anatomical reason to prefer one interlacing over the other. I've heard it claimed that this preference is related to handedness, but my experience does not bear that out.

When I do this exploration with a group f'm speaki.g to, I sometimes ask how many people prefer the interlacing with their dominant hand on top. It usually turns out to be about half. The preference, I think, is random. It's a learned preference that was determined by chance. It could just as easily have come out the other way.

As an infant, you noticed strange objects that sometimes floated above you as you luy on your back (your hands). You came to realize that you had some control over those objects that you could make them do - move apart. They would things like come together or come together in different ways, sometimes with the fingers interlaced, sometimes not. When the fingers did

Sources of Behavioral Stress

41

interlace, either index finger could equally easily end up on top. By chance, one interlacing hoppened a bit more frequently than the other. You got a little bit more practice with that interlacing, so it got easier. You chose it more frequently, so it becarne still more familiar. Eventually, you chose it all the time. The other interlacing was forgotten. Your non-habitual interlacing felt strange when you tried it just nowr perhaps, because you haven't done it that way since you were six months old.

You learned to exclude the nonhabitual interlacing from your behavioral repertoire; interlacing your fingers became something you did in only one way. But you learned more than that. You also learned to exclude the awareness that you had excluded anything, so that you had no way of knowing what you had lost. You took nway the possibility of the non-habitual interlacing, then pulled a curtain oaer the empty space so you couldn't see that it was gone.

Interlacing your fingers in the non-habitual way is not a very important behavior. It doesn't make life much easierr or more enioyable, or otherwise better. You probably will get hli,"g about as well in life whether you have that behavior available to you or not. But once you see this mechanism at work, you have to ask yourself if that same mechanism may have shaped your behavior in ways that do make a difference.

Are there ways that you've unconsciously learned to act that do make life more difficult or less enjoyable, perhaps creating a vulnerability to RSI? Are there easiet, simpler, healthier alternatives that you've pulled a curtain across and hidden from yourself, in the same way you hid the non-habitual interlacing? I believe that there are, and that you can learn to gain access to those alternatives

-

42

Low Stress Computing

making life simpler and easier, and reduci.g your vulnerability to RSI in the process.

Functioning requires information Functioning well requires information information about what is going on inside as well as outside your body. Your nervous system constantly generates and transmits massive amounts of position information from your joints, length and tension information from your muscles and tendoils, balance information from your inrter ear, pressure information from the portions of your body which are in contact with external surfaces, and other forms of information about activities within your body. This information from within yoTrbody called f proprioceptiae information. (In contrast, information about the outside world such as you receive through vision and hearing is call exteroceptiae information, though this term is less commonly used.) Your nervous system is designed to integrate this flow of proprioceptive information into an ongoing representation of your body and its movements, which you use to organize and control your actions. I'm going to call that representation your somntic self-image. FIow fluidly you move, and how efficiently and effectively you act, depends on the quality nf this somatic self-image.

A good somatic self-image can give you the balance and agility of an acrobat, or the skill and manual dexterity of a neurosurgeon. A poor somatic self-image can leave your movements stiff and uncoordinated, stressful and inefficient. LJnfortunately, a poor somatic self-image is more the contemporary norm than a good one, even among those who consider themselves fit and athletic. Constructing your somatic self-image is a learned skill. You acquire it unconsciously as you grow up, just as you

Sources of Behavio ral€tress

43

do with walking, speaking, and other forms of behavior. As with other forms of behavior, it is influenced by your by the people around you, and the environment patterns of reinforcement they present you with. The quality of your somatic self-image depends on the quantity and quality of the information that you put into it. Unfortunatel/, we live in a society which systematically teaches us to be unaware of ourselves, and to restrict the flow of proprioceptive information we need for fluid, efficient action.

"Sit still

-

don't squirm"

to say that society That may sound a bit stron g "systematically teaches us to be -unaware." But on reflection, it's hard to come to any other conclusion. Think back to when you were six years old. At six you probably understood intuitively, though you might have been hard-pressed to argue it intellectu ally, that for a six year old, sitting still is an unnatural act. So they put you in a room with a bunch of other six year olds, and an adult authority figure who said "Sit still. Don't squirm. Don't look out the window. And raise your hand if you have to go to the bathroom." between the adult authorrty You had to choose figure telling you to sit still, and the intuitive knowledge that sitting still was an unnatural act. The cards were stacked in favor of the adult authority figure. The odds are that she won out, and you learned to suppress your intuitive knowledge.

In that process, you learned to restrict your flow of to become unaware of your proprioceptive information that you were taught to suppress body. The urge to squirm was a proprioceptive expression of your understanding that you didn't belong at a desk. You should have been

44

Low:Stress Computing

out learning about the world by experiencing and interacting with it, notby sitting in a classroom being told about it. Even the admonition to "raise your hand if you have to go to the bathroom" taught you to suppress and ignore your body's biological signals. This wasn't the first time you were taught to reduce your awareness and suppress the proprioceptive information your body was trying to send you, and it certainly wasn't the last. The messages to "sit still, don't squirm, don't explore your environment" probably started much earlier, and certainly continued into later life. Emotional feelings are proprioceptive, so learning to repress your emotions had the by-ptoduct of further reducing your proprioceptive awareness. The legal drug culture of over-the-counter painkillers, sleeping pills, and headache remedies is based on the idea that it's better to suppress proprioceptive messages than to listen to those messages and hear what they have to say.

Most of this is unconscious, of course. Few people consciously try to overstress their bodies and make themselves hurt, or to raise their children to grow up and do the same thing. But somehow, it's now built into our life-s$l", and has become a systematic part of our lives.

Sources of Behauioral

Stress

45

Chapter 5 Synergies between sources of stress

These sources of behavioral stress - excessive effort, are poor body organization, and lack of self-awareness not distinct and independent. On the contrdrf ,each-feeds and intensifies ttrc others through a system of mutually reinforcing feedback loops.

We can diagram these loops as shown.

Aglus signpryns that lncrease in the source of the link leads to an increase in the target, while a minus gigt means that €rn rncrease in the source leads to a decrease in the target. Remember, the ideal situation

Effort (less is good)

Body Organization (more is good)

€rn

would involve low levels of effort and high levels of body organization and

Self-Awareness (more is good)

Synergies among the three sources of behavloral stress

46

Low-Sfress CompUlng

self-awareness (os indicated in the parentheses).

Let's look at the loop connecting self-awareness and effort, taking it in one direction at a time. Decreases tn self-awfireness encourage increases tn ffirt (a negative link) in several ways. When you're not sensing what you're doing, Iou can't tell how much effort you are using. You unconsciously use more than neces sar!, "just to be sure." The earlier exploration in which you

gradually reduced the pressure you were using to hold your pencil demonstrated this. When you don't sense the task clearly, you may do it in an inefficient and effortful yay.This is often true, for example, in lifting or carrying heavy objects. And finall/, less self-awareness means you may not know enough about what you're doing to reahze how much effort you're using. Going in the other direction, increases in effort reduce self-awareness (another negative link). High levels of effort make it difficult to notice slight changes. Your nervous system detects relative changes in stimuli, not absolute changes. Formally, this phenomenon is known as the Weber-Flechner Law, which states that the detectable threshold difference in any stimulus is proportional to the background level of that stimulus. As an example, think about the effect of lighting a match in the middle of a room. If the room is dark, the match will illuminate the whole room, while if the room is brightly lit, the additional light will not be noticeable. The match produces the same amount of light in either case, but your perception of that light depends on the preexisting ambient level. Thi? p{ittciple also applies to effort. A change in your level of effort will be much less noticeable if your ambient level is high than it will if your ambient level is lower. If

Lources qf Behavioral Stress

47

you're carryirg a tray and someone puts a glass of water on it, you will notice the additional weight and the effort required to offset that weight" If they set the same amount of weight on a piano you're moving, you won't notice it. If you habitually use more effort than necessary in your ongoi.g activity, then you don't notice the small changes that could reduce that effort. This makes it hard to discover ways to do things more easily, or even to notice one if you huppen across it. Think back to the exploration of dropping the pencil. \A/hen you hold the pencil too tightly to begin with, it's hard to be aware that there's an easier way. Excessive effort discourages self-awareness in other ways as well. To support your body lightly balanced on your skeleton, you must be able to sense the palh of that support through your skeleton to the ground. If the joints along that path are tightly locked by cocontracting muscles, sensing the path becomes impossible. Effort creates noise in your nervous systemr making it harder to notice the useful signals.

Lookirg at the other links in the diagram, we see a similar pattern. A poorly organtzed body inherently uses more effort than does a well organized body. The chronic cocontraction that excessive effort produces makes it harder to organrze easy and efficient action. Lack of awareness makes it difficult to detect inefficiencies. If you habitually organ rze yourself inefficiently, you also tune out your body's signals telling you to change that. The three sources of behavioral stress we have excessive effort, poor body organrzatron, and identified form a stable, self-reinforcing lack of self-awareness that system will maintain devic€s, it's own system. Left to and perpetuate itself throughout your life, imposing mechanical strains on your body in everythi^g you do. If

48

Low-Stress Computing

you do repetitive tasks like typing, those strains ctrn lead to RSI.

If you manage to avoid RSI, these same strains clrn eventually lead to other difficulties back - astiffness, problems, and the like. That may take long time, so that when ithappens you'Il simply attribute those difficulties to aginp and people around you will support that assessment. F t you, and they, will be wrong. That loss of function and increasing difficulty in movement is not a nafirral consequence of the aglng process at all. It is a consequence of chronic excessive effort, poor body organization, and lack of self-awareness.

Chapter 6 Reducing Behavioral Stress

I have suggested an etiolo gy for RSI in which repetitive stress produces mechanical strain which leads to-Tlury. The stress can be further broken down into enaffonmental stress, which comes from external sourc€s, and behaaioral stress, which comes from the way you organrze your movements and actions in response to whatever envirorunental stress exists. Taki.g this response relationship between environmental and behavioral stress into account, we can diagram this etiolo gy as follows: Enviromental

Stress

*p*t{flHj

"t@*Mechan

ic

^,

@

Inju ry

Ergonomic approaches to the reduction of RSI focus on reducing enaironmental on the first link in this chain

-

50

Low-Sfress Computing

through measures such as reasonable work schedules, good lighting, and ergonomically welldesigned equipment and furniture. It is clear from the above diagram that those approaches are sound, because reductions in environmental stress will produce corresponding reductions all along the chain. They are not the only way to produce reductions in injury at the end of the chain, however. stress,

Our focus here will be on the second link in this chain on reducirg the behavioral stress you produce in -response to the envirorunental stresses that the external world imposes on you. This behavioral stress is not determined by your external environment, but by the habitual patterns of movement and action through which you respond to it. No matter what your external environmert, it is possible to learn to function in a less stressful, more centered and relaxed way. This can be beneficial even in an ergonomically ideal working environment. In an ergonomically less-than-ideal environment, it can be critical. It can make the difference between experiencing painful or debilitating RSI, or not.

I have identified excessiae ffirt, p00r brdy lrgonization, and lack of self-aw&reness as three patterns of behavior which contribute significantly to behavioral stress. These palterns go together to make up what we might call a higrylress resplnse style, i.e., a way of responding to the world that creates and maintains high levels of behavioral stress.

Whatever your external envirorunent, this sort of high-stress response style will impose ongoing unnecessary mechanical strain on your body. This strain, in turn, creates a propensity for injury. Even if it doesn't produce itjtry in the short run, it is unhealthy over the

Reducin

Behavioral

long run, and worth changi.g.

In this chapter we will explore ways of changi^g that by moving toward a low-stress response style, propensity involving appropriate ffirt, good body orgnnization, and gr e at er s elf-

aTt)

ry effort

Excessive ffiw$#'Wa ffiffi

fir enes

s.

body

Ap Appropffit*'ffiGood

Poor organization

effoft

ffiffi

w gh-stress W W" High-stress ffi ffi W &'ffi

ffi

.ffiw

ww'M# WIW

ww-ffiW Wffi.r.r."ffiW

Low-stress

WEtrffi'ffi :tnt -w.

Y&

%.w w%,ffiffi "%w"'

w"

w

45tP ffi ,tffi

ffip ffi

,ffi ffi

ffi-

Lack of self-awareness

ffi

body organization

@

WW

WGreater

%.e ffi ffi

M#

self-awareness

Moving from a high-stress to a low-stress response style Excessive effortr poor body org anrzation, and lack of self-awareness result from long held and deeply ingrained unconscious habits. Such habits are not easily discarded. Th"y can be changed, however, through an ongoing process of somatic exploration. By this, I mean an ongoing process of becoming more aware of horn you mlae and interact utith the utorld, and using that awareness to moue and act more easily and fficiently.

In later chapters I'11 offer movement lessons and other specific suggestions to help you overcome some of the common somatic bad habits that contribute to RSI. My intention, however, is not to prescribe a specific path that you must follow. Instedd,I want to luy out general guidelines that will help you to find your own way. That will prove more valuable in the end.

52

Low-Sfress Compulng

Exploring yourself and how you move isn't something anyone else can do for you (though others can provide assistance and guidance), It's something that you ultimately do for yourself. While you should begin to experience benefits quickly, major changes may not huppen overnight. It took years to develop the habits that determine how you now move and act, and it's going to take a while to change those habits. Somatic exploration should become a lifelong process, and should lead you to a more fulfilling and enjoyable life. Do not expect that a time will come when you are "fixed" arrd can go back to functioning the way you did before without becoming vulnerable again.

The action/ awareness cycle Flowever you do 7t, a primary tool in the process of somatic exploration is something I'm going to call the action/au)fireness cycle. This cycle involves three components, which I will call Act, Notice, and Change.

o A:t, by moving or by performing some other action.

o Notice the way you do so, and take in the information that provides.

o Allow that

ffiAc'l% Notice

Change

The action/awareness cycle

information to change your action in ways that make it easier, more efficient, or otherwise better.

Reducin

Behavioral Stress

The action /awareness cycle is not a rigid prescription to be follow€d, so much as a general description of the process of utilizi.g feedback to improve your actions. As a simple example of how it works, try the followitg experiment. Read each paragraph of instructions in it's entirety, then close your eyes and do it. Open your ey€s, read and do the next paragraph, and so on.

7it comfoftably

wiLh you r eyee cloeed.9lowly

head qenf,ly Lo you

lurn your

r right without effofr, until it et o?o.

O?rn your eyee and nof,e what you arelooking mark of how far you r head lurned,

al, ao a

your h ead qenlly to lhe riqhL and backLo Lhe center oeveral timee. Ae you do, noT,ice how far down you r s?ine you feel lhe f,urning movemenf, Allow more of yo ur e?ine Lo become involved in the movement, and oee if Nhie allowe you Lo turn more eaaily.

Cloee you r eyee aqain. Tu rn

7it

comforL,ably wif,h you r eyeo cloeed, Turn your h ead to f,he righl wilhoul efforL until il efo?o, thie time allowinq more of you r e?ine and horeo lo Vaft,iciVaNe. O?tn your eyee and nolice whaL you are looking al, Com?are lhie with where your h ead Et,,o??ed the firet Nime.

Did your head turn further the last time than it did the first? For many people, it will, though that may or may not have huppened for you. Let's assume for the moment that it did, and analyze why that happened. This will help us understand the effectiveness of the action / awareness cycle. Think about what determines your range of motion when you turn your head. Your head sits on top of your spine, which consists of 24 separate vertebrae one on top

54

Low-Stress Computinq

of the other. The top three quarters of these vertebrae (in your neck and upper torso) can turn relative to the vertebrae below them. (The lower ones do not furn.) The more vertebrae you

involve when you turn your head, the further your head will turn. Assume, as a rough

#l,Tf;: iifi:tr'#:ff?,Ht{?*. can turn'

actual situation is more lomplex, because the vertebrae in your neck can turn further than those ir yrur torso, but

the general argument remains valid.) If you hold your chest rigid and restrict the action of turning your head to just your neck, ygr 1lll be able.to tuln your head approximately 35o. If you allow the movement to extend down your spine into the middle of your back, on the other hand, 1rou can easily turn twice as far. The first time you turned your head to the rightr /ou probably subconsciously restricted the movement to just your neck, because that's the way you habitually do it. Your turn wasn't stopped by any inherent mechanical limits i. ynur skeleton or muscles, but by how far you were witling tolet yourself turn. By watchi.g the movement, noticing how far down your spine it went, /ou could see that more movement was possible. This allowed Turning just Turning your your head head & torso to further. you turn

You probably didn't reason this out consciously. You didn't say to yourself "look, I can allow more movement

Reducing Behavioral Stre:$s

55

than I'm now doing, and then I can move further." Rather, the very act of noticing made information available to the (normally subconscious) levels of your nervous system which organrze and direct your movement, allowi^g them to do so in a more efficient way.

Through a simple exploration like this, most people can improve their range of motion in just a few minutes. The change may be smaIL, but it demonstrates a significant concept. SimpIy noticing hout you act, and using that noticing to support change can produce an improvement. Larger changes may require more than a simple exploration. In the next section, we'll expand this exploration into a longer Awareness Through Mouement lesson. This lesson should improve the quality of your movement, maki.g it easier and more fluid, and reduci.g the stress it imposes on your body. The lesson is a fairly simple.one, and should take about 15-20 minutes. To appreciate this process you must actually experience it, not just skim through it. You must take the time to follow the directions, and have the experience. If you don't feel like doing it now, skip over it and come back to it when you have more time. You will find the experience worthwhile.

Turning your head

-

ATM lesson

This lesson consists of repeated applications of the action / awareness cycl gentle movements, which you repeat over and over while you pay attention to what you feel in different parts of your boily. As you notice your movement it changes, and these changes allow you to notice still more. You should do the lesson sitti^g on a chair with a firm, level seat, and you should sit upright without leaning against the back of the chair for support.

56

Low-Sfress CompuW

Be gentle with yourself. If anything hurts or feels uncomfortable, do less. If even small movements are uncomfortable, just imagine movement. f can't monitor you to make sure you don't overdo, so you need to monitor yourself. Pain and discomfort interfere with learning, so attend to your comfort throughout the lesson.

Apptoach my instructions as suggestions, rather than directions whichmusf be followed. Think of the lesson as a guided tour through a part of yourselt with me as the tour guide pointi^g the way. If you notice something I didn't point out, that's fine. You're here to see what you discover, not to obey me unquestioningly. Should you decide to come back and repeat the lesson, don't try to do it exactly the same way each time. You may go on the same tour many times, but you can discover different things each time you take it. The lesson consists of a sequence of directions about how to move and what to notice, given in this typeface, with accompanyirg commentary in normal type. Each paragraph is a self-contained "chunk." Read each paragraph in its entirety, then close your eyes and follow the instructions in that paragraph. Repeat the movements as often as you feel necessary to get the experience being suggested. Generally, 5 to iO times will be sufficient. If you wear glass€s, please remove them while you're doing the movements, then replace when you read the next directions.

1iL comfo(bably erect, in yo ur chair, wilhout holding eliff or riqid. 5ft far enou7h forward thal your body has room Lo move wilhouL enGounf,ering Ihe back of rhe chair,

you reelf

Cloee you r eyes. Tu rn your h ead elowly to Ihe righL, without, efforL. Allow itLo eLo? of tle own accord.

Reducin

Behavioral Stress

Notic e the quality of your movemenL ao you do eo, Wh en your h ead slo?c, o?en your eyee and nof,ice whaf, you're lookinq aN.

This will give you a benchmark for how far your head turned easily at the beginni.g of the lesson. I'll refer to this as a " calibration movement." We'll return to it throughout the lesson, and use it to measure change. Cloee you r eyee, and re?eat,edly turn your h ead Io f,he riqht and back lo lhe cenfer. Don'f, qo ae far ae you wenf, in Ihe calibraNion movemenV; qo VerhaVe three quaftere thaT' far, NoNi ce the quality of your movemenT,, ao you furn.

Conlinue lurninq you r head to lhe riqhl and back to cenT,er, ao before, As you Nurn, nof,ice how far down you r eVine you feel movemenf. ls the lurninq confined Lo your neck, or can yo u feel ir furt,her down your e?ine? Ae you continue lo ?ay attention, you may feel iN furt,her down than you did at firof,

KeVeaIXhe calibration movemenL. Close your eyeo and turn you r head f,o the riqhL withoul efforf,, unlil iN el,o?o. )Ven you r eyee and eee how far you Nurned. Wae it any fu fther t",han you wenL the firet time?

)it quiehly for a momenf, and reqisher your feelinqe. Do you feel any differenf, on Lhe riqhL than on Nhe left,? Close you r eyee, and re?eatedly Nu rn your h ead to f,,he riqht and back Lo the cenfer, a6 before, Noti ce whaL you feel in your ohouldere, ls there a Lendenoy in Lhe left ehoulder to move forward, and in the riqhl Lo move back? Allow Lhoee movemenf,s t,o hu??en, eo thal your f,oreo rolat eC eliqhlly ao you f,urn. Don'N force it, but jueV allow it,to haVVen naf,urally. Doee Lhis make lhe

58

Low:stress Computing movement, harder, or eagier?

Much of the effort you expend in movement goes into trying to hold parts.of yo-urself still that should be moving. As more of you becomes involved, movement gets easier. Continue T,urninq you r head to t,he riqht and back to cent.,er, feelinq the turn down you r oVine and allowinq you r shouldere No ree?ond No the movement, ae before. Notic e whar you're doinq with you r eyeo,Deqin f,o move you r eyeo t o f,he riqht, ae you f,urn your h ead t o t,he

riqht, and T,hen back to the cenf,er ae your head returns to f,he cenfer. Doee f,hie rnake the movemenf,, harder, or eaeier?

r head and eyeo t o f,he riqht' and back t o cenfer, qradually ohift, you r int enlion Lo your eyes. Lef, the movement of your eyeo become While you conbinue T,urninq you

primary, ao if you are movinq your eyee f,o look aN eomeihing off to the riqhf,, and allow you r head to follow. Turninq you r head t,o look Lo you r riqhr,, allow Lhe movemenl t'o flow down yo ur s?ine, eo that, each vert,ebra reo?onds to f,he one above iL. Allow your t,oreo and you r ehouldere Io re6?ond, KeVeaI thiE movement, S-1O Nimeo, and feel bhe flow of the movemenl Ihrouqh you r body, ReVeaN Nhe

calibraf,ion movement,, Close you r eye6 and

r head ro rhe riqhf, wibhouT, efforr, until it eto?e. Open you r eyeo and eee how far you T,urned, Wae ir any furr'her f,han you went the firet time?

T.,urn you

Turn you r head elowly once or f,wice from left, to riqhf,, and notice rhe ditrerencel betrween Nhe f,wo eideo.

Reducing

Beha@

59

Doee you r head qo fufr,her on one eide lhan on Lhe other? le the qualily of movemenl differenf'?

7it quieLly for a moment and reqisLer yo ur feelinge, Wh at kinde of differencel do you f eel beLween you r riqhl and left eidee? Many people feel significant differences between the two sides at this point. Their head turns more easily and fluidly than it did at the beginning, and more easily to the right than to the left. The right side of their body may feel lighter, more relaxed, more present. If you feel those differences, allow yourself to register that experience for a few minutes; don't be in a hurry to make yourself feel symmetrical.

If you don't feel those differences, notice and register that. Come back again in a few days and try the lesson again, and perhaps you will. What meated those changes? One possibility might be that the mechanical act of moving simply "Ioosened you up:' fy. somehow stretching you-{ muscles and lubricating that your joints. I'd like to suggest a different answer how and body of what changed was your awareness your it moves. As you watched yourself moving, you learned something about yourself, and that improved your movement. The difference in feeling reflects your change in awareness of the two sides. What you learned may not be anything that you can put precisely into words, but you move and feel differently as a result of it. To see that it really is the change in awareness that makes the difference, and not the movement itself , fty the followi.g. (As before, read each paragraph and follow the directions, then go on to the next Paragraph.) Go Nhrouqh Lhe leeeon aqain, I,urning to Lhe lefL ineLead of f,he ri6hf,.3uL bhie tiffio, do Nhe leEson in

60

Low-Sfress Computino

you r imaqination, Don'f, hold you roelf ri6id,

or impede emall movemenhe if they occur. For the moet, ?aft, Xhouqh,imagine Ihe movemenNE rabher than achually doinq Nhem, lrnaqine f,urnin7 you r head Lo the left, feeling how far down you r eVine f,he imaqinary movemenf,, qoeo. KeVeaN thie imaqinary movemenl B to 10 timeo.

lmaqine feelinq the Nendency Lo move in your ehoulderE, and imaqine allowinq your body to reo?ond, lmaqine feelinq you r left, shoulder mave back as you f,urn f,.o the \eft,, and move forward aqain as you turn back to cenf,er. lmaqine Iurninq you r head to Lhe left and feeling your right, ehoulder move forward, Nhen feelinq if,, move back a6 your h ead moveo back No cenler.

7it, for a momenf, and reqieNer you r ex?erience, Has the earlier difference you felt, bet,ween T,he two sidee diminished? lmaqine Lurninq you r head t o the lefl and involvinq your eyes, eo that Ihey move T,,o the left, and back to the cenler with the movement, of you r head. lmaqine lettinq your eyes lead the movement,lookinq t,o hhe left No see oomethinq on your eft eide, and allowinq your n eck and you r ehoulderl and your t,or6o No ree?ond fluidly No f,haf, movement. I

1it quielly and reqieter your ex?erience.Then actually rurn you r head from left, to righx, Nofice how far you qo on each eide. Notic e f,he quality of the movement. How do Ihe lwo sides feel now? Are they more 6ymme|,rical?

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Many people find that this imaginary movement that earlier differences balances them out quite nicely have diminished they felt between left and right considerably , tf not entirely. Some people even find that the left side feels smoother and more fluid than the right.

If you did experience this change, what caused it? The change didn't come from actually doing movement because you didn't do any. It had to come from something else. It came from the learni.g and change in awareness produced by imagining the movements. (F{aving just done the movements to the right, of course, gave you a model to copy

i. ytur

imagination.)

If you didn't experience change from this imagi.ury movement, don't despair. The imagination is like a muscle. The more you use it the stronger it gets. This has been a simple example of an Arnareness Through Moaementlesson. Lessons in a live class or on tape would follow a similar process, though generally involving a more complex series of movements. The teacher might begin by asking you to do a fairly simPle movement. You would probably start with a limited view of how to do the movement being asked of you, so your beginni.g movement is likely to be rough and inefficient. As you watch yourself mover ;rou become more aware of what you are doing and your movement improves. The teacher may ask you to change your movement, or just to notice a different part of your body while you continue the same movement. As the lesson Progressesr 1rou involve yourself more fully in what you are doing. Your awareness of how you use your body broadens, and your movement gets smoother and easier.

If you do this regularly over a period of time, with lessons focused on different functions and different parts

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of your body, you will experience increasing ease and of movement. Back problems, stiffnessr and other difficulties you have had for years may disappear. Even long term chronic pain may vanish, as you become aware of what you had been doing to yourself to cause the pain, and stop d-oit g it. You increasingly move as an integrated system rather than a collection of separate pieces.

fluidif

Self-awareness and awareness of the external world are not separate functions; they are aspects of a single generalued function of awareness. As self-awareness broadens, the skill of seeing with a broader softer focus can generalize and changes may occur in other areas of your life as well. Such a broad range of improvement may occur, in fact, that someone who doesn't understand the general change in awareness which underlies the other changes may find it difficult to believe.

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Chapter 7 The process of somatic exploration

We've seen that simply noticing the way you move, &s you did in the earlier short exploration of turning your head, can increase your range of motion and help you move more easily. Extending that simple exploration into a longer and more structured movement lesson can increase those benefits, further reducing the effort you expend, increasing the coordination between various parts of yourself, and improving the overall quality of your movement. As beneficial as these changes are, achieving the

ongoi.g self-awareness and improved body organization necessary to go from a high-stress to a low-stress response style requires more. It requires commitment to an ongoing process of somatic exploration, in which you make the action / awareness cycle part of your life. You can learn to apply awareness in your ongoing working and living activities at many different levels. By noticing your movements, you can learn to move more fluidly and efficiently. By noticitg the way you organize your awareness, /ou can learn to function with a broader and richer sense of yourself and of your interactions with

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your envirorunent. By noticing what distracts you and takes you back into your old habitual behaviors, you can learn to integrate change into your ongoirg activiry.The effects of any particular noticirg may seem small, but the cumulative effects of many small improvements can become significant. It's a bit like water eroding away a rock. Small effects can produce large changes over time. You gradually learn to move and act more easily, fluidly, and efficiently. As you do, your actions put le-ss mechhnical strain on your body. If you have not yet injured yourself through repetitive action, /ou lessen the risk of doi^g so in the future. If you have already injured yourself, the reductions in strain make it easier for your body to heal, and lessen the functional deficits imposed by your injury and the likelihood of future reinjury. It may seem like I'm asking a lot here like I'm asking you to chnnge your entire IWITfrat is exactly what I'm If now operate in a hjgh-stresp *qge, you ?uggesting. you impose unnecessary stress on yourself every duy. That stress creates mechanical strain, which in turn can lead to a wide range of problems, includirg RSI and other muscular/skeletal problems. Even much of the gradual loss of ease of mobility and function that many think of as a "normal" part of the aging process is really the result of an unnecess ary build-up of stress and strain.

I'm not telling you that you have to change. You don't! You can go on the way you have been, and try to cover up or stave off the consequences of high-stress response style with analgesic drugs and other forms of treatment, exercise, denial, and similar tools. But if those things were really working for you, you probably wouldn't be reading this. If they aren't workirg for you now, they probably

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won't work any better in the future. I am offering you an alternative way to take more control over your life and over the stresses and strains you impose on yourself. Whether or not you choose that alternative is up to you.

I'm not going to lay out a detailed program for you to follow. Inste dd,I'11 talk about some of the tools which can facilitate somatic exploration, and how you might put them together into something that works for you. You choice, after all, is what this is all have a lot of choices about. You are ultimately the best judge of the particular combination of tools and ways of using them that works best for you. This book can be a useful source of advice, but you should not let it, or any other external authority, dictate how you orgarrrze your personal process of healing and change.

Tools for somatic exploration Somatic exploration involves notici^g what you do,

drawi.g feedback from that noticing, using that feedback to do things more easily and efficiently, arrrd repeating that cycle. The more you do this, the less stress you create, and the easier it gets. Among those tools you can use to help you along are the following:

o

Awareness practices

Integration practice Triggers for practice Sources of guidance

Conceptual shift Awareness practices By an aTt)areness practice,I mean some activity or practice in which your primary focus is on increasing

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your awareness of yourself and how you move and act. This might include practices such as the Feldenkrais Method, T'ai Chi, yoga, the Alexander Technique, meditation, etc. The Feldenkrnis Method

The Feldenkrais Method rs a form of what is called somatic education ft is body-centered approach to learning which uses gentle movement and directed attention to enhance self-awareness and increase the ease, fluidity, and efficiency with which you move. These i*provements can gener aLtze, leading to enhanced functioning in all aspects of life. The Method is taught two formats rbally directed Awareness Through Moaemenf lessons (usually taught in group classes or recorded on audiotape) and individual private lessons rn Functional lntegration.

I've already discussed and given you a brief sample of Awareness Through Moaement.Information on my Awareness Through Moaement tapes can be found at the end of this book. Later chapters will be accompanied by lessons which specifically address the materials covered in those chapters. In Functional Integration, touch is the prim ary teaching modality, augmented by verbal direction and discussion. In a typical session you would lie fully clothed on a low table (similar to a massage table but lower and wider) while the practitioner touches and moves you in gentle, non-invasive ways. The intent of this touch is to explore your neuromuscular organtzatton your subconscious responses to touch and movement - and to have a tactile, nonverbal conversation with your nervous system about how you organLze your body and your movement.

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The process is akin to biofeedback, though more subtle and complex. In conventional biofeedback you are "hooked up " to a sensor measuring some aspect of your physiology that you are normally unaware of, such as the tension in a group of muscle fibers or the temperature of your fingertip. The biofeedback machine transforms this measurement into something you can see or he lighting a light or sounding a tone when the muscle fibers relax, or when your skin temperature rises. Vvithout knowi.g exactly how you do it, you can learn to keep the light lit, or the tone oil, thus consciously controlling what had previously been an unconscious process. In this way you can learn to relax habitually tight muscles, or to increase peripheral blood circulation by warmi.g your

fingertip. In Functional Integration the practitioner is the sensing and providitg biofeedback instrument (through touch) about internal processes more feedback complex than those addressed by conventional biofeedback. Instead of isolated data like tension in a small group of muscle fibers or the temperature of a fingerttp, you receive feedback about larger and more complex patterns of neuromuscular organization and response. Through touch the practitioner also suggests new org anuzations more comfortable, or alternatives more functional, than the old. The gentle non-invasive movements you feel in a Functional Integration session are not intended to " frx" anything or to create any structural change. They are a source of new experience, a chance for your nervous system to move beyond the narrow range of patterns to which you habitually confine yourself. This facilitates learnirg and change, at a deep nonverbal level. Functional lntegration is not a process in which the practitioner does things to you, ot imposes change on you.

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The commodity which passes between you and your practitioner is information; the one who actually makes the changes is you. Gentleness is an important facet of the work, because it facilitates that transfer of information.

T'ai Chi T'ai Chi is a Chinese martial art and moving meditation, in which slow gentle movement is used as a way of developi.g ease, fluidity,and eventually, speed and power. The aspect of T'ai Chi which people are most familiar with is the T'ai Chi form, or so/o exercise. This choreographed sequence of movements may take up to a year to leatff, and once learn€d, can be fruitfully explored for the rest of your life. As is the case with Arnareness Through Moaement lessons, practicing T'ai Chi is a process of moving slowly and gently, noticing how you move, and using that awareness to make your movement easier and more fluid. Awareness Through Moaement uses a different simple form for each lesson, and doesn't require an investment in time and energy in learning those forms. T'ai Chi, on the other hand, uses a single, highly complex form. It does require and investment in time and energy to learn the form, but once that investment is made the form becomes a tool for ongoing self-exploration. Each approach works, and both provide excellent tools for increasing self-awareness.

My article, "T'ai Chi and the Feldenkrais Method: Different windows on a common vision," discusses the differences and similarities in greater detail. Other awareness practices The Alexander Technique is a form of somatic education which has much in common with the Feldenkrais Method, and also differs from it in significant ways. It was

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developed by F. M. Alexander, an Australian actor who was looking for ways to keep his voice functioning at a high level even after several hours on the stage. He eventually rcahzed that the problems he experienced with his voice were due to an unconscious tightening and contraction in his neck and throat as he spoke, and that the k*y to reducing this tightening lie in a greater awareness of the carriage of his neck and head. F{e built his technique around the observation that a similar tightening and contraction was present in a wide range of activities, and that learnitg to let go of it could help people function better at whatever they did. The term yogfr covers a wide range of self-awareness practices, mostly originatirg in India and other parts of Asia. The most common form of yoga is Hatha Yoga, in which awareness of the body is developed through the use of static poses and movement between these poses. Yoga can be an excellent form of awareness practice, but you need to carefully evaluate the person teaching it. (This is true with any practice you consider, of course.) As the popularity of yoga has grown, it has been adopted by fitness teachers and others who sometimes teach it more as a form of calisthenics than as a form of awareness practice. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but it's important to be aware of what you're getti.g. Meditation is also a form of awareness practice. A.y form of meditation, including just sitting quietly and observing yourselt can contribute to your increasing self-awareness. Meditation forms which include a focus on awareness of body and movement are probably more useful tools for somatic exploration than those which don't.

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Awareness practice can provide a protected envirorunent, away from the ongoirg distractions which dominate your normal activity. In that environment you can focus on yourself, observe how you organize your awareness and your action, and expiore alternatives ways of doing and being. You can discover what it means to notice more of your body as a whole, and see how changes in your notici^g pTnduce changes T your experience of movement. You can explore the way you support yourself in gravity, and see how you might reduce your effort by using your skeleton more and your musculature less. You can learn how to sense and correct the misaligt*ents it your bo dy that sap your energy and strain your muscles and tendorls.

I personally find the Feldenkrais Method and T'ai Chi to be excellent practices; you may prefer something else. The important thing is not that you choose the same practices I do, but that you choos and use me form of awareness practice that resonates for you. Integration practice

Important as it is, awareness practice is not an end in itself but a tool to change the way you function in life. The lessons you learn through awareness practice must be transferred to and integrated into your other activity. \l/ithout integration, they are of limited value. I have known people who devoted themselves to and became quite proficient in one form or another of awareness practice, but somehow never transferred that learning to the rest of their lives. I once knew a yoga teacher, for example, who was quite good at hei yogu. But behind the wheel of a car she developed terrible back and shoulder tensiolts. She failed to transfer what she had learned from yoga to the activity of driving her car.

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Integration practice can include a variety of strategies and ways of working with yourself to facilitate transfer and integration. A few examples follow.

o

Registering the way that you feel at the end of a Feldenkrais lesson or a round of T'ai Chi, then using your imagination to connect that way of being to how it would feel at hoffi€, sitting at your computer, or givitg a presentation.

o

Taking time when you sit down at your computer to notice how you support your body in gravity, and adjusting that support to reduce the effort you expend, before you start to type.

o

Consciously broadenitg your self-awareness as you start to Vpe or do some other activity, then noticing how long you can carry that broadened awareness into the activity.

o

Stopping periodically to notice unconscious tensions you've built up, or other detrimental changes in your organizatton of your awareness or your movements, and readjusting.

o

Paying attention to the width of your visual field as you drive, attend meetings, or do other tasks, with the intent of taking in more with your peripheral vision. This can then gener alize to other dimensions of awareness, such as awareness of your body and movement , ot awareness of iruppropriate emotional responses.

o

Regrstering detrimental response (like tensing or holding your breath) to external stresses such as criticism or deadlin€s, and exploring alternative ways of respondi^g.

Some of these suggestions may seem strange right

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now, but as you begin to engage in the process of expanding your awareness and reduci.g your effort, they will make more sense. Triggers for practice You may sit down at your computer and begin to type in a relaxed and centered way. Before you know it, there you are again, leanitg forward into the screen, with your shoulders hunched and your arms tight, doing all the things you're trying to stop. This tendency to drift back into habitual ways of being and acting presents a major barrier to learning and change. It's something we all do. In fact, it's a built-in characteristic of the human nervous system. It's not something you readily overcome by trying harder, or working hardto do better. Trying harder, in fact, only makes the problem worse. Instead, you need to bring yourself back to a centered place and start again d to do this over and over and over. As you do, the new way of beirg that you are trying to acquire will gradually become morE avaiiable to you. This is a demanding process, but it doesn't require (ot benefit from) muscular effort. What it demands is attention,not ffirt. Triggers which remind you to check what you're doing and to readjust if necessary can facilitate this process of integration. You should build such triggers into your life. Computer programs exist which will beep periodically to provide reminders, but you can also create your own. One that I often suggest to clients is the telephone. For many people the telephone is a source of stress. ft triggers a startle response when it rings. They reach for it

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immediately, unconsciously tightening as they do. But you can turn this around using the phone instead as a trigger for centering and relaxation. Let it be OK for the phone to ring one more time before you answer it. Use that additional ring to bring yourseli back to a relax€d, centered state before you pick up the phone. Do the same thing before you make an outgoing call, makirg that a trigger to practice as well.

If you do find the phone stressful, you may discover that doing this lessens your stress. The phone can go from being a threat to becomi^g a trigger to practice at random times during the duy. Buildi^g this and similar triggers into your daily routine can remind you to practice frequently, helpi.g you achieve the repetition necessary to change long-held habits. Sources of guidance

The course of action I'm advocating here may take you into strange and unfamiliar territory. It may seem to contradict what you've believed in the past about subjects like movement, stress, and health. As you explore this and other approaches to health and well-being, 5rou will draw on different sources of guidance to help ynu sort out these and other apparent contradictions. This book is one such source of guidance. Other sources will include other books, friends, and teachers or practitioners professionals you work with and other health of disciplines you practice, doctors, professionals. These various sources of guidance will not always agree, and you will find it necessary to be selective in how you utilrze their advice.

Different people will give you different advice because they see from different perspectives. Remember the fable of the blind men and the elephant. One touched the trunk,

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and concluded an elephant was like a rope. Another felt the side of the elephant, and thought it like a wall. Yet another felt its ear, and concluded an elephant was like a leaf. Each of their limited perspectives correctly reflected their own experience, but was woefully incomplete.

In an area as rich and complex as the way we function as human beings, this is to be expected. There is no single all-encompassing perspective which always has the right answer, and you can't expect to find one. Different perspectives will show you different pieces of the puzzle. From thoser /ou must assemble your own unique solution. The perspective I come from focuses primarily on self-awareness and how you use it in your actions. That is a dimension that the medical model hardly addresses. The medical model, on the other hand, sees things in terms of diagnosis of specific pathologies, with treatment deterrnined by the diagnosis. This is not a dimension which *y perspective really deals with. For this reason, advice yort wo,tld get frorn me may differ considerably ' from that which you would get from your doctor or physical therapist.

Difference does not necessarily imply contradiction, of course. Your physical therapist might prescribe a set of exercises, with little attention to your state of mind when you do them. My advice, on the other hand, might focus primarily on your state of mind. Without disagreeing with the PT about the exercises, I might ask you to do them slowly and gently, paying attention to how you move as you do them. It's nice when guidance from different sources is different but not cbntradict orf , because you end up with a broader view than you would have gotten from any one source. There

will

also be times when different sources do

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give you contradictory advice, and you will have to choose between them. A surgeon might recommend surgery as the only reasonable treatment, while others recommend more conservative approaches. A PT might recommend "strengtheni.g exercises, " Ln circumstances where a Feldenkrais Teacher mught argue for a more gentle approach focused on self-awareness. When this huppens, taki^g into consideration the risks you have to choose and benefits of both-approaches, 3s well as what feels right to you intuitively.

Developing your sense of rightness The idea of relying on "what feels right to you intuitively" may go against what you've been taught to believe. This society strongly indoctrinates us to rely on experts and other external sources of authonty, and to view our own feelings as untrustworthy and unreliable. Earliet,I discussed one example of that indoctrination, when you started school and they put you in a room with an adult authority figure who taught you to "Sit still. Don't squirm. Don't look out the window. And raise your hand if you have to go to the bathroom." That indoctrination w&s wrongl Your feelings are or at least they can be, if trustworthy and reliable - and calibrated. You have they're properly developed within you a highly reliable sense of rightness that is as much a part of your biological makeup as your sense of vision, or hearin g, or touch. Your sense of rightness may be unreliable at present, because your early indoctrination "took" ar.d you didn't feed it the way it needed to be fed to develop it's potential. It doesn't have to stay that way.

Your other senses wouldn't work very well either, if you didn't properly develop them. People blind from birth who have their sight restored in adulthood will

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initially see a blur. They have to learn to see objects and make sense of them. Even the senses that you think of as fully developed are probably much less developed than they could be. Your sense of balance , for example, is inherently capable of keeping you grounded and secure on a six inch beam (ot even a tightrope) high above the ground, yet few of us develop that capability. If you currently suffer from RSI, a poorly developed sense of rightness probably played a major role. The RSI didn't sneak rp on you unannounced. Your body sent you a whole range of signals telling you that things weren't right, that you should be sitting differently, or using your arms differently, or allowi^g yourself to breathe. You ignored those signals, in part by tensing to block them out. That was how you had learned to do it when you were taught to "sit stillr..." when you were six. The signals got louder, and you continued to block them out, until they finally became too loud to ignore. At that point, perhaps you asked yourself "how did this huppen to me?" Developing and learnirg to trust your own sense of rightness should be an important part of your process of somatic exploration. Ultimately, that sense of rightness will become your best source of guidance about what works for you. This should not prevent you from seeking and using the expertise and advice of others who may possess skills and knowledge you do not. What it meansr though, is that you should be able to develop your own sense of when that is necessary or appropriate, and of how to draw on "experts" in ways that empower rather than disempower you. You should never follow anyone blindly (including me) ,If what they say does not make sense to you.

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Conceptual shift

A^y form of deep self-exploration is likely to produce conceptual shifts, and somatic exploration is no exception. Replacing the idea that "I have to work hard to achieve what I want" wrth the idea that "I should do things that contribute to what I want to achieve and reduce my unproductive effort" is one such shift. Developing the sense that "the attention I pay to how I do things can make a major difference in how well my life works" is another. Replacing the idea that "ny feelings are unreliable and not to be trusted" with the idea that "my inherent sense of rightness can become an important source of guidance" is a third. And there are others. Conceptual shift is something that huppens along this path, if you follow it very far.It may seem strange, though, to categorize conceptual shift as a "tool for chang?," as if it were something you had a choice about whether or not to do. I'm categorizing it that way because to let shifts happen I believe that you have that choice I want to them. cultivate or to consciously passively encourage you to make that latter choice, because it can be a powerful tool in your toolkit. What does it mean to "cultivate conceptual shift as a tool, rather than just letting it huppen?" Consider two ways of approaching an Awfireness Through Mouemenf or T'ai Chi class. On the one handr /ou might go to the class and do what you're told ,payi^g attention to and enjoying the movements. You might not think much about it between classes, or about how it could change other parts of your life. On the other handr 1rou might actively ponder what you were learning, and what effects those lessons could have on other things you do and believe. You might experiment to see what other changes you could bring about. This is what I mean by cultivating conceptual shift as a tool.

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Consider a more specific example. Most people walk by falling forward from one foot to the next, with little ongoing awareness of what supports them at any point in time. Each step creates a small impact, against which they unconsciously tense. Olre of the skills cultivated in T'ai Chi is what the Chinese call "walkirg with an empty foot." This way of walking involves ongoing awareness of the ground supporting you, and a shifting of weight from one foot to the next only after the moving foot has made contact with the supporting surface. (Flence the foot is ""*pty" of weight while it is in the air.)

If you practice T'ai Chi, in time you will develop the ability to move this way at least while you're doing T'ai Chi. You might let it -stop thet:, or you might think about the underlying principle, and what it has to say about how you support yourself in gravity all the time, - that this not just doing T'ai Chi. If you do, you may find principle also relates to the way you sit, and the way you support your arms and hands as you type. If you're lucky, /ou will have a teacher who explicitly points out principles like this, and helps you integrate them into your other life activities. If not, you'll have to do that yourself. In either case, you will learn more and learn faster if you actively seek understanding and conceptual shift than if you just practice movement and hope that will magically make you better.

"Demanding" is not the same as "difficult." Excessive effortr poor body org anuzation, and lack of self-awareness usually result from long held and deeply ingrained unconscious habits. These habits are not easily discarded, and the process of somatic exploration is not an easy process. At the same time, you should not think of it as a difficult process. It would be more appropriate,

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perhaps, to charactenze it as demanding and requiring p erseaer ance, but not dfficult . The idea that something can be demanding but not dfficult may seem strange when you first hear it, perhaps even logically inconsistent. We usually think of easy and dfficult as formi.g a dichotomy, ot perhaps as the opposite ends of some scale of level of difficulty. That

apparent dichotomy is really a reflection of the inadequacies of our langu?Be, caused by our lack of third linguistic alternative.

a

To better explain what I mean by this, let's look at some definitions for dfficult, ensA, demanding, and perseaerance. (These definitions are drawn from the

American Heritage Dictionar!.) Drff rult is defined as:

hard to do or accomplish; demanding considerable effort or skill; arduous, wherehard means

requiring great effort or endurance or difficult to accomplish. Easy is

defined

as:

capable of being accomplished with ease; posing no difficulty; requiring little effort or endeavor; undemanditg. Demanding is defined as:

requiring much effort or attention, while perseaernnce requires steady persistence in adheritg to a course of action, or a Purpose.

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We see from these definitions that dfficult and hard are closely related, and both are related to the idea of ffirt" Easy is associated with a lack rf ttr rt, and also with being undemanding. Something is demanding when it requires uffort or attention It's important to note, hete , that effort and attention are not the same thing. They are different. Where, along the easy-to-dtfftcult scale, do we put something that requires considerable focused attention, but little effort? On the one hand , Lt's not dfficult,because it does not require effort. On the other hand it's not eas!, because it is demanding rather than effort. - of attention The process of change necessary to reduce the level of behavioral stress you impose on yourself is like that. The best way I've found to characterize it, without arbitrarily inventing a new word, is to describe it as demanding but not difficult. This might seem like a nitpicking distinction. If it's not easy, why not just call it difficult? Isn't it difficult, after all, to learn to focus your attention differently, and to keep a broader field of awareness as you work? Why describe it otherwise?

It's worth describing it otherwise, and making the distinction between demnnding and dfficult,because the way you describe it will affect the way you go about it. \Mhen you think of a task as dfficult, you automatically use effort to accomplish it. As we noted earlier, effort involves the contraction of muscles. But if your objective rs the reduction ,f ttr rt, and you can't learn to do that by ffirting. Flaving this third conceptual categar!, demanding but not dfficult, rnakes it easier to avoid sabotaging yourself by "\ /orkirg hard" at trying not to work so hard.

Three Dimensions of Behavioral Change Stress and the RSI it produces flow both from

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envirorunental sourc€s, i.e., things that happen to Aou, and from behavioral sources, i.e., things you do to yourself. Our focus here is on the behavioral sources. To the extent that your difficulties are caused by things you do to yourself, the best route to eliminatittg those difficulties is through through changirg the way you do those things change learnirg to do them differently. This behavioral dimensions. fundamental three involves learning along

o Action: You produce stress in your body with poorly org arrrzed action done with excessive effort. To reduce stress you must organrze your actions more efficiently, using less effort to carry them out.

o Awareness: The fundamental cause of poorly organtzed action is lack of self-awareness. You can't act efficiently without the information that efficient action requires. To act more efficiently, /ou must organrze your perception differently to take in and utilrze mc)re -information about yourself, about what you are doing, and about its effects on the world around you.

Action

Three A,'1"

Dimensions of Change

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Q2

\

.e"

o Understanding: Behavioral

change is ultimately it comes about through changes in how experiential by changes in awareness. A better you act, accompanied cognitive understanding can support these experiential changes by providing motivation to change habitual patterns of action and awareness , particularly potterns that may initially seem reasonable.

One example of this interplay between the cognitive and the experiential which we examined earlier is the

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the idea that if you work harder you at in a later chaptet, is the hurry-up fallacy, the idea that you can get done more quickly by hurryirg when you're pressed for time. work-harder fallacy

- Another, which we'll look will accomplish more.

Both of these fallacies are deeply imbedded in habitual subconscious patterns of action. When you want to get more done , fou try harder and exert more effort. When you don't have enough time, you hurry. Both feel right when you do them, and seem to make conceptual sense. This combination of apparent experiential and cognitive support strengthens these fallacies and provides justification for the habits that embody them.

And yet, both ideas are wrong, and contribute significantly to dysfunctional actions that produce RSI and other stress-related problems. Understanding how that huppens won't,by itself, change your behavior, but it can help motivate and support the experiential changes necessary to overcome them. My intention with this book and the Awareness Through Moaement audiotapes which will accompany it is to support all three of these dimensiorls. So far, we've focused primarily on conceptual issues, hopi.g to give you a new conceptual perspective. Up.oming chapters will include a greater experiential focus, guiding you through new ways of doi.g and perceiving, and the accompanying tapes will allow you to deepen and strengthen those experiences.

About the Author

Italph StrauclU Ph.D. , has a private practice in the Feldenkrais Method tn Pacific Palisades, California, and teaches workshops in various aspects of awareness and movement throughout the United States. He was trained by the founder of the Method, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, and has been exploring the body/mind interaction through T'at Chi and related practices since the late 1960s. Ralph brings to his practice a wide-ranging background and experience. FIe received his Ph.D. irl Statistics from the University of California, and was formerly a Senior Mathematician with the Rand Corporation, where his research focused on issues of human and organ tzattonal decisionmaking. Ralph has worked with and around computers since the 1950s, and has been a personal computer user since he got his first Apple II tn 1979.

He is the author of THE REALITY ILLUSrcN; F/ow ylu numerous articles on the human. in being awareness role of make the world you experience, and

Acknowledgments

The perspective on movement and human functioni^g which underlies this book developed over many years, and was influenced by many sources.

Professor David Blackwell, my mentor and thesis advisor at the University of California, taught me to think of mathematics as primarily an intuitive activity, and in so doing, shaped my ways of thinking about everything I encounter. Robert W. Smith taught me T'ai Chi, which opened me to the wondrous interpluy between mind and body. Moshe Feldenkrais extended and reinforced the understandirg I brought to my training with him, and gave me new tools with which to extend and deepen that understanding. Bob Niminsky has been my partner in an exploration of body and movement that grew out of our practice of ju-jitsu and Aikido together, and has been a source of inspiration for a quarter of a century.

I have also learned much from the many clients and sfudents with whom I have worked over the years. One of the best things about my work as a Feldenkrais Teacher is that people come and pay me to teach me things. This manuscript has benefited from comments and suggestions from Paul Linden, Mike Mossey, Penny Kome, Vincent DelGobbo, and Erik Barkley.

And I am deeply indebted to my wife Merna, whose support and counsel throughout has been invaluable.

Aw arene s s Thr ough Mou emenf audiotapes by Ralph Strauch The following tapes are currently available. Tape#

Lessons

610 Sensing the Head in

Space

&Varying

the

Alignment of

the Torso- Enhance awareness of your position and movement in space, and discover the surprising sensory consequences of minor variations from your habitual posture.

67L Feeling your Cerebral Spinal Pulse &. Making Waaes Get in touch with deep pleasurable waves of motion that are always present in your body, and the altered states of consciousness they

-

allow.

613 Softening the Mouth &, Mouements of the law tensions you habitually hold in your mouth and ju*.

-

Release

614 Supine Pelvic Clock & Freeing the HUs and Peluis hrcrease the mobility of your hipt and pelvis, and improve the

-connections

from your pelvis through your spine to your head.

617 Softening the Ribcage &. Breathing throughout the Chest Enhance the mobility of your ribcage and shoulder girdle, and the inside of your torso with your breath.

-explore

Enhance the mobitity 6L9 Spinal Flexion & Spinal Extension of your torso by working with the primary movements of spinal flexion (bending) and extension (straightening).

-

623 Reaching with the lNhole Body & Connecting the Fingers Release the tensions that fragment your movements to the Spine

marripulating things, and reexperience the of reachng/ touching/ unity of movement that is your birthright.

86

Low-Stress Cqmputing

These tapes were recorded during live classes and

workshops. They were not intended to deal with RSI,per se,but were part of ongoing exploration in self-awareness and movement. Nonetheless, they can be useful for people experiencing the effects of RSI. The descriptions below should help ynu decide which tapes might be of value to you. RSI often involves pain in the hands and wrists. This is due in part to excessive tension in the hands and arms, and to a fragmentation of movement while typing (trying to Vpe in just the hands, while holding the torso, shoulders, and arms rigid). Tape 623 (Reachitg with the Whole Body & Connecting the Fingers to the Spine) contains two lessons which relax and integrate the arms and hands, and is probably most relevant single tape available here for someone suffering from RSI.

As you type your arms should be supported by relaxed shoulders and a relaxed torso, itself supported by a relaxed spine. Excessive tension and rigidity in your spine and upper torso restricts the flow of movement as you work, imposing mechanical strains that lead to RSI. Tapes 6L7 (Softening the Ribcage & Breathirg throughout the Chest) and 6L9 (Spinal Flexion & Spinal Extension) put you more in touch with how you use your torso, and in the process help you reduce that rigidity. When you feel grounded and supported by the surface beneath you, your upper body can relax and center itself over the base that your lower body provides. When you don't feel supported from belowr /ou tense your upper body in an attempt to make up for that lack of support. Tape 614 (Supine Pelvic Clock & Freeing the Hips and Pelvis) can increase your awareness of your pelvis, and of the skeletal path of support from your pelvis up your spine to your head.

Awareness Through

Moyemenllapes

87

Excessive tension in the mouth and iu* both results from and produces tension throughout the spine and upper torso. If you experience your jo* as tense and rigid, you may find Tape 613 (Softening the Mouth & Movements of the law) useful. The lessons on Tape 610 (Sensirg the Head in Space & Varyi.g the Alignment of the Torso) both deal primarily with increased self-awareness. Sensi.g the Flead in Space gives you a heightened awareness of the balanc€, position, and movement of your head in space, while Varyi.g the Alignment of the Torso allows you to experience the often significant changes in subjective experience brought about by small changes in the organization of your torso. The lessons on Tape 611 (Feelirg your Cerebral Spinal Pulse & Making Waves) are intended to take you within yourself and provide a deeply centering and integrative experience.

"Connecting with the Earth" (Zpp, $.50)* "Tigers and Tunnel Vision: Is our biological reaction to stress maladaptive in urban society?" (Zpp, $.50)* "Emotional stress and body organuzation" and "The Process of Functional Integration" (zpp, $.50)* ttT'ai Chi and the Feldenkrais Method: Different windows on a common vision" (4pp, $1)* "Traini.g the Whole Person" (3pp, $1) " An Overview of the Feldenkrais Method" (4pp, $1). "somatic Dimensions of Emotional Flealing" (\2pp, $2) * Muy be downloaded from our website at no charge.

Renlity nfusion The

How you make the world you experience By

ltrlph

Strauch,

rsBN 0-9676009-3-6 $15.95 224 p&ges, 6x9, biblio, illus, index Published by Somntic Options

This book deals with the nature of perception and the mechanisms we use to create and maintain the collective illusion we call reality. It doesn't directly address the problem of RSI, though it does discuss the some of the mechanisms by which we make the unconscious choices that ultimate lead to trauma and pain in many forms.

What other writers say aboutThe Reality lllusiln: "... a tool for bringng mind, brain, and body into alignment, that we might be with ourselves and so with others...personal rewards are endless."

at peace

Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Crack in the Casmic Egg

"...unusually clear, accessible account of the mysteries of the multidimensional world. " Marilyr Fergusory author ofThe Aquarian Conspiracy

"A powerful learning tool...a clear guide for taking an important step towards an enlarged way of perceiving our lives."

Timothy Gallwe/, author of

The Inner Game of Tennis

"Physics and metaphysics...a bold attempt at syrthesis." Thelma Moss, author of The Probability of the lmpossible "...takes you to the boundaries of your own mind and occasionally makes you gasp with wonder at glimpses of what lies beyond" Serge King, author of l&huna Healing

"r[t important

contribution to bratn/ mind and how reality is viewed." |oan Halifax, author of Shamanic Voices

Send check payable to ltalph Strauch , to P.O. Box 194, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272 Please send the followingt

copies of The Reality lllusion

@ $L5.95

copies of Low-Stress Computing,Part L @ $11.95 The following Tapes

@ $10

each (tist tape #s)

Articles, as indicated:

Bookrate surface shipping is free within the US, Canada, and Mexico. For Priority and Global Priority Mail add: In the US $4 Canada and Mexico $S

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We accept credit cards at the Somatic Options website, at

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Low-Stress Computing Using awareness to avoid ttSI A F el denkr ai sa Perspective P art'L :

Reducing Behavioral Stress

Sitting at a computer may be the hazardous occupation of the 90s. Repetitive actions impose harmful stresses on your body which can lead to injuries and painful conditions referred to as repetitive stress injuries (RSD.The incidence of RSI in the workplace is rising, and the monetary and human costs are staggering. Low-Skess Computing is a somatic education program using greater self-awareness and improved body organization to reduce the stresses which lead to RSI.

Part l,: Reducing Behavioral Stress examines the stresses you impose on yourself excessive effort, poor body - through of self-awareness can organization, and lack - and how you red.uce those stresses through somatic exploration paying to more attention to how you move, and using that information improve the quality of your movement. Related materials to be published separately, include guided self-exploration and experiential movement lessons as well as additional explanatory material.

I{alph Strauch" Ph.D . , has a private practice in the Feldenkrais Method in Pacific Palisades, California, ffid teaches workshops in various aspects of awareness and movement throughout the United States. He was formerly a Senior Mathematician with the Rand Corporation, and has been a personal computer user since he got his first Apple A.nL979. o

omatlc

ptiolrs-"

$t r.g5

^ ...t0 liw nore fully in your body