The Feldenkrais Journal #7 Conceptual Models

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THE FELDENI(RAIS

]OURNAL

NO.7

wTNTER 1992

:

:.t.

U.r" I

t .'i

CONCEPTUAL MODELS

a.

I

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Lau.rence Wm. Goldfarb Elizabeth Beringer Iack Heggie, Paul Rubin, Arlyn Zones

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Margery Cantor

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Ginger Beringer

cl.

Brian Lynn, Elizabeth Weiss

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The Feldenkrais Iournal number

Thble of Contents 2

A Letter from the

4

Moshe Feldenkrais: ABiographical Sketch of his

I

In Memory of Charles V. W. Brooks t9r2-1991 Linda Delman

10

A Talk about the Feldenkrais

L4

Function: Realizing

2t

Aesthetic Consciousness in Functional

27

Functional Integration: Charting the Territory Nancy Denenberg

34

The Roots of Functional Integration, Part

48

Contributors

Editor

Method

Intentions

EarlyYears

Garet Newell

Myriam Pfeffer

Mark Reese

Integration

III:

Martin H. Weiner

The Shift in

Thinking

Carl Ginsburg

7

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO,

A Letter from the

7

WTNTER 1992

Editor

Dear colleague, The other night I r,r,as leaving Freer Hall, rvhere I work in the Kinesiology Department, to go home. As I walked dor,vn the main corridor, I listened to my footsteps as they echoed dorvn this oid hall. It rvas late, I had been rvorking on this editorial on the Macintosh at my office. No one was around. I remembered one time in grade school, after a school play, wandering dor,vn the dark, vacant ha1ls. I had the same thought now as I had back then: thinking hor,v crowded those hallways were during the day, noticing how empt.v they,,vere now. I felt that I was going to learn some secret, having a special chance to see this place naked of its students and unguarded by its teachers. Nothing of the kind happened. I listened to the beat of my steps bounce off the walls, I peered into the shadows formed b-v the red g1or,r, of the exit light, and found a precious feeling, a communion with this building, the place that houses the school. As I reached the door, I lvanted to go back and r'r'a1k the hall again, to rekindle my lonely connection, mv connection to a sense ofplace. I thought ofyou, dear reader and colleague, of how we don't have any halls to u,ander dor,vn, alone or together. I thought of the places r,ve do have to meet-trainings, conferences, r,vorkshops, classes, discussions over tea in the kitchen or living loom-and, especially, of our conceptr-ral ground for those meetings. So many of our meetings are confined by the teacher-student lelatior.rship upon r,vhich our apprenticeship was based and from which we seem to have such difficulty escaping (as do the daltime inhabitants of this building). So many of our meetings are bounded b-v a fi'actured memory from the past, fractured by our different points of vier,r,s, our varied disappointments and hopes. So many of our meetings lack a place, they offer no ground to come home to, no shelter. I looked back at the hall, down that dark, murky passage, and rvondered rvhen r,ve r,r,ill have a home, a place to leave and come back to. By home, I don't just mean a building, an institute, though I think that this, too, is becoming incleasingly necessary,; but, more importantly, I mean a conceptual home, one that has its doors open to the future. I uished for companl, here, for you to join me here, to lend your hand to spar.rning the distance betlr,een science and craft, between thinking and doing. So much of n'hat I read about movement studies these days-in sensorimotor development, in dynamical sl,stems analr'sis, in adaptive control theory lorth one idea: Moshe Feldenkrais was way ahead of his time. He created his n ork, our

-calls

work, before there r,vere wavs to talk about it and before there rvere tr,avs, for most us, to think about the hor,r, and why of it. Moshe, someholv, thankfully, leapt ahead of the theory of the time and invented this method. On1-v norn., are the ideas comir.rg forth that can help us understand, explain, and develop the l,r,ork.1 Moshe's',vay of working came forth frorn a complex background, enriched bv his deep knor,vledge in such areas as judo and mechanics. I remember manv hours \vorrying: would I have to understand those in order to understand the r,rrork? I am no phvsicist, no martial artist. One of mv clearest memories of the training, a sliver of our fractured heritage, is of Moshe repeatedly pointing out at Amherst hor,r, the scientific concepts and framervorks of the day, such as cause-and-effect reasoning, r,vere insufficient for understanding the u,ay of working that he n as teaching. I rernember then rvondering, yes, but'"r'hat is there in terms of aiternate ways of thinking? Is thinking hopeless? Is language r/zar useless? Was the person r,vho told me, with grim determination, "If you taik about the r,vork, vou can't possibly understand it," right? Two years ago, Elizabeth (Beringer) asked me to edit an issue of the Feldenkrais Journal. Given my long-standing interest in der.eloping \{ays to think about our n ork and creating models-ways of articulating whatlve do-I chose the theme of conceptual models. Many ways of thinking have developed both outside our fleld and rvithin our numbers recentllr that

2

r E.,.en norv, these concepts lack the unifying fiarnervork that is the very soul of our r'r,ork, r,r,hich is one of the off'erings r'r,e brir-rg to this conrrersation, this der.elopment.

,t

IVrNTER r992

THE FELDENKRAIS ]OURNAL NO. 7

have so much to offer us. I think, lbr instance, of Nicholai Berstein2, a Russian r,r,hose ideas, der.eloped in the rg3o's and 4o's, are revolutionizing the way many scientists nor,r. think about movement. Or of the pioneering rvork done by trainers who continue to reflne and develop the process of training Feldenkrais practioners. The challenge, for us as it rvas for Moshe, is to flnd ways to talk about the work that fit r,r,ith the spirit of the lvork. This issue presents an assortment of answers to that challenge. The contributions to this issue cover a rvide spectrum of ideas, models of thought, and styles of presenting them. The issue begins r,r,ith a historical piece: Garet Nervell's article about N{oshe's years in England, told through the stories of those r,r,ho knew him then. This is followed by Linda Delman's tribute to the late Charles Brooks. In the next t.,vo articles, tr,'".o trainers address t\vo very different audiences about aspects of the method: flrst, the transIation of Myriam Pfeffer's introductory talk to an international somatherapy conference, and then the transcription of a talk Mark Reese gave on the subject of function at the Michigan training. We continue with two contrasting pieces: N{artin Weiner's discussion of the aesthetics of Functional Integration and Nancv Denenberg's introduction to r,rryiting chart notes in a phvsical therapy setting. Finally lve have the closing article in Carl Ginsburg's trilogv on the roots of Feldenkrais, n hich introduces and delves into the framer,r.ork developed by Chilean biologists N4aturana and Varela. Each contributor presents a different place tiom which to think-history, theory, aesthetics, language, biology-n16i discusses its relevance to our rvork and to ho\\r we think about it. l{ere we continue to establish a foundation lbr thinking about our work, one that does not rely on what was said and when, but one in r,vhich the conyersation continues and gror,vs, one that brings in more r,oices, one that begins to establish a place to come home to. The ploduction process of this issue required a proiound and continued effort on the part ol the editorial board-Elizabeth Beringer, Jack Heggie, Paul Rubin, and Arh.n Zones-u'hom I thank fol their hard work and support. In the process of developing the articles, each of us u,orked u,ith a different author: giving comments, having conversations, and r,r,orking together on refining intentions and their expression in text.3 As N.Iartin \{einer mentions in his introduction, the final pieces speak to a collaborative, supportive effort, a con.,,ersation in r,r,hich something ne\^/ is created and nurtured into fruition. In order to maintain the integrih of our u,ork against chailenges from the outside and from lvithin, rve need to continue to define this method, if onl-v to agree upon r,that it is not. This is the challenge rve will continue to face on legal, social, intellectual, and spiritual grounds. Our only hope is to face it together, lor together r,r,e can rely on each other's strengths and bring out the best in each other. Alone r,r,e rely only on our u,eaknesses. Any individual def,nition of the method, any individual model or training, r,vil1 manifest all the archetypical instability of someone talking to him or herself. Iust as r,ve f,nd i1 each lesson: to grow and de.",elop we leed a dialogical, rather than monological, approacir in the community. The articles contributed to this issue are a manifestation of this dialogue, the \.ery purpose for the existence of the journal. The richness, variety, and depth of the r,r,riting offered for your consideration and enjoyment bode nell for the future of the Feldenkrais Nlethod.

z See fbr example, The Coordination o_f Nlouemertt. Press, 1967; or an explanation of Berstein's ideas in Hwnan Behauior, I. A. Scott ed. Hillsdale N..J.:l,ar,vrence Erlbaum Assoc., 1982 (especially Section 5, Chapters ro-rz). 3 The board contributes its time and all related expenses. That means that we can produce t,uvo tirousand copies of this journal, not including mailing costs, for under $5,zoo. 'Ihis is an incredibly lorv ligure, one rnade possible or-rlv bv the kindness and generosiry of our designer, l{argery Cantor, and our artist, Ginger Beringer. If n e had the journal produced independentlv, an issue this size could easilv cost over s2o,ooo. Furthermore, for this issue, rve also [-rad the assistance of Elizabeth Weiss, a member of the Anat Motion Svstems Sonoma training, rvho graciouslt, r.olunteerecl her proofreading serrrices, a much r-reeded part of the

production team,

3

WTNTER r992

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

Biograpfri.l

MOSHE FELDENKRAIS Sketch of his

Early Years Garet Newell I have a vision

of a biographical

project for which the following article, and the research it required, is just a small stan. What I envision are chapters covering Moshe's

life

in Palestine, in Paris in the 1930's, in the United Kingdom in theI940's,

lsrael in the 1950's and '60's and his international travels in the 1970's, I am greatly inspired by the process

of interviewing people who knew him at different times in his life. I would like to continue to contact and interview more people, especially as they may not be available

for many more years. I would appreciate any suggestions as to who to contact and the assistan(e of anyone who would also like to do any of these interviews. Since

writing this article, I have spent much time with Moshe's sister, Malka, who has shared a lot with me and would like me to come to lsrael with her to see letters and photographs that she feels are essential to any biography of Moshe. I would also appreciate any suggestions as

to how to

receive funding for the con-

tinuation of this project.

4

"I was present lvhen he metamorphosed from a ph1'sicist and jr-rdo expert into rvhat he later became; I sar,t the start of it," Bill Halliday shared with me while rve sipped tea together in his London flat in the winter of r986. When I began teaching Auiareness Through Movement classes in London, one of rnv students mentioned the classes to an acquaintance of hers rtho said, "Oh, I used to knor'r'N{oshe lt'hen he rvas here in the rg4o's." I jumped at the opportunitv to meet and intervielr, David Boston, n'ho then Iecl me to Bill Hallidar, and to Allison Dor,vnes. I discovered that Franz Wurm had first met N{oshe at that time as well. As I r,vas going to be living and teaching in the United Kingdom, I became very curious about the decade Nloshe spent here. I had the good fortune to meet and interview these friends of Nloshe. In this article, I rvill let them tell his story: "He r,r,as born in a town in eastern Europe (in Slar,r,'uta in the lJkraine; his family later moved to Baranor,vitza) that \\,as a part of the time in Russia and a part of the time in Poland. He emigrated about the time he -"vas fourteen or flfteen to Paiestine and helped to build Tel-Avir', mixing concrete, etc.," Bill Hallida-v told me. "His interest in jiujitsu, as a form of self-defense stems from this time. I'm not sure rvhere he was educated in Palestine, but he set hintseif tlp as a tutor. Starting ollt, the onlv pupils he got were the ones rvho had been rejected by all of the other tutors. It was a difficult job to get them to do an.vtiring, but he succeeded, therefore his skill in hou, it is that one learns. And I think it was the monev he made doing this that allorr.ed him to go to Paris to take his degree." "ln Palestine during the British N{andate, the Jer,vish settlers were more or less fixed in one village, r'r,hereas the Arabs r,vho attacked them arrived out of norvhere and disappeared into nowhere r,r'hen it was over. It r,r,as ah,rrays the Jervs r,rrho got it and I think that it r,vas under those conditions that Moshe learned self-defense," Bill Haliidav continued. "He was in the Jer,r,ish rer,,olutiotlarv movement in

wr,\TER r992

THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 7

Palestine, " David Boston puts it, "he claims he learned jiujitsu, partly as but the Arabs cor.rld. At that time,

the1. 11,s."rr't allol'r,ed to carry arms,

I

the British far.ored the Arabs against the Iews. He got fed up r,r,,ith this mo\rernent and r,r,ent to Paris." He arrived in Paris in tgz8 and earned a degree in engineering and later a doctorate in physics and worked in the laboratory of loliotCurie, nho, along with his wife, received the Nobel prize in 1938. "He must have been highly thought of in terms of physics as he was rvorking r,vith ioliot-Curie, who was a communist as were manv people in France at that time," shared David Boston. \,\hile he r,vas in Paris in t933 he met Jigaro Kano, founder of the

martial art/sport of judo from |apan. N{oshe brought along the book he had r,vritten about jiujitsu rvhich Kano took back to |apan,,vith him to study in more detail. \.Vhen Kano returned in rg3,l, he con{ided to the ambassador from lapan, Y. Sugimura, that he had fina1ly found someone r,tho r,r,.as going to develop judo in France. In r936 he and Moshe founded the Judo Club of France. Moshe became, as Allison Dor,vnes puts it, "one of the vehicles rvho brought judo to the west," and among the first students rvere Moshe's sister, Malka, as rvell as Frederic and Irene Ioliot-Curie and several scientists who were members of the "Institr,rt du radium." Moshe's knee, which he had injured in a soccer match, began to trouble him at this time. Allison I)ourns describes his situation: "He had his knee in plaster and iived at the top of a long fligirt of srairs. The bedroom was distant from the bathroom and it u,as a question for him as to how he was going to get around. He discovered something fundamental then." He began to applv his knor'rrledge of mechanics and phvsics and his study of neurophysiologv to the problem of the

ivlnte. lrerte Ctu'ie &

\,1.

JolioL Curie

ttisit ivloslrc nt the Dojo. (PIrctogruplt corn'test' of NIalka Fel dettkrai s Si I ice,,\"/o.r/zei s1-srer.)

functioning of his knee. Moshe's life in Paris w,as interrupted by the invasion of Paris by the Germans in rg4o. Franz Wurm describes a search the Gestapo conducted of the Ioliot-Curie laboratory, "probablv to get rid of the Cornmunists and the Iervs. Moshe's sister, Malka, rvho also rvorked at the Iaboratory at that time, 'sniffed' r,lhat \vas up and -nvhen the Germans ca1led the rvhole lot of thern into the courtvard, Malka stayed behind, r,r,ent into the jackets and coats of all rvho urere working there, took out all of their identitypapers... she l,r,as one step ahead of the Gestapo ... and r,r,andered into the courtvard r,vith her pockets full, " and no one u,as arrested. In the late summer of rg4o, the government in exile had moved to the south of France and Joliot-Curie lvas a "one-day minister" pleading rvith the government to get Moshe out of France as "he knor,r,s too much and being a leur could be blackmailed and forced to talk." Franz Wurm recalls, "He r,vas given trvo suitcases sealed with the seal of the French Republic and was told to hand them over to a French go\-ernment in exile in London." Bill Halliday remembers that "they Ieft from a beach near Bordeaux; there was a British destroyer standing oflshore and a queue of people with all their worldly possessions, u,,aiting to be taken onto the ship. Thev had to throrv ar,vay their 5

THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 7

wINTER rg92

suitcases as there was no room, so you can imagine ho"v Moshe had to struggle to hold onto his." He lvas interned when he flrst arrived in Britain. Professor J.D. Bernal, described by David Boston as "one of the most brilliant scientists in the country," found out that Moshe lt'as in the country; he had already known of him by name. At that time, Bernal rvas serving as a Chief Advisor to the British Cabinet and Franz \\rurm recalls that he said, "we need these people like salt and you go and lock them upl" Moshe sat tight on the suitcases, which the British Intelligence rvere most eager to investigate, and was eventuall-v alloi'r'ed to hand them over to the DeGaulle government in London. VIoshe didn't know at the time what the suitcases contained, but these secret papers from the Joliot-Curie laboratory helped to keep the information concerning experiments with nuclear flssion out of the hands of the Nazis and made it available to the AIIies, which rvas of use late in the rvar. It was through the influence of Bernal that Moshe ended up in the Admiralry's

Moshe uith some of ltis colleagues at H M lJ n derw ater D etec ti o rt Es tab lis hment in Fairlie, Scotland. (Photograph courtesy o.f Rill Hallid.qt.

ft

anti-submarine experimental establishment, knort'n as H.NI' Underwater Detection Estabiishment, in Fairlie on the \\'est coast of Scotland. "From the point to vier,r'' of physics, Moshe \vas an odd chap at Fairlie," David Boston recalls. "Our Establishment seemed to be the sort of place they shipped scientists they didn't knor'r,'r'','hat to do r'r'ith. Moshe didn't exactly flt into anti-submaritle tt'ork, but then, neither did any of us," Bill Halliday reports. "We were isolated in a sense, but there i,vas a group of us, which meant a sort of little communitv of scientists. We didn't mix much r,vith the natives or even u,'ith the other factors at the Establishment. We rvere quite cut off; there rvere hills behind us of 3,ooo feet high, so we were restricted to the coast. \Ve used to cycle a lot and Moshe and I both had bicycles. I remember him claiming to me that he could go up any hill in top gear on his bic-vcle; he didn't quite make it, but he nearlv didl" David Boston recalis. "\.\4ren he flrst came, it was as an Admiraltv phvsicist, but of course he started talking about judo," remembers Bill Halliday. "He was very clever how he interested all the scientists in judo; he r,vould go around to people's homes and demonstrate on their carpets." "He persuaded the local school to allow him to use a classroom in the evenings," David Boston recalls, "and he put in a tremendous effort, moving ar'vay the school furniture and carn ing heaq, floor mats up from the cellar each dav. He kept the scientists interested, as he could al-ur,ays supply the mechanical explanation of the various throws." Bill Hallida-v tells of this " chap, Ray S., r,vho was the leading lad in the judo club. The project we were all lt orking on at the end of the war was originally conceived bv Ray. He came up with a most original sonar system; these are bits of the transinducer lsee photol and this is a cylindrical slide rule. He didn't accept the conventional idea of lt'hat you could and couldn't do and Moshe had a great regard for him, for his ingenuitv." Moshe spent much of the "Admiralty's time" working on his thesis, the subject of which r,vas the measurement of the voitage

wINTER 1992

THE FELDENKRAIS ]OURNAL NO. 7

produced by a Van der Graf generator, rvhich he had been working on rvith Joliot-Curie in Paris. Moshe gave a course of lectures at the Establishment in 1943-44, rvhich r,vere the first fer,l, chapters of ."vhat became Body and Mature Behauior, published b.v Routledge and Kegan Paul in London in rg49. As Bill Halliday remembers, "he n ould turn up rather late at night rvith the latest piece of manuscript and read it to us. He would come out with some sort of outrageous claim and a tremendous argument would ensue. He lr,as the only chap I've ever met with whom, if vou had an argument, he absolutely convinces you, changes your point of view." Moshe thanked Bill Halliday in the acknor,vledgements of Body and Mature Behauior for his "patient listening." In 1944 at Fairlie, he started a class, although he didn't have a specific name for it at that time. Bill Halliday remembers, "Moshe's principle was that in order to get rid of poor posture, vou had to lie on your back, like a baby, on the floor with your knees in the air, and gradually lift your head so that you could feel each vertebra coming away from the floor. That was one of his early ideas." "He made a great thing of the usual judo break fall," recalls David Boston, "which led to lying with the knees up. He made a point about the two antagonistic muscles operating against one another, so that having been down like that, you tend to find a more erect position in standing. He did many exercises like a baby lying on the tummy and lifting the head up; he included various voga-like exercises like the headstand." After the war, Moshe came to live in London, in Belsize Park, rvhere he had a room next to Franz Wurm, r,vho recounts hollr thev met: "Moshe came into my room as our landlad-v told him that I had some dictionaries, and he asked if he could borrorv them as he said that he was rvriting a book and that his English was not very good. He looked at me and said 'You look as though you are reading something r,r,hich you admire very much but don't understand and you've got a headache on the right side.' I said, 'Right on both counts,' and Moshe said, '\Vhich shall we deal with flrst?' and that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Franz credits Moshe with helping him in the difficult task he had at the time of writing a book that needed to be a masterpiece by saying "you can't write a masterpiece; forget the masterpiece, just start writing." This, along with other examples illustrates to Franz that "NIoshe v,,as doing Erickson before he ever heard of Erickson." Moshe practiced and taught judo at the Budokai in London and used the rooms there for his own teaching. "He rvas looking for a group of people with whom to experiment, as he r,vanted to see what effect lhis teachingl would have on them over time," relates Allison Downs r,vho, from her contact with him then, remained a lifelong friend of Moshe's and took special interest rvhen he rvas rvriting his Iater books. "The two innovators who interested me most, in the sphere of an understanding of human behavior, were Dr. George Morgan and Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. Dr. Morgan had reached some conclusions about psychiatry and an idea that he shared r,r,ith Moshe was that it is unnecessary to retrace the past, that it is the here and nor,v in all its aspects ivhich matters most. I understood them to say that the past is captured in your body and you are released from it when you change 7

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

Ben-Gurion ancl NIoslrc toastirtg orte another. (Photograph cotu'tesy of NIttLka l-eklenkrais Silice, ]llosfte's slsler.)

E

WINTER 1992

the muscular pattern, the way in which you use -Yourself." The political situation after the war in England lvas very important; a lot of radical thinking that had been dormant in the 1930's had come to the surface. "We would often go out to a pub together after Moshe's classes," David Boston remembers, "and the main topic of conversation was politics' George Morgan was a Communist, sympathetic to Marxism, and this influenced his ideas about psychoanalysis' Moshe persuaded Morgan to his theories to the extent that Morgan provided him with many of his patients. Many of the people who came to his classes were patients or ex-patients of Morgan." George Morgan went on to set up what he called the first commune in England, St' Julians. David Boston, Allison Downs, Franz Wurm and friends of theirs formed the "core" group of those attending Moshe's first classes in London of what was later to become known as Awareness Through Movement. Franz Wurm remembers Moshe receiving a telephone call from someone who, having just read Body and Mature Behauior, asked Moshe when he had studied with Jacobi. \,.\hen Moshe replied that he had never heard the name the response was: "Impossible, your book is exactllr along the same lines as his work." Through this contact, Moshe made the first of his several visits to Heinrich Jacobi in Zurich, the stories of which (about both drawing and playing the piano) he recounts in The Elttsiue Obuiotts. This was his flrst connection to the similar work that was developing before the war r,vith Elsa Gindler in Berlin. Moshe also had some contact in London with F.M. Alexander, but his real friendship developed with Charles Neal, a teacher trained by Alexander. "Neal was fascinated by Feldenkrais," Allison Downs recalls, "and rvhen Feldenkrais went to live and work in Israel in rg5r, Neal visited him there." In Israel, Moshe worked r,vith David Ben-Gurion, whom he brought back to health while he was Prime Minister. "To demonstrate his faith in Moshe," Allison continues, "Ben-Gurion said'I will stand on my head' (which was considered dangerous by the medical profession for a man his age and in his condition), 'and ask the Press to be present."' Thus appeared the famous photograph of Ben-Gurion standing on his head on the beach in Tel-Aviv r,t'ith Moshe Feldenkrais on one side and Charles Neal on the other. It rvas published in nelt spapers around the world and became the first international exposure after Moshe had rvorked in relative obscurity for so many years. late 1940's r,r'ere diftrcult times for Moshe, as Franz the Apparently "He was in quite a state, having found r'vhat he had then Wurm recalls. found and it being so simple and obvious to him, he would say'either I am crazy or everyone else is stupid!'Without the support for his ideas that he found in his friends and in such prominent people of that time as J.D. Bernal, Julian Huxley, Francis Huxley, and Solly Zuckerman, he might have just thrown the whole thing arvay." At the same time that Moshe's success in bringing a rather wealthy r,voman back to health and her offer of one million pounds sterling to found an institute for his r,vork in London came about, Israel began to.uvorry about the Eglptians

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAI. NO. 7

wTNTER r9g2

having submarines and Moshe, by then an expert on detection, was asked to take over the scientific research section of the armed forces. One of Moshe's closest Israeli friends in London was also a friend of Ben-Gurion, who was very ill and no longer able to find any help from the medical profession, so Moshe was asked to take him on as well. "That being that, and for sentimental reasons as well, Moshe threw away the chance to have his or,rm institute in London, went to Israel, and stayed there for thirty-five years," recollects Franz Wurm. Moshe said to him at the time, "If I would have become a medical doctor and a famous person, then I probablywould have stayed as stupid as all other doctors." Moshe's decade in the U.K. was formative. During these years of investigation and experimentation he began to develop the unique method he passed on to his students and followers.

In Memory of CHARLES V.W. BROOKS 1912

Charles Brooks was a teacher of Sensory Alvareness lvith his wife Charlotte Selver. He authored the book Senson, Atuareness: The Rediscouery of Experiencing.He rvas also my friend and teacher. We received the news of his death in Melbourne, Australia, as I was preparing to teach an Awareness Through Movement lesson on standing. Oddly, the night before, as I'd been preparing the lesson, I had been filled with memories of Charles and Charlotte and with the realization of how much they had contributed to my learning. I was especially remembering lessons with Charles about standing that night. The next day I could hardly imagine talking through my tears to rzo students, but found my ground, my standing, and delivered my understanding of the lesson. I share with you his passing and hope that by reading the words that follow you can taste some of the flavor that was Charles Brooks, a splendid seeker on the path.

-r991

by Linda Delman

"But it is like that muddy water which often must be pumped from the well before the clear water flows. And the fact that the muddy water may be useful does not mean that one should not continue to seek the clear. \Mhen the clear water begins to come, (and it may come and disappear for long periods, and come again), it is unmistakable. Such clear water, flowing ever],,nhere among a group of people, may penetrate through their skin and stir them awake." Charles Brooks

From The Rediscouery of Experiencing

s

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THE FEI,DENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

A Talk about the

F E tD T

NKRAI S N{E ]TTIt O D Myriam Pfeffer November rgSB

The following lecture was given try Myriam Pfeffer at the Congresss of Somatherapyin Paris. The

requirement was that the lecture should not exceed fifteen minutes. It was preceded by two hours of work that included giving the

participants an experience of Awareness Through Movement

and showing two of Moshe Feldenkrais's Functional Integration lessons. During the presen-

tation of the video tapes, Myriam explained aspects ofthe work. Ilana Nevill, translator

1t)

Before coming to the practical aspect of Moshe Feldenkrais's teaching I would like to make some general and methodological remarks that I feel are indispensable. Learning, education, and self-improvement are not a matter of social conditioning nor of training people like animals. Instead they are

related to a dimension that is of vital biological significance in human development, that is to say, in becoming human. \A,4rat is innate has to be revealed and integrated. This happens in the course of very complex processes of maturation by which the nervous system actualizes itself. All immaturity in relation to age amounts to poor health and inadequate functioning, constituting loss of energy and a threat to the

individual and society. There are two kinds of learning, both of them necessary and complementary. One is academic learning, to which lve limit ourselves all too often. The other, organic learning, is essential if we are to unfold our potential as human beings and to continue the inner growth process constantlv demanded of us throughout our existence. Feldenkrais called that "following one's o-,tn direction." Every one of us is responsible for his or her own life and development, whatever the education n e received. The central idea of "follorving one's own direction" influenced all of Feldenkrais's thinking, all his teaching and practice. Let me explain: Modern man, infantilized and constantly in a hurry, believes that health, a pleasing physique, and happiness are to be found in drugs or training programs such as body-building rather than in learning aimed at self-knolvledge through increasing awareness. Feldenkrais was convinced that the easiest and most accessible r,vay of becoming aware of oneself is through movement. Indeed, one aspect of his teaching is called "Ar,vareness Through Movement." This is neither gymnastics, nor acrobatics, nor stretching, nor any other mindless physical work. Here the movement serves the process of perfecting the functioning of the brain. Movement reveals, guides, and organizes the functioning of the nervous system. It forms a stimulating dialogue reflecting and energizing our strength, skill, intelligence, and capacitt' for transformation. In Alvareness Through Movement motor action is very much instrumental in bringing about mastery, improved adaptability, and developmental progress. Feldenkrais was a man of science through and through. He had a doctorate in physics and worked in the research team under JoliotCurie. A black belt himsell he r,r,as the flrst to promote judo ir-r France.

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His genius allowed him to combine his scientific knowledge from diverse fields, for example from electronics (understanding biofeedback in terms of cybernetics), mechanics, and other areas, and put his method into practice. He also based his rvork on ideas derived from philosophers, psychologists, neuro-ph-vsiologists, anthropologists, etc., including Schrodinger, Darwin, Lorenz, Milton Erickson, J.Z. Young, Magnus. None of them could have imagined how useful their knowledge would be when translated into non-verbal language, as happens during a Functional Integration session. (That term, Functional Integration, refers to the other aspect of Moshe Feldenkrais's teaching, involving a dialogue between the practitioner's hands and the student.) Feldenkrais did not accept anl.thing that might convey questionable notions, any wishy-washy mysticism or certain dubious theories of energv. It was by rvay of Western techniques, those at the very forefront of scientiflc research, and his scientific spirit, that he assimilated and metabolized a profoundly non-Western knowledge. I will give you a few examples. Feldenkrais asked himself what constitutes an efficient movement. You could repl1, it should be easy, harmonious, flowing, but that does not give you a practical criterium or point of reference. In physics, the criterium for efficiency in movement is reversibility of motion, which is linked to the minimal expenditure of energy. In his research into animal and human behavior, Feldenkrais came to the conclusion that this definition also applies to human beings. This means that an efficient movement is rerrersible and can be reproduced any time. That is to say, one can stop it anl, vhere along its trajectory, reverse it, give it a different direction or return the original direction, etc. This quality of movement involves a minimum loss of energy and the possibility of producing the movement at will. Once the quality of movement had been defined in terms of physics, the question arose of how this relates to the structure and functioning of the human being; for example, how well can "posture" be described from a dynamic point of view? Feldenkrais used the term "the potent state" here, referring to an equilibrium of alertness and vigilance, a neutral point from where one is able to move into any direction rvithout prel i m i nary reorganization. From chemistrv and physics he took the notion of ampliflcation. The idea of amplification slrggests that a practitioner may work away from the area lt here symptoms exist or lvhere pain arises. For example, the practitioner works through the feet to affect the organization of the head and neck. The points of contact and the areas the practitioner r,vishes to influence can be completely different and quite distant from one another. Indirect means are much more effective than

directmeans.... Arvareness is only possible due to the great sensitivity of the proprioceptive sensors. Feldenkrais goes into great detail in explaining the precise mathematical correlations involved in the variation of threshold in kinesthetic and tactile perception. In this context, he refers to the \\teber-Fechner larv. Applied to the somatic senses, this law essentially states that the less effort made, the greater the sensitivify. You probably

lt

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t2

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all know about the connection between tension and attention: when there is less tension, there is more attention. Of course, Feldenkrais put every.thing he discovered into practice. The sessions are devised in such a way that the student can develop the entire infrastructure required for learning: that is to say, alertness, acute listening, discernment, etc. Since our brain is programmed for Iearning, the objective of any Feldenkrais session is, in fact, to eliminate anlthing that interferes with actualizing and integrating our latent or innate abilities. In other words, the aim is to help us make greater use of our potential. Let's look at another aspect. The people who come to you as somatopsycho-therapists or to us, as practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method (for we are neither somato-, nor psycho-, nor therapists but teachers, or rather not even that, since we simply allow learning to take place: "learning not teaching"), those people are probably dissatisfied rvith their condition or present performance. They want to improve their prospects: in other r,vords, the-v are looking for change; they don't want to suffer any longer, whether from backache or depression; they want to get slimmer or improve their posture, etc. A bewildering choice of methods promising change is available, and there exist even more theories of transformation. Now lve know from our own experience that "plus qa change, plus c'est Ia mdme chose" (the more things change, the more they remain the same). That shouldn't really surprise us since we feel what we want with only part of ourselves, namely our conscious volition, rvhile we act with our whole being. But our r,vhole being eludes us constantly, disappearing further and further into the abyss of the unknown. St. Paul said " I do not the good that I lt ant to do, but I do the evil that I do not want to do." In other words, true will, which is potent and effective, is unconscious, subconscious, and autonomous. So the question becomes: how do we communcate with these other parts of ourselves? Moshe Feldenkrais chose non-verbal sensory communication with the unconscious-through touch-as a way of learning: it is more direct and therefore more effective. Sensory stimuli are closer than all our intellectual understanding to our unconscious functions. These stimuli are therefore better suited to allow functional modifications to occur. \\4ren we want others-or ourselves-to change something, we suppose that the person concerned is capable of that. \.\4rat do r,lre think, for example, when we tell a child to "stand up straight"? That he cannot or does not want to comply? If he knew how, the child would stand up straight, but the necessary internal organization eludes him. In order to change his posture the r,vords "stand up straight" need to be linked to a distinct kinesthetic sensation, which he cannot possibly experience with his present bodily organization. This applies to any and all change. The Feldenkrais Method gives the person who wants to change the opportunity to learn how to do that: to learn, for instance, how to stand up straight in order to be able to re-create the appropriate internal organization. It is, above all, a matter of experiencing learning processes which we can transfer to all other domains of our lives, from mathematics or studying a foreign language to jogging.

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THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

Let's return to the notion of change. t.Vhat has to remain permanent? And what needs to change? Can r,r,e reorganize the assembly, the interconnections, the entire "r,viring" of the nervous system? In the Feldenkrais Method, we don't deal r,r,ith the question of change as such, nor r,vith the painful difficulties associared r,vith it. Instead, by way of effortless movements in a spirit of playful exploration, we allow people to discover alternative routes for the same action. Let's take the example of breathing: in sessions devoted to that subject, we don't teach the students how to breathe, but allow them to rediscover the autonomy of their own respiratory function. We explore various alternatives: the breathing of Yogis, babies, of somebodywho is depressed or cheerful, paradoxical variants of normal patterns, etc. . . . As a result of this process of exploration, the students' breathing will begin to adapt spontaneously to the need of the moment and, simultaneously,

habitual patterns will be neutralized. In order to respond in different ways to the same stimuli, i.e., to learn, we first need to inhibit our old response. Inhibition, which is as important for learning as stimulation-if not more so-is mastered in Feldenkrais sessions by working through the imagination, differentiation, and other means. Let me finish b-v stressing that lvhat the student learns does not necessarily change tulnt he or she does, but rather howhe or she does it. \\4ren students learn to do the same thing differently, this opens up the way to move beyond previously habitual or compuisive behavior. The majority of our problems derive from rigidity arising out of a lack of choice. The person who experiences what Functional Integration really means will find that the problem he or she previously complained of disappears with the development of the newfound abilitv to do something or not, or to do it in a completely different way. In short, this method hopes to contribute torvard apprenticeship to wisdom.*

*

Editor's note: Ilana Neuill, who translated thts talk into English, did a wonderful job of preseruing the essence of Myriam's style and presentatton. Howeuer, due to the way each language makes unique connections possible between words, the process of translation leads ineuitably to some loss of nuance and richness. One releuant example tn this talk is that in the concluding sentence, Myriam made a play on words with the word "apprentissage," which translates tnto apprenticeship in English. In French, this also could be heard as "apprenti-sage," meaning the learning of wisdom or a sage who learns continually, LWG

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7

REALIZING INTENTIONS A lecture by Mark Reese The following is an edited uersion ofa lecture-discussion by

Mark

Reese

at the Midwest

FPTP tn Lake Orion, Michigan, on July 3, tggo (beginning

year).

of

" identifies questions or comments from trainees-these often are paraphrased or partly imagined

second

because

" Q.

ofpoor sound quality

or because the question wa.s asked, off

-mike. Mark's words

are edited to render hk extemporaneous spoken style more re adable. Original tr arc cr ib ing from tape and editing was done by Beclcy Malm; Mark has made some minor changes and add.itions for clarification.

The idea of "function" is essential to understanding Functional lntegration' Yet perhaps because function is so basic. so "obvious", its meaning is often "elusive" or difficult to grasp. ln order to understand the Feldenkrais concept of function, we can begin by looking no further than common experience. ln our work we deal with what appears in everyday life. And despite certain difficulties in communicating nonverbal aspects of our work, our use of language is based upon normal speech, not technical nomenclatures or esoteric usages. ln common language we speak of the ability to function as ensuring our ability to live. ln this general sense, function refers to fulfilling the basic requirements of our biological, social and personal existence. Furthermore, it is apparent that our functioning is organized into meaningful actions and activities. We judge our actions according to how well they fulfill our purposes and plans. Our judgments are personal, and they refer simultaneously to the outward result and

inward experience of our actions. Our ways of acting have a history that begins with early biologically-based activities and potentialities that are channeled, differentiated, and developed through learning processes. These learning processes reflect high-level coordinations of self and environment, physical, biological and social domains. This. in general terms. is a Feldenkrais view of function. ln this discussion and in the following lecture, I leave out the distinctive means or techniques we utilize to improve function. Of course, much of how we distinguish the Feldenkrais Method lies in describing and elaborating these means, i.e., the processes of Functional lntegration and Awareness Through Movement. The following lecture examines function only in its most general relation to our work.

M.R. Here's a definition of function: function is hou,'\ve turn our intentions into actions. It has to do r,rrith the relation betn'een intention and action. We have an intention to get up, and we get up. Horv r'rte get up, how our action relates to our intention, is the functional domain, and the domain of functional integration. Q. lVhose definition are we using here? na.n. Feldenkrais's.

e. Is sensing a function? m.n. Sensing is not

a

function.

Q. But vou have to move in order to sense.

l4

M.R. I would call sensing an aspect of action. We could enumerate many aspects of action. Feldenkrais himself came up with a number of different schemes. In the bookAwareness Through Mouemenl he says that the main components of action are sensing, feeling, thinking and

wTNTER 1992

moving. Any action has all four aspects, and what we normally talk about as movement represents one component of action. in the beginning of the Amherst training he r,vent at it a little differently. There he said that any action has three components: space, time and the way you manipulate the body to do something. There are many ways of breaking up the lvhole -,r,e call action into parts, perspectives or categories. You can enunlerate the parts of the body especially pertinent to an action: elbows, hands, nose, eyes, toes. Or physiological systems in the body: circulation, digestion, nervous system. From a physiological point of vielv, the nervous system is just one part of an action. Function includes all these things, but, essentially, it means the relationship between intention and action. It's a very radical idea. From the standpoint of western medicine, for example, this represents a radical philosophical shift. Because r,r,hen you talk about function as the relationship betrveen intention and action, it situates the work in the subject, in the learner, in the actor. You see, in a Feldenkrais professional training program we talk about you and me. About horv zue act; we intend. In medically-oriented professions, the discourse is based upon talking about tlrcm, and. about the lr that's r,vorking or not working properly. From the standpoint of the actor, the question is whether an action is adequate to the intention, not whether it fulfills statistical norms for biomechanics, strength, exertion, symmetry or alignment of the spine, or measurements based upon any kind of objective test. Those things come into it, but they represent details that improve r,vithout our u,orking on them directlv. The main thing is how satisfied you, yourself, are lr,ith your own action. So when people come to us for functional integration, our interest is in helping them turn their intentions into actions in a rvay that they are more satisfled with themselves. \\4ren you do that for someone, he or she feels on top of the world, and you do too. As long as you're working with a person to improve how he or she turns his or her intentions into actions, you're not really trying to change the person. It's not like there's something \,\rrong with the person. It's not that he or she has a problem, and you're there to take the problem away from him or her. You're not trying to change him or her at all. People don't really want to change. We don't r,vant to be different than lve are. We may think rve do; but if someone could wave a magic wand to take auray our individuality and turn us into an idealized notion of what r,ve thought r,r,e rvanted to change into, probably most of us would decide not to take the genie's offer. Or if we did, lve'd hope for another wish that could rerrerse it. \\4-rat people want is just to feel themselves and not feel their difficulties. And rvhere many people feel their difficulties is not in lvho they are, or in what their intentions are. People's difficulties are expressed in the functional domain rvhere intentions are turned into actions. Most of us feei there is some area in our lives we'd like to work a little better, so that r,r,e don't feel resistances, or pains, or discomforts or whatever it is. We ,,r,ould like to be in that state we feel r,vhen we're at our best-r,',.hen there's a magical quality, so that each time we have an idea to do something, r,r,e already embodSr the idea and carry through our intention directly into action. We don't feel we have to get ready to do something. \Ve don't feel lve have to r,vork on ourselves. The readiness is just tl-rere. And that's a verv good feeling. That's the idea of function.

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We've all observed it in ourselves. For example, in doing Awareness Through Movement you feel a moment r,r.here your intention can't be directly translated into action without some kind of difficulry. \{4een working with someone else, it's a bit harder. In order to do that same operation with another person that we do internally for ourselves, we have to relate to the other person's intention and rvhat is getting in the way of it. That takes a great deal more sensitivity, a higher development of awareness than it takes to work on ourselves, because lve feel ourselves directly. It's easy at any time to regress, to forget ourselves in our work and become mechanical. You know, you can take a person's knee and think, "The knee is a little stiff. 'v\hat can I do to make the knee looser?" Then vou work on the knee, and do some sequence of movements that looks like Awareness Through Movement or Functional Integration. You flex the knee and you flex the spine. The work may be gentle, not overly strenuous. It has nice kinds of patterns to it, a nice body logic. And you think it's Functional Integration. But it's not yet functional. It doesn't matter if the knee gets looser. There are dozens of techniques to loosen a stiff knee. Essential to what makes the lesson functional is attuning yourself to the other person so that you relate to r,vhat his or her intention is, in terms of how he or she uses that knee and what he or she uses that kneepr. You don't have to articulate it explicitly in words. And the person you work with doesn't necessarily have to articulate it, nor even be consciously aware of it. Most intentions are not expressed consciously, nor even known. For example, I just scratched my head. I didn't consciously think, "Oh, I have an itch at the back of my head; let's see, I r,r'ill use my index finger to scratch it." That happens on Sesame Street, but it doesn't in real life. You just do it, but yet one can see that it has the look of an intentional action. If my arm were flying all over the place seeminglv randomly, then probably it would be a movement without intention. But even in people with cerebral palsy who have athetoid movements you can perceive repetition, and order, and purpose. \.&4ren vou see recursion, redundancy and pattern, there is usually intention. Often vou recognize

intention by a repetition that expresses a relationship rvith the environment. I learned a trick in improvising music Years ago: if you make a mistake once, it's a mistake; but if you make it three times, it's a motif. It often takes a great sensitivity to see where the intention is because, on the surface, movement can look chaotic or meaningless. The better you are at reading intention from movement, the better you can attune yourself to help the other person r,vith his or her intention. If you look at the person from a mechanical point of view as a pillar of blocks, or as a physical alignment, or as a displal, of tense and relaxed muscles, or as over-stretched this or that-any mechanical description of the person-it completely blocks -vour ability to see the intention expressed. Because then you have stripped the person of his or her soul, and you deal with a machine. Then, if you like, you can correct the machine. You can rely on a vague faith that there must be a mechanical connection between mind and body. You can believe that somehow, if you correct the mechanical restrictions, the soul will be abie to move the body according to what it wants to do. Sometimes that model appears to work. But that model totally takes you away

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from where the real juice is, arvay from the really interesting part of what it is to be a human being. A human being is an intentional animal r,vho has purposes and plans, and it's our relation to those plans and purposes and dreams that human life is all about. That's what makes this work very meaningful. That's why there's a need for this work, and n h), people are not satisfied lvith the health care system as it now stands. \\hen people get their bodies worked on, they feel something is missing, they feel that they are not being related to. And when they go to another therapist for talking about mental issues-there, too, something may be missing. Because it's in the relation between intention and action-in that very immediate feeling of howwe embody ourselves right now in doing something, how we get up, and move our arms, and speak, and so on-that we want to feel a change. \.{rhen we feel it there, in our action, then all the rest is taken care of, because there is a better integration of self. If we carry our intentions into actions without trouble, we're healthy. So the task is learning to attune ourselves to our own process of translating our intentions into actions. Then we gradually learn to carry through that same process rvith another person. It's not really so difficult, because I think we learn to do it automatically from the process of training. Q. Actions out of intentions are not alrvavs healthy.

u.n. Do you mean there are unhealthy intentions? Give us an example. Let's get very concrete. Q. I have clients who wrap themselves around telephone poles. They have an intention of wrapping themselves around a telephone pole and they do it. ru.n. That's a major philosophical question, and a moral question. I think cooperation is a basic assumption in our rvork. Usually, cooperation begins with mutual respect: I respect vour intention, even if it means that vour intention is to u/rap yourself around a telephone pole. I can feel that that's a pity, that it rvould be great if you could live and be happy and not feel that way, since that intention reflects a very great deal of dissatisfaction with yourself. But I think it's still your right to do that. Not everybody thinks that. There are laws against suicide, religious and governmental laws. That's an extreme example. You know, I beiieve Feldenkrais was fundamentally an anarchist. Anarchists believe more deeply in cooperation than the adherents of any other political philosophy. Other political philosophies usually inrrolve mutually agreed-upon contracts: laws, constitutions, police, and every.thing else that goes along with that. People rely on those contracts in order to mediate and limit social behavior. The anarchist position is that all that's real, when you come dor,rm to it, is you and me and r,r,hether we can get along. The lar,r, of cooperation is the only law. Feldenkrais said the only political system he ever really admired was r,r,hat he experienced when he first came to Israel. He said that when you r'rralked down the street and saw somebody building a wall, if you didn't have to be any,n,hsle for the next hour you would just join in and

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help. Everybodywas helping each other, and nobody HAD to do anything. There was very little real government at that time. And as far as whether people would steal, or kill, or hurt anyone, it seems the main thing you could appeal to was whatever moral sense people had. If you had a disagreement with someone, you could appeal to your own moral authority and the moral authority of the other person. That's r,r,hat anarchy is. That's too hard a pill for most people to srvallor,v, really. It's too hard for me. I don't know, personally, whether I've got enough conscience or guts to live in a world where I'm that responsible and errerybody is that responsible all the time. I would just like to expect that my own behavior is going to be roughly acceptable, and let the police and the welfare department take care of the rest. I think that's."vhere most people are. That's how things har.e gotten \vorse and u,orse, until vou have a social world r,vith so little sense of responsibilitv, lvhere \ve've gotten so far from our nomadic roots, rvhen something akin to anarchy was the basic rule. But in the anarchistic kind of thinking vou don't have absolute ideas about what's correct action and what's incorrect, or what it is to be a good person or a bad person. There may be people out there who have evil intentions. Their aim is to destroy. There are Shivas out there. You can say, what kind of a terrible, immoral work is this? We are supporting people's evil intentions and helping them translate their intentions into action? Is this a morally defensible position? How can you support someone with an evil intention? Well, vou don't have to. If someone comes to vou and you think this is a bad guy, you can say, "I'm sorry, maybe someone else should work with you." You don't have to r,vork u,ith an-vbody if vou don't respect r,vhere thelr are, or who they are. Or if 1,611 feel the_v're just too disturbed and they need some other kind of work or setting, and vou can't el,en begin. In this lvork we put aside, suspend, put in brackets* all kinds of "objective" ideas: objective ideas about correct movement, correct posture; or about pathology and healing; or about rvhat's morally correct or morally incorrect; or about absolute reality, what's real and not real, and what's hallucination. We put brackets around all the objectivist ideas, and we suspend our judgment about them. We deal with the personal relation betlveen intention and action, where the ultimate authority is your or,vn moral authority, your own sensory authority, your own sensory feedback in terms of what you want. This is how we help or support another person's learning. I believe that the basis of health is inherent in our biology, in our sensory feedback, our brain, our bodily existence. \\hen you support or facilitate bringing a person's intention into action, the organism moves in the direction of * The term "bracket" is taken from phenomenological philosophl'. It is used here to describe the process of setting aside certain ideas that are naively assumed to be "real" independent ofour experience. The phenomenological perspective sets aside the question of an independent reality, and emphasizes that lr,hat rve call " realiw" is kror,r.r-r only through our experience. In language rve can speak of, and therefore create in language, an independent reality, but rve cannot experience it directly outside language's domain. The Feldenkrais Method is essentially phenomenological. We don't r,riork on those things that are conventionally and naivelyvierved as "real," such as "the bodv" or "disease" or the "causes" of a person's difficulties; r,^".e rvork u,ith the experier-rtial realit--v of our actionperception, and the sensory-motor learning process that gir.es rise to, or constructs, what

l8

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health. And not just health in a narrorv physical sense, but in a moral sense and every other sense. Health is, ultimately, a social as well as a personal idea, because none of us r,r,ould be walking or speaking if we didn't grow up in a social communitv. Every part of ourselves-our movement, how we move our arms and legs and spine, our eyes, everything-all are social as well as personal things. So I believe that if lve work in a Feldenkrais way, we will do something for the rt orld at large that will make the world more anarchistic--in the positive sense of anarchy, not in the sense of competing ideologies. Anarchv is where there isn't an objective ideology. Anarchy is when people have to work things out, one on one, and two on one, and seven on two.

Q. So what the intention comes out of creates unhealthy or healthy action...if the intention comes out of acceptance, without competition...

u.n.

As you improve your ability to realize your intentions, your most fundamental intentions will surface. In other words, your intentions r,vill become more related to the main thing that you're about, your uniqueness as an individual and what you're here to do. You need to feel in your expectation that when you get up, when you speak or perform any movement, it's going to happen the way you think it should. You need that positive feeling about yourself in your actions. That's rvhere your self-esteem resides. It's not like you have an attitude and Vou -"vork on your attitude towards yourself. We believe that the attitude changes through working on the relation between your intention and vour action. As that impror.es, 1'our intentions will become more reflective of rvhat you realh. r.,,ant.

O. \\4ry don't vou -"r,ork."r,ith that bad gu-v; don't Vou think it rvould be within )rour power to bring out the good in him? Then vou change the rvorld.

M.R. I was being rhetoricai, because she asked the question about unhealthy actions or intentions, such as somebody who wants to wrap himself around a pole, or wants to kill himself, or someone else. Those are extreme cases.

Q. Brit if you workwith them, you change them. For in everyone there's something good, isn't there. You have to bring out the good in him.... M.R. I think that's a nice thing to say, but I don't know what would happen if we brought Hitler here and got his head and neck really free and....

Q. You're saying support the function even if it's unhealthy and good -"till come out of it, and she's saying don't support the negative function but change the person. M.R. I'm saying that if you're able to feel what's going on in yourself, in the relationship betlveen your own intention and action, and you can appreciate this in someone else, then you have the basis for cooper-

t9

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THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

ation. You're taking awav the brackets from the objective ideas, and getting into the realm of ideologv, -ur,hen -vou sav everybody has something good in them to bring out. It's the same problem'"vhen we say the person is moving in a r,r,ay that's bad for his or her spine because he or she is putting too much rveight on one leg. I har.e had therapists tell me: "\\trat are you doing? You're reinforcing a bad habit, because if you help them put more rveight on their standing Ieg 1,ou're ruining them. It's your obligation to have them learn to put the w'eight on the other leg." You see, the same style of question comes up in many rvays. Just see if you can follon' out this r,t-av of thinking, and stay rvith what it means to appiy these ideas. You rnight have to think about it for a u.hile. Putting objectivity in brackets requires a major philosophicai shift. But unless we make that shift \,\.e cannot fullv relate to a person and his or her intent. That's r,rrhat rve need to learn to do here. That's our r,r,ork ahead. Q. We're discussing this as if intention were a single, solitary, clear thing. My experience of mv o."vn intention is that it's very seldom a single, soiitarrr, clear thing-that they'rs all kind of interconnected. And she w.as talking about the intention of a person r,vrapping himself around a pole. That might be a single, solitary, clear intention but it doesn't strike me like it lvould be. It strikes me like it rvould be part of a bigger

intention....

M.R. Yes, that opens Llp many good questions. You don't harre to take people at face l,alue. People may sav that such and such is their intention, and if vou're perceptirre you won't believe them because they're lying to you, thor-rgh they ma-v not knorv it. We must not be too gullible They may be making another statement, l'r'hich is not about wrapping themselves around a pole, and vou can help thenl make that other statement. Then, if you do, they reall-v don't need to $rrap themselves around a pole. That may have been only a rather inelegant rvaY of saying "I dor-r't nrant to be b.v m-vself tonight," or "I rvant to be alone

tonight."

a. I think that

,^

many peopie might not knorv rvhat their intention is.

M.R. They don't, and that's one of the reasons r,r,hY r,r'e deal, much of the time, rvith such simple actions. Because if lve deal rvith a person's entire life and what he or she really rvants to be doing, it can get ven' complicated. Our technique often lies in using simple functions to u'ork on the richer and deeper ones. We say, "Let's just start 11ri1h hs11r YsLl roll or-rto --vour right side and come back again." This movement is a microcosm of your life. As you ro11 onto your side and return to vour back, all those difficulties r,r,,hich normallv come between vour intentions and their realization are usually expressed-even in this very simple action. This function provides a golden opportunitv to clariirvhat our intention is. As rve learn to resolve our difficulties, and to realize our intentions simply and elegantly, r,r,ith a deep sense ol intlet satisfaction, tve've learned much more than hour to tllrn o\-er on to ollr side. We've learned the process of horv to turn an\- intention into actiot-t successfullv, and that's the essence of functioning n.ell.

WTNTER r9g2

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 7

Aesthetic Consciousness in

Functional Integration Martin

H.

Weiner, Ph.D

Introduction The vielt, I am presenting grew out of my own frustration r,vhen, as a new practitioner, I realized that I had not learned from Ntloshe a bod-v of knor,vledge consisting of diagnostic tools or a handbook of techniques to be applied in various situations. I simply did not knorv r,r,hat to look for when someone came to me and when I did see something, I did not know what to do with nrhat I sarv. I was forced to reconsider what I had Iearned from Moshe and flnally came to understand that r,vhat I lrad learned was a LUay of seeing, not a content to be seen, and a way of interactingwith sorneone, not a collection of manipulations. We r,vill be exploring the idea that FI can be r.ierved as an art form and that b-v developing our aesthetic sensibilities \ve rnav improve our skills as practitioners. Our der.elopment of an aesthetic model r,r,iIl be facilitated by having an understanding of soine of the essential aspects of scientific models-a type of model rvith rvhich \ve are generallv more familiar. It is not mv intention to pit the notion of FI as an art against its practice as a science, for in truth I think that both vier,r,points are necessary for inspired rvork. I am, however, more interested here in exploring the aesthetics of our rvork and will be discussing some of the features of scientific models briefly as background.

Scientific Models Generally, the purpose of a scientiflc modei is to provide a structure for interpreting our experiences in comprehensible, lan -iike patterns. Models do this bv fitting particular or individual experiences into recognizable groups that we can identify and name. Fundamental to this process of collecting individual experiences into categories and principles is that lve destroy, as it r,vere, the uniqueness of ,,t hat \ve are experiencing b-v flnding in it similarities rvith other events. \Vhen I relate to this object in front of me as a tree, I have categorized it as a member of a group. I am no longer free to be in relation to this particttlar lhing, at this particLLlar time, and am less open to interacting lvith it in undefined and novel u,ays. The result is that I do not experience rvhat ls in all of its indir.idualit], and " suchness", to borror,v from the Buddhists. I experience it through the filters of my models, language, and history of these things rve call "trees". Having models of this kind rvhich grollp and interrelate our experiences ir-r causal patterns is clearlv indispensable for communicating and functioning intelligently in the world. Moshe frequently played r,vith this theme, pointing out that a child without language is in some

artists

but let curtain

they

are

It is better to fiom lhemory for work will be sensation, and your

over the amateur."

Paul Gaugin, 1

848-1903)

21

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO, 7

WTNTER r992

sense unintelligent because he has no way of relating to the r,vorld in an organized manner. On the other hand, he is also less limited in some

ways than someone with language since, as soon as one learns the r,vav of experiencing the world that his language dictates, he is limited in his ability to see things freshly and to experience outside of the confines of his cultural and linguistic world-view. Let's take this one step further. Scientiflc models often do not remain just helpful and instructive ways of organizing our experience. Thev seduce us into accepting them as reality itself. They move from being constructs and representations of the world and live for us instead as the way the world is. This tendency to objectify our models and take them to be the reality that we live in is a natural process but one r,vhich can have adverse consequences, particularly in the healing arts, where we can end up relating more to a problem, description, or diagnosis

than to the client.l In the healing arts, in particular, models about horv the r,r'orld t'r'orks seem necessary in order for us to knor,v hor,v to proceed. Training usually consists of teaching a model or system that tells the student both whatto see (the diagnostic process) and tuhatlo do about it (the treatment). Even in many new and sophisticated approaches to healing this mode of thinking prevails. The models may be different, the theories about how the world works may vary, but present in the background is the same commitment to fitting tinis particttlarperson into an historically defined and recognizable category and then proceeding to treat someone in that category. This is so porverful a propensity of consciousness that it is hard to imagine that we can get along without causal laws and diagnostic categories. In what follows I r,vill be suggesting another approach that I believe allows for new insights and possibilities for FI. The Aesthetic Sense I want to ground this discussion of the importance of our aesthetic capacity in Functional Integration within the method and teachings of Moshe. In his keynote address at thelOth Annual Feldenkrais Guild meeting in Seattle, Dr. Karl Pribram recalled an incident when he, Margaret Mead, and Moshe were together and Margaret asked Moshe "How do you do it?" Pribram recollected Moshe's response as follorvs:

"'lVhen I see a person, I knor,v how they should be, hort'theY should look. I see the perfect person. \,\4ren I see you I knorv ho'"v you are and holv you ought to be all rolled in one. But hon'vou ought to be is right there...and then I simply go to work r,vith mv techniques and try this and try that. It isn't very r,vell structured. lt doesn't really matter whether I start u,'ith the little toe or an ear or a neck...Until I get that person to look like the person I think they ought to be and I know exactly how they ought to look.'And that's the essence of rvhat he (Moshe) felt he was doing." r. Some of these difflculties with modcls shon, ttlr even in hor'v rvc ret'er to the people we',vork -"vith. Clearly a "client" is different from a "student" is dift'erent from a "patient" Hor'v rve vierv the person sitting in front of us, and thus the model u'ithin r'vl-rich n'e hold them, dictates a lot of hor,v n e interact rr.ith them.

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THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAI, NO. 7

This captures a crucial insight into Functional Integration. Moshe was saying that his work was based on his ability to "see" possibilities.z It is important to note that despite the apparent normative connotation of the term "ought" in Pribram's rendition, I do not think that Moshe had in mind here an external standard that he was imposing on a person from outside. It was not as if he had a model of what the abstract, ideal person looked like in terms of which a client was to be assessed and made to exemplify. Instead, I think he was saying that when he looked at a person, he had an idea of how this particularperson ought to look. It is fascinating to consider the idea that when we look at someone we can "see" both how they are and how they can be. That is, we can "see" one's potential as something that is already present but not manifested. Moshe did not say that he could see what was wrong with a person and flx it, which r,vould be much more in keeping with a scientiflc model. Instead, he simply "saw" a person as they were and as they could be and brought how they could be into being. This suggests that a practitioner is a "visionary"-seeing the potential contained in the particular and holding that vision so powerfully that it is brought into being. There is a profound effect on a client, or for that matter anyone, lvhen lve focus on bringing forth their potential abilities rather than making their pathology go away. I would say that the "seeing" that Moshe engaged in nas a highl-v developed aesthetic capacity that is closer to the consciousness of an artist looking at a painting or a block of marble as he brings the form it contains into manifestation. We will explore the dynamics of the aesthetic consciousness and horv it applies to Functional Integration.

Non-Iudgmentalness One of the most important aspects of the aesthetic attitude is that it is non-judgmental or non-diagnostic. To "see" in the sense we are talking about, oddl1, enough, requires that we suspend our tendency to see what is apparent and categorize it within a system. To behold someone's potential involves izof seeing r,rrhat is obvious in a way that restricts us or the client. Viewing them from a scientific perspective can often miss the point of .uvho they are. It is not easv to look at someone r,vith an arm that clearly meets all the criteria of a paralvzed arm and nonetheless suspend such judgment and see it as just this person's arm. Moshe himself said that one of the most difficult habits for him to break was that of seeing a client as having a recognized diagnosable problem which he would then try to treat. Suspending this tendency has fruitful results. First, the practitioner is freed from the limitations of his or her own judgments about what can be done for someone rvith a torticollis or cerebral palsy or what have Vou. It is refreshing, empowering, and even courageous not to work within the limits of r,vhat is deemed possible bv our belief system z. I am using quotes around the word see because, though it has similar connotations to the standard usage, I don't think rve lr,ould consider that one's potential is something visible. I think Nloshe's "seeing" is much closer to Don Juan Matus' sense of this term as described in the Casteneda.lr.orks in u,hich he relates "seeing" to "stopping the rvorld"n vig11r 1rgry 5imilar to our discussion here about not getting seduced by our models.

23

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and models, but to be the visionary-seeing what can be and not being stopped by appearance. I recall a young woman who came to me with a drop foot. A test at a major hospital had concluded that the nerves r'vere dead and there was no chance she lvould ever flex the foot. As I r,vorked, I felt the foot responding and told her that the nerves $Iere not dead' She thought it was absurd that I would claim to feel something that an extremely sophisticated machine had indicated wasn't working. In anY case, her foot began to move again. It turned out that she iearned subsequently that the test results had been misread. The point is that if I had seen the apparent and listened to her, I would have been unable to r'r'ork to bring forward the possibility of her foot moving' I r'vould have limited her within the confines of my belief system. Secondly, by virtue of the practitioner not labelling problems, the client also becomes free to explore their creative potentiai rvithout the burden of having to get rid of some problem that the-v have. I frequently see clients r,vho have come from a doctor or other health professional and have been told something is -uvronS-their posture is poor, they have a neuropathy, or anv one of a thousand problems/ labels people are given when they seek help. It is important to remember that clients also tend to get seduced bv models and rather than Iiving in the plastic realm of their sensations, thet' seek a causal explanation of their pain or inability and become anchored u'ithin the rigid structure of a belief sYstem. Moshe told the San Francisco training about a rvonderful example of this issue. Apparently, earlv in his career, someone came to him rvho had been diagnosed as having Parkinson's disease. \Ioshe persor-rally did not think that the person had Parkinson's and kept tn'ing to convince him that he didn't. Part of his evidence r'rras that after a lesson the man could always take a few steps normallY before reverting to the characteristic shuftle. It was useless. The man lvould never get beyond those few steps before he would remember his Parkinson's. Finally Moshe tried a different ploy and told him that he had read some studies that indicated that there were some rare cases of people u''ith Parkinson's who could walk normally. Moshe said he felt that his client r'r'as one of them. The client began to progress quicklv, content in his belief that he had the disease. The history of science is rife u'ith examples of how our commitment to our beliefs can be more po\verful than evidence and experience to the contrary' Far better to avoid them from

I

the outset. Uniqueness I would say that the primary aspect of our capacitv to behoid the r'vorld aesthetically and to appreciate someone or something as beautiful, is

our ability to move beyond categories and experience the particular unmediated by our categories and concepts. This mav seem similar to what we discussed above as being non-judgmental. Horvever, whereas non-judgmentalness is simply not doing something that we have a tendency to do, being open to someone's uniquess is a more active appreciation of them and the subtle nuances of r'vho they are. It involves approaching a client as a unique being who has put their world togeth-

24

I

wTNTER 1992

er physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually in a novel rvay and seeing how this person,,vorks, how effective they are in accom-

plishing their intentions, and how they interface and impact the world. I believe Moshe was saying something along these lines when he said that rvhen he works r,vith a person all of his experience and knowledge are there in the background, but he approaches the client as if he had to rediscover everwhing all over again r,r,ith them. This is one of the most important attitudes we can bring to an FI session. Many years ago a woman came to me rvith a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis from her doctor. She r,r.as large boned, robust, and earthy looking, but she walked as if she had no strength in her legs and was moving them by leaning back and leveraging them fonvard from her lrraist. As we worked during our first session, I tried to enter her r,r.orld, and see her as she was without being contaminated in my explorations by her diagnosis. I felt that although she r,vas not very present in her Iegs, I did not feel n eakness and lack of control or spasticity. As I touched and explored her world I learned that she had had a miscarriage and shortly thereafter conceived again and gave birth to a healthy and normal child. It was during her pregnancy with this child that her symptoms of MS appeared. She simpl-v felt that belor,r, her chest "r,rras not her". She lived on a farm and had a wonderful relation to the earth. I thought that after her miscarriage she felt unrvorthv or incapable of carrying a child to term and u,hen she got pregnant for the second time, she gave the matter up to mother nature and stepped out of the picture belorv the diaphragm. I made this suggestion to her and n e talked about her love for her children and horv good and caring she u,as as a mother. I needed her to appreciate who she reallv rvas and that she could step back fully into the picture of her life and trust herself again. She got up and walked just fine. Both of us had been able to move beyond the hold of the diagnosis. Moving into her r,r,orld, r,ve explored how she had organized it to serve her and were able to creatively re-organize it to serve her better. Beyond the Subject-Object Distinction An important aspect of aesthetic consciousness is that it is a way of perceiving the world rvhich moves us beyond the distinction of subject and object. We disappear as a subject beholding an object and instead allow the object to become the center and experience its own subjectivity. We are the occasion for the rvork of art to "light up" and become the content on the stage ofconsciousness uncluttered by our preconceptions. During an advanced training in San Francisco in rg8o, Moshe said that when he worked r,vith someone he "allor,ved the person to attune him to them".3 I rvould say that this "attunement" happens when we shift from a scientific mode to an aesthetic one and experience the client as we would an artistic creation. Our abiliW to attune to another is r,rrhat allows us to provide for them "what they need rather than rvhat rve already know hor,v to do", as Moshe was fond of saying. Attuning to another requires compassion, love, and the strength to 3. His actual statement, nrhich I r,,"ryote don n at the time, ups; "I attune m1'self to the person. No, that's not right. I allonr them to attune me to theni." The correction he made is extremelv instrllctive but bevond our scope here.

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THF- FELDET-KRAIS IOUR.\AL NO. 7

move beyond the structure of our own experience as being the model for the world. It puts us directly in touch with another person and our two nervous systems become one. I think this aspect of the aesthetic consciousness is particularlv important in hor,v we touch and physicallY move someone during an FI. Despite how it may look from the outside, \ve are not touching to manipulate an object in our world. That would be more appropriate \\dthin a scientiflc mode of working. Our purpose is to r,vake the client up to hirn/herself and to do this we touch intohisllner rvorld and move the person from inside their experience. Invariably when I have presented the aesthetic vietr,'in rt'orkshops to practitioners and students-in-training, some are concerned that if thev do not bring some system or model to their'"t ork, theY simpiv rt'ili not know r,vhat to do and hor,v to proceed. How does one act in the face of the unique and unfamiliar? It seems I am asking them to take a long trip r,r,ithout ar-r1, baggage- a very scary proposition. Let me sav a few things in response that might help. First, it is important to realize that this concent for knort ing r'r'hat to do before we start is itself generated by our commitment to the ven attitude that I anl saldng we can suspend or at least not be dominated b-v- that being a practitioner means having a sophisticated phvsicalistic model out of which we diagnose and treat. In regard to the issue at hand, it may simply be necessary to take a quantum leap and appreciate that the aesthetic attitude is a creative form of consciousness that will generate i,vhat is appropriate for the situation.

Secondlv, as FI practitioners, the problems we rvork with are usuallv the result of gaps in the client's ar,vareness and our task, therefore, is to increase a\vareness. This shifts the focus from how to recognize and treat a particular diagnostic categoSr to holr'rve can best educate and expand someone's a\vareness. The \.ery fact of interacting lvith clients l,r,ithin an aesthetic consciousness of discovery and exploration begins to open them to themselves. Our fundamental intent to help a person become aware is facilitated by the practitioner's developing his or her own awareness along with the client. It is as if we engage them in selfdiscovery by our discovering them. We are so constituted as human beings that r,t hen another person makes us feel valuable by loving us and appreciating our whoieness, our system's own intelligence is reactivated to learn and evoive. Tt wakes up to itself and its orvn healing resources.

A note.fi'om the author: I atn inclebted. to the Edi-

tori.tl Boa.rd of

the

Joru'na|

rLnd to Paul Rttbin in par-

tictiar, Jbr manlt

lrclp.l-t.tl

sLtggesti ons ot1 ettrl.i er dra.fis o.f tltis

article. Tlrcy trul-v giue

of their tinte artrl ertergygenerousll,

for

rLs

all.)

Conclusion From the aesthetic perspective, Functional Integration can be more than "table work" that rve do to someone else. It is an attitude that can pen ade our whole life. By developing our aesthetic sensibilities and being open to the beaury and magic around us, we expand our skills and thus bring more to those meetings ivith people that r,rre call an FI lesson.a The porver of our method is not contained in anv special models rve have of hor,r, the world r,i orks. It resides in tls and our ability to experience others humanely, rvith reverence for the utriqueness that they are and an appreciation for their sacredness and integrity. +. A fuller discussion of ho',r' n ait fbr another occasiott.

to develop this u,av ol bchoiding tl're r'r,orld r'r'ill have to

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7

Ft]NCTXONAL INTEGF.ATNON Introduction Describing

a

Functional Integration (FI)

One often makes do r,vith a gesture, or a we are giving lessons in medical settings, office, r,vriting an objective description of portant and necessary means of c

institutions are to support our r,vork, the other than the pupii's experience; the guistic entiry.l Writing notes in my client's medical Iearned in the physical therapy (PT) office. In the three years that I spent r,vorking in PT clinics (r9BB-9o), I r,rrent from agonizing over r,vhat to write, to rvriting chart notes during mv pupil's rest breaks. Occasionally, I felt that having to write notes intruded upon the dynamics of the Iessons. But, overall, I came to feel that the practice of charting helped to clarify the structure of the lesson both for me and m1' client. As a ner,v practitioner, mV lessons tended tolrrard the amorphous; knorving that I had to account for r,vhat I lr,as doing helped me to hold one idea in mind through the beginning, middle, and end of the FI. Medical chart notes are only one \vav of describing a lesson and they are probablv not the most apt description for our rvork. They do offer another perspective, hor,rrever, r,l.hich mav contrast with and complement the educational perspective r'vhich Feldenkrais practitioners tend to use. The medical emphasis on empirical description can be used to lend a kind of rigor to the lessons rve offer. And with minor adaptations, medical notes can be expanded to encompass the pupil's subjective experience. Both rnedical and educational descriptions of a lesson will be compared later ir-i t1-ris article. I am ar,vare that there are poiitical and philosophical diff'erences in our communitv regarding n orking r,rrithin the n-redical system. i invite you to participate ir-r the discussion I hope this article opens, bv offering your solutions to the issues raised here.

CneRTTNG THE

TrnRrroRY

by Nancy Denenberg

Medical Charts-an overvierv The rnedical chart is a legal document l,r,hich records the client's coLtrse through the physical therapy clinic. It rvi1l be referred to r,rrhenever there is a question about the ciient or her treatment. In most cases, howeveL, the primaw readers of medical charts are phvsical therapists employed by insurance companies. They revierv a sample of the clinic's charts and decide rvhether or not to pay for the services rendered. r. l'he stvle of charting rvhich l ciescribe here and the theoretical comments whjch follolv gron, directly ont of conversations I held r,rdth Larrv Gold larb in the spring of r9B9 -e-;

THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO.

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7

Therefore, writing accurate, easily understood chart notes protects you and your clinic both legally and financially. The medical chart will include a diagnosis made by a qualified doctor (M.D., D.O., D.D.S., and in some states, chiropractors or Oriental medical doctors). Technically, the diagnosis should state the cause of the symptom, but in practice, many diagnoses are descriptions of the problem. Common diagnoses might be: Low back pain Scapular myofascitis (inflammation of the muscles and connective tissue of the shoulder blade) Sciatica Irregular gait. The chart also contains a record of the initial evaluation b-v the physical therapist and the treatment plan sihe has devised. The bulk of the chart consists of notes you or other clinicians write to document individual sessions with the client.2 In general, insurance claims reviewers are looking for erridence of steady improvement over a reasonable period of time. Thus the particular details of how you worked in each lesson are Iess important than the fact that progress is being made. The pupil, practitioner, phvsical therapist, and insurance company will all be rvell-sen'ed and satis{ied if you and the physical therapist thoughtfull-v set goals u'hich vou can reasonably expect the client to attain. If she surpasses these goals, so much the better. You will also want to consult rvith the PTs or clinic billing staff about the jargon which the insurance compatties prefer at the moment. The Structure of Chart Notes Standard physical therapy notes for individual sessions usuallv follou, the "S.O.A.P." format: Subjective: \.Vhat the client says about hor,v she feels. Objective: Your "objective" description of the client's situation. \\4rere and horv she moves or doesn't move. AIso, your "objectir-e" description of the lesson. Assessment: Your assessment of the client's progress at the end of

the session. Plan: Future lesson plans or other treatment plans. I used SOAP notes in the following ways:3 Subjectiue:

I asked simple questions to find out horv m1, pupil is. Examples: "How have you been?" "Have you been noticing movement x? "Hor,v have the movement lessons been helping you?" "Were you able to do activity z more easiiv?" "\Mhat are you interested in toda-v?" e. Marcia Margolin, CFP, and David N{oses, CFP, introduced me to the SOAP notes format. 3. Daniel Rosenfels, RPT, CFP consulted with me on the medical, legal, and practical details of medical charts.

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From the ans\\rers, I could write a brief summary, noting increased abilities, presence or absence of pain, if a recurring injury had been ar-oided, or u,hen recovery time from a recurring problem decreased. I also inciuded client requests here, such as: Client interested in sitting for >30 min. Client requests home program for relief of back pain. (Norr : a home program is an at-home self-help program for the client. In m\- case, I usually gave them a brief Awareness Through Movement lesson or something to notice and do.) ObjectiL'e:

This section of the SOAP notes serves to redeflne the diagnosis in functional terms, and briefly describes the FI given to address that issue. ) [o

ue rtt e rt t

Eualuation

To fir-rd out \\-hat rny pupil can and can't do, and hour she's organized at the beginning of the lesson, I might ask her to walk, or sit, or reach.a Or I n-right feel rr,ith mv hands if movement of the pelvis, for example, is easr- in one direction and difficult in another. From here I can construct a pattern rvhich connects her way of moving rvith her presenting problern. Then I can redefine the problem in movement terms. The client's ftrnctional movement limitations can be described at the gross motor ievel: Diffi cr-rln' reaching fonvard. L lateral ertension > R. Thoracic rotation limited u'hen standing and turning.

Or more specific skeletomuscular language may be appropriate: Paravertebral muscles chronically contracted. Scapular retraction limited. C3-CG rotate as one piece.

Writing chart notes is one instance where anatomical language is useful. Once I construct a pattern which connects the pupil's way of moving rvith her difficulty, I try to draw her attention to what she's doing that creates or maintains this limitation. I ask her to notice, for example, the fact that the side on which reaching overhead is easy, is also the only side where lateral extension is easy. Although I've engaged the pupil's awareness and I'm setting her up to learn something about how she might use her ribs and spine in reaching, in the chart notes, I r,r,ould only write: L lateral extension > R. Throughout the lesson, chart notes indicate only a small portion of r,vhat is occurring. Lesson Description I generally gave a very simple skeletal and functional description of the lesson, including the position and a line or two about what r,vas differ4. Wl-rile Feldenkrais practitioners may perform a movement evaluation, this is different than the initial medical evaluation which clients receive from the supervising physical therapist.

2S

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entiated and coordinated in the course of doing a particular function. For example: L side-lying: Differentiate pelvis frorn ribs in rotation'

side-lying: Differentiate scapula from ribs and spine in reaching. Sitting: Differentiate mid-thoracic vertebrae in extension; coordinate r,vith low back extension. On back: Coordinate rhythmic hand movements to decreased tonus in segmental rolling.

R

Often I aclded a second sub-heading, "HP", for their Home Program. If i made brief notes for the client to use at home, i included a copy in the chart. Often the description of the ATNI rnatches the FI description iust given. Examples:

HP:All ,+'s, lateral flexion, see attached page' HP: Differentiate shoulders from hips as above. It is very temptillg to rvrite too much in tire Lesson sub-section. For example, the comment "bring ends of rhomboid rnuscles together to relieve chronic contraction," is unnecessary, utlless you particularly lr,ant to remember that vou did that. I generallr' assumed that if an insurance claims retrietver or another clinic practitioner read my notes, s/he rvas usuall-v looking for evidence of the client's progress. If the Physicsl I'herapist lr,iro r,vas also seeing the client rvas checking my notes, I assurned that s/he was interested in rvl-rat mv focus rvas. If a clinical colieague r,r,anted to knorv exactlY hon- I conducted mv lessons, I assumed a conversation or a Iesson rvitir me-not Inore notes-would be called for.

Nthough it is tempting to restate the goal or to rush on to describing the positive results, as in: "slrrlng: Differentiate scapula from thoracic spine to improve turning and reaching," this belongs in the next section, the "A". Assessrzenl;

In this section I described the client's progress in terms r'r'hich usuallv related back to my description of the functional limitation in section "O". For example: Client uses back & r,r,'hile reaching breathes more easily. L lateral extension = R. Thoracic rotation increased in standing & turning. Sitting (slightlr,, somenhat, much) easier. Decreased extensor tot-tus in standing. Increased range of motion in ceruical flexion. Sometimes I had to report that a limitation or difficulty remained, "R shoulder still painful, but client feels more comfortable overall, is breathin g more easil-y. " Plart: I kept this sectiort very short. I often jotted down an idea for rvhere lve might begin the next lesson. I r,rrould note client plans to see the ref'erring doctor or other professionals, get X-rays, go on vacation, return 3{-}

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to work, and the like. Examples:

Continue lessons 1x/wk. Continue differentiation of mid-thoracic in sitting. Differentiate head from shoulders in rotation. Being in a clinic rvhere there are many busy people paying a lot of attention to pain and treatment, I found that the planning note rvould help me to maintain my perspective on guiding the client through the next step of learning. Keeping an idea of r,r,here \ve were going also kept me focused on the highest priorities r,vhen lvorking with people who had a number of different Iimitations and/or limited insurance coverage.

Abbreviations I used as many abbreviations as possible. Some clinics have a list of standard, accepted abbreviations. These might include: mvmt (movement), jt (joint)/ shldr/ scap/, mm (muscles), r'.v (vertebrae)/ mid-th (mid-thoracic)/ LB (1or,r. back), flx'n/ ext'ni lat'l flx'n/ rot'n, Ri L/ ftvd/ blatd, diff'n (differentiation, but only if I'd rvritten out "differentiation" once alread-y), >, R; Standing circling hips, Client feels R hip doesn't go over R heel; feels R LB stiffer > L5. Mvmt Lesson: Standing at bar: Differentiate lon er leg & foot in inv'n/ev'n;coordinate with hip moving R & L. Side-lying: Diff'ate pelvis & shldr in bkrvd motion of R side, co-ord LB, kn, ank flx'n. Application: Client uses ankle jt to cushion heel strike; As shifts R hip over R heel when R u,t-bearing & lets R LB flex, senses greater stability adaptability in R ankle, more comfort in LB, Iength on R side.

Home Program: Standing, diff'ate lower leg/foot. Plan: Recapitulate, as requested by client, then add head shift to R; attention to foot moving in relation to toes. This telling is more true to the learning that I think mv client experienced. But it's also longer, and I have no reason to u,rite such accounts. I no longer lvork in a clinic and I have no need to keep SOAP notes. Hor,rrever, the experience of keeping such terse and objective accounts has been useful. If I u,ere r,r.riting such notes now, I r,vould incorporate the domain of au,areness into the traditional SOAP notes format. I expect that a sentence or t\vo ir-r the Assessment section, noting what the client learned or didn't learn, and ho'ur,. that related to his problem, would suffice. Then I belier-e a useful record rvould exist for me, as well as for mv clinical colieagues and the insurance examiners.

Postscript: Awareness, Explicit Learning & Self-Reliance The particular client noted abor,e rr.anted and needed to understand what I r,vas looking for, hon he could sense and understand that, and what he could do for himself. \Vith him and whener.er possible, I'm interested in moving be-vond the mvsterious. I'm not satisfied giving lessons which work at a skeletal and neuromuscular level onlv and rvhich magically appear to " somehor,r, help ". \\rhenever it's appropriate, I want the differentiation and learning to occur at the level of the pupil's conscious awareness as rvel1. Lessons rvhich inform the pupil of the changes occurring and the role he can plav in maintaining and furthering those changes encourage both self-awareness and self-reliance. The pupil's dependence on the practitioner drops away as he learns to take responsibility for what he is doing norv. s. Goldfarb, Larvrence

Wm., Articula.ting Chartges. (Berkeley: Feldenkrais Resources)

1990.

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THE ROOTS OF FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION Feldenkrais wrote in his book, Higher JtLdo,

"In a perfectly matured body which has gronn r,r'ithout great emotional disturbances, movements tend gradually to conform to the mechanical requirements of the surrounding world. The nervous svstem has evolved under the influence of these lar,r,s and is fltted to them. Holel.er, in our society lve do, by the promise of great rervard or intense punishment, so distort the even development of the system, that many acts become excluded or restricted. The result is that we have to provide special conditions for furthering adult maturation of many arrested functions. The majority of people have to be taught not onlv the special movements of our repertoire, but also to reform patterns of motions and attitudes that should never have been excluded or neglected."

PART III:

Tnn SHrpr Iw

THINKING

by Carl Ginsburg 34

It is one thing to learn a repertoire. It is quite another thing to "reform patterns of motions and attitudes." One has to knou, sotnething of hor,v our most basic functions such as rvalking or sitting are learned and organized. This topic has virtually been ignored in trventieth century psychology with its emphasis first on learning repertoires, and then on programs and algorithms of formal thinking processes. These studies, useful as they are, are not relevant to the problem of learning in terms of organizing the system for functioning. Feldenkrais had what seems a monumental task, u,ith iittle in the way of a theory to go on. He did have at his disposal his background in judo, his understanding of basic physics, and an understanding of systems from his contact rvith the burgeoning science of cr,bernetics. Above all, he had his ability to explore on his orvn r,r.ith an extraordinary open-mindedness, as well as his attention to detail that led to discor,eries of great uniqueness. We have already explored some of the characteristics of this learning process in parts I and II of this essay. In this third part rve rvill attempt a synthesis, bringing the disparate eiements of the process into a more cohesir,,e understanding. We need, horvever, a bigger picture, a biological vier,v that shifts the ground of our thinking. The work that Feldenkrais developed is practical and immediate. As he developed his work, however, Feldenkrais er.olved his thinking process in the direction of this larger picture. In many rvavs he anticipated a revolution in thinking about Iife and living beings that is only being articulated in recent years. This shift in thinking is incorporated directl-v in Functional Integration rvork. Much of it has already been discussed in the flrst two parts of this essay. But it has not been articulated directly and set apart in distinction to the usual way we think in our culture.

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Thinking in a Lesson Let us begin rvith a practical example of this thinking. A young man came for a few lessons with me at the urging of a student in a Feldenkrais Training. He had injured his right elbow two vears before. Now his elbow was stiff; he could not bend it fully and could not touch his right shoulder rvith his right hand. He also had pain with certain movements which interfered with one of his great loves, playing tennis. Serving the ball was a quite painful action. He had had one surgery to attempt to relieve the elbor,v. X-ravs nor,r, shorved a calcium deposit near the original site of injury. It was the cause of the pain, he rvas told and should be removed. The voung man was not so sure that he wanted to undergo another surgery. I began the lesson with this young man by gently moving the ribs and the shoulder together and then apart on the left side. Only later did I repeat similar movements on the right. This allowed him to feel how he restricted these movements on the right as compared with his uninjured left side. He rvondered at first why I wasn't interested in his elborv. But then he commented, as he began to allow more movement, on hor,r, much he restricted himself and actually held the right shoulder higher than the other. Now that he felt something of the participation of the ribs, spine, and pelrris, he recognized that he could comfortably move much more than he allor,l ed himself. His father, r,vho had accompanied him, sat and rr,atched nith fascination. "And vou can use this in tennis," I said. The father nodded in agreement at m-y remark. An engineer, he apparently understood that a tennis setr' e required more than just an arm in the action. After this first lesson his shoulder, neck, and upper back felt much easier. So too did his elbou,, although we never mentioned it at the end of the lesson. In the second lesson I held his forearm so that it was stable, and slowly moved his upper arm and body to indirectly close the elbow joint. As the abilitv to use the joint improved, I directed him to think of moving the elbou, au,av from himself rather than to try to bend the elbow. His father said that this rr.as also clever engineering. In the end he could touch the shoulder rvith his hand r,vithout pain or discomfort, and he could plav tennis. A lesson sequence like this is so much of lthat many of us do in Feldenkrais work that I tend not to flnd it remarkable. I forget how great a shift in thinking is required. \Vhat I knor,v is this: given that some freedom of choice and action is created, the human system will organize itself in a more optimal wa1,. If I had focused my thinking on the elbow and the corresponding "cause" of the pain, namely the calcium deposit, the ysung man r,vould still have his problem. I shifted my thinking a\,vay from looking for a mechanical or physical cause of the "problem," toward thinking about the whole lvay this young man organized himself in his action to protect his elbow, and about how I could give him support and alternatives that wouid allow him to find a better organization for his purposes. He now had a new way of thinking. A New Biological

Thinking

In the last trventy years a new thinking has been emerging in scientiflc fields such as chaos theory, fractal mathematics, and systems biology that no longer sees each event in the phenomenal r,r,orld as a separate

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entity. The older thinking can propose mechanisms. It has a devilishly hard time showing how order arises in complex systems. Theoretical biologist Franciso Varela has contrasted the two approaches in biology in the following way:

"Current biology: Heteronomous units operating by a logic of correspondence. Ner,v biology: Autonomous units operating by

a

logic of coherence." (Varela, rgB6)

We need to explain this further, as the language here is unfamiliar. Varela's shorthand way of putting it describes two very different modalities of understanding. Let us begin with what is familiar, although described in an unfamiliar r,t ay: heteronomous units and logic of correspondence. The term heteronomous units refers to a way of seeing living organisms as if they were a collection of parts, where each part contributes to the overall functioning. The parts, howet er, are independent of each other. Here the emphasis is on understanding the components. The logic of correspondence is what we alreadY understand as rvhat we mean by logic. For example, we see an organism behaving in a certain way. We then search for a mechanism that mav be external, or internal, to the organism r,vhich nill correspond to and explain the behavior. Basic to such a logic is the notion of cause and effect. \Ve notice that an organism exhibits a certain response. We look for an enr-ironmental stimulus or some stimulus from r,r.ithin the organism to connect to the production of the response. As another example, a person reports that he or she has a pain. We search for some pathologl,- or structural anomalv that we can relate as a cause of the problem. We assume that flnding a cause will lead to a solution to the problem, a solution u.hicl-t works by eliminating or neutralizing the cause. This is so taken for granted in most disciplines that it is rarelY if er,'er questioned. Correspondence also Ieads us to the notion of hou, svstems relate to the outside environment. We see that an organism connects rvith this environment, and postulate that the organism must contain some sort of internal representation that corresponds to the environment. This view dominates cognitive science and the fleld of artiflcial intelligence, where it is assumed that a system that shorvs some degree of intelligence, i.e. which can act in a way that appears sensible in its environment, has some design that allows it to respond to the environment. It has an internal perception of what is outside itself so that its behavior corresponds to the needs of the environment. Let us look now at Varela's aiternative. We must begin rvith the r,vord autonomous. Autonomy is one of those problem concepts that many scientists would rather ignore than try to grapple with. Yet it is understood generally in an intuitive way, and when lve see it, we tend to think that whatever thing shows this characteristic is alive. Varela (tgB+) describes a situation where he sees a dog r,valking on the street and the dog changes direction and walks torvard him. In this situation, \rarela describes how he is tempted to impute the idea that the dog inter-rds to greet him. \\4rat is important to Varela in this is that "the dog's behar-ior

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is difficuit to account for unless I observe that the dog confronts its enr-ironment not as if it were receiving instructions from the environment for particular outcomes, but rather as if these instructions were mere disturbances that the dog interprets and constructs according to its sense of regulation and balance. This is again that peculiar qualit_v n'e call autonomy." Thus an autonomous unit, or organism, lvill act in its environmental medium according to its own internal structures. If such a system does so nith rvhat appears to be intelligence, we are mvstified, ho'uvever. We \\'ant to knon ho.,v it is designed to do this. Varela speaks of a "subtle but porverful tr,vist." And that is to emphasize the system's coherence. This is a far more radical notion than flrst meets the eye. Coherence emphasizes the interconnectedness, internal consistencv, and unity of a living system. Coherence arises because living systems, from the very outset, are systems that harre a certain kind of organization. The very survivability of the system implies that this organization is a necessary condition and is maintained as long as the life of the system continuesl. A living system then acts in such a way that it maintains its organization, its set of internal relationships. The system knows nothing of inside or outside, but adjusts to every disturbance in order to maintain itself. These adjustments then become a kind of history of its interactions that makes it more likely that the same behavior r.t ill be reproduced in similar circumstances. How can r,rre have t',rro points of r.ieu,, one Iooking at mechanisms, and the other looking at the uniw and interconnectedness of the system? Both must be useful. \Vhat then are the advantages of shifting our thinking to the systemic perspective? A perusal of the scientiflc literature written from the perspective of correspondence and design reveals that such an approach generally leads to very complex models that often only partially solve a problem. Researchers often develop conflicting theories without flnding a deflnitive wav to decide among them2. The coherence perspective, on the other hand, leads to a kind of economy and simplicity in thinking and acting rvithout needing to elucidate mechanisms. It takes into account the r,vhole. It avoids the pitfalls of tinkering with parts to the detriment of the complete situation. Further, as Varela suggests, it is rrital for leading us torvard increasing our chance r. This insight about iiving s\,srems n as first articulated by svstems biologist Humberto Nlaturana, and then expanded upon by his student, Francisco Varela. Because these authors use certain common terms in a special rvay, rve need to be careful to be clear as to their special use. Organization refers specifically to the organization ofprocesses ofproduction and destruction that maintain a living being in its form, unity, and ongoing life. Note that in terms of its n'raterialitv and energ,, a living svstem is in constant exchange with the en\.ironment. Therefore, it has no identitv in terms of its material makeup. \,Vhat rve can obsen e is that the structures of such a system are "plastic" and can compensate for the rvay it interacts and couples r,r,ith its enr.ironment. Structures here refer to the actual components of a sl,stem u,hich carry out the organization. The system thus has a history, or if vou will, a memory of its compensations, and the abilitv to update its stluctures. (Varela, 1979. N{aturana ar-rd Varela, r9B7). z. For an example of the dilficulties of understanding human movement from an engineering and analytical perspective, see Multiple Mttscle Systems, edited by Jack Winters and Savio Woo. The many papers in this volurne detail atte mpts to mathematically analyze movement and the underlying skeletal structure. I{ost of the papers are speculative and only attempt a solution to very limited and restrictivel"v simple problems (Winters

and Woo, rggo).

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for survival on the planet. For him it is a radical shift in epistemologr- as well as a "new mind." I believe that Feldenkrais developed his thinking in this same direction. Without articulating it in the same way, I also believe that he developed Functional Integration using a logic of coherence and not a logic of correspondence. It enabled him, as it enables us, who practice his method, to act directly with another person through a coupiing of two systems. Such a coupling depends upon this characteristic of coherence.

Coherence and Control Here is Feldenkrais describing how a person orients himself or herself to a sound. "Nowwith the ears, we have exactlY the same thing' If someone talks to my right, really on my right, then the sound n'ill reach my right ear flrst and it will be delayed by the time necessan'for the sound to travel around my head to reach the other ear, and until I hear with both ears, I don't know where the sound is coming from' So if someone makes a noise at my side, my head rvill turn around so that the noise reaches my ears at the same time. And tltis is reflectiue of n lot of the u,orking of the neruoL;S system Iemphasis mine]. This is horv it organizes to make sure that both ears receive the same intensitt., and when I've done that, my eves are directed at the source of the sound." (Feldenkrais, i9B7) This is a kind of universal wav of describing movement in a concrete context in which the complex activitv can be made sensible in terms of a simple parameter; that is, both ears receive the same intensity. That "my eyes are directed at the source of the sound" indicates a basic coherence about action and its relation to a rvorld. Feldenkrais's description is related to his understanding of cYbemetics and predates the r,vork of Varela3. The thinking is in the same direction. Maturana and Varela (rg8z, p.r+z) describe how a simple single-cell animal such as an amoeba can move. The amoeba colnes in contact with a protozoan. rr.\hat is seen behaviorallv is that the amoeba engulfs the protozoan. \.&4rat is seen up close is that substances from the protozoan interact with the amoeba membrane; this, in turn, changes the in 3. The cvbernetic approach models a self-regulating, or control, s)'stem. The kev cybernetics is that the system matches the present condition against a desired condition and detects the difference or error betrveen the fit'o conditions. This error signal is called feedback. The move towards correction is simple in that it reduces the error signal. Sucl-r a system doesn't have to compllte a great deal of mathematical data. Feedback is essential to control and leart-rir-rg for human beings, as was amplv demonstrated bv the research efforts of K. U. Smith at his laboratory at the Universitr,'of Wisconsin back in the nineteen ltlties and sixties. In a number of Smith's experiments an experimental subject r,r'as given a task to track a target. Smith obsen'ed both the learning and performance of the task by measuring the accurac-Y of the trackir-rg as a lunction of time. He then dela-ved the feedback time and measured the degradation of both learning and pelforn-rance. A dela-v of seconds will result in difficulty for the experirnental subject. js Note that feedback in Smith's experiments occurs in the real tirne of the task. This r-tot re'szt/i's' both o.f ps1'chologists kttotuledge call rvhat the same as either reinforcement or of r,vhich are usuall-v given to the subject at a time after the performance iSmith and Smith, rgBB). For those readers rvishing more details abor.rt the cvbernetic approach, I i-righlr recommend Larry Goldfarb's recentl-v published thesis erplaining cr-bernetics and describing Feldenkrais n ork in c],bernetic terrrrs (Goldfarb' tsso).

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consistencv of the protoplasm so that it flows and forms what is called a pseudopod. The pseudopod in turn changes the position of the amoeba, thus changing hor,rr the membrane contacts the substances in the enr-ironment. "This cycie is repeated, and the sequence of movements of the amoeba is therefore produced through the maintenance of an intental correlatiorz bet,,veen the degree of change of its membrane and those protoplasmic changes we see as pseudopods.', Thus there is n-ratching of n hat is happening at a sensory surface of a cell u'ith a motor surface in such a way as to maintain an internal set of relations. This is also a q,bernetic description. It follows directly, however, from understanding "autonomous units operating by a logic of coherence." It ar-oids the entire pitfall of thinking that movements are represented somehor,r, inside the living system, or as in higher species, that ther-are represented inside the nervous system. Feldenkrais and Physics We can see now how the development of coherent movement of oneself inr.olves an implicit physics. As '"ve quoted Feldenkrais before,

". . mo\.ements tend gradually to conform to the mechanical requirements of the surrounding world." (op. cit.) We use this basic physics all the time nhether lve are teaching Arvareness Through Movement or we are making contact, giving support and so forth in a Functional Integration lesson. We do not need to articulate rvhat r,r,e knor,r,, given that we have a tacit understanding directly in r,r,hat we sense in ourselves, and with others, in terms of knor,r,ing rt hat organization of the self works to provide ease and comfort in action. This is the condition r,r,e seek and we can match the actualin, of our action against some very simple parameters such as reversibility of action, smoothness and ease in moving, etc. It is very fortunate because the engineering problem, as I pointed out before, is formidable. Feldenkrais's initial discoveries in this realm were made before he developed his method. His source was judo. Moshe's judo teacher, G. Koizumi, pointed out in his introduction to Higher Judo that Feldenkrais had "studied and analyzed judo as a scientist in the light of the laws of phvsics, physiology and psycholog-y. . ." (Koizumi, rg6z). Iudo, which requires great skill in finding the most efficient use of oneself, can be a guide to the conditions of efficient action. In judo, for example, Feldenkrais discerned through his knon ledge of phvsics that it was the action of the pelvis that allor,rred a person to easily throrv another. Even a person considerabi-v smaller than the person thror,r,n could be capable of doing this. From this obsen ation, he established that easy action required that the larger, stronger musculature of the trunk and pelvis be used for actions requiring strength. One major reform of patterns of motion thereby involves learning to move rvith the center of the body for such action. Conrrerselv, delicate and refined action needed the musculature of the periphery, the arms and hands, for example. One can find numerous examples in Awareness Through Movement lessons of this and other applications of the basic physics of conforming to the requirements of the world.

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Cybernetics and Learning K.U. Smith, as cited in note 3, showed that distortions in feedback resulted in degradation of Iearning. Feldenkrais went about corroborating the importance of feedback for learning from the other side. He noted that loss or lack of smoothness and coordination in human movement related to some sort of Ioss of sensory feedback for the person. This might be due to over-contracted musculature from which feedback is limited by the noise of over-contraction. Or it might be due to lack of sensation and awareness of some part of the self necessary to the movement. He then explored rvays to recover or create increased sensitivity, finding that allowing movement in itself reduced overcontraction and that imagining the body in itself increased sensitivity. Such processes are abundant in Awareness Through N{ovement lessons and in Functional Integration. With increased sensitiviry, one feels differences that were not apparent before. For an outside observer, the same effects can be seen in improved coordination and smoothness

in

a

person's action.

A second corroboration ofa cybernetic effect occurs rvith the use of Feldenkrais's Functional Integration strategV of taking the person more in the direction of the pattern of contraction in the musculature. The observed effect of this strategy is that the over-contracted muscles become reduced in tonus. This is counterintuitive to the idea of directly correcting a fault. Nevertheless, this is exactly holv u'e r,r'ould expect a system rvith a feedback loop to behave. Here one supports the system and the system self-corrects. Understanding the cvbernetic point of view already involves a shift in thinking, and it involves a shift alvay from the logic of correspondence.

Movement and Organi zation Feldenkrais has been quoted as saying, "Movement is the kel'to life." Let us go back for a moment to the formulation of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana. We need now to look at hor,v movement of the organism, in the space of the environment, evolved. \\te lviil see something startling. Simple organisms that do not have a nenrous svstem actually behave by cybernetic processes similar to those of complex organisms. The example of the amoeba has alreadv been cited. Movement, thereby, comes before the nervous system, but as Nlaturana and Varela note (1987, p. 145), "from the standpoint of the nervous system's appearance and transformation, the possibilitv of movement is essential." The Nervous System Feldenkrais often asked, "\.&Ihat is the function of the nellrous svstem?" His students would provide answers ranging from ideas such as, to make the limbs move, to perceive the world outside, to saving that the nervous system controls and regulates the body. He alr,vays had a different unexpected answer, and would frotvn and ask for the next explanation, shaking his head in disappointment. Eventually everyone in the room wanted to know his answer to his question. "Aha," he would say, "you haven't yet got the idea. The function of the nervous system is to create order out of chaos. " Life itself involves order forming out of

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chaos. Hou. can such order come about given that the tendency of systems left alone is to move toward an equilibrium and increased disorder? Ilr-a Prigogine has shorvn that the answer lies in noticing that the conditions of systems on the earth are far from equilibrium and that there is a constant influx of energy from the sun (Prigogine, rg84). Here rve have irreversibility. Under certain conditions in processes taking place in these conditions, order will spontaneously appear. One

characteristic that seems vitally important is that there is

a

kind of

feedback in that what the system produced is enfolded back into the process. This is called iteration or recursion.a Are there similar iterative processes in the nervous system? Let us see rvhat is knor,vn. The sensonr nerves and their connections into the central nervous svstem comprise only a tiny fraction of what is in the nervous system. \\rl-rat is r.ery interesting is that one finds nerve pathways that indicate that the centrai nervous system feeds back onto every sensory surface. This includes the retina of the eye, the spindles in the muscles that detect lengthening and shortening, etc. Thus there is no such thing as pure senson.data unmodulated by the central nervous system. The many loops in the nervous system therefore allow for the iterative or recursive processes to take place. Recursion, i.e. repetitive cycling, may be the most essential process available to the neryous system in the creation of invariances, perceptions, actions, etc. (Pribram, t97U Maturana and Varela, rgBT). The nervous system responds to change and not to static or constant irritation. For the eye to see, for example, the et,e must move if nothing else is moving. A static image on the retina rvili disappear as the cells on the retina habituate. So too r'n,ith er.en'other sensory s\.stem (Pribram, rgZS). Equivalently, the nen ous s\.stem does not respond to absolutes, but to relationships. For example, there is no direct correlation between the color one sees and a given frequency of light. The color one sees can frequentl-v depend upon relationships to the surroundings. Changes in lighting r,r,ill be compensated for so that things seen in red light r'r,ilI still appear colored as they were in white light even though the rt avelengths of light hitting the retina are now different. Another example is that a tune is recognized as such even though the absolute pitches in which it is played are different. Here are some more instances: an object is recognized even though it may be at different distances and produce images of r,videly varying size and shape on the retina; one's handwriting is the same whether one r,r,rites on a blackboard or on a sheet ofpaper on a desk. Thus we can say that the nelous system creates invariances, lvhich include such things as tunes, objects, handrvriting, etc., that allor,r, for the distinction of "things" as separate from background, as lvell as distinct actions. \.\4rat is invariant is the relation of the parts and not the measure (N{aturana

andVarela, rgBT). Despite the belief of many researchers of human movement that ".. .the simple tasks studied constitute building blocks of more complex tasks,"(Huer et al., rgBS), Feldenkrais demonstrated that awhole func+. John Briggs and F. David-Peat provide an ercellent introduction to chaos theory in their book, Turbulent Mirror (Briggs & Peat, 1989). Thev sl'ror,r,how iteration is generative in both mathematical and real svstems.

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tional movement is learned more quickly and easily (Ginsburg, 1988, p. rg). Feldenkrais work also shows that differentiating parts of the self within the self-image leads immediately to improved performance of action. The nervous system doesn't see what it doesn't see. The blindspot in the retina is never noticed unless one does an experiment to reveal its presence. Damage to the nervous system, such as the loss of part of the field of vision, is also not noticed and the missing part of the field is sometimes experienced as filled in. The nervous system creates a stable background or world, which is an ordering necessary to be able to get around easily in the world. If you move your eyeball with your finger, you can notice that the world jumps as the image on the retina jumps. Move your eye and the world stays still, even though the image on the retina jumps as much. This shows that the system compensates for the movement of the eye as detected by the kinesthetic feedback from the eye muscles. The ordering takes place in the context of movement. As we indicated before, no sensory system can operate without movement. Thus there is always a circularity between action and experience. In the words of Humberto Maturana and Franciso Varela, "All doing is knowing, and all knowing is doing." (Maturana & Varela, rg87) So-called nerve impulses, i.e. polarized waves that jump across qmapses, may comprise only a small part of the activity of the nervous system. There are neuroelectrical processes, that do not involve propagated impulses, going on continuously in the nervous system (Pribram, rgzr). We could conclude that there are probably inductive effects in the nervous system so that electrical activity in one part induces activity somewhere else. From this we might speculate that the nervous system can be modeled better if it is understood as operating in a non-localized distributive fashion rather than as a collection of individual functioning units. The details of the actual organization of the nervous system in structure and function is still undisclosed, and there are still a lot of unsolved problems. Gerald M. Edelman notes that modern neuroscience is actually in a crisis since it is unable "....to explain how, prior to conventional learning, neural structure and function can result in pattern recognition or perceptual categorization with generalization." (Edelman, 1987, p.zs). The crisis, Edelman believes, is masked by "... interpretations that evade or obscure a number of critical difficulties, contradictions, and lacunae in neuroscience." We have moved away from the telephone switchboard metaphor for the nervous system, and are well on the way toward eliminating the digital computer metaphor. Some radically new ideas are leading in different directions. Nervous System and Body Let's begin with an already organized network of nerve cells as might exist in an infant. This network has a structure already as a result of evolution, although for a human being very little about it is fixed at birth. The pathways of its organized processes need to be formed. Feldenkrais saw that the initial action of the infant is global. Learning

then involves a shift from global undifferentiated movement to action

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of the self which is differentiated and organized to carry out intention and function. The only way this can happen is through movement and experience. "So we come to an extraordinary conclusion-that our brain and our body are one thing and they grow together, only through the perfection of the body movements." And, "You flnd that the body is necessary to train the brain, otherwise differentiation cannot be performed. . . the brain has no contact with the surroundings." (Feldenkrais, rg87). Some other observations from this lecture included that if one is deaf, one is also dumb, that once a person has learned to write, you can cut off the hand and the person can write with the other hand. \Mhat we have is an extraordinary system that gives both stability and the flexibility to adapt to new circumstances. \[rhat kind of system can do what we have described so far? Note that one cannot teach a person how to organize movement or how to perceive. These activities can only be learned. In other words, we need a system that organizes itself as it experiences. It is a system that has both stability and an extraordinary plasticity to shift with changing circumstances. It is a system that is exceedingly difficult to models.

Autopoiesis and Organization Closure Generally speaking, neuroscientists, biologists, and others interested in the problems we have addressed have worked from the bottom up. That is, the belief has been that if we can understand the process at the lowest level-the level of the cell, the neuron, and the synapse-we can develop an understanding of the system. Much of what we discussed so far we have looked at more from the top dor,rrn. Here, we can observe the way a system works as a whole, as Feldenkrais did, and evolve strategies based on the coherence of living beings. We can go a step further and ask a new, and very different, question: What kind of organization of a system is necessary for a system to show that it has a unity as a system? rvVhat kind of organization of a system is necessary for a system to show that it operates by autonomy, coherence, and self-maintenance (i.e. can reproduce and rebuild itselfl? Organization here refers to the processes that underlie biological existence. More generally, organization indicates what relations are necessary for something to exist. For a living being to stay alive, its organization in this sense must be con5. Al1man, rgBg, reviews advances made in modeling intelligent systems with so-called neural netr,vorks. A more biological model has been developed by Edelman, rg8;, ca11ed a neuronal selection theory. Edleman charts out a process of brain organization that can take into account manv features of the nervous system that are not accounted for in other models to date. In this theory, neurons are alreadl, organized into groups and, through the experience of the organisrn in motor behavior, the signals from the environment dynamically induce a selection process in .,t hich certain functional groups of neurons are selected out and reinforced through changes in electrical ar-rd biochemical activity. Structures in the nervous s_vstem are not therebv determined by information from the environment. The capacities are already there. Nevertheless, Edelman has eliminated the question of design and paralleled the r,vorkings of the nervous s)rstem to the process of evolution. This is a good step. It u,as anticipated by Bateson rvhen he showed that evolution and learning are both stochastic processes (Bateson, rgzg). It is also a feature ofMaturana and Varela's radical relvorking of biological theory. Edelman's idea also fits verv rvell with Feldenkrais's idea of differentiation being the central element in learning. And in a true biologist's fashion, Edelman shorvs that movement is essential for the organization of perception, and that the organization of both movement and perception are adaptive to \Un/ival of the organi'm.

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tinued. A break in organization results in death. This is a different use of the word organization from our common use in the Feldenkrais work to refer to the organization of an action. The question is radical in the true sense of that word. For Nlaturana and Varela, it is a question that also asks: \\hat is it that characterizes a living system and makes it different from any other kind of system? \\re return now to their formulation6. Maturana and Varela note a ven, obvious thing: living systems are organized in such a rvay "that their onlv product is themselves r,vith no separation betr,r,een producer and product." In a living system, such as a cell, there is a continuous inflou,and outflow of materials and energy. On the other hand, the organization of the processes by r,vhich the cell constructs itself from the materials is not changed, and it must be maintained as we stated. This organization needs also to be stable and unchangeable. It must therefore be a series ofprocesses that at each end connect together to form a loop. The organization is thus closed to the outside. But what if some outside agent perturbs the cell, or the outside ettr-ironment itself creates a perturbation? This could endanger the organization. In order to maintain itself, a cell must effectively ntake sonte change so that the organization will persist. There is a change in structure. Structure here also has a special sense and refers to the rvar-the physical components of the system are put together. One of the most important structures that the cell creates is the membrane that the cell uses to separate itself from the environment. The cell membrane botl-t contains the unitv of rvhat is inside and allolr,s for florvs of enerp. atrd materials to and from the outside. Maturana and Varela have named this kind of organization autopoiesis (Maturana and Varela, rgBT). Maturana has further stated the idea as a general larv of biology. He calls it the lan, of consen'ation of organization. A living system is alive as long as its organization of processes is maintained. The implication of all this is that a living svstem, while open to flows of material and energv, is closed to information. Now we can notice another unexpected feature. We noted that n hen a system is perturbed, it adapts itself structuraily in such a \vay as to maintain its organization. Because of this, each living system has a history. The structural changes become a record of hor,r, the system rvas perturbed over its 1ife. This relation to the enr,ironment can be described as a structural coupling. "We speak of structural coupling whenever there is a history of recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems." (Maturana and Varela, rgSZ). As living systems can interact r,rrith each other, coupling can lead to larger unities than single cells. We can har.e multicellular organisms, as well as coupling at a still higher level betn een organisms. We can nort make a radical thesis about the nen ous svstem. As n'itir the basic organization of the cell, the nervous system is organizationallr closed. By this, we mean that looking from the point of vielr, of the svstem and its internal relationships, there is no information transferred

from the environment, no-input-output, no representation ol the ottt6. The best introduction to this rvork is Nlaturana and Varela's popularizauon of rirerr ideas in The Tree o.f Krtou,ledge (Matttana and Varela, r9 87) . \'are la's Pn nci L)l ?s a.i' Fj io' logical Atttortonz-y provides a very closelv argued technical p res etrtarion of t}-ie ti',e . r. (Varela, r979).

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side world inside the nervous system. As with our description of the

cell, the nervolls system shifts structurally to maintain its organization when perturbed by the environment. And, as rvith the cell, the record of these structural changes becomes a history, or lvhat rve commonly call a memory. Learning occurs because the nervous system has developed to be extremely flexibie and structurally plastic so as to maintain its own internal relations. Stability arises as invariances are created within the internal relations. Lastly, I r,r,ill just hint at the possibilities r,vhen we consider the results of those interactions between living beings that result in structural coupling. Interactions can lead to a much larger domain. For example, the creation of a culture through social interaction. Or the evoking of learning in a person through interactions with a world and with other people. From our point of vier,v, we now have a parallel to the Feldenkrais shift in thinking. We can look at a lesson from this perspective and say that there is no information passed in a Functional Integration lesson. A lesson is a coupling betrveen practitioner and pupil in rvhich the adaptive processes are elicited and in which it is the internal processes of the pupil that make the difference. A Functional Integration I am working with Brenda who suffered a cerebral accident when she r,vas in her trt enties, some twelve years ago. She has pursued manv avenues toward recovery of use of her paralvzed left hand, this hand r,vhich contracts into a snarl of confused trt isting along lr,ith her u,rist and arm r,vhen she tries to use it. \\hen she ignores the arm and hand, it hangs with the elbow partialiv bent. We have rvorked together for four sessions and have already discovered a number of ner,v things not available before. First, and foremost, Brenda found it easier to progress rvhen she shifted focus ar,vay from the hand and the details of the action. And there was her discovery that her loss of mobility and function is not limited to her hand. I began my flrst lesson with Brenda by touching the ribs and spine on each side, revealing to mvself that the affected left side was quite immovable as compared to the right. \\hen I passively moved her left arm, the ribs stayed glued to the table; this rvas in contrast to the right side, r,r,,here lifting her arm led to the entire rib cage following and facilitating the movement. As I continued the lesson, I spent a good bit of time rvith the "good" right side. I explored how pressing her foot moved the ribs on this side and the spine, and I continued with the movements of the arm in conjunction r,t ith the trunk and pelvis. Only then did I approach the left side again, and, in so doing, I also brought Brenda,s awareness to the differences. As I sensed improvement-such as feeling that her ribs and spine began to respond rvhen I pressed her left footI checked with Brenda to flnd out whether she felt the differences. She did and indicated that she reallv appreciated sensing the movement. Moving her arm, head, and shoulder together, I rvas able to slolr,,ly, passively, move her hand to touch her shoulder and then her neck and flnally her face. At no time did I atternpt to move her past any resistance that I sensed in her.

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Now, in the fifth session, I feel that when I move her arm, the ribs follow. I ask Brenda to take my hand and move it through space. This she does by catching my hand in her still spastically contracted fingers. But her arm and shoulder are no longer behaving in a spastic pattern of fixed contractions. I ask her to move me wherever she n'ishes. This she does by lifting my arm, pushing it forward, and pulling it back. Suddenly, she realizes that she can move me, and, therefore, hersell to places that were unreachable when lve started together. It is as if this functioning came out of nowhere. Later, Brenda tells me that she has caught herself spontaneously using her left side in situations where, previousIy, she would never have considered it. We work more with her hand. I have her touch and feel mv hand, touch and stroke herself. In previous sessions, when I moved her passively to bring her hand to hersell I arranged her flngers, as theY diminished in spasticity, to touch her neck or her face. We work rvith her sensation and perception: horv she feels and identifles each flnger and how she feels where they are in space and in movement. It turns out that her senses of space and movement are not reliable, whereas her sense of touch is. As she uses her hand in the small ways that are possible, in touching and feeling, her sensation becomes more accurate. \Mhat is different about our work together? There are elements here of communication and contact; there is m1, ability to sense at al1 times what is going on with Brenda and to stop when it is too much, or u'hen she begins to resist. There is the support I am able to give her, so that she trusts that my touch is safe, that I will respect her space and her being. There are aspects of my skill that allor,t' me to be intentional without being invasive, that allow me to guide'"vithout ever needing to be forceful. I am constantly reminding her that there is no need to succeed, that success will follow our engaging in this process. I evoke a coupling that allows Brenda to lind a new possibiliry'. I do not give her any information, but out of our coupling, out of the dance rve do together, she senses differences and, in effect, creates new information. This is the importance of the idea of organizational closure: we avoid the arrogance of thinking that we are responsible for what happens in the lesson.

And then there is this further shift in thinking that I have been presenting here. A shift from focusing on the parts to dealing u'ith the movement in a whole context. There is no isolation of fingers or hands or whatever, as something separate from rvhat Brenda needs to do in life. From the beginning, what I do is connected r,r,ith action and function. Function isn't something complex.It is mundane things like touching and feeling, basic things to the use of the hand. Now we can articulate a little better about the process. Varela and Maturana's work helps us to describe the biological basis of this essential (biological) process that we have labeled functional integration. \.{hen I see it happening right before me, I am still ane-struck bv the power of our nature as human beings. I would like to conclude with the passage from The ElttsiL'e Obt'iotts that I quoted in the first part of this essay. Nou, You can see that

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Feldenkrais had a complete grasp of the understanding articulated by Maturana and Varela. Feldenkrais wrote: "Through touch two persons, the toucher and the touched, can become a new ensemble: two bodies when connected by two arms and hands are a new entity. These hands sense at the same time as they direct. Both the touched and toucher feel what they sense through connecting hands even if they do not know what is being done. The touched person becomes aware of what the touching person feels and, without understanding, alters his conflguration to conform to what he senses is wanted from him. \A{ren touching I seek nothing from the person I touch; I only feel what the touched needs whether he knows or not, and what I can do at that moment to make the person feel better."

Bibliography Allman, W.F. (r989). Apprentices of Wonder: Inside the Neural Network Reuolution. NewYork: Bantam Books. Bateson, G. (rSZg). Mind and Natr-1rc. Ne\r,York: E.P. Dutton. Briggs, I. and David-Peat, F. (1989). Ttu-btient Mirror. Neu.york: Harper and Rorv. Edelman, G.N{. (rg8;). Neural Darwirzism. Ne',vYork: Basic Books. F'eldenkrais, M. (rg6z). Higher Judo. London and Nerv york: Frederick Warne.

Feldenkais, NI. G9Br. The Elusiue Obt,iotLs. Cupertino, CA: N{etapublications. Feldenkrais, M. (1987). Aruareness Tlrouglt MottementWorkshorr, rg74, London England. Berkeley,CA: Ad,,.anced Seminars. (Available from Feldenkrais Resouces, Berkeley, CA) Ginsburg, C. (rgSZ), "The Roots of Functional Integration: part I." Feldenkrais Journal, no. 3, 13-24.

Ginsburg, C. (rg8B). "T}re Roots of Functional Integration: part II." Feldenkrais Journal, no.4, 13-19. Goldfarb, L. (r99o). Arrlcr ilating Changes: Touards a Theory of the Feldenkrais Methorj. Berkeley, CA: Feldenkrais Resources.

Huer, H., Kleinbeck, U., and Schmidt, K.H. (rg8s). l.[otor Belmuior. Berlin: Springer. Koizumi, G. (1962). In Feldenkrais ,M. Higher JtLdo. London ancl Nerv york: Frederick Warne. Maturana, FI., andVarela, F. (rgBz). The Tree ofKnowledge.Bostonand London: Ne.,r, Science Librarv. Pribram, K.H. (rsz1). Languages of the Brain. Engler,vood Cliffs:prentice Hall. Prigogine, I. (tg8+). Order Out of Cftaos. Boulder, CO: New Science Library. Smith, T.j., and Smith, K.U. (1988). The C-vbernetic Basis of Human Behavior and performance. "Continuing the Conversation: A Ner,vsletter of Ideas in Cybernetics," no. 15. Varela, F.

(tgtil. Principles

of Biological Autonomy. New York: North Holland. Varela, F. (rg8+). "The Creative Circle." In Watzlawick, p., ed.. The Inuented Realiy. NewYork: W\,V. Norton.

Varela, F. (rg86). "Laying Dorvn a Path in lValking: its ethics." Cybernetics, vol. z, no.r, 6-15.

A biologist's look at a new biology and

Winters, J.M., and Woo, S. L-Y. (tggo). Mttltiple MLtscle Systems: Biomechanics and Mouement Organization. Ner,v York and Berlin: Springer.

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Linda Evans Delman graduated from the Amherst training in 1983. She maintains a private practice in Kentfield, California, and travels actively as an assistant trainer in the Method. Currentlyher most

intriguing and delightful study is her daughter, Liliana. Nancy Denenberg graduated from the San Rafael I training in r987. She has lived and taught the Method in |apan, California and Michgan. Nancy has a private practice in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Nancy initiated and leads stud-v groups for Michigan-area students of professional training programs.

Carl Ginsburg, Ph.D., graduated

from the San Francisco training in

1977.

He received his doctorate

in organic chemistry from the University of Ohio in r968. Carl works as a trainer in various professional training programs around the world. In additon to w'riting for the Journal, Carl edited The Llaster Moues and just published his first book of short stories: Medicine Stories. He lives and works in Nbuquerque, New Mexico.

Lawrence Goldfarb graduated frorn the Arnherst training in r983. He teaches in the Kinesiology Department at the Universitv of Illinois, Charnpaign-Urbana. Larw keeps an active rvorkshop schedule and a private practice in Champaign, tllinois.

Myriam Pfeffer graduated from the Tel Aviv training in1969. She is a senior trainer and trar,.els extensively, teaching in training

Garet Newell graduated from the Amherst training in r983. She is an assistant trainer and organizer of prolessional training programs in the United Kingdorn. Garet is committed to researching Feldenkrais's life and ivriting about it.

Mark Reese graduated from the San Francisco training in tgl;.

Ilana Nevill graduated from the London training in tggo. She r,vorks in Britain and Germanv, having been long involved in education (from Kindergarten to Gurdjieff). She is particularly interested itr introducing the Feldenkrais Method to the caring professions and to musicians. Ilana is the editor of Feldenkrais Jottrnal, U. K.

...

ar-'

'r--r.),i

G

programs and leading r,t orkshops In addition she directs her on n programs in Paris, r,vhich is also her home.

Since rgB3, he has been a trainer

in training programs u,orldrvide. Mark is the author of numerous publications on the Feldenkrais Method, including Re I a.tert' i se. which he co-authored u,itl'r Dal{d and Kaethe Zemach-Bersin.

Martin H. Weiner, Ph.D., graduated from the San Francisco training in 1977. He has served the Guild as president, member of the fir'st

Board of Directors, and chairman of the TAB. He holds a black belt in aikido and did his formai academic training in the philosophv of mind. He presently dir,ides his time between prirrate practices in Palo Nto and Santa Fe: he also leads rvorkshops on presence and anareness for practitioners of the healing arts.

ERRATA We wotrld like to express further apologies to Margaret Barlosek for misspelling her name in the article entitled "A Story of Recovery in Two Voices". In addition the last fewwords of the flrst section, ending on page 31, were omitted. This should have read: In that moment, I think Marg felt deeply the fact that the other student simply saw her as most people do, as a friendly person with a lovely smile. Apologies to Carl Ginsburg for dropping offthe last few sentences of his book review. The ending should have read: needs better distribution. Aside from these minor difficulties I highly recommend it to the Feldenkrais world. Apologies to Ianet Tobacman for the errors in her poem, The Chances I Take, And flnallythe "bibliography" at the end of Larry Goldfarb's article on page 48 is really a group offootnotes!

e

This issue of the Feldenkrais Journal was set in Utopia, anAdobe Original type family

designed by Robert Slimbach. The text"was formatted in Quark Express on a Macintosh IIcx, final copywas output to film on a Linotronic aoo. It was printed at Bacchus Press in Emeryville, California.

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CONCEPTUAL MODELS