The Feldenkrais Journal #8 General Issue

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The Feldenkrais Journal is published annualll, b-v the Feldenkrais Guild@ for its members. Inquiries regarding this publication should be directed to: The Feldenkrais Gui1d, P.O. Bor 489, Albany, OR 9732r. Material

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publication can be sent directly to the editor, Elizabeth Beringer, at 7r5 Cornell Ave. Albany, CA 9+2o0.

Additional copies of the lournal are available through the Guild office for s6 to Guild members and $ro to nonmembers, (includes postage and handling). Bulk rate fees are available upon requesl.

Subscriptions to the Journal are now available. These are designed for people who are not currently receiving the lournal through their Gui1d. A three-issue subscription is sz5 for N. American residents and $35 for overseas subscribers. A five-issue subscription is s4o/$5o, respectivelv. Please send your payment in US dollals, directly to the Guild office. The next issue is on the theme of "Parailei Developments," (see editor's letter). If vou have an article, poem, drawing, or letter to the editor to submit, please contact the editor,

Elizabeth Beringer. The editorial committee is happy to cornment on flrst drafts or works in progress. Final versions of accepted articles must be submitted on a Macintosh-compatible computer disk in the program N{icrosoft Word. For more information about format, length, computer compatibility, etc., please $'rite to the editor or the Guild office for a copy of our r,r'riters' guidelines. Feldenkrais@, The Feldenkrais Guild@, The Feldenkrais@ Method, Functional Integration@ and Art'areness

Through Movement@ are registered servicemarks of the Feldenkrais Gui1d. Editor: Editorial Board:

Design: Drarvings: Bone poems:

Proofreading & copyediting: e!

Elizabeth Beringer Lar,vrence Goldfarb, Iack Heggie, Paul Rubin, Arlyn Zones, Gay Scott, Alan Questel Margery Cantor Kaetha Zemach-Bersin Marghe N{ills-Physen Elizabeth Weiss, Caroi Kress Back Issues:

r z no. 3 r-ro 4 no 5 no. 6 no. 7

Journal no. Journal no.

General Issue (xerox copy)

Journal

Special Interest Groups

Journal

Iournal Journal

Iournal

MartiaiArts Emotions TheArts Stories

Conceptual N{odels

All back issues are available through the Feldenkrais Guild office. Price to Guild members is $6, to non-members $ro per copy. OCop-vright r993 The Feldenkrais Guild. All rights revert to the authors upon publication.

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The Feldenkrais Iournal number

Thble of Contents 2

A Letter from the Editor

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Madeline ArlynZonesWalker

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Kathy: A Case Study Michael Purcell

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AnlnterviewwithAnnGerald DavidZemach-Bersin

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A

31

Resistance as Function: From talking the talk to walking the

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BookReview: The CultureofPain GaySweetScott

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Book Review

Conversation: Heinz von Foerster and Moshe Feldenkrais

z Trances People Liae:

Healing Approaches in

QuantumPsychologt CarlGinsburg

40

Contributors

walk

Shelly Duke

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THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 8

A Letter from the

Editor May, 1993

Dear Colleagues, 1'm pleased to introduce you to the eighth issue of the Feldenkrais Iournal. This issue is a general one, thus we have a stimulating mix of different kinds of articles: some case studies, an interview with a long-time private student of Moshe's, some book reviews and a transcript of a discussion between Heinz von Foerster and Moshe Feldenkrais. Dr. von Foerster gave a keynote address at the last Guild conference, which is a nice coincidence with the publishing of this piece. The next issue of the Iournal will mark the ten year anniversary of Moshe's passing. We have chosen "Parallel Developments" as the theme. We will be looking for articles that explore how Moshe's ideas are being invented, discovered or developed in other professions and domains. As always, we will consider articles of any type for each issue. The Iournal is now on a new schedule and will come out each Spring. Thus the deadline for submissions rvill be October r, 1993. The flrst issue of the Iournal was organized byYvan Ioly and myself in rg84, and I have continued as its editor since that time. We made the decision then to circulate the lournal only to members of the Feldenkrais community. We felt that the community needed a forum to discuss and develop our evolving profession. Recently the Guild Board of Directors has raised the question again as to whether Iournal subscriptions should be sold to members of the public. Many people outside our profession have expressed an interest in the Journal and this could be a nice opportunity for exposure and dialogue within a wider audience. Opening up the Journal to a larger community would necessarily result in a shift in the current editorial policies. For example, we presentiy reject articles that include a basic description of the Method r,vritten for novices. We have solicited exclusively articles that were written specificallv for the practitioner community. ln our desire to loster discussion, and perhaps even argument, the editorial staff has accepted and published articles that present the Method in varying and sometimes controversial ways. Our concern is whether this policywould be appropriate for a Iournal that is available to a wider readership, particularly other professionals in the field. \Vhat do you think? The editorial board of the Iournal will be considering this question during the upcoming year. Please send us your thoughts on this subject. I would like to thank the members of the editorial board for their help with the creation of this issue. I hope you enjoy itl

//ry

Elizabeth Beringer

Editor

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fulyn Zones Walker

N{ADHI, INE Meeting Madeline Madeline, a e-year-old child with severe brain damage, r,r,as first brought to me in the fall of r99o, She had had a stroke in utero and had been seen by neurologists, physical therapists and a chiropractor. A possible diagnosis of autism had been considered. Some of the clinicians felt that Madeline was autistic, while others felt that she showed more social tendencies than the usual cases of autism. She had also been diagnosed as having a scoliosis. I found Madeline to be immediatelv compelling. She had a dreamy quality. It was as though her little withdrar,r,n soul was looking very far arvay. Madeline could initiate very few movements voluntarily. She could neither turn, roll, sit nor reach for any object not situated directly in front of her. She wore glasses and had an eye which wandered. \\hat I failed to notice at flrst sight was how severely flexed her trunk lvas. Her head was thrown backward and her elbows were flexed and held close to her torso. My flrst session with Madeline was seemingly disastrous. First I put her on her back and attempted to roll her side to side. I then ventured further, rolling her from her back to her belly. At first she laughed,

but then suddenly let out a blood curdling scream. The parents, two very extraordinary people, focused on the ferv happy moments of the session and decided to bring her back again. Besides, they said they were used to Madeline screaming in her therapy sessions.

DancingWith Madeline

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During the next session or two I discovered that Madeline lor,,ed to "dance." Since I had struck out on the table, I decided to work with her sitting on my knee. I had in mind a memory of one of Moshe's sessions fromAmherst with a girl named Kimberly. Moshe had the child seated on his lor,ver thigh such that her feet nearly touched the ground. He 3

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shor,ved her, through each part of herself, how her feet touched the

floor

rvhen she erected herself. As he helped her to come forward, to access the power in her lower back, her legs would begin to straighten and the whole conflguration of standing was evoked. I put Madeline on my knee and began to simply rock her pelvis fonvard and backr,r'ard. I had asked Madeline's mother if Madeline liked music. "She loves music," rnras the mother's response. I played a tape by a duo named "Tuck and Patti." I would describe their music as a combination of iazz guitar and black gospel; in other words, a sublime fusion of rhyhm guitar and feeling. Madeline listened intently and began to undulate slightly, punctuating the music with very exact movements of her hands. I rvas fascinated by her ability to listen and respond to rhythm. \.^/hat might appear to the casual observer to be random hand movements were actually rvedded to the syncopation of the music with an exquisite precision. And so I found that it was our mutual ability to inhabit this world of feeiing, sensation and rhyhm that could become the point of departure for our

relationship. \\4rile Madeline was occupied rvith dancing and listening, I had the opportunity to feel the details of her spine, her head, her chest. Now I felt through my hands why she never spontaneously chose to lay on her stomach. Her little torso was so rigidly flexed that of course it r'vould be terribly uncomfortable. The screaming of the first session had been her attempt to communicate this discomfort. As I was able to feel and see her more specifically, I was able to devise a new strategY. In the following session I put her again on her stotnach, but this time I began to work along the spine. I worked through each vertebra, introducing the smallest possibility of movement and of lengthening toward the head. At the same time, using a slight pressure through each rib I was able to further affect the spine At a certain point in the lesson, Madeline lengthened her right arm in a reaching movement. This was the flrst lesson in which a clear functional shift took place. It showed me that this child could learn and that she could feel differences in herself. Unlike our flrst session together, she was now lying on the table. Her breathing was slower and deeper, and she r,vas listening to my hands.

Finding "I" My next breakthrough came in the following wav: I still did not know rvhether or not Madeline was autistic, but I remembered another of Moshe's cases in which he rvorked lvith an autistic child. I remembered these two videos because at the time I saw them they made very little sense to me: they stood out bv virtue of their oddity. In the flrst video, Moshe has a girl named Allison lying on her back while he gentlv rolls her slightly right and left. Periodically he says to her, "Is.vour name Allison?" or "You are Allison." In the second tape the girl is rvalking and making gestures with her hands. Her arms are bent and hands remain close to her chest in self-referential gestures. In other u'ords, rvhat seems to be expressed through the hands does not refer outrvard, to the external world, but is directed inward. In this session N{oshe paces

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her jerfu hand movements and then beautifully leads her into a movement of the hands and arms which allows her to turn herself around. Through the memorv of these cases and reflection upon horv I sar,v Madeline, I came to understand that rvhat these two girls shared was not just a iack of spatial a\{areness, but also of spatial identity. In other rvords, there is an essential sense of I-ness r,vhich is established by turning around the vertical a-xis. And thus, in the videos, this turning was linked to the naming of Nlison. This realization 1ed to a series of new ideas which were to prove quite fruitful. \\hen I began to perceive N{adeline as not "existing in space" I sarv that all attempts to rnove her in space had to be introduced much more slowly than my originai pace. Without the perception of body boundaries, any sudden or even normal transitions from lying to sitting would be felt as chaotic, disordered, and perhaps frightening. Once I found this new pace, her sudden protests died down and her rate of Iearning increased. She learned to turn rvhile sitting and, once she was able to turn, space began to exist to the right and left of her. \.&rith turning came the ability to reach to the right and left. Simultaneously a new r,vorld of objects to be seen, touched and manipulated came into view. As more of the outer world appeared, the desire to explore also intensifled. Madeline's gestures began to refer not just to herself, but outward. Obstacles still ren-lained but she had made a major step The Laws of Gravity As Madeline gained more mobility through our work together, she

acquired the ability to sit. She had found a way to maintain a relative equilibrium in sitting, but if she moved too far to the right or left she would tumble. She had no sense of putting her arms out to the side to catch herself. Again, the concept of catching herself did not exist. For her, there were no laws of gravitv. I endeavored to teach her about bearing weight with her arms. \,Vorking with her in the sitting position, I helped her to shift slowly to the right and the left, just beyond her usual point of balance. The floor r,vas used as a solid point of contact-a predictable point of reference r,r,hich rvould alrvays be there as her hands reached out. During this phase of work another insight came to me. I had intermittently made use of therapl, balls in my r,vork. I thought that the balls r,vouid facilitate the movement of the pelvis, spine and head. N{adeline had always hated being put on therapv balls. I now sarv that the mobility I had tried to achier,e with the balls r,vas a mobility rvithout context. In other words, this mobility had no link to learning. Let's turn for a moment to the idea of Madeline as a child rvho lacks spatial coordinates in all the cardinal directions. If you seat such a chiid on a ball vou create a random situation in r,vhich there are no reference points for mor.ement in space. However, if you sit that same child on the floor, then the contact of the right hand on the floor when shifting to the right, or the left hand when shifting to the ieft, becomes a predictable phenomenon. The floor is alwavs in the same place. The movement of the pelr,is to the right and ieft must include connection to a stab1e enrironrnent for such a child to learn from the situation. In the prone position, I gradually shon ed Madeline how she could use her hands and her entire arm to bear rveight. This involved showing

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b1, pushing her hands into the table, she could simultaneously Iift her head. There were many small steps involving a new organization of the shoulder blades relative to the arms, relative to the spine, ribs, etc The seventh cervical vertebra, which had probably never moved, also had to be included in this reorganization.

her that

Locomotion With the progress Madeline had made in weight-bearing rvith her arms and lifting her head, crawling might have emerged. However, it did not. \.\4rat was the difficulty? \.Vhat the doctors had termed scoliosis seemed to be in actuality an impairment of the right side including the spine, ribs, right hip joint and leg. Any spontaneous attempt to crar,r,l r,vas impeded by a lack of ability to fold the ribs on her right side and to mobilize the por,rrer in her lower back. Even rvhen it rt,as possible to give her the experience of this configuration, she could neither retain it nor utilize it voluntarily. To further complicate this situation, I r,r,as reminded of the initial damage r,vhich had occurred to the area of the brain known as the corpus callosum. So that altirough Madeline could draw up her leg on the left side, rvorking with the left side did not seem to transfer to her right side. I did not knorv how much of a factor the damage of the corpus callosum was in impeding the transfer of information between the two hemispheres. I eventually found it easier to work rvith her in the kneeling position. Initially she would be in the kneeling position r,vith the r,veight of her trunk fully supported either by props or by my body. I rvas gradualiv able to reduce the amount of external support as her arms were able to take more and more of the weight. The equal distribution of r,veight between her arms and legs was not yet possible. At this point I was forced to take a three-month break from our r,vork as demanded by other traveling and teaching commitments. \.\4ren I returned home, the mother reported that there had been little progress. As an afterthought, she mentioned the appearance of one new behavior, a special rocking motion. Madeline rvould sit cross-legged on the floor and rock herself with increasing momentum until she could thror,r, herself forward and catch herself urith her arms. \'\tren Nladeline arrirred for her next session i discorrered that the absence of progress u,as a misperception on the part of the mother. In fact, through this repetition of the rocking notion ser,eral changes had occurred. \&'hen Madeiine rocked herself there came a moment r'r,hen in order to rock forward she had to lift her pelvis off the floor. As her pelvis came fonvard and up off the floor, to pre\.ent herself from falling she not only used her arms but simultaneouslv arched her back and lifted her head quite high. She was now on the verge of being abie to bring her pelvis over her legs and stand on her hands and knees rvithout support. Her mother had not made the link betr,veen this action and the lessons that preceded it. Once again I worked rvith Madeline primarily in the kneeling position, trying to address the difficuity that remained in mobilizing the right side. In the kneeling position it seemed easier to make use of the possibilities of skeletal leverage offered by the easy access to the pelvis. I could norv explore the three cardinal planes of movement of the pelvis

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and follorv more precisell, horv this movement was being transmitted through the spine and ribs to the head. It seemed that the rocking movement of the pelvis fonvard and back r,vas much more available to N{adeline than the ability to rotate, translate, or laterally flex at the pelvis. I began to gently lift weight to come more solidly onto the opposite 1eg. She u,ould still need power in her lower back before she could actuallv lift her unrveighted leg by herself. The foilorving series of lessons involved creating the conditions for N1adeline to take that one small independent step r,r,hich would mark the beginning of locomotion. If you, the reader, rvill try to imagine what some of those conditions might be you r,vill join me in the exact moment r,r,here I flnd myself r,vith Madeline today. Madeline can now stand on her hands and knees. She can lift one hand or the other and can reach for something r,r,ithout falling. But she does not yet have the idea of crarvling fonvard. Madeline is norv 4.vears old. She is tall and she is hear,y. \A,/hen the parents flrst brought her to me they did not knoi,v if she rvouid ever rvalk. The question has norv become not if, but r,vhen. This question bears dor,vn on us all with a rveight that increases with the passage of time. And although this question must underlie all my thinking, all my strategies, I see at the same time how it can easily obscure my capacitl. to fully perceive Madeline. So I must come back to another question. \\hat is the next step for Madeline just nor,r,?

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Michael Purcell

Kathy:

A Case Study As practitioners, one of the most interesting things about our rvork is

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how attending to our orvn thoughts and feelings-our or,r,n seiveswhich we have learned to do so r,r,eil through our training, plays out against the process of the person \ve are n orking rvith. Moshe sometimes spoke of the range of experiences he could have rvhile rvorking, from insignificant to omnipotent. The foilowing story is not my story. It belongs to the woman I call Kathy. Ultimately it is about this wonderful r,vork Moshe led us torvard, but there is the irony. Because the work cannot exist r,vithout a practitioner and a student who both come to know themselves better, and are moved because of it. There are two lucky things about the rvay my work with Kathy started, and both stem from her coming to see me through my practice at a physician's ofHce. It was Iucky first because she would not have been able to afford a sufficient number of lessons on her own. Secondarily, for my part, the day she came through the door I kner,v I was likel1, to see her at least six times, so I was clearly going to have to get used to herl A woman in her mid-3o's, Kathy stood before me holding her neck stiffly turneci and tilted to the right. Her right shoulder rvas lifted up almost to the point of touching her inclined right ear. Her disheveled hair and clothing indicated to me someone rvho uras not particuiarly careful about appearances, but more striking r,r,ere the missing teethseverai molars and, most noticeably, one incisor right in front that appeared broken offand stained. I later learned it had been this rvay for some years. Also, my nose convinced me that she r,vas a smoker. I cannot deny my initial distaste. My quick flrst impression was that Kathy was someone rvho paid little attention to either qualiq, awareness or personal hygiene, and I admit that I rvas not particularly eager to rvork with her; but before long I realized that I was quite mistaken, though I still found her paradoxical. I first began to $asp this when she told me about the job that precipitated her current "injury" and presence in our office-cleaning hospital rooms. She pointed out that this requires diligence and an immaculate result, and she took her job quite seriously. Kathy's manner of speaking was also intriguing. Despite a marked southern Illinois twang, she spoke in a clipped, almost surgical

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way. She described her initial reason for seeing the doctor as a frozen

left shoulder. She continued quite succinctly: "...But that is better now. My main problem now is neck pain. Neck pain has alrvays been the main problem. I have had torticollis for over 20 years. In fact, my right sterno-cleido-mastoid muscle is nothing but solid flbroid tissue." I questioned her more closely on this, and she was convinced, based perhaps on a doctor's or physical therapist's comment some time before, and apparently her own observation, that she had torticollis and that the mentioned muscle was now nearly useless and irreversiblv damaged. With that, plus an evident scoliosis and a strong Iordosis, I n as nevertheless surprised to flnd with my hands that her lower rib cage \vas rather flexible. This was quite a contrast to the topmost ribs. At the end of this flrst, mostly exploratory iesson, neither of us f'elt there had been any clear improvement. I did not know whether Kathy truly had some form of torticollis (which, as I understand it, is usually accompanied by a compulsive tick, which I did not observe) nor r,vhether the muscle had indeed become fibroid, but these were not my primary concerns. As she left, what I found rnyself wondering was r.thether Kathy might be willing to move on from her current perception of herself, and whether I would be able to make any signilicant progress with her in that area. One of the things I had noticed about Kathy was that her feet did not make solid contact with the ground. Standing, she seemed to be uncomfortable, as if she would have liked to escape the floor, and it r,vas rare for her to sit with her t'eet flat on the ground. It seemed to me that we would get nowhere until she could experience her own weight. So in the second lesson I worked entirely with the soies of her feet and abducting each knee to bring the foot up to standing. This had a remarkable effect. Suddenly this woman with the apparently rigid view of her body experienced her feet, her contact with the ground and her rvay of r,valking quite differently, and the change was evident to see. After my impressions of the flrst lesson, I was taken by surprise by horv quickly she embraced the second. Also in the second lesson a new, significant piece of information came out. Kathy explained that at the age of r4 she had been a gymnast (something that never would have occurred to me). She r,vas highly motivated and was working with the full expectation that she would one dav go to the Olympics. Then unexpectedly she took a bad fali and landed on her knees. As she described it, she felt at that point the course of her nhole life changed. She began a downrvard spiral. Particularly discouraging was a lack of support from her mother, who she felt never beiieved in her passion ibr gymnastics. She married early to get away from home and sustained physical abuse from her husband. She attributed the condition of her neck to his holding her in a hammerIock and tu,isting her neck almost to the point of breaking it. Kathr,came for the third lesson reporting that the changes in walking and nelt, contact rvith the ground had remained with her. At this point I began to realize that Kathy had an excellent capacity for learning that simpl-v had not been effectively stimulated in certain areas for many years. Over the next fer,r, Iessons I inciuded substantial erM. With little

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prompting, she told me she was r,vorking on the lessons at home between sessions, which again conf,rmed to me that she indeed had a lot of motivation and drive to improve. At this point I began a series of lessons involr'ing the organization of Kathy's spine and rib cage in relation to the use of her arms and rotation of her head and neck. We did a lot of motions of hand or arm coming to the head in various rvays, and then manY.u'ariations on reaching in different directions. She got authorization to come for six r'r'eeks' About the eighth lesson Kathy reported that the "grinding between her shoulder blades" that had gone on for about sir months was gone and had not occurred all week. She described her nen' feeling as being like "a well-oiled spring." A stiffness and constant "gripping" that had earlier been apparent in her hands and forearms rvas also disappearing, and we did some work speciflcally with the urrists and digits. Kathy had come into the office as a workmen's compensation case, and at this time she was beginning to get vocational coutlseiing. As r'villing as she had been to work harder than rvas good for her at cieaning hospital rooms, she no.uv began to see not onlY advantages, but that there might actually be a future for her in another, lnore upscale career. About this same time lt'e began a series of lessons that errentuall-v Ied to r,vhat n ould be, for Kathv, a remarkable event. Up to this point most of the lessons, nrhile challenging to her in small ways, dicl not present any major difficulties. Kathlr responded with a rapidly improving self-image, demonstrated feeling of hope, and overall softening. Yet, while she suffered much less of the pain and difficulty now that she associated with her tr'visted neck and stiff shoulders, her basic postural configuration had not changed much. She still craned her neck forward and to the right, r,r'ith her right shoulder pulled torvard the right ear. With the fuller sense of Kathv's history and personality I now had, I decided that it r,vas n eli rvorth pushing the limits. One day she came in and I asked her to lie on her back. I took her left arm and started to bring her hand torvard the table next to her left ear. Initially the stiffness in her her hand, arm and shoulder made it seem all but impossible-and it took manv repetitions and variations for her to get the idea-but eventuall-v I rvas bringing her palm to the table. I rotated her hand in different directions, at the same time r,vorking to free the scapula and ribs, until she r,vas able to comfortably place her palm down with the flngertips under her left shoulder. The right shoulder began with even more rigidity, but melted much more quickly as Kathy's very intelligent brain calculated and recaiculated the possibilities being presented to her. \.&4ren she sat up, her shoulders r,r'ere quite different. Kathl'herself described them as "almost even for the flrst time in Years'" \\4ren she came in the following r,veek for her lesson, her shoulders lr'ere still relaxed and almost even. I proceeded to take her through the same lesson as anArM, and then had her arch up on each side and begin to pass her head under the gate of her arm. It \vas one of those things that she could not have conceived of doing, ]'et it made a tremendous difference. Kathy felt herself extending her back in a rvaY that she hadn't experienced in years. Her progress r,r,'as becoming quite amazing.l would have to describe it as exponential: the more she learned, the

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more she kner,v horv to learn. It began to be quite clear to me that despite her "condition," despite the "torticollis," despite the years of damage and the psvchosocial complexities, she was capable and deserving of finding much more for herself. To see this all unfold u,as verv exciting. There rvere several more lessons, both pr and ern'r, to mobilize each end of the spine in different directions, to reach dor,rm tolvard the heels rvhile lying supine ivith knees bent, to further organize differentiations betvveen the head and arms, to organize tnisting in lying, sitting and standing positions. We even worked on flve points, on the hands and knees, rolling the head along the ground in various directions and eventually sliding both head and opposite arm under the other elbow. With or without her "torticollis," Kathy somehor,v managed all of this quite nicely. One day, about three r,r,eeks after the "head under the gate" lesson, Kathy rvalked in and I almost didn't recognize her. lnstead of her usual tee-shirt and r,vorn cotton slacks with surfing dinosaurs all over them, she r,r,ore a business outflt. She had been to the dentist and her broken front tooth was repaired; and her hair, r'r,hich rvas usualllr as straight as string, was now coiffed with some bouncv curls. Working rt,ith the vocational counselor, Kathy had decided to become an accountant. In subsequent weeks Kathy let go again of her new dress code, but the tooth and the \varmer, easier confldence remained. Seeing the changes indicated bv her ne,,v decor, I also gained confldence to proceed r,r,ith a plan I had been developing. Hor,rrever, the week follor,ving, while Kathy rvas dressed a little more casually 3n6 I r,vas ready to take the plunge, she had also been to the dentist for some follorv-up w-ork that had her mouth numb and her body feeling stifffrom two hours in the dentist's chair. So I delayed my planned lesson and r,vorked very iightly along her ribs and scapuiae. Still, at the end of this lesson she could almost completel-v Iet go of the constriction in her right shoulder n ith her own intention. I said nothing of of the fibroid mass. The next r,r.eek I asked Kathy to lie on her back and begin herself to rvork lr,ith one pahn, then the other, on the ground near her ear. Before too long she r,r,as comfortably passing her head under the gate of her arm, and soon she had both palms on the ground and rvas arching up first on one side, then the other. As I led her through it, mostlv as Arl.{ and occasionally assisting her u.ith mv hands, certain things became clearer. We stopped, and I said to her, "Do vou see rvhere this is headed?" After a slight hesita-

tion, she said, "Yes, I think so." "Do vou feel ready?" "Yes." The hesitation was gone. First, with mv hand supporting her lightlr.under her back, she started to shift the weight onto the top of her head, roiling lightl-v up and down, letting her neck and upper back arch. After a ferv mornents I stepped away, and Kathy lifted herself up into a full five-point back bend. At the moment of accomplishment, a blush of full red color came into her lace. A thriving, determined young gymnast at 14, n ith great plans for the tuture, this r,vas something that she remembered u.e11, but had not done in z4 years! I could see from the wav she beamed nou, that Kathv r,vas on top of the world.

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She lvent out of the lesson telling everyone r,vhat she had done. She went home and shor,ved her husband. The following week her author-

ization from rtrorkmen's compensation ran out, and she came in for r,r,,hat it looked like might be her last lesson. She was stiil excited, and quite looking font ard to being productive in a new job. Probably what we did in this iesson is not of much import. Basically, I had her lie on her side and rvorked very quietlv on her spine, upper back and neck; and finally, supine, I lifted and moved her head. But Kathy r,vas far from quiet. Her voice rvas strong and clear-unlike anfhing I had heard from her before. Her face was vivid, retaining a new color. She talked throughout almost the entire lesson, mostly about her famil-v. At the end of the lesson I told Kathy that even if she could not get authorization again, she still might consider coming in occasionaily, and if necessary I rvould see her at a reduced fee. About trvo months later she reappeared. \.Vhat Kathy had done u,as to make a deal rvith the insurei:sl She r,vould agree to being released

"permanent and stationary" (what a terminologvl) if the-v rvould oni-v consent to her having one more six-week course of as

@ !}

t2

Feldenkrais lessons. If the success of the human species is to be measured b-v the abilitv to manipulate one's environment, here is one more example of the possibilities of human cleverness. I was delighted, of course. She was delighted. For me it rvas a great lesson about expectations. It rvas also a lesson about the constant baiancing act lve do in this work: We need to make judgments about rvhat is possible for a person, but without interfering r,vith the unfolding of possibilities that can be quite unexpected.

WTNTER 1993

TI{E FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO.

B

David Zemach-Bersin

An Interview with Ann Gerald: a student's sccount of learning

with Moshe in the earlyyears

nzn: Please tell us horvyou flrst met Moshe Feldenkrais. ac: In 1962, I saw an article in Parade N'lagazine about N{osl-re and r.tas very impressed r,vith it. I had contracted asthma nhen I was 12 -vears old. I lvas given Vaseline nose drops, rvhich rvas a standard procedure in those da-vs. At that time it wasn't knor,vn that putting \'-aseline clrops in your nose opens vour bronchi, and they r,vill never regain their shape. This is rvhat happened with allflve iobes of my lungs. As a result they r,vould become infected very easily, and I had a very narrow range of movement where I could breathe. During the r96o's I r,vas having severe breathing problems, and the doctors weren't helping me. I was breathing oni-v in the upper part of my chest. So, I decided to wT ite Moshe a letter. Of course I didn't have his address. I wrote to Moshe Feldenkrais, Tel-Aviv, Israel, and lo and behold I got an answer. I had told him r,vhat rny difficulties r,vere, and asked if he thought he could help me. He suggested that I come to Israel, so in rg63 I nrent for eight rveeks. He gave me treatments evenr single day, f,ve dalrs a r,r'eek. He didn't let me go to the group lessons (,{'urrareness Through Movement). I r'rras feeling very, r,ery improved so I returned home. But i had a very difficult r,vinter and decided to return to israel. I sublet my apartmerlt and planned on staying for a year. I r,vent by boat from New York to Haifa, called Nloshe rvhen i got there and started right alt a1, getting treatments every da-v. He r,'',,as softening my chest, and softening my ribs so that there r,rras space for me to breathe. After a r,r,hile, he allowed me to go to the ciasses. Moshe taught group iessons, three classes a day, in the late afternoon and early evening. On Fridav mornings he gave just tr,vo classes, and one of the classes was especially for teachers. These r'r,ere people lt'ho had come to the classes for manY years and were teaching classes themselves. Gabv Yaron rvas in this

Friday morning ciass. Gaby and I wouid go to a concert every once in a r,vhile, and I occasionaily rvould go to her house for a group lesson class. Gaby had classes of B-rz people. She rvas seriously interested in Moshe's r'vork and studied physiolog-v and anatomy. Later she became one of the group of i3 in Moshe's flrst and onlv training in Israel. This began after I left Israel. Mvriam Pfeffer was also very helpful to me and was part of NIoshe's first training. She had taken up 1,oga and f'elt that it had helped her con-

I first met Ann Gerald in 1979 when she came to me for Functional lntegration lessons. i knew that she had received many lessons from N4oshe, and that she did A,wareness T h ro u g h N4 ove m e nt /essons nearl,/ every day.

first impression was of her walkrng. She was an older woman, scmewhat

lv4y

hunched over, and yet as she walked, she lrterally gltded. There was no e,tidence of fallrng and recovering. Visually it was almost as if she was ice skatrng rather than walkrng. Each step of Ann's walk was so smooth and easy, such a pleasure to see, that for many years when our /essons were over and Ann had gone out my offrce door and into the street, ! would linger at the window simply to watch her as she so elegantly floated away. Of ccurse, Ann had serious physical problems and restrictions. Yet, it vvas clear that-as l\'4oshe used to say was using what she -she had in the best of all possible ways. Thts tnterview took place in Berkeley, California in 1992.

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siderabl1,. A friend took me to some yoga groups r,r,hich Myriam taught.

friend of Myriam's as lvell. Myriam.nvas curious as to r,vhat Feldenkrais r,vas all about. She made an appointment to have a personal lesson with Moshe just to get an idea of r,vhat it was like. Then she started going to the group lessotts. Sometimes after she had been to a class, she rvould come over to mv apartment and r,r,e would go over the lesson. Myriam had such a rvide interest in all kinds of health things. She brought a Yogi to Tel-Aviv, and he gave a class for about a week rvhich I also attended. During the group lessons I would often 1ie next to Gaby. She rvould help me a great deai, because Moshe taught the lessons in Hebrer,v. I onll,knew the names of the parts of the bod-v in Hebren'. I didn't understand anv of the verb actions-rvhether to push or pul1 or stretch.Moshe came to every single class. If the lesson r,t as from an earlier class and being played on a tape recorder, he r,l'ould rt atch evervbodY very carefullv to see r,rrhat they were doing and sometimes u'ould stop the tape and talk. I r,rrent to every single ,crlnl class rt hile I statred in Israel. I exercised for just one of them, and then I sat and u,atched and listened. N{oshe n ould repeat the lesson, ma1.be one other time that \veek, so I rvould see it again. But he altva\is had neu'and different lessons. I don't recall that NIoshe e\,er corrected anr,bodr'. It n'as very interesting to sit and r,r,atch a lesson, and see people doing completelr,'different movements. But he had e.ves like an eag1e, and if he thought too many people rveren't follorving the directions, he rvould stop, gir.'e ne'"lr instructions and then start in again. So he r,r'ould correct his ou'n teaching in order to make it more understandable. Moshe did not allorv anybody to take notes at the group classes. But he did allow me to, because he knew that I r,rrasn't going to stay in Israel, and that t only understood a very small portion. As the time r,vent on, I could understand more and more of r,vhat he rt as sa-ving because he u,ou1d repeat what he r,vanted people to do trvo or three times in different $ra\,s. I did get to rvhere I could understand maybe 70 per cent of the lessons. It rvas interesting that the people who attended the group Iessons came from all rvalks of iife. There were musicians rvho rvere used to holding their bodies in one position because of their instrument and needed to have adjusted bodies so as to be normal. There \vere manv dancers, there rvere young men from the army and there r,vere houseurir.es. Erren,body and anvbody came to these groups. I rvould salr there rt ere mavbe r+o or Eo people in each class. Moshe's individuai lessons u,ere given at a small apartment where his mother and brother lir.ed on Nachmani Street. His mother was a very gracious hostess. She had embroidered a pillou' that a friend had seen, and had said to her, "\\rith that imagination, you could probably paint." So, at the age of eighh'she got some oil paints, and some small canvasses. She took just one lesson, and then she rvent off on her own. The apartment rvas cor,ered rvith beautiful small paintings. She did the most imaginative, the most beautiful skies. The things that she painted rvere the places that she remembered from her viliage life in Poland and of her ner,r, life in Israel. I, being an artist, r,vould go to the various galleries and the shorvs and bring back things for her. We had a lot of n'onderful communication about art. Later, Moshe and his brother, Baruch, had a book of her paintings published in Israel. Then I became

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DZBi

Do you remember any of Moshe's friends, such as Aaron Nleskin? Benjamin Zemach in last issue of Feldenkrais intervielvrvith [See Iournai.l n c: Yes, N{oshe was very close friends with the actor Aaron Meskin. I rented a flat that the Meskins olvned-a small flat up on the roof of a similar building just dorvn the street from where Nloshe lived. If Moshe didn't have something special to do, he rvould alrvavs spend the evening up at the Meskins'. They lived on the second floor, and N'loshe -'r,ould alrvays climb the stairs two steps at a time. Meskin \vas a very, very important friend of Moshe's for many, manv vears. Moshe was very interested in theater. For example, if there was sonleone playing the part of a hunchback, tiris was very difficult to do night after night. Moshe would teach the actor hor,v to use the ioad, how to carry the body so that he wouldn't be thrown out of shape by having to pla-v this particular part. Moshe was verywell read, and he had an excellent library. Also, he had an interesting collection of paintings from the various u,e1l knon'n artists in Israel at the time. I remember Moshe taking singing lessons and he later deveioped different,tru lessons that had to do rvith the use of the voice. I remember that he also took piano lessons. He had r,vide, rt ide interests. He was a very vital man, and he could be very chartnit-tg, but he could also be very rambunctious.

: You said you went to Israel intending to sta-v for stayed much longer.

ozs

a

year, but You

ac:

I decided that a\,\,'areness r,t as something that \,vas very difficult to attain. That you could think about it, but to make it a part of You is ven/, very difficult. So I decided that I rvould stav on, and I staved for rveli over

7

tu/o years.

: In your cumulative sta-vs in Israel, vou must har.e r eceived over individual treatments from Moshe. This is obviouslt, more than soo people. I rvonder if you have any Inenlories of n-hat r-ou felt of most Moshe's thinking.

ozn

ac:

There rvere occasions r,vhen N4oshe did tl-rings that u,ere particr-rlarly beneflcial for me. Horvever, mlr general impression is that he r,r,ould be thinking about something, and I believe that he r,r,ould then do the same thing with practically everybody that he sar,r, that day. I never talked to him about why he did that or lvhat the results r,r'ere. Sometimes he would repeat things rvith me that he had done before. I do know that in the arna classes-of course \ve never used the rvord 'ernr' then, they rvere just group lessons-there were lessons rvhich he occasionally repeated. The one he repeated more than anvthing else was the pelvic clock movements. Later on he developed many variations of the clock; in fact, I believe that it was one of the most important group lessons to him.

ozs: Ho\,v did you reconnect r'vith Moshe when he began to teach in the United States? AG: That is a very curious story.

I was living in Walnut Creek (a suburban tou,n 3o miies from San Francisco) at that time. I never, ever turned on the radio in the morning. But one morning in rgTz I did, and rvithin minutes there rvas an announcement that the next guest on the talk

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THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 8

showwould be Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. I was dumbfounded. I was able to leave a message for him, and he called to invite me to Stanley Keleman's house. Moshe had been teaching at Esaien for over a month and was exhausted because the participants had kept him up day and night, picking his brain. He came again in rg73 and called me when he arrived. He was giving a month-long ArM workshop to a large group at the Universitv in Berkelev. I rvent to some of the classes and got individuai lessons from N{oshe and Yochanan R\.werant. I remember that Will Schutz, Iudith Stranskl, and Bob Knighton were there. There was also an aru class in the evenings, and I remember that vou were there, David. \.{hen Moshe started his flrst U.S. training program in t975 in San Francisco, I would invite him and Yochanan, Gaby and Mia for dinner at my home every summer. Moshe was so pleased to come. \\4ren he came to my house, he could just relax and forget about er.,erything else. He could just enjoy the food, and not be bothered taiking. There is no question that Moshe helped me very much. I doubt that I'd be alive today if it weren't for him. He made such a change in my life, it's reall-v very extraordinary.

In the Memory of David Moses rg56 - rggz

will always remember you for your vision and vitality Thank you for your selfless and unfailing generosily to the Feldenkrais community.

We

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THE FELDENKRAIS JoURNAL No.

B

This ts a transcription af a conversatron between

Heinz von Foerster, Ph.D. and ll4oshe Feldenkrais, D Sc. that toak place when Dr. von Foerster was invited to address the San Francisco FPTP in the summer of 1977. The traintng pragram was in tts thtrd year at the ttme af this conversation. Thts tra n script was o rtg nal ly comprled and edited 4,. uLt||a n^--;- Lat ^ri and uy Lynn Sutherland t

A CONVERSATION: Heinz uon Foerster & Moshe Feldenkrais 1977

Heinz von Foerster was born in Vienna in 191 1 . He completed his Ph.D. in Physics and after the Second Woild War moved to the United States with his family to join the staff of the Department of Electical Engineering at the University of lllinois in Urbana. Dr. von Foerster is considered one of the founders of the field of cybernetics and systemic thinking. He is a constructivi st, cybe rn eti c i a n, math e m ati ci a n, phys i c i st and philosopher who has had a pro'found impact on

Moshe Feldenkrais: Do I see Prof. Heinz von Foerster? Would you piease come in. Bv the lrralz, here rve have a distinguished guest whom we rvelcome with great pleasure. I have had a close relationship with you for manyliears. I am a close fan of \Arittgenstein. He has something

to do with -vou. Heinz von Foerster: Do you knor'v him? vr

p: No, I am not a personal friend of his. I knorv him from his books

and I knor,v several people r,r,ho worked \,\.ith him. Would vou mind watching us for a few seconds?lThere is an eru in progress, Eds.] Then r,t e will try to beneflt from your wisdom. Do any of you mind r,vhile I take a few seconds to explain to Heinz rvhat we do? I don't want him to be completelv out of gear. We are near the end of our training. Roughly speaking r,r,e think of the pelvis as .... If you want to improve, you must ciear the ground upon which you stand. It means that rvith the most elementary thing, you need a greater inteliigence and understanding than for any complicated thing you can

the scientific conception

of "objectivity."

He

collaborated over the years in his research

with A/largaret lVlead, Gregory Bateson,

Humberto A/laturana, Francisco Varela and Aloshe's close

friend Noa Eshkol. E)

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do. If the basis is improved, then vour structure is safe, more piiable,

more flexible. Here lve are trying to improrre the movement of the head. We girre the example that the peh,,is has all tire strong muscles of the body. It has the gluteal, the quaciriceps and the abdominal muscles. Any of the strong muscles are in the pelrris. Certainlr,'1,ou can sa-v that any of the strong movement rvhich carries the bodv depends upon the pelvis. That means it is the power station. This pon er station does not knor,v what to do. The head, r,vhich has all the teleceptors .... Ail the things rvhich connect us to the outside rvorld, the social environment, and to other people must be done bv turning the head. Therefore, the rvay the head moves and rvorks around the vertical, the r'vay we talk, the wav we move, and the way we smile is a ciear indication of the way lve are i,vired in frorn childhood to nor,v. Any improvement in that will improve our abilitv to cope with ourselves and the outside rvorld. Betr,veen those twolve liken the thing to a submarine and a periscope. The power station, the pelvis, is the submarine and the periscope, the head, which has a long connecting rod, Iooks at the rvorid, looks around, and tells the station rvhat to do and rvhere to direct the por,t er. If that scanning der,ice gives false directions or distorts the thing bv its on n limitations, then it directs the pelr.is to do things rvhich he doesn't knon. There is a connecting rod bett'r,een the tlvo. This means the thorar and the spine. The spinal chord and the musculature will be organized to do futile sorts of things instead of doing the best for the nenrolls sYstem. So, there \ve are. Nou, ure are doing the movement of the head. We have said that the organization of the heads in this room is a little bit better than the average. In fact, you can see.... I sayr,r,e cannot do anything unless rve knor,r, rvhat we do. if rve know rvhat r,ve do, we can do r,vhat r,ve r,r''ant. Before you can correct an error, .vou must first knorv tlie error. Othenvise, if I find there is sornethitrg l\rrong r,r,ith me r,.,.hich I rvant to correct, t make another error instead of correcting the original one. Correcting an error is impossible. The compulsion must be eliminated so the error doesn't occur again. It is not a cluestion of eliminating the error. It is a question of learning. Relearning a t1-ring in order to make it errorless. That is our job. By the way, that is a

lost cause. fFrom the ,qrr,r] : Nor,v lve haven't broken anv arms. Ali

r,r,'e

have done

is pay attention to what we are doing. We knor,v rvhat rve are doing. The change this produces in the nervous sYstem rnakes you learn in a way r,vhich is the onl-y learning. That means discover, r,r'ithin the things you are familiar r,r,itir, reactions rvhich you did not knor,l, were included. it is like discovering vou can describe a circle around a triangle. That is discoverv. That is the only way of thinking that in r,vhat rve do, there is suddenly a new element, neu, insight, ner,r, abilit1, to do. So You can learn by improving a minor insignifrcant thing in vour life. By doing that, our

brain r,vorks better and organizes itself better. Do vou knor,r, r,vhv it organizes itself better? In our intentional cortex, there are r,r,ired-in inhibitions and overexcitations. There are patterns w'hich become fixed bri habits of thought, habits of organization, habits of actions. These elements are not free to make anY change or any reorganization. That means the thinking is iimited. Our ability to do is limited.

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It isn't that we don't have a brain. It is because rve have rvired in that brain in such a way that it is not free to learn a new thing. That means learning something in the direction of ourselves, and changing the r'",ay we act in the outside world. [And later] : I will show you something extraordinary. Do vou remember how much we had to work to get many of you to roll the head? Originally, how many of you understood rvhat it meant to ro11 the head between the hands? See here is a guest who has never been here before. See hol,r, he roiis the head. That is why he is Heinz von Foerster. Do you know that others lvill do almost everyrthing except rolling the head? I rvill show you r,r,hat

they do. First of all, they will hold the head, and carry the arms as they always do r,vhen shaving. They turn with the pelvis, and hold the head r,vith the hands. It took us weeks to explain what rolling really meant. Rolling means that the point of contact changes place on both hands. Do _vou think they understood that? Do you know r,vhat they do aftern ards? They do this: lMoshe mimes some of the patterns] . There are some here who did it for weeks. Then, we showed them that the difficultywas our normal belief that the hands and the head must move in the same direction all the time. In reading, in scratching ourselves, in putting on our shoes, rve normaliy move our head and hands together. Therefore, out of the seventy or so muscles of the head and shoulders, lve know onlv one pattern" Are you right-handed? Yes, so rvhen I Iook to the left, my head goes together. There isn't any difficulty, as this is the normal use of self. The difficulty comes r,vhen you put that damn hand here and need to put the head to the left. At that point, the head moves to the left and the arm goes to the right. Put the hand behind-take ar,rrav the right hand and do it lr,ith the Ieft only. Can you see that the head moves in the direction opposite the direction of the arm? That is too much for people to stomach. They cannot do it. The hands begin to....This is the difficulty. They are unable to do that. It is not the habitual thing. They cannot think a thing in their own body. That is r,vhat we are trying to do so we can get there in our or,rm body. Nor,r, everyone can do that. We can differentiate betrveen three things: We can: a Slide the hands and do nothing with the head.

s c

Move the head r,vith the hands. Nlove the head opposite the direction of the hands.

u r: There isn't any need to tell you how pleased \ve are to have Heinz von Foerster here. No doubt we will learn something from him. Without further notice, will 1,ou please give us vour wisdom?

uvr: First of all, let me return the compliment. I r,r,as the first to receive Vour r,visdom when I rvas allor,r,.ed to lie flat on the mat, hold my head n ith the right hand, and lift it up rvith only the movement of my arm alone. My head did not mobilize itself. The reason I think the experience of these movements is so important.... I r,r,ill give you in a couple of reports lvhich I am allor,ved to give

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from scientiflc insights gained over the last couple of years. They all converge to a Feldenkraisian philosophy rvhich you are all extraordinarily familiar with-not onl-v familiar with, but experiencing it and also doing it. This is one of the essential features rvith -which I can give you a brief report. Essentially rvhat I am telling you, you all knorv. The onlv thing rvhich mav be different is the r,vav I sa-v it. It rvili onl-v be the form and not the content which mav be different. It may be another u'ay of looking at the thing. Before I go on, rnaking a reinforcement of sorne of the Feldenkraisian thoughts or experiences you mav have had, let me give )rou one or t\\ro reinforcing remarks about the movie vou have just seen. [A movie on the brain had been shorvn.l One thing rvhich I think is signiflcant, ,which mav not be perceived r,vith full signiflcance, is the absence of comments. It is the absence of something rvhich I think is important. It is the absence of references. It is the absence of certain functions which are usually associated with certain structures of the brain. Do vou remember, we saw extraordinarilv interesting anatomical structures of the brain with many of the identiflable substructures. In almost no case did the speaker sa-v, "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the seat of rhis and seat of that. Here you see, and here You hear. Here you do that. " He had only one lapse into that style of speech. That'n'r'as u'hen he identi{ied a particular structure as the seat of feelings and emotions" I am not naming that structure, because othenrrise -vou rviil once again connect it. The concept of identifying certain structures with certain functions is an old game. I think it nras inrrented by a German phrenologist during the late eighteen hundreds. He identifled certain humps and bumps on the skull r,r,ith certain functions. I recail distinctly that he called these particuiar lumps and bumps over here references for extraordinan'skill in mathematics. Another example is a particular knob on the brain which indicated your propensity to have love for chiidren. i first heard about phrenologv in high school. In high school, r've had onlv one girl. \l\hen we heard the love of children nras sitting here, everyone r'rras trying to feel, on her head, the bump. She did not have an1' bump at all. We thought there must be something tbul about this phrenolog.v concept. I rvould like to add one poit-rt about this association of function and structllre. It is an artiflce. It is an inr.ention. It is an interpretation r'r'hich is not rt artanted. It is usuallv rnade because if you remove a particular structure, then a certain function rvill not appear. Therefore, if this certain function has not been handled by that individual lt'ho has lost a specific structure in the brain, then it is usualll' associated r'r'ith this structure that has been lost. rr p: Let me add one little thing. Sometimes n'hen \.ou take off a structure and something disappears, there is something eise rvhich appears because that structure was remor.'ed. nvE: Exactly. Becalise a certain strllcture has been remot'ed, the r,vhole svstem is different. The point that You har,e changed it is that this particula.r place remor,ed something. One ol the most beautiful arguments against this association betrveen structure and tlncticln lr'as given bv a neurophysiologist r,vho died lr,-hen he r,vas very voung. lle pointed out that this !\ras nonsense. It is quite obvious holv rvrong this is because

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I may claim that stereoscopic vision is located in the right eye-that means that r've see depth; if someone loses the right eve, he does not see stereoscopic vision. This is exactly the same argument which is given rvith the loss of the function. It is different. You have a different brain. It may react in a different rvay. ox. This was a certain point. Briefly, not giving association of certain functions to certain structures in the brain, I thought, n as a significant aspect of the fllm. Another item I thought was an interesting point about the fiim. You can alrvays judge the level of a science if it makes us cognizant of differences. In the flrst stage of a scientiflc inquiry, scientists are alr,vays elated by things which are the same. First anatomists would say, "Wor,v, everybody has a single nose. There is one nose. There is one Iiver and one heart. " You flnd the stage where we recognize that r,ve are all alike. Then you can go a little further. They say, "We11, we are a1lalike, then lve can make this operation and that operation." Apparentlv things never are that simple. Eventualiv, they begin to make references to horr,, different indir,idual brains are. They sav the differences in the brains are as different as t1leir physiogomies. \,\hich I thought was a very nice....

r: Differences of our brains are as different as mv hands are different than vour hands.

na

nvp:

Exactl)-. I think the recognition of differences is one of the reallv nice signs that the anatomv of the brain has reached a level where differences are recognized. These are the two poirlts which I rvanted to make. The other things \rou can see are beautiful. Let me nou, srn",itch to the other things. Let me have an admiratiorr speech for Feldenkraisian phiiosophy. Again, r,r.hatever I ma'1, s3y yorl alreadv kno'nr,,. The cnly thing rvhich may be new is the rvay I am stating it. I think a most crucial insight, r,vhich is coming to

the fore rr.itirin the last couple vears of scientiflc inquiry by a synthesis of various scientiflc disciplines.... These mav har.e been galloping for vears and years or for decades and decades in their or,vn lonelv little tracks. For example, linguistic philosophv, ethology, mathematic s, neurop hr,siolo g1', physics, etc. ; everyb o d-v ( ) r,-as busv riding on his o-"vn horse r,vith his own track. In the last couple of vears, maybe even the last decade, there have emerged people who have rvanted to look or,er and see rvhat r,vas happening in the other tracks. They wanted to knor,r,rvhat the other chaps r,r,,ere doing. Graduail-v, people \vere saving, "I could uncierstand this, if t understand that first." Suddenly, a convergence, a synthesis of some scientiflc thought emerged. 81, a cooperative effort, more \'vas understood bv integration than if vou recite the insights from the individuals'knowledge. More and more, something very interesting has emerged. Very briefly, I rvould like to put this forth, even if it seems crazy. As my friend

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and neurophysiologist, Francisco Varela, has put it, "We are essentiallY not only seeing with the eyes. We see essentially lvith our legs. " He is still a professor of neurophysiology in Chile and is remarkable. No'"v I rvill tell you how this ties into our Feidenkraisian philosophy. It started rvhen.... If one really Iooks into the development of the shift of perceptual competence-it is not really going directly into the sensors, but it is going into the motor s-Ystem. It started with a paper by Henri Poincar6. He r'vas a French mathematician/philosopher. He published, in rBg5, a paper in an obscure journal cailed, Reuue de Mdtaphystque et de L[orale. In English, it lvas a journal concerned with ethics or morals. The title of the paper r,r'as, "Space and Geometry." It rvas a very short paper of about tulo or three pages. In these two or three pages, Poincar6 proved, unambiguously, that it nould be impossible to perceir.e depth of space (r,ve mav call it three-dimensional perception or depth perception)-perception of space rt'ould be impossible if -"t e rt ere to have sensors, eyes, only. If rve rt ould have eYes onlY, rve rvould be principailv unable to perceir,'e depth of space. Hou. do r.",e do that [perceive depthl? It is not the eyes alone. It is that \ve can voluntarily move our body in order to get a change of visual sensation. B-v the very change of visual sensation, which we register when we move the locality of our bod1,, the notion of depth of space emerges. If lve are unable to move, there r,vould be no motor system. If we rvere not able to control the movement of our motor svstem, r,ve would not be able to perceive the sensation, or construct a three dimensional space. We all experience this phenomenon. Poincar6 presented us rvith a littie philosophical curly-que and said, "My friends You need motion in order to perceive." This rvas 1895. It r,r,as buried \,vithin this French Journal. I believe this was the source of the notion that we need motor activity in order to make perception or sensation.

Another branch of that thought, rvhich rvas independent of Poincar6's observation, was made by Piaget. I think most of you are farniliar with Piaget. I want you to pay particular attention to Piaget's studies with small children. He obsen ed that notions of objects, particularly the notion of the constancy of an object, could not be acquired b1, a child unless the child r,vas allowed to manipulate the object under consideration. Bv the sensonr-motor interaction, i.e., taking a ball and putting it in the mouth, tasting it, tossing it, shaking it-many, many times to the annovance of the parents-that is the w-av you learn rvhat the thing is. \\hen you toss it up and out of the crib, you learn what that is. Piaget made oodles of experiments. F{e experimented r,vith the age and exposure of the child to particular obiects. Eventualllr, a constancy about objects r,vill arise in one's orvn development. The notion of object constancy is not as triviai as it flrst appears. You may immediately move from anlthing rvhich we may call a constant geometric object-a ball or a cube-to an amoeba. We can recognize this as an amoeba and knorv that it moves like this. There is nothing constant about an amoeba. Hotrrever, there is something constant in an amoeba. Othenvise, rve r,vould not know to call it an amoeba. \\4rat is constant about it? Its volume remains constant. It is made out of protoplasm. \\rhenever the amoeba mo\res like this, it sends out a pseudopod, and rnarches around. We recognize it as an amoeba. You may even begin to recognize it by the number of nuclei.

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The notion of object constancy is not a trivial one. Moreover, if you really come to think of it, you r,vill recognize that if you tryto grasp.... See the Feldenkraisian notion? You must have a motor action in order to understand, to grasp. Everyone can recogr-rize this ball point pen. lf you look at this, vou knolr, it is always this r,rrav. Consider the follorving thing. The wayyou see this pen is the wayvou have never seen before. My statement, "that you have never seen that before," is a statement that the projection of this pen onto vour retina, in this particuiar position I am holding it, with this particular color scheme, rvith this particular silver knob, etc.-all these particular things, sitting on your retina-has ner,er hit )rour retina before. The probabilitv that it er,er did is absolutelr-so small, it mav be eons before it i,vould e\-er recur. Yet, even though you have never seen it before, ilI rvere to shorvyol this pen, you

I

mav think "Oh, he has one of those pens." Ladies and gentlemen, this thing here you call, being a constant object, a pen. Yet, r-ou never see it to be the same. Again, in order to extend Poincare's obsen ation, you would never reaiize it is the same thing il r or-r \\-ere not allon ed to handle it, to rnanipulate it, to work with

it, to get

a

moror reeducation of it.

nr r : Do \ ou see rne blushing? We have been talking about this for months.

nvr: \h-poir-rt has been that this would

be familiar, and I am only

changing the contert. I u,ould like to drawyour attention to something else. For the r-noment, 1et us call this an object. If you translated that object into German, then in German it is called Gegenstand. If translated ir-rto English the u,ord would rnean "stand against." Gegenstancl is something rvhich stands against you. It is something r,r,hich objects to yollr rnovements. Therefore, you call it an object. You have an "object" r,r,henever vour mo\.ements are "objected to" being carried out in the manner vou rlanted to do it. See, this is an "object" because it "objects

to" mymotion. If the degrees of freedom of your actions are constrained.... But, a constraint can onh. be sensed r,vhen you move. If it just sits there, vou can't sense that it is there and will limit your mo\rements. You mor.e and risk the interaction r,vith w.hatever is there. Whater.er is there objects to \-ou1' movernents by further interaction-computing. I n i11 no\\r use " computing" as an interaction rvhich takes place in the brain. I can justifi, that term "computation" in a moment. I do not mean numbers. You mav compute some type of invariance, some lype of constanc)'. You rna\, name this constant or restraint on freedom by the sameness n ith r'r,hich vour actions are reduced. Then vou have given a name to something rvhich is invariant in one wa.v or the other. That means you name this or that, in spite of the fact that it mav have diflerent size or shapes. It is an invariant in the sense that you become dexterous with it. See either rvith the right hand or the left hand. Therefore, lrou can handle it, or grasp it, or manipulate it, or understand it. You knor'v rvhat happens r,t hen you do this, or that, or 23

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when you write on a sheet of paper. The ink stops coming out of the pen, you throrv it ar,va-v. The computed invariants are in the experience of constant flow and change, which can only be computed rt ith it or its interaction r,vith yourself.... For example, this is what I experienced nrhen I lay here on the floor. That is'n'hy I immediatelv started to participate. That is a way of knowing yourself. If you are doing tu,o things rvhich have been stressed again and again. You are doing something and rvatching r,vhat vou do. In some cases, you may do things merelv bv u'atching yourself. Watching, itself, is an action. Right nou,, vou engage vour rvhole bod-v into a rvatching operation. This is an actir.ity n'hich you carry through. Actually, I rvas fascinated -,vhen Feldenkrais said, "Turn your head and see the difference betrveen left and right." There suddenlY rvere two universes. There r,vas the left universe and the right universe. \A4ren I suddenly started to iift my head with only my arm lifting the head, suddenly, I had a head which rvas quite heav-v. I never thought that before. \&Ihen Moshe suggested I should roll my head, I already had my experience of knorving there was something sitting up there much heavier than I was usually aware of. It could be rolled around as if it were resting on a little rod. So rny rolling around wasn't a problem at all. From the preliminary exercises, I knew what he meant by rolling the head.

r: Just a minor thing. Put your chin in the hand. As gently as vou can, move the head as if it ivas a precious thing. To us it is a precious thing. To vou, it mav not be precious. N{orre it a littie right and left, up and do\tn, just as if it n as a ptecious thing. Then vou realize how much HvF can multiph, and become a bigger, nicer, better HvF. Then, you can see rvhere parts of the u'iring still remain, in spite of our intelligence having transgressed. Just as vou iurpror-e vollr reading by the disassociation of r,vords from seeing, rthich enables voll to read ten times as fast. \&'hile you are doing that, you can read ten times as fast.

nr

rrvp: Thank you very much. I feel fantastic. You move vour head r'r,ith the help of vour hands. Let me give you a footnote to what you just said-a clinical observation which I think is a very interesting observation. In World War I, there were many lesions which r,vere caused by pro jectiles entering the skull in the parietal region. If they penetrated

the brain, and in some cases the patient u'asn't dlring from the injuries, these injuries healed very fast. Smali rvounds can be taken care of relatively fasr. The\,ma\,even co\rer the opening rvith a little metal plate. Patients, with clear cut injuries to the brain, lvould be dismissed from the hospital after a month or so. Then I discovered some ven' interesting cases rt hen patients had injuries to the occipital region. This is a big region over here. These were cases rthere there r't,ere clear entrances and exits to the lr,ound. The projectiles rvould pass through the brain and leave a ciear hole so healing could take piace. After the patients went home, after three months, the.v shorved signs of body disorganization. Theyrvould have difficulties moving the hands and arms. For example, they couicl not rvrite easily. In order to write, they might have to lift the right hand onto the table with the help of the ieft hand. Or, rvhen thev rvalked, thev might have to pull the right leg behind themselves. Of course, these people returned to the hospital and rvere investigated. No one couid find anfihing rvrong rvith the motor svstem. Nl the

24

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THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 8

reflexes \vould test out, there wasn't any atrophy of the muscles, etc. No one kner,- u,hat was going on. One of these patients came in and there was a young medic, who offered him a cigarette. The patient replied, "\\hat?" The medic repeated the request in a louder tone of voice. The patient did not respond to that, but flnaIly responded to the next request. [\,\4ren offered the cigarette in a different location, the patient r,vas able to see it. Ed.l Perhaps the patient does not see normaily. The patient was referred back to the ophthalmologyward. This man had a complete loss of central vision with onl1, a small amount of peripheral vision remaining. It meant he did not see anlthing which was in the center of his visual fleld. He only saw things that were in the periphery. This means he could not see his arm. Therefore, he could not move it. Absence of central vision was not noticed. The question was raised. How could this man, rvho could not see, actually not knor,v that he could not see? That is a deflciencvwhich we all, permanently, suffer from. We do not see that we do not see. It may be taken as a metaphor.

u

r:

We say it that we do not knor,v n,hat

r,r,e

do not knorv,

nvp: However, if you know that, vou, at least, knorv a iittle bit. If vou knowvou don't see you have, at least, made tremendous progress. I u,i1l tell you the therapy. At firsr, the people in Innsbruck did not knor,rr r,r,,hat to do with these people. Eventualiy the-v came up rvith a verv elegant solution. The elegant solution was to blindfold patients rvith this central vision loss. Blindfold them for a month. \.Vhen you are closing your eves and you don't see an),thing-of course, immediatelyvou take control of your proprioceptive system. You know exactly which posture Vou are in when you close your eves. You know if your arm is up or lrour eve is down. That means you are re-exercising your internal notion of vour body, posture and position. You are readv to receive the signals of the body which are constantly coming in, but vou don't usually pa_y attention to them. Here, you pay attention to them, and vou just become aware that you are standing on a board. After a month or so, these peopie are completelr- in control of tl-re signals from their proprioceptive sYstem. Thev can n alk around. The1, have a reliance on their motor svstem and their proprioceptive apparatus - this system tells them about the tension in their body and r,vhere it is in space. Once these people har-e learned Io use their body rvithout visual cues, the blindfolds are removed. I wanted to give this as a little footnote to vour observation. \Vhat you are doing here is that you become more and more a\,\rare of visual perception. You are not only doing this as a metaphor. you are extending your vision by knowing hor,v to rvalk, or horv to lie dorvn. I rvould like to give another experiment because these are all interesting things which fall preciseiy into vour concepts. These are experiments r,vhich had been made by a group of experimental psl,cfuologists from lnnsbruck. The man's name is Kohler. Kohler, himself, is a great skier and a great mountaineer. lVhen he did these experiments ire rvas a \rery young man of thirty to thirty-five. He convinced some of his graduate students to \vear optically distorting goggles and spectacles. These goggles u,ould r,,erv badiy distort visual perceptions. For example, they r,r,ould expand sight in the upper direction or sidewalrs, or reverse the visual fleld one-hundred-eighty degrees, etc. 25

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B

In the last case, it meant that whatever students were wearing the goggles saw the lvorid from an upside-down perspective. It was very queer. The flrst time you put these goggles on, you are absolutely lost. They had to be guided through the room, carried dorvn the stairs, etc. They were not sllpposed to take the goggles offfor a month or tu'o. The students had to sleep rvith the goggles, brush teeth with the goggles, eat with the goggies, etc. The result of the experiment is interesting. These people, once thev become a iittie bit used to r,vearing the goggles, flnd that the universe rvhich is n ithin reach of their arms starts to appear right side up, even though the rest of the universe is still upside down. Those things they could reach, such as a chair they sat on, became right side up. As I look at myself, I am right side up. If I look at vou, you are upside down. After three or four da1's, the immediate vicinity becomes righted. Later, as people walk into rooms, they find that the rooms slorvly begin to appear right side up. Slowly, lamps and pictures appear to be right side up. The longer the students r,vore the goggles, things in their further distance became right side up. That means, rvithin your motor interaction r'r,rth your correlation rt ith sensation, vou get more and more learned correlations betrveen the sensation and the ntotor actions. It is the correlation betn een the motor actir''iW and the sensation that is important. It has nothing to do n'ith if something is actually right side up or not. tt is irr rr hich \\ av can r ou correlate vour experiences coming through r.arious senson: modalities that 1'ou identif"v the universe around you. The fascinating thing from this chap r,t as the report rvhere he bicycled to the institute. He could not tell an1'difference. Even rvhile wearing the goggles, ever\,thing appeared right side up. It was November, and the flrst snowr,vas coming dolvn. The student could not believe it. The snor,v was going up. He could not believe it. He ran dor,vn the stairs and held out his arms. He had the paim uprvards and dorvnr,t'ard. After he felt the snow on his upturned palms, the snorvrvas coming dorvn normallv. This means he had to have a sensorimotor experience to correct his perception of the snort. The falling of the snou, must be correlated nith al1 the other erperiences. I also u'anted to bring this thing about-to loosen one's attachment to purelv sensory experiences. Sensory experience needs motor actir,'ity for its interpretation. NIotor activitv needs senson'experience for its interpretation. \Vhat vou have here, and r'r,hat I u'ould like to conclude with, is considered in scientific circles an anathema. This is a circular proof or a circular causality. Sensation interpreted by motor actirdtv and motor actirdry interpreted bv sensation. People call that type of argument omniscient tautology. I call it auotopoeisis. I think it is a creatir.e circle u,hich allows us to compute or perceive that q,pe of universe \ Ie, as individuals, want to exist' Thankyou for having me.

nrr: You don't knorv how r,r,'ell you served me. I am very glad to hear, coming from other quarters, the same ideas. Once, when I listened to a tape recording of rvhat I said, I said great minds think alike. I only r,vant to give some minor details about rvhat n'e did, and compiement r,vhat you said. 26

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\\4ren vou look in a mirror, 1,our left is on the right and t our right is on the left. In front of me, the left and the right have changed. We are alrvavs used to talking to others-we are used to seeing the right on my personal ieft as lve talk directiv to another. So, i look in the mirror and see myself as someone else. I flnd my right and left har,e changed. Some people think it is the mirror. I tell them it is all right. Whv do vou still have your head up and the legs dor,vn? \\4ry didn't you inverr that also? Or maybe lie dor,r,n and have a look. In the lying position, the arms should not change because obviously the head and the legs do not change. Obviously, this inconsistencv is not in the mirror. It shor,vs us how we are '"r,ired in. We are rvired in to see right and left. It is like we are a computer with one card, and rve can't take it out. Another thing lrrhich is most important is the sensory and motor together. I say that the object, the fl,pe of thing r.ou said ure learn, the constancy of the shape... . For example, if I look at a box of cigarettes, it does not become smaller if I mor.e it further or nearer. It keeps its shape and I recognize it. That has nothing to do rvith the e\.es and rvhat I see. It has to do with my habitual interpretation of the hand-sensory appreciation of the space, form and size. Obviously, my eyes see an object getting smaller and smaller. Yet, I knor,r, that a cigarette lying there with an object I don't knor,l,, enables me to adjust the size of the unknown box. If I lvould trr,. to find out about those things I cannot reach rvith my hands, I would not be able to maintain the constancl, of the shape or the form. Nort, I flnd you can never touch the moon or the sun. Therefore, my opinion of the size of the sun depends upon how high the sun is. I believe that if r,ve could take the moon in our hands, lve would think it was the same size regardless of how high in the sky it rvas. It shorvs vou that if you flnd the constancy.... Actually, I believe that consciousness, the real object of consciousness-we say states of consciousness, rvhich means that our present consciousness is only one of many other states. The one that rve maintain is the one rvhich maintains constancv of shapes and form by those things which we can touch. That is one of the major objects of consciousness. It is maintaining the constancy of shape and form so we can live in this r,r,orld r,r,ith a changing, moving body, mor.ing ears, moving eyes, etc. This is one of the modalities of consciousness. That is good enough. We have talked about it for years. It is onl-v nice to hear that some peopie have a way of looking at it that is so extraordinary. I told you [the students] about that. \Vhile we \vere talking and teaching it, I told vou there are at least another hundred people investigating this from another angle. They have the same sort of insight. \\hen a culture evolves and something is ner,v, it is impossible that human brains are so different from one another (even though the brains are different), that important developments do not occur in ten, hundred, thousand places at this moment.

nvp: I nould like to add a feu,points to your

details. The concept of

a closure, a sensory motor closure... . That means the interpretation which I just gar.e, or 1.ou just commented upon, rvhere you are reaily

training people to become a\vare of their or,rrn activities and allow closure to take place, is significant. it is more signilicant than it appears on the surface. The signi{icance I think it has, or at ieast some ethologists r,rrho are investigating the question of closure think, is the question of regaining 27

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THE FELDENKRAIS IOURNAL NO. 8

autonomy. Autonomy is regained. That means if you are handling yourself and not being handled by anlrong else, if you are generating the universe by vour choice through the sensory motor interaction.

lr r: You don't harre any right to use those lvords. They are our words. Unless you knoww'hat you are doing, -vou don't have any choice. If you don't have choice, if you can't do the same thing in at least trvo different ways, you are a machine. If you can't differentiate the movement, if You have an alternative rvav of doing something, vou restore human dignitl' to r,vhat it could be. Is there anvone r'r,ho n ould like to ask a question about something you did not understand up to nor'r'? That is not a shame to admit. If -vou ask Dr. von Foerster things rvhich he doesn't understand, he r,vill adrnit there are man\r things he doesn't knor,v. I am also behind him. I have many things I would like to knorv the ans\{er to. Does anyone have a silly question? Usually, the non-sillY questions have alreadv been ansr,vered. Clever questions are usuaiiy r,vritten in the books.

nvr:

Exactly. There aren't sill-v questions. There are only sillv answers.

Class: You rvere mentioning the concept of closure. Is that related to the

Gestalt r.vork?

ur.r:

Indeed, there is a series of concepts rvhich are considered as holistic as opposed to a reductionistic type of philosophlr. That means they aim to integrate into a total ."vho1e an)'thing. That means, if yoit were not to do that, a rvhole set of phenomena rvhich rests on the interaction of the observer rvould be eiiminated. It rvould be unobservable, unreflectable and inconceivable. In that sense, ail these attempts are a gestait idea rvhich is a holistic concept. There are others rvhich fall into a similar direction. They all have the same spirit. Namely, they attempt to bring about a closure, an integration of sensing, feeiing, grasping and understanding of an interactive entity. This entity, by its very interaction, creates a unit rvhich by the analysis of the individuai parts r,r'ould never be conceir,,able. It is exactly the trend of our times. Especiallywhen I think of those scientists-I think of those who are sitting in the lbrefront of scientiflc activiW. This atternpt is being made which I consider as one of the major changes of scientific paradigm. In those changes, the obsen'er r,vili norv be part of the observation. This is an anathema to the classical scientiflc approach. That classical approach sa1r5 1ru, the observation or concepts of the observer shail never enter into his description. It is the very fact that he is an observer, that he is capable of describing the activity, which is the whole concept of cbjectivity.

r: As usual, I can only compliment what you saY. To me, it is so obvious that I don't understand how manv other people do not follow that or stick to the whole idea. As an experiment, made by a scientist, I offer to people that I rvill organize an experiment r,vith man)r instrutnents working. I will leave the room. I'lvili take another scientist, provided he wasn't working on an exact duplicate of what the person r'r'as currently rvorking on.. .. For example, I will take a scientist dealing in radiologl' and take him into a nuclear ph1'sics laboratory. I r'vill ask the man to tell rt'hat the experiment was about. No scientist rvould be able to answer that question. A11 he could see rvas needles moving. It is only u

28

a

THE FELDENKRAIS IoURNAL No.

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8

the observer, the man r,r,ho conducts the experiment, who makes sense betn een the needles and the thing he obsen es" I said this in 1946. Do you knou. Uri? Thev found the atomic point of hldrogen was determined br- manr,prominent physicists in the world. They found more and more figures after the point to be correct. By the time they determined the third flgure, you flnd that many prominent scientists, flrst-rate people, did not agree on the flgure. One of them declded that he rvould repeat all the four experiments by prominent people that don't agree after the third flgure. I will see. They put them into rates so vou can count them. At that time, there weren't geiger counters lor counting. All the counting was done with their eves. Obviousir', r'ou need to blink occasionally. So, you miss osciliations. You nrite in r.our book. If vou want to get precision to the third or fourth flgure, \'ou cannot miss one or t\,vo osciliations every ten seconds. He trained himself to look at the experiments like this. Actualiy, I too, have learned to do it. lMoshe mimes and makes funny counting sounds.l I look like this so I never look closer. This rvay I can count all those scintillations on this. Then, he redid it again. Eventually, he found that the third figures and the fourth figures were correct. At that point, Uri decided there must be a mlrture of hvdrogen rr,,hen the fourth figure, n ith this correction, did not work. There must be a mlxture of the nr o. This is hor,v they found hvdrogen. So, rvithout obsen'ers rve n-ou1d not har,e an atomic bomb. Hiroshima wouid still be there. That is extraorciinary.

nvr:

In \rienna ulten rr.e alion ed the ladies to make the scintillation obsen.ations, ther-came up rvith much more consistent data than the gentlemen. The gentlemen \vere alr,r,ays imagining they r,vere seeing an obsen atior-r. The ladies rvere much more speciflc. I must leave Moshe.

up: Thanks lbr coming. ltrvas a vertr, great honor.

I hope\ve carl meet

again. Can vou see that some of things rve have learned, he touched upon? We had it mucir more profoundly. It is not that -vou had actually learned. I told r-ou that you were now capable of seeing things in a r,vay r'r,hich manv other people, who by general consent have a higher academic standard than you, cannot match. Even those r,r,ho partiallv understood.... It is superior to any other thinking you can flnd around r.ourself. It is the qpe of thinking that Pribram said, u,ithin turenty-flr,e years, every unir.ersitl, rvill teach it. Nl those things r,t hich we cali "being r,vired in, " rt hat r,r,e thought, or what our parents thought. Hor,v many times have I told vou that this generation is a cru-

cial one. The next generation, or maybe at the end of this one, lvhat rve thought, or i,vhat our parents thought, or what the majority of people outside think, will be considered as backward as the Middle Ages. There lvill be an extraordinary change. There r,r,ill be a crossing of so many disciplines. There wiil be people rvho can see the u,orld and not a collection of sillv freaks. From that point of rriew, the religious people are more intelligent than scientists. Thev don't knolr, something, so they say there \vas someone rvho made it. That is thatl God is there and you don't knorv him. Thel,don't sav thev knor,r, him. They never caught him b-v his beard. FIe has done it, he aro

wTNTER 1993

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knows rvhat he knorvs. He knorvs the past and the future. The-v do not argue r,r.ith him. On the other hand, if vou ivere to take a physicist who considers the world-he mav sa\r this is a1l atoms and electrons. \\hich is correct. All the world is motion. If vou stop his rvorld, he has trvo blinkers on his eyes. \.Vhen -vou ask him, "\\ho are vou, u.'ho obsert es the rvorld of science and atoms?" He rvili tell vou that this question has nothing to do with physics. If you askhim if his ph-vsics deals rtith architecture, he rviil answer that only the architecture of the atoms has to do n ith ph1'sics, all the other architecture has nothing to do r,vith phvsics. Unless he is a human being, on top of being a phvsicist, he rvon't knon an)'thing about world architecture. Othenvise, his phl,sics starts lvith atoms and flnishes nrith atoms. It starts that he doesn't see anything else around him. Law isn't of any importance. Archeology isn't of anv importance. The human observer doesn't have any importance. It is the phenomena

that has importance. Is that

a r,vay?

\,\hat sort of r,vorld is that? Anyhing which exists for the rest of humaniw isn't any concern of his study at all. He Iooks at the phenomena and wants to know the world through that. Surely that is asking 1'ou to knorv yourself by your tail. If you know the taii, then you knorv the person. Is that the idea? From this point of vierv, the scientist has less ground to stand on than anv religions stance. At ieast the religious person admits he doesn't knorv a thing. He mav believe in it. That is okay. But, r,vhen someone claims to introduce science and method rn'hile eiiminating ser.,entv-flt e to ninetv-flve percent of the l,vorld, except the structure holding atoms together-he missed the world. Some of the great physicists have seen this long ago. They tried to teach the other students that this is not the onlv rva-v of looking at life. You can see the same thing in other sciences. Usually, they all have separate facilities, separate cliques. Everyone believes separately. This is modern schizophrenia. tt is dividing a human being into serreral compartments, with each one being r,vatertight to the other. I believe a new era is coming about. Right now, there are so many physicists r,vho are studying gymnastics. Margaret Mead had the idea of saying that. There are biologists w'ho do ph1,sics. There are physicists who are interested in different states of consciousness. A1l these things mean you are becoming human again. I think this is the beginning of a nerv era. It means people r,r,ill learn as they used to iearn in Cambridge and Oxford. Centuries ago, they learned natural science. This contained astronomy, literature and philosophy. \\4rat was the name of it? Ihere r,vas divinity. I don't remember the exact term they usgcl. It contained all the physical and nrathematicai sciences of the r,vorld. It r,vas the study of the science of nature. Thank you very much.

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ShelleyDuke

RESIS]TANCE AS FUNC]INON: Nfy most reu,arding rvork as a Feidenkrais Practitioner has been rvith people involved in on-going psvchotheraplr, meditation or TrvelveStep programs. Often, these students develop insight into their ps-ychospiritual der,elopment long before they fully manifest their learning in evervdav behar.ior. The Feldenkrais Method can help them move lvith greater ease and efficiencyfrom "taikingthe talk" ofpersonai transformation to "u,alking the rvalk." In some cases, I coordinate officially r,r,ith a psychotherapist to create a "healing circle" context for a mutual client by providing written "Bodr, -lntuitive Reports" to both client and therapist. Besides bringing body-centered arvareness into the therapeutic process, I receive sllggestions from the therapist that can contribute to the Functional Integration lessons. N{ore often, hor,vever, my support of a student's psvchospiritual journe.v is unofficial, based on the student's reports of the issues he or she is exploring. Case

from talking the talk to walking the walk

ofI

contacted me in response to Arvareness Through Movement brochures for "Forgiveness As a Bodil-v Function" and "Rekindling Delight" rvorkshops I offer. She was experiencing rvide gaps betr,veen her cognitive understanding of psycho-spiritual issues and her abilitv to actually do r,vhat she wanted in her everyday life. We decided to explore some of the r,vorkshop themes on an individual basis. J lvas 4r and generally in good health. She rvas separating from a second marriage, seeing her children offto universitv, attending regular spiritual gatherings and doing v,,eekiy psycirotherapy. She rvorked fulitime as the successful corporate accountant she had been during twenty years of married life. She reported mild lorver and upper back pain. J had little experience of any body-centered approaches to learning or healing and was not used to being touched. Her approach torvard her body had been one of "fltness" more than comfort. On all levels of presentation, I sarv her as "r,vell put together" as they say in the business world. I began our flrst lesson \,vith strategies from RuthyNon's "Magic Blanket" lessons, encouraging I to "surrender iike a baby" to an unfamiliar, asymmetrical position r,rrith the roller under the right hip and shoulder only. I r,r.orked gentlv with her arms, ribs, pelvis and heacl to help her notice her resistance to letting herself lie comfortablv and to facilitate her reiease of patterns of holding herself (together). J

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I r,vanted J to clearly sense the differences between her left and right sides. \.\4ren I took the roller out, I asked her to describe the differences she felt in "longer than/shorter than," "more contact rvith table/iess contact," "tingling/numb" terms. Then I asked J to breathe into one side and describe the sort of person she experienceci that side to be. Next, I asked her to do this on the other side. I asked her what sorts of things

each side might like to do. judgmenJ's perceptions of herself tended to be expressed in strongly lva-vs of plaful, accepting f,nd more tal terms, so I encouraged her to her I leave me that to appreciating her varying aspects. It was important her with positive contexts for exploring her kinesthetic sensations on or,r,n, since I r'vas going to be away for several weeks after this first lesson' She described her right side as the linear accountant, responsible mother and dutiful w'ife she recognized as "her'" The left side seemed less familiar and "not iike her." It felt younger, weaker, more r'ulnerable, and unfamiliar. "It" felt like someone rvho lvanted to create, be unpredictable and have fun. I asked I to gentll, roll to her side and come to standing, paying attention to how the two sides of herself moved, sat and stood in relationship to each other. I asked her to walk slorvly, exaggerating the asymmetry she felt, as though she r,vere a "couple" within herself. I encouraged an attitude of curiositv rather than assessment. She noticed flrst how one ieg supported her, and then hor,v the other leg aligned to allor'",'her to stand "on her own tlvo feet" and move to'uvhere she wanted to go. I deliberately and playfullv used psychological metaphors to bring her awareness to everyday movements. Back on the table, I worked briefly to integrate the left side but did not use the roller. I r,vanted to leave J rvith a clear sense of differentiation and unfamiliarity to explore on her olvn rvithout discomfort or

,

excessive imbalance. a(D

rL

32

LESSoN2: One of the most striking patterns J and I had noticed in the flrst lesson was a way she had of clasping her left arm at the wrist rvith her right hand. The arm was pulled close to the body and across to the right side. Without any intention of "doing something about it," T had dralr,n J's attention to this "habit" of organizing herself r'vhen lying or standing. \.44ren we met for our second lesson, it was this pattern of holding her arms J mentioned iirst. She had become conscious of horv much time she spent holding herself in this r^,'ay. It was a habitual pattern that she recognized as going back into her childhood. She had also become acutely aware of how pressured and restricted she felt at rvork, and had taken a r,veek off. She was putting her house up for sale, planning a move, and considering career-change options. She continued her individual therapY and attended an "Adult Children of Alcoholics" i,veekly suppofi group. Perceiving her as more open, authentic and reiaxed than she had seemed on her first visit, I acknort'ledged the changes I saw in her. As I rvorked with J on the tabie, I rvas struck b1'horv responsive she was to my touch. I r,vas moved, as I often am during Functional Integration sessions, by the level of trust she seemed to be giving me. Well into the lesson, rvhen i picked up I's left arm, she said, "I feel like I am so

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B

resistant. " I put her arm dorvn and asked her hor,v she experienced her resistance. I asked her r,vhat she lvanted to do with herself to express that resistance. \&Ihile still lying on her back, I shor,ved me hor,t, she wanted to pull her left arm in tou,ard the side of her body and tuck her left hand beneath her buttocks. I had her do this movement on her own several times to appreciate its kinesthetic familiarity. I asked her if it reminded her of any pattern or e\:ent from her past. She said there was nothing she

could think of. We explored her pattern of "resisting" together, noticing horv it involved the use of her arm, chest, jarv, legs and eyes as well as changes in her breathing. i did not touch I directly during this part of the lesscn. Verballir, I guided her to do the same movement of her arm and hand in many different r,r,ays. For instance, she could "resist" in the same way with the arm and hand, but look in different directions from the habitual with the eyes. Or, as she moved her arm, she could breathe out, breathe in, or consciouslv hold her breath. I asked her to do the movement more forcibl-v but without strain, and then more subtly and delicately. Finallv, I asked her to "rest." I completed the iesson with some gentle hands-on mo\rement of her feet and head. Before J stood up, I spoke to her aboutlvays oftaking care of herself. I asked her to be aware of her abiiity to choose a level of r,,ulnerability and openness with rvhich to sit up and "face me." I wanted J to recognize that she had choices in how she presented hersell flrst to me, but then to others at rvork and in her stressful life-situations. I sensed that she was reopening to deep lerreis of e trust in response to the Feldenkrais work and her psychothera2 peutic process. I wanted her to be art are and respectful of her or,l,n ta ? vulnerability. If I r,vas going to help in returning her "inner child" to ? J, I wanted to support her in accessing effective ways to care for her C tender, childlike qualities. As I stood, we again explored her habitual, "safe" hand/arm placement. We noticed hor,r, much tension and breath-holding felt "optimal" to J in giving her the ma-ximum sense of emotional securitv. Our tone lvas plaful, cLrrious, and respectful of this "tried and true" pattern of "holding on to herself" that had obviously served her in some capaciry.

tu

LEssoN 3: \\'hen] returned one weekiater, she began bytelling me that she realized rvhere the arm movement and hand placement originated. Her father had been an alcoholic incapable of directly expressing much love. One thing that he did do r,rras tickle I under the arms. She hated being tickled and felt violated. At the same time, she recognized this painful ritual as being one of her father's only messages of love for her. The strongest part of her bodily reaction in the patterns she had been exploring seemed to be the pressing of the upper arm against the rib cage to protect her armpit. I began this lesson with J on her belly. First, I r,vorked with flexion and extension of the ankles and toes. T hen I began gently pushing and pulling through the legs and spine to the opposite shoulders. I rvas thinking of encouraging gentle movement of the shoulders through ]'s

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rib cage and reestablishing non-threatening hands-on contact. Then, I asked j to ro11 over. I continued to r,rrork rvith her feet and shouiders. As I r,vas once again struck by this woman's responsiveness to m\touch and her apparent trust of me, she said, "I feel like I'm vert'resistant-like I'm resisting everything you're doing." I stopped for a moment, took a breath and said to J, "You know, this is fascinating to me. This is the second time that I have been rvith you, marveling at horv responsive you seem to this rvork and horv easily you move u-ith me rvhiie you, in almost the same breath, have expressed y6111 sense of resistance' You knor'v that old salring, 'It's all in Your head?' I'm u'ondering if your bod1, and your head are expressing the same thing or not' 1'd iike to explore this resistance r,vith you together. " Moving down to J's feet again, I guided I to experience herself phvsically resisting any movement I made b-v pushing against me in the opposite direction. This, it turned out, \\ras a novel experience for herto physically push against me with her foot in this w-ay. I contrasted this " orrert "resistance" r,vith "letting me do what I rvanted r,vith her foot. This r,r,'as the "1" I had experienced before-totally movable and compliant. We explored different options of responding to mY touch in r-arious combinations and directions. Then, I asked J to explore rvhat "hoiding her own" might be like in terms of her boci-v's functioning. That is, what rvould she do r'vith herself to maintain her or,vn position? Could she meet my pressure rt'ith an equal commitment to staving Put? \Vhile I vaguely recalled a martial arts demonstration in r'r'hich I experienced differentiation in response to someone pushing against me, I had never consciously translated "ves" and "no" into'uvavs of moving. I had certainlv never explored the function of "holding my or'rrn" in any positive, integrated rvay. For J, the possibility of "staying put" in response to external pressure, rather than either complf ing or reacting, represented a r,vhole ner,v option in her life. We differentiated three distinct possibilities: complving and moving u,ith any external pressure; reacting to and opposing pressure; and meeting pressure in appropriate measure to hold one's orvn position. Once this tr,as clear, lve investigated various combinations of these patterns of organization. We explored horv the "f'eeling resistant" that into J experienced and expressed often in her life habituaily translated "head" "bodv" the sav her and her neuromuscular expression. Did her lr'ork the-v could same thing? Did thel'rvant to saY the same thing? Horv in rnore eff,cient partnership to clearl-v express "yes," "no rvav" or "I'm r,r,,ith vou and I'm also hoiding mY own?" Near the end of the lesson, I helped J to transfer her learning from her feet and legs back to her arms, where she had first experienced her "resistance." Could J become more clearlv a\\Iar-e of her abiiitv to "feel resistance" in her arms ',t'hile physicallir demonstrating compliance? Could she do the opposite; i.e., resist rvith her arm yet feel responsive? Horv could she learn to organize herself so that her mind's messages, her feelings and her body r,vould ali say the same thing at the same time? In other r,r,otds, could she express lt'hat she intended to communicate? While I leave the psycho-spiritual impiications of such a lesson to a student and his or her therapist to explore, the ramiflcations of being

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able to communicate cleariv in "body language" seem immense. Holv confusing life must become and holv vulnerable, r,rrhen the ,,resistance,, of our mind and emotions does not translate effectively into neuromuscular patterns of organization that "resist." And holr, confusing for our partners and loved onesl J apparentlv had never experienced being

tr

comfortably touched although she longed for physical closeness. Her flrst steps torvards healthy intimacy involved learning to clearly express and manifest the "no" that habitually came up for her in making physical contact. From there, she could choose to communicate ',yes,,, "ma1r[s, " "later" or rvhatever she rvanted in ways that others could hear and respond to. Patterns of splitting off thoughts from feelings and feelings from behavior seem common, especially in people lr,ho have endured abusive or addictive dysfr"rnctional families. The rvorld is fuli of indir,iduals rvho have trouble "saying no," "committing to ves" or "maintaining their own positions in response to pressure they feel from others.,, "Affirmative behavior" is more than a rarav of learning to say things differently. It is a way of reorganizing ourselves somatically so that we can feel and express what lve want on all levels. These lessons taught I in practical terms how to more efflciently back her thoughts and feelings r,vith her body's organization. They allowed her to practice flexibiiity in responding to another in r,rravs appropriate to both internal and external circumstances. She realized that she could "change her mind" and enjoy a body that effectivelv expressed her choices. My continuingu,orkwith I has been like lvatching someone innocently wake up to herself and her or,r,n life. The r,.r.rlnerable steps she takes to reclaim her authentic "inner child" rarely get mentioned .D a? "baby steps" from no con,? -subtle C tact to a childlike delighr in being iiP touched, from resistance to excite1. ment, from fear to curiosity. The J Feldenkrais method provides skills tand an approach to learning that can gentlv facilitate such sensitive journeys-both our olr,n and our students'.

L

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BookReviews: The Culture of Pain, by David Morris,

University of California Press, r99r. Reviewed by Gay Sweet Scott

t

36

David Morris's book, The Culture of Pain, (University of California Press, 1991, 341 pp. rvith illustrations, $29.95 hardcover) provides an ovelielv of meanings Western culture has attributed to pain. \\4rile the author sprinkles the text with tidbits from cultural anthropologY no' r and then, the culture alludecl to here is primarilyWestern European and n'hite' The cover, for instance, sports a detail from the Hellenistic Greek sculpture "Laocoon," thus prepadng the reader for something like a brief history of Western civilization. Morris's ambition emerges in trvo parts: to present how we have historicaily made sense of our afflictions-the ills of the flesh that are part of the human condition; and to ask ho-'r' '"t'e are to make sense of our suffering and others' now as creatures of the zoth century? N{orris observes that how we attribute sense to our experietlce of sensation is made bearabie, even rich, or hideously blank. As u'e live in a countrywhere chronic pain is epiCemic despite mountains of pills, we are compelled to examine the strategies \'ve construct in order to endure in some measure intact. \A{ry is there so much back pain? Is it merell, fauiry ergonomics? Morris looks at pain not i'vith fear or with a clevotion to pathologv, but to inquire horv our ideas about suffering ma1' structure an othenvise alienating ordeal. Instead of offering self-help strategies, his book opens numerous questions as to hort'others have understood suffering and hor,v rve in turn construct our own meanings' Not surprisingiy, the book's strengths are its weaknesses: rvhile it is encyclopedic and readable, fer,v ideas are thoroughll' developed' (The author even mentions the Feldenkrais Method-once on page 195as beneflciai in pain management, but gives no expianation of the Method's premises. He does cite Ar'vareness Through Movement in his notes.) In the chapter, "The Uses of Pain," he tantalizes the reader with the observation that "Satire, as a civiiized adaptation of the prirnitive curse, shorvs holv past cuitures used pain b-Y drar'r'ing it \'\'ithin the formal conventions of literary and cuitural ritual" (r8o) . He goes on in the sarne paragraph to discuss hor,v a ceremony persisted in some rural Indian viliages as recently as 1967 that required young men to hang themselves frotn hooks attached to their lower backs in order to ensure a good harvest. In addition the chapter includes a discussion of horv patients in chronic pain manipulate their experience for secondary gain, a brief discussion of pain and our notions of manliness in the zoth century United States, and a very rich discussion of William Carlos Vv'illiams's great short story, "The Use of Force." This list hardlv does justice to one of the shorter chapters (zs pages). Some readers r,villflnd Morris r'r'onderfuliy rich and thought provoking and some, perhaps the same readers, may flnd his shotgun approach irritating. Those rvho suffer r,vhiplash reading about William Blake and the behaviorists in the same paragraph will not be charmed b,v Morris's st1'le, but thev may be challenged. Each chapter is divided into numerous clisparate discussions set off from each other bv a slash character (/) in the space betr,t'een sections. It's a device indicatirre of

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composition on computer. Again a strength as well as a shortcoming of the book is that any one of the little or large discussions could flt as well in any number of chapter headings. Thus, while reading the book we move between the Marquis de Sade and St. Theresa, George Wesley Bellows and Beckett, Piero della Francesca and Daumier. The book in itself begins to embody Morris's thesis: the meanings we ascribe to pain are multilayered, varied and no longer partake of linear organization. It should be noted that Morris does not in any way underrate or understate the agonies of chronic pain; his chapter "Pain is Always in Your Head" argues not that we invent pain, but that sensation is interpreted in a most complex way by the brain. He does not propose a model to "explain" pain; he does argue that the old dichotomy of psychological pain vs. physical pain is insufficient to describe the occurrence and experience ofpain. The book's most eloquent, and concluding chapter, "The Future of Pain," most clearly states the author's concerns. In it he argues that the rgth century model of pain as explicable within a purely mechanical model has robbed sufferers of attributing any meaning to their suffering and has encouraged faith in the authority of the physician. "The old organic model-ker,ed to an understanding of acute pain-simply will not account for the \\-aves of chronic pain now sweeping the modern world" (268). He notes u,ith hope increasing compassion in the medical profession to spare terminally iIl patients needless suffering. Here, it may be rvorth obsening that interspersed throughout the book are, to the Ia\.person, often shocking asides on how others' suffering is responded to-for instance, ner'r,borns and children are routinely undermedicated despite flndings that children sunive surgery far better if adequatelr" sedated. Onlv certain sufferers and certain kinds of suffering are \\ orth\- of compassion. Thus Nlorris finallr-shorvs \ve are heir to complex and contradictory traditions, the metanarratives: meanings ascribed to suffering encoded in Christianin'u-hich he eloquently translates, or Marxism which he notablv ignores, or feminism, for example, are metanarratives that are now inadequate to explain pain in a world rich r,vith new psychological and phr.siological interpretations. The modernist view, that pain is meaningless, is also unacceptable to Morris. Although he grants that meaninglessness is an explanation and a narrative of sorts, he says meaninglessness is untenable. He has a knack for asserting that arguments are untenable u.ithout demonstrating why. But in this case, he argues that \Iodernist pain seems a result of rgth century mechanism. "Nlodernist pain is meaningless pain: the expression of a grand theory that reduces all aflliction not merely [?] 'mental' to the dimensions of a mechanistic event taking place solely within the circuits of the human nenrous system" (zZg). In contrast, Postmodernist pain requires that "...your pain and my pain might have totally different explanations and meanings" (283). Morris concludes, "The resulting uncertainty may bring about its own discomforts. The most

important compensation for inevitable uncertainty, horvever, is that pain will have reestablished the link with meaning that ties it to culture, history and individual lives. It r,r.ill be a more human pain." (zB+)

Unfortunately, Morris does not detail how an individual may journey from the isolation of chronic pain, negotiate the metanarratives, and 37

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arrive at some solace within acceptance of an experience that is flnall1, profoundly isolating. Morris's gift is that he requires the reader to acknowledge the richness of cuitural artifacts we bring to the notion of pain. David Morris's book, The Culture of Pain, requires that nre extend our wondering of our own and others' pain within a social/ Iiterary and philosophical context.

GETTING OURSELVES OUT OF TRANCE Trances People Liue: Healing Approaches

in Quantum Psychology by Stephen Wolinsky, Ph.D., in collaboration with Margaret O. Ryan. Foreword by Carl Whitaker, M.D. The Bramble Co., FallsVillage,

Connecticut, rgg1.

Reviewed by Carl Ginsburg

38

Many of us in the Feldenkrais world have taken the work of Milton Erickson as a congenial counterpart to the Feldenkrais work in the domain of psychotherapy. There is good reason for this, because Erickson emphasized the need for change in one's action as the essence of psychotherapeutic change. Feidenkrais also emphasized that change in one's way of doing and acting was essential to his method, and he commented on occasion that what Erickson did rvith w'ords was at heart the sante as what he did with touching. For his part, Erickson often manipulated his patients into acting in a different way. He believed that by putting patients into trance states he could get them to tap into what he described as the positive aspects of the unconscious. In some sense, this is not what we do in our work. We have always included the element of arvareness, which suggests a more awake state from which to move into action. For years, Feldenkrais insisted that his work r,vas different than hlpnosis. Then he back-tracked somewhat as he became more familiar with Nrp work and the work of Erickson. I believe now that his flrst impulse r,vas actually correct. There is a different element in Feldenkrais work. The work of Stephen Wolinskv has illuminated these themes for me. His psychotherapeutic approach, which I have explored in a number of workshops, involves expanding awareness and expanding choices through a de-hlpnosis process. Rather than manipulating elements of a situation as one does, sa1r, in a process such as reframing, one arvakens to a realization that one creates one's reactions to the r,vorid, and that these reactions interfere with one's being alive and awake in present time. To me, this is a shift to awareness parallel to lvhat rve r,vish to do in Feldenkrais work. it is a different element. Now, in a very exciting new book entitled Trances People Liue, Stephen Wolinskv has at last presented his r,vork to the public at large. Central to the book's theme is how by shifting Erickson's idea about trance upside dor,vn, one gains dramaticallv in one's ability to choose the trance or no-trance state one

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wishes to operate from. Let me quote Wolinsky directly with regard to this central idea: "In the Ericksonian model, I learned that trance states could be induced or facilitated as a therapeutic intervention to interrupt the symptom structure and access unconscious potentials and resources. In my breakthrough moment, those puzzle pieces came together in an entirely ner,v pattern: I sau, that although trance states can be used to evoke resources and change on an unconscious ier.el, they can also be-are used-to create the symptomatology with which we al1 struggle. I saw that the person who brings his or her problems and symptoms to me is already in a trance state, and that it is this very trance state that is interrupting his or her experience of the present moment, biocking unconscious potentials and resources, and creating problems and symptoms. The therapeutic intervention then involves working with the trance state the person has already created (which de-hypnotizes them) rather than inducing or facilitating another kind of trance that may or may not be pivotal to the patient's symptom structure."

In other rvords most of us live in one trance state or another most of the time. If this is hard to accept, Wolinsky gives a synopsis of the major trances we experience in our lives, which rvill help in our self recognition. Among these are age regression, age progression, amnesia, negative hallucination, positive hailucination, confusion, time distortion, the formation of hlpnotic identities and so forth. He postulates that many of these trance states are induced by our first hlpnotists, our parents. De-hypnosis involves taking responsibility back to ourselves for the creation of these states. Wolinsky cites many examples from his practice as to horv this can be effected. One procedure he often uses that should be familiar to us is to have his client flrst allow the phenomenon, eventually asking the client to create it or make it happen. Wolinsky's work rests on that of Erickson and others; many of his procedures are familiar. \.{hat is expansive and new in his work involves his procedures for experiencing, and then witnessing our own creations. If rve can rvitness it, it cannot be who \,ve are. Identity is separated from being. This is a radically freeing notion that allows us to recapture life in the present moment and an expanded field of interaction with the rvorld. It separates trance, which Wolinsky sees as narrowing our focus, from a truiy no-trance, awake state in which we are present to a much rvider fleld of phenomenon. These insights are a direct consequence of Wolinsky's six years in India studying meditation. \&hat is wonderfui about his use of eastern religious materiai, horvever, is that he created a way to flt it into the context of western culture. Wolinsi