Written by Paul Lee
Photographs courtesy of the author

You know how when you watch some people do Taiji, they just completely “embody it?” They “are” it.  Their softness is concrete, and nothing extra is wasted in their movements.  And then there are those who move around in undefined motions (耍來耍去), only able to mimic the forms with an yet-to-arrive emptiness.  They haven’t understood in their felt sense the logic (道理), because the principles haven’t been embodied.  They haven’t found the pathways through their joints to connect to the floor for the manipulation of the “empty space” around them to find the utility and function of each movement and each shift.

In Taiji and Qigong, there is the idea of having to soak (浸) in the practice in order to finally be enlightened (開竅).  People could practice for decades before they blossom and “get it.” At one point I felt that I was going to soak in knee pain, muscle fatigue, and frustration, of which the unnecessary extent of these experiences could be avoided if I only knew how to use myself properly. 

That is why I turned to Feldenkrais. As a classically trained ballet dancer in the West, I have been pointed back to find home away from home in some Eastern principles. I observed that the phenomenal dancers I had admired at the Nederlands Dans Theater, Forsythe Company, Pina Bausch Company, and Cloud Gate Dance Theatre all shared something in common: the efficiency, soft strength and fluidity of a martial artist (Taiji artist).

What is Feldenkrais?

The Feldenkrais Method® is a way of teaching people how they can find flexibility to be efficient, safe, and be able to move with pleasure.  Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the method, was an Israeli scientist with a background in mechanical and electrical engineering, as well as one of the first European judo blackbelts, who became a friend of the founder of judo, Kano Jigoro. 

Many forms of exercise focus on doing things correctly, sometimes being prescriptive, so Feldenkrais found it more practical, rather, to develop people’s intelligence to use their kinaesthetic feedback to refine their patterns of thinking, sensing, and feeling to improve the quality of people’s dynamic posture in action, which he termed “acture.” This meant offering the nervous system more options outside conditioned patterns of acting or behaving that are not necessarily expedient to the changing situations and circumstances we encounter in daily life.  He chose to focus on improving people’s movement since it is the essential ingredient to the very act of living.  

The beauty of the Feldenkrais Method is the calm evaluation and exploration - of “the how.” Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) lessons are designed experiences that help one to explore all the possibilities of movement within different constraints in positions and movement tasks.  

It is hard to put into terms what the method offers. The Method must be experienced. Perhaps it’s easier if I give a taste of what the Feldenkrais learning process is through action.  Try this out, if you please:

Mini ATM® lesson:

• Lie on your back and bend your knees to have your feet standing.  

• Slowly and gently slide your right hand down to the direction of your right heel, and then once with the left.  Do this a few times alternating between right and left. 

  •  Notice how you can reach closer to your heels and easier by paying attention to how your ribs fold on the side.  And when one side folds, can you feel how the ribs on the other side open away from each other?  

  • What would you like to do with your head to help the movement of your hands?  Are you rolling it, keeping it still, sliding the back of your head, or perhaps even sliding your head as your turn it?  

  • Do you tend to breathe out as you reach, or do you inhale?  

  • Is your waistline shortening on one side, so that your pelvis swivels on the floor, and you feel that there’s movement in your hip joints? 

• Then just rest and see if you feel different in how your shoulders and back are resting on the floor.  

• Once you’ve felt any change, use the same process of inquiry to help you explore reaching the hands along the floor, but this time upwards above the head.  One hand once and then the other.  

• Then try and stand up and walk around.  

  • Can you feel how this lesson is about freeing your neck by allowing your ribs and spine to accompany its movements?  How did you shift your weight from one leg to another easily like a supermodel?

• This was a lesson about freer breathing, more resonance in the voice, availability in oneself to be mobile to support stability…

There are hundreds of these ATM lessons (in addition to the hands-on one-on-one sessions we call Functional Integration®).  In one lesson called “Painting with the soles of the feet,” I stood up feeling a sea of circles moving throughout all of me.  I was so mobile, which made me so grounded that it was nearly impossible to fall. I could feel how my ankles were the guides and support for my neck, how my ribs were the push and pull of my hands, how my hips were a driver... Everything was a part of everything else within me that words fail to capture that whole sensation of connectivity.  I felt like I could access the inner experience of the Taiji masters and Cloud Gate dancers (which incorporate Taiji, kung fu, and Chinese dance into modern dance).  If you have ever seen the dancers of the Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan, you’ll see how they have the ability to move like water (or liquid mercury), which is a physical embodiment of the philosophy of Chapter 78 of the Dao Te Ching:

“Nothing in the world is softer and weaker than water.  
Yet, to attack the hard and strong, 
Nothing surpasses it. 

The weak overcomes the strong.  
The soft overcomes the hard.
Everybody in the world knows this,
Still nobody makes use of it...”  

In the mini-lesson from before, the idea of one side closing in order for the other side to open helped me experience the idea of yin yang (陰陽). Something needs to come together for the opposite side to move apart, something goes down into the floor as another part lifts up. In Chungliang “Al” Huang’s TedTalk on Taiji, he noted how in Chinese we don’t say “yin and yang”.  There is no “and” since it is one whole.  

I believe this “Western” method of self-discovery, self-clarification, will actually support people’s growth through these traditional Chinese arts for health cultivation.  I am certain that everyone will also have the internal sensory language to understand even the Dao behind phrases like “engage your core,” “lengthen,” “connect to the floor,” “reach,” “breathe freely,” etc. and deepen their benefits in all the activities and practices that we love.  There is that white dot in the black side of that famous symbol, and there’s also the black dot in the white, right? The Easterness or Westerness of the philosophies is irrelevant because we’re just finding ways to experience certainty, flexibility, access and structure to understand and realise our shared human potential.  I’ll keep the yinyang as a symbol for that today.  

#feldenkraismethodforhumanphilosophies 

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