The practice of making no effort

Jane Gillespie takes a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class, which aims to train the...
Jane Gillespie takes a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class, which aims to train the brain and body.
Retraining your body and brain to function more effectively and spontaneously with less effort, stress or pain sounds like a dream for most of us but 50 years ago an Israeli scientist developed a method that claims to do this. Charmian Smith tries some Feldenkrais.


We are lying on our stomachs, our cheeks on the backs of our stacked hands, making slow small movements with our elbows.

The atmosphere of concentration in this Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) class is palpable as we explore and feel the effects of these small movements, not only in our shoulder blades but in our backs, pelvises and even in our legs.

After the class, which includes other incremental movements to which we pay close attention, it feels as if I've flossed my shoulder blades and the tightness in my upper back from a day at the computer has gone.

The practitioner performs the movements in a "functional integration" Feldenkrais session.
The practitioner performs the movements in a "functional integration" Feldenkrais session.
The Feldenkrais Method does not claim to be a form of exercise nor a therapy, although it can have therapeutic consequences, but it is movement education, according to Jane Gillespie, of Utopia Dynamic Health, a Feldenkrais practitioner.

It aims to teach the brain and body to realign, rebalance and correct itself, making movements smooth with minimum tension, and avoiding and eliminating stresses and strains and the possibility of injury.

The gentle, slow, explorative movements and the close attention students pay to them are said to help change habitual actions and ways of moving, and minimise excessive muscular work they may not be aware of doing.

The movements are exploratory and done with minimum effort - what practitioners call "efforting less" - and require a high level of attention, so may seem strange to those used to the "no pain, no gain" mindset of an aerobics class in which participants are told how to do particular movements, Gillespie says.

Photos by Craig Baxter.
Photos by Craig Baxter.
However, learning to maintain concentration and body awareness is like developing any muscle group.

It takes time and you may tire easily at first.

The movements are unusual and unfamiliar.

For example, one of the techniques to refine a dysfunctional walk, perhaps brought on by an old injury, is to walk backwards since bad habits and bad posture are not associated with walking backwards. Because they are doing it with awareness it allows them to relearn moving forward, Gillespie says.

The movements done in a Feldenkrais class are often performed lying down, which not only helps relaxation but is also non-habitual and you learn to feel what your body is doing. The movements are often small and done incrementally to work fine-muscle organisations and they can even be done in the imagination if they can't be managed physically, so anyone can participate.

"Basically, how you move is related to your neuromuscular connections, how your mind activates the muscles, and so to change the movement responses, your brain has to change, so when you are imagining movement you are working in that network," she says.

Besides the ATM classes, in which people explore and refine their own movements, there are individual Functional Integration (FI) sessions, in which the student lies or sits on a padded table and the practitioner gently moves various parts of their body.

Although you may walk away from a single session feeling or moving differently, Gillespie says it's best to suspend judgement for at least six sessions.

"You just notice change, that your aches and pains go away, that your movement is easier, you feel better, you are more relaxed in your life, you are more creative, you have more access to a wider variety of choices because you are not so locked into one way of being. It opens you up," she says.

According to Dr Jon Shemmell, of the School of Physical Education at Otago University, the plasticity of the brain, its ability to change and rewire itself, has only been realised in the past couple of decades.

"The plasticity of the brain is fundamental to everything we do. Really the only constant state of the brain is that it's constantly changing.

"The more we explore the state of the nervous system, the more we understand it's quite flexible," he says.

"We certainly know that some of the changes that occur in the brain when we visualise a task are most of the same regions that get activated when we do the same task.

"Focusing the attention on the movement seems to be very important in the initiation and maintenance of plastic change in the brain, but there are some conflicts with internal focus of attention versus what we know about motor learning to date, which says that having an external focus of attention, such as achieving reaching for a drink, as opposed to what's happening in the body when you reach for a drink, is better in many ways."

Doing well-designed, peer-reviewed, academic research into the effects of Feldenkrais is difficult, he says.

"The question with things like Feldenkrais or yoga, which have so many different facets and so many different things you are changing at once, it's hard to put our finger on which aspect is making the crucial difference.

"For us to run a research project that is meaningful we'd have to break it down further and analyse the component parts of Feldenkrais or yoga or whatever."

Nevertheless, there is anecdotal evidence of improved movement in people of all types, from adults with injuries that hamper other movements to children with cerebral palsy.



FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONERS IN THE SOUTH

Jane Gillespie, Utopia Dynamic Health, Dunedin.
(03) 477-8644, (027) 526-2674
janegillespie@xtra.co.nz
www.utopiadynamichealth.co.nz

Jane Gillespie comes from a yoga and Pilates teaching background.

A netball knee injury from her teenage years created an imbalance through her body, she says. Feldenkrais shifted that dysfunction and improved the function of the knee and the body relative to the knee, so the knee imbalance doesn't impede anything now, she says.

"It's freed me up from a whole lot of things I wanted to free up from and there's been a huge amount of letting go. It's improved my movement and changed the way I interact with the world - I'm more relaxed and easier."

Over the four-year training course, she claims Feldenkrais has created change in her life. Change is not always easy and can be disruptive, but in hindsight the change has been positive, she says.

Kim McCristell, Dunedin.
(03) 471-2333, (021) 1037-9873
kimmccristell@yahoo.com

Kim McCristell, who comes from a dance and theatre background, says Feldenkrais complements anything you are doing - dance, singing, performing, how you move at work or home, and even how you manage your stress levels in your day-to-day life.

She says it takes a couple of years to embody the work fully as you move around in your day-to-day life because your body-mind is learning, not your intellectual mind.

"It's really working with pure physics of function, and within that, because we are human, we embody much more than just how we can move. It's a complex thing, and if you are looking at those movement and postural habits and making changes, then things in your feeling world often change too."

Catherine Spencer, Dunedin.
(03) 453-6043, (021) 122-1421
simplemove@ihug.co.nz

Catherine Spencer comes from a performance background and did her four-year Feldenkrais training in Melbourne.

The Victoria College of Performing Arts includes Feldenkrais as a core subject to enable performers to understand their bodies, use them more efficiently, and suffer less injury. In North America, Europe and Australia, it is part of any rehabilitation therapy package although it is not actually a therapy, she says.

"It's a way to learn about your own habits and learn other organisations that may serve you better, and find ways to make subtle changes and give awareness without trying to put an "ideal" posture or way of doing things on you - it's not prescriptive.

"People with severe chronic pain and other disabilities could go to a class and do what they could, imagine doing what they weren't able to do, and over time make small adjustments to the way they do things that help them manage their pain."

Nicky Tompkins, Queenstown.
(021) 543-153
feldenkraisqt@xtra.co.nz

As a result of an injury Nicky Tompkins couldn't turn her head to park the car properly. Living in Wellington at the time, she tried chiropractic, osteopathy and massage treatments, which were all helpful, but after a few months she'd be back in the same position, she says.

"I was recommended to a Feldenkrais practitioner called Elke Dunlop who remains my mentor and through her individual treatment I lost the difficulty in my neck and shoulder and back, and I came to realise that it's not until you change the way you use your body that you can sidle out of these habits that cause pain. So that for me was a big lightbulb, that this is really different, everything else you need to practise or keep doing it, and this was a new approach."

When she moved to Queenstown she decided to train as a Feldenkrais practitioner as there was no-one offering the method there, she says.



 

 

 

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