Learning to Learn

In the last post, I wrote about the upcoming series of Awareness Through Movement (R) lessons with accompanying discussions we’ve got planned for you. 

You’d have read that...

“You’ll not only have a lesson, you’ll also get to hear a short 5-10 minute talk a few days after each lesson, to give you actionable insights into the most crucial aspect of the Feldenkrais Method(R) in a way that will help you….

• Bring the work into your everyday life with more efficacy 
• Bring you to a deeper appreciation of what makes the method unique and potent"

So let's flesh out this “crucial aspect” about what “makes the method unique and potent”. It’s  what makes me and the rest of our team so damn passionate about this method!

You see, it's not about the movement in and of itself. At least, not as most people conceive of movement.

Indeed Moshe Feldenkrais said, "Movement is life. Without movement, life is unthinkable" and so you could say it's ALL about movement.

He also said, "Life is a process. Improve the quality of the process and you improve the quality of life itself."

Soo...

The concept of "movement" is so much bigger than finding the "right way" to physically move...

Perhaps the simplest way to get at this is to say that it's about not getting stuck...about always being able to find your way to living more and more as you'd like, given whatever circumstance you find yourself in whether physically, emotionally or in your thinking.

Because life is unpredictable and ever-changing --- always moving ;-) --- what helps us live ever more satisfying lives is being resilient and adaptable....

For this, what’s required is the ability to learn well. 

If you’re like me (before I studied the Feldenkrais Method), this can sound awfully vague and you might be thinking that you know how to learn. And indeed you do! 

But, like anything you bring your awareness to, you can continually improve, refine, and expand your learning abilities. 
We often do whatever we do without thinking about how we do it or what else might be possible.

Even though I was good at school and did okay in sports, I never r-e-a-l-l-y knew how to learn. I just did it, as we all do, because human beings are pretty fantastic at it.

It was participating in a Feldenkrais training that taught me how I could engage in the process of learning and living in a way that was so much more fruitful, effective and rewarding. I learned much more deeply how to ask and how to answer two important and related questions:

• What am I a.c.t.u.a.l.l.y doing?
• Is there a better way for me to do this?

To quote Moshe Feldenkrais again; “How can you do what you want when you don’t know what you are doing?”

Finding the way to approach these questions through movement and awareness gives me the means to refine my abilities to respond to life in a more elegant and enjoyable way.

So...in this series, you’re going to be exploring some of the ways in which Feldenkrais lessons help us learn how to become better learners and live more gracefully.

Below you’ll find a link to the first recorded lesson, and in a week, we’ll send you a link to a short 7-15 minute discussion about what was embedded in the lesson to deepen your understanding and explore how you can bring more of what you learn into all aspects of your everyday life.

The links won’t disappear anytime soon (you’ve got time). So do the lesson when you can, and then listen to the discussion after giving yourself some time to reflect on your experience (as much as a couple of days).

And most of all…

Have fun and enjoy the process!

Click the link below and scroll down to the lesson...
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Awareness Through Movement Lesson: Rolling to Sit with the Elbows