The whole system

One of the axioms of the Feldenkrais work is that the whole body is a system.

As an idea, this may seem simple, but to make it effective in practice takes detective work.

Claire, a professional woman in her 50’s, came in this week and said, “Oh, thank you, Maureen, for last week. I have been remembering to stretch out my left ribs, and my neck feels so much better.”

I was glad to hear it.

Do you know what’s the connection?

The previous week Claire had come in and after the briefest hello, and while rubbing the right side of her neck, had reported, “Maureen, this weekend was so bad. My neck just seized up.”

She shared that after a full work week she had taken a long drive to spend the weekend with family. On Saturday morning there she was having fun with everyone, except that her neck was killing her. Over the course of the next few days, some of the tension eased up by itself, but now, home and back at work, she still hurt.

What could I do about it?

I asked Claire to walk. I saw my clue right away.

Claire was holding contraction in the left ribs. It wasn’t extreme, but the desired fluid shift among the central muscles was missing. The contraction naturally pulled the head to the left. But Claire didn’t want to walk lopsided. So, something inside – some part of the brain – automatically pulled on the right neck muscles. They brought her head to the middle. But the tactic overworked the neck muscles, and they hurt.

I asked Claire to lie down on my table. I explored what was happening in those left ribs. The muscles were tight! They were happy to let go! When Claire stood, she felt that she was taller and that her neck was fine.

Over the next week, the left side contraction would come back in again. But Claire noticed it. She could move in a certain way and let it go.

Sitting in an upright manner

Yesterday “Constance” sent me an email saying that she would have to skip one of our regular sessions. Then she sweetened the cancellation with this report:

“Last night at a concert I used your sitting position (both feet flat on the floor, head above spine and hands on legs) and had not one iota of back pain.”

I thought this was great because Constance has been living with a lot of pain and in our sessions so far we hadn’t worked that much on sitting.

Constance has been coming to see me privately for a little while because of pain in various places that is sometimes nagging and sometimes debilitating. It often surprises her with new manifestations.

During much of each session Constance lies on my padded table. At the end I ask her to sit and notice, briefly, how she feels.

She often reports that she sits upright more easily.

During one of our early sessions, I took out a notebook and showed her several photos of seated Egyptian pharaohs. From these sculptures, I call this way of sitting “Egyptian Pharaoh Pose.”

As you can see in the photo above, the posture is very upright and full of right angles.

Maybe it looks stiff to you. It’s not casual. It’s definitely regal.

It demonstrates “weight bearing through the skeleton.”

It has the advantage of efficiency. Once you feel comfortable like that, you can sit for a long time.

If you are in a lot of pain and try to sit like that, you probably won’t be comfortable. But if you do movements that bring you to a deeper state of relaxation, then sitting like that comes very naturally.

When I asked Constance if I could talk about her experience in this post, she said, “Yes, of course, you may use my experience. It was truly wonderful for me.“

The purpose of the skeleton

A couple weeks ago I was working with “Patrick,” a man who for months had been waking up with back pain. He had pain intermittently during the day, but consistently in the morning.

I asked him to show me how he slept. He lay down on my table on his stomach and turned his head this way and arranged his legs like this and his arms like that. All fine. But as I looked more closely, I could see that there were odd things about his ribs. They weren’t going the way one would expect them to.

So, I sat next to him and gently pushed on each rib, a little this way and a little that. I wasn’t trying to put them “in the right place” but to clarify possibilities to his brain. Through movement I was saying, “Dear Brain. You can hold the rib here, or you can shift it there, or there, or there.”

Patrick was taking some big breaths, so I had the feeling that I was going in the right direction. Over time the ribs as a whole were softening, and he looked more comfortable in his sleeping position.

Then it came time to sit. He sat quietly for a moment; he looked nice and easily upright. Then he made the transition to stand, and as he did, he said with surprise, “This feels a great deal lighter than I usually feel.” At my suggestion, he went back and forth between sitting and standing a few times, and the feeling of lightness continued. Then he walked around my room, and felt the lightness also in walking.

He turned to me and, “How did that happen?”

So I told Patrick a story.

About 15 years ago, when I had been a Practitioner for a few years, I went to my annual week of continuing education. In the opening session the trainer, Jeff Haller, asked the group, “What is the purpose of the skeleton?”

Jeff was sitting on one of our low tables while about 20 of us were sitting around him on stools and on the floor. There was a long silence as we reflected. One answer was offered. It was a beginning. Another few offerings were made, but none seemed to hit the mark. Silence returned to the room.

Jeff answered his own question: the purpose of the skeleton is to make the body light.

If you think about an amoeba, he continued, it only moves by projecting a pseudopod against a squishy mass. It can never get very big, and it cannot live outside water. To get bigger and still be able to move, fish developed with vertebrae and muscles to pull against them. To move across land, amphibians developed limbs. And to get the head at maximum height to the ground, apes and humans developed the ability to walk on two legs.

In the process of being human, things happen that lead to a loss of the natural alignment. Then the weight of the body, and particularly the weight of the head, is no longer carried directly over the bones. In consequence, the muscles have to do extra work.

When the alignment is restored, weight is taken off the muscles, and the person feels, in every action, lighter.