1-55643-185-6 HEALTH Ruthy A1on's description of Feldenkrais work in Mindful Spontaneity is a favored text of a generation of Feldenkrais enthusiasts. A10n weaves experiential and theoretical information in a poetic yet pragmatic lan guage. These simple and unexpected suggestions will help everyone who suffers from restricted movement or pain to find a new sense of freedom. "Ruthy A1on's exercises will enable many people to tap into the natural wis dom of their bodies and find greater ease and freedom in their lives." JACK HEGGIE, author of Skiing With the Whole Body "Ruthy A1on, one of the world's leading Feldenkrais teachers, has written a book which offers magical results for all those who enter within and read." DAVID ZEMACH-BERSIN, co-author of Relaxercise RUTHY ALON began working with Moshe Feldenkrais in the 1960s in Israel, and is considered one of the foremost teachers of The Feldenkrais Method® in the world. She teaches throughout Europe, America and Australia as well as in Israel, where she makes her home. 52295 North Atlantic Books Berkeley, California Distributed to the book trade by Publishers Group West 9 Mindful Spontaneity Lessons in the Feldenkrais Method Ruthy Alon North Atlantic Books Somatic Resources Berkeley, California Mindful Spontaneity: Lessons in the Feldenkrais Method Copyright © 1996 by Ruthy Alon. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books. Published by North Atlantic Books Somatic Resources P.O. Box 12327 and P.O. Box 2067 Berkeley, California 94712 Berkeley, California 94702 Cover design by Amy Evans McClure Back cover photograph courtesy Ruthy Alon Book design by Catherine E. Campaigne Illustration on page 107 by Ginger Beringer Printed in the United States of America Mindful Spontaneity is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to devel op an educational and crosscultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, SCiences, human ities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relation ship of mind, body, and nature. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alon, Ruthy. Mindful spontaneity / Ruthy Alon. p. cm. ISBN 1-55643-185-6 (pbk.) 1. Feldenkrais method. I. Title. RC489.F44A46 1996 613.7-dc20 95-19039 CIP 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 / 02 01 00 99 98 To Moshe, the great teacher who shared all his inventions with us in such a way that each of us has been inspired to re-invent it all from the beginning. T hrough human motion we can challenge the non-supportive habits that reside in our subconscious minds. In such a way we can awaken in the nervous system that innate primal wisdom which enables it to cor rect its own actions. This is a process of reeducating adult neuromotor func tioning towards restoring innocent grace, efficiency and ease. The process of updating habits is inherently rejuvenating. Limitations, degenerations and pains give way to an organic knowledge of coordination in an ever progressive path of self development. Acknowledgements J WOUld like to thank all the many people who walked with me along the way to creating this book. My warm thanks to: my students everywhere in the world whose awakening to their own transformations made this method into a live teaching; Zvi, my all-time friend in Tel Aviv, for his uncon ditional help; the publisher, Navil Drury from Craftsman Press in Australia, who trusted the book and its value and accepted it with its name as it is; Agnes Lilienfeld in Jerusalem for her art in the illustrations; Myra, my typ ist in Jerusalem, who deciphered with good spirit the endless handwritten corrections which I kept putting in the manuscript; Ziona Sasson in Jerusalem for her help in the close-to-impossible project of translating from Hebrew into English; Colin in Sydney who spent hours trying to weed the non-Eng lish terminology; Amitabha who cared and devoted her work to enhance the book; Professor Ruth Miller for her language insights and encourage ment; and to my many colleagues, Feldenkrais practitioners everywhere, for their openness toward my own interpretation of the method. Contents Preface to the First Edition ................................. xv Introduction by Dr. Bernard Lake .......................... xvii Introduction to the Second Edition by Carl Ginsburg .............x xi Chapter 1 - Functional Honesty .............................. 1 Your version of why you have backache ............................. 1 Is there a formula to avoid back pain? ............................... 2 Your back at the foreground of your movement ecology ................ 3 Creative exploration versus following instructions ..................... 6 Denying inner signals ............................................ 8 Qualities that can't be measured ................................... 9 Moving today so you1110ve moving tomorrow ...................... 10 More achievement with less effort ................................. 10 The dynamics of getting out of bed-a choice between well-being and self-injury .................................... 11 The greatest difficulty is to believe you can move without difficulty .......................................... 14 Right in terms of efficiency or right in terms of choice? ................ 15 Encouraging the drive towards self-assertion ......................... 15 Where did you lose the compass to your well-being? .................. 16 How did you give up the right to a rhythm of your own? .............. 17 Yawning-how do you accept Nature's gift of self-renewal? ............. 18 Blame or praise-eroding your power to judge for yourself ............. 19 Your shape-the only thing you wouldn't do for it is accept it ........... 19 vii MINDFUL SPONTANEITY Clothes that make the person-self-expression or constriction .......... 20 Shoes-form at the price of mobility ............................... 21 How do you cope with carrying a load? ............................. 21 The trouble with what you don't do ............................... 22 How you stopped daring ......................................... 22 The prototype of stretching ...................................... 23 Injury to the spine of personality .................................. 24 Improvement through the restoration of reality ...................... 24 Healing through progress ........................................ 25 Awareness-the grammar of your lost spontaneity .................... 25 Chapter 2 - Organic Learning: Learning Through Options ....... 27 Are we all premature infants? ..................................... 27 Early learning ................................................. 29 Refining personal style of movement: the medium for opening habits to change .............................. ... 33 Reconstructed learning: initiated mistakes .......................... 36 Errors as a challenge to autonomous learning ........................ 37 Guided improvisation: updating habits ............................. 39 Don't do well: do differently ..................................... 40 The true gain: biological optimism ................................ 41 Alternating cycles: the preparatory game of Nature ................... 42 Tentative sketches versus overcoming the test ........................ 44 Finding the path of least resistance ................................ 45 Talk to the brain, not to the muscles ............................... 51 Changing context: learning by contrast ............................. 53 Exploration by way of variables ................................... 54 Linking and unlinking .......................................... 58 Base and breakthrough .......................................... 59 Bringing the mountain to Mohammed ............................. 60 Auxiliary movements ........................................... 61 Be creative: do it badly .......................................... 63 Refining the individual through the coherent rhythm of the herd ....... 64 Ease is gained through ease ...................................... 66 Permission for gracefulness: a supportive climate for learning ........... 67 Language that invites ease ....................................... 70 Breath of relief: biological omen .................................. 72 Teach the brain to harvest satisfaction: a reversed immune process ....... 73 Ninety percent doing non-doing .................................. 74 Awareness: the gate for late learners ................................ 75 Movement as mirror ............................................ 79 viii Contents Touch for touch's sake: nourishment for self-knowledge ............... 80 Learning in the presence of a witness .............................. 81 Even a teacher needs a teacher .................................... 84 Change: the dynamics of improvement ............................. 85 Improvement: unpredictable change ............................... 90 Equals without trying to be equals ................................. 92 Integration of the change ........................................ 94 The more that is less ............................................ 96 Chapter 3 - Family Therapy to the Community of Vertebrae ..... 99 Uniform flexibility or discriminative flexibility ....................... 99 The fixture in between the flexible sections ......................... 100 Sideways undulation of the rib cage in water ....................... 101 The alternating dance of pressure on solid ground ................... 102 Shoulder blades-storage for unexpressed emotions .................. 103 The instinctive response to threat ................................ 104 Distorted defense ............................................. 104 Neck and back-victims of lazy convexity .......................... 106 The double standard of the spine ................................. 106 The spine between command and execution ........................ 107 The vertebrae held by ribs ...................................... 108 Flexibility and vulnerability ..................................... 109 The Integration Approach ...................................... 109 Functional distribution of labor-submarine and periscope ............ 111 Restoring inner wisdom ........................................ 112 Integration of function, structure and state of mind .................. 113 The Magic Roller .............................................. 113 A lesson in standing while lying down ............................ 127 The support reflex ............................................. 128 Healing the response to gravity .................................. 129 Confronting the convexity of your back ........................... 130 Suspending the lower back like a hammock ........................ 131 Surrender to primal undulations ................................. 132 Releasing movement from control ................................ 132 A climate of openness to change ................................. 133 The change in your back, and your belief that it can change ........... 134 The silence that cries out in discovery ............................. 135 Who is the person standing in your body? ......................... 136 Reciprocal reorganization ....................................... 137 A back which is less subject to personal history ..................... 138 Zig-zag of steady process ........................................ 139 ix MINDFUL SPONTANEITY Organic learning: an inner conclusion ............................. 140 Chapter 4 - Movement for Life, Movement for Love ........... 143 Multi-functional by Nature ...................................... 143 Multi-purpose methods of natural healing ......................... 144 The mUlti-purpose nature of the Magic Roller process ................ 145 The bonus of the Magic Roller for sex ............................. 145 Primal undulations that bear the excitations of love .................. 146 The wave that heals the back .................................... 146 Respecting the ebb as well as the flow ............................. 147 Locally emphasized movement during sex ......................... 147 Lovemaking in the context of interaction between the pelvis and the body ............................. 148 How to pass your back safely through the wave ..................... 149 Coordinating your total self: a source of sexual energy ................ 150 Passivity that inspires vitality .................................... 152 A mystical urge of the universe flowing through you ................. 153 Emergency respiration: the pelvis that chokes with effort ............. 153 Forward movement of the pelvic bone within leisure ................. 154 A pelvis that rolls with laughter .................................. 155 Trusting your body's wisdom .................................... 156 Utilizing your awareness to reach a state in which you don't need it any more .......................... 157 Aligning your posture so that your heart can believe you are loved ...... 157 Surrendering your weight and being loved unconditionally ............ 158 Touching the core of vulnerability through self-organization ........... 159 The living silence that you always desired .......................... 159 A question mark concerning the necessity for aggression .............. 159 An outward orientation that invites excess ......................... 160 Giving up the habit of trying to excel ............................. 161 Do you try to win by effort what can be received as a gift? ............. 161 In gear for fulfillment .......................................... 162 The stressed effort that renders dissatisfaction ....................... 162 Sex-suggestive context for imprinting its atmosphere on life .......... 163 Do you urge yourself to want what you don't want? .................. 164 Mutual conditioning on each other's responses ..................... 165 The ignorance of non-pleasure ................................... 165 Sex as meditation: an unintentional way of moving .................. 165 Transforming the roar of sex into music ........................... 166 "Waken not nor stir the love until it please" ........................ 167 You can change the style as you offer yourself more pleasure .......... 167 x