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Moshe Feldenkrais's Work with Movement -
A Parallel Approach to Milton Erickson's Hypnotherapy
by Mark Reese
The work of Moshe Feldenkrais and
Milton Erickson epitomizes mastery of the facilitation of human
learning. On the surface their approaches are dissimilar: Feldenkrais
works primarily in the physical domain of touch and movement, while
Erickson worked primarily in the symbolic domain of image and language.
Nevertheless, there are striking parallels in their philosophical
emphasis on human individuality, the importance of learning, and the
role of unconscious processes. Even more remarkable are the similar
innovations of utilization, indirect techniques, and pattern
interruptions that each employs with a subtlety which defies verbal
description and strains the powers of observation. Those who are
familiar with Erickson's work can discern many similar patterns of
communication in the following Feldenkrais excerpt. In this workshop
session, Feldenkrais had participants lie on the floor on their stomachs
and do various slow, gentle movements related to childhood crawling.
After a while, Feldenkrais asked the group to begin bending the fingers
of the right hand "as in you're going to make a fist", and then to:
Undo it, as if you
stopped thinking of the fist...That is the easiest movement we can do.
It's almost like moving the eyelid Close and open, as slowly, as
comfortable, and as little as is nec- essary for you to feel that you're
actually flexing and stretching [pause]...We can do everything to our
own comfort....You'll find that in order to be able to do a thing
comfortable, elegantly, and aesthetically right...we must do it with a
minimum, of exertion, with the feeling of lightness, the feeling, the
sensation of light- nests of lightness of the movement [pause]...You
will see that the exists only when you flex it a little bit more and
open it, but not completely. In order to make the hand completely flexed
and completely open, you have to make a real effort, enough effort, but
to flex it a little bit more and flex it a little bit less...gives you a
sensation that it is easy, light [pause]...Now being easy light, will
you please continue that movement...easy, light...so that the feeling of
easy, light is actually connected...it will be...whether you want it or
not...you can't do it otherwise...Your entire motor cortex, the entire
nervous system is now pervaded with that feeling, light, and you should
know that in our motor cortex the hand occupies, nest to the lips, the
largest area...so very slowly there will be a feeling of lightness
permeating the entire musculature,...the entire self, making it...keep
on doing it...and while you do that, while you feel it's really light,
you'll find out the whole arm gets light and slowly you will feel the
neck and the shoulder blade...over that...getting soft and nice and
actually prepared to act without preparing itself. In other words, it's
getting ready for action and you will see when we get that, how quickly,
how nicely, we will all be moving, doing the same thing independently,
whether you have arthritis, whether you had an operation or not, you
will still move infinitely better than you started [pause]...Don't stop
moving the right hand, flexing and ...slowly, slowly see a remarkable
sort of thing...If you keep on doing that movement, it will actually
teach you...slowly, keep on moving the fingers gently and on top of that
movement, lift you right shoulder and you will see that the gentleness
of the movement, the skill of the movement permeates our entire being
and therefore you will see that other things we do improve without doing
them. You don't have to exercise in order to improve. You only have to
be your own self. (Feldenkrais, 1981b)
In this example,
Feldenkrais utilizes a hand-grasping movement-an infantile reflex and
embryological "growth action" (Blechschmidt, 1977) -in order to induce
hypnotic-like learning. His students are placed in a situation where
they learn from their own movements the means to achieve" comfort,
elegance, and aesthetic satisfaction." During the past 40 years
Feldenkrais developed a somatopsychic discipline incorporating numerous
effective techniques that in many essential respects complement and
parallel the work of Erickson.
Many of us in the Feldenkrais
community are drawn to Erickson's work because he so well conveyed
certain implicit but unstated insights of Feldenkrais's approach.
Similarly, some Ericksonians have discovered in Feldenkrais's work a
subtle intelligence about nonverbal behavior, learning, and
communication which makes Ericksonian skills more accessible. In this
chapter I hope to stimulate reciprocal study and collaboration between
practitioners of the two methods- a collaboration which has, in fact,
already begun. Furthermore, by understanding certain common principles
that are instantiated but differentially applied in the two methods, I
hope to promote the emergence of more integrated and effective
somatopsychic theory and methods.
I begin with an overview of the
life and work of Feldenkrais, followed by a discussion of the awareness
of movement Feldenkrais and Erickson both learned through personal
physical traumas. Then I describe their parallel philosophies of
learning and their parallel techniques. The chapter concludes with a
reflection on the artistry and experimentalism of Feldenkrais and
Erickson.
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS: HIS LIFE AND WORK
Moshe Feldenkrais was
born in Russia in 1904 and emigrated to Palestine at the age of 13. Like
many innovators, he came to his field by a circuitous route, weaving
together numerous influences. As a young man, he was an excellent
athlete, a soccer player, and self-taught in jujitsu. He did
construction work and tutored problem students while attending night
school preparing to study physics. He had an early interest in hypnosis
and translated Emile Coue's book on autosuggestion into Hebrew.
In
Paris, Feldenkrais earned his doctorate in physics at the Sorbonne and
assisted Joliot-Curie. During his university years he met Kano, the
originator of judo, and trained with Kano's students to become a high
ranking black belt and well-known judo teacher.
Evading the
Nazis, Feldenkrais fled to England where he worked in antisubmarine
research during the war, wrote scientific papers, trained paratroopers
in self-defense techniques, and authored books on judo. On slippery
submarine decks he aggravated an old soccer injury to his knees, and
began the extended work on himself which led to his discoveries about
movement reeducation. After he publicly presented his ideas, people
sought his help with their problems. For several years he was an amateur
somatic practitioner, first in England and later in Israel where he had
returned to work as a research scientist. In the mid-1950s, Feldenkrais
gave up his career in physics and devoted himself fully to his work
with people. By the late 1960s he was training his first Tel Aviv group
to become practitioners of his method, and he trained two subsequent
groups in the United States. He wrote four books on his method, and his
teaching is preserved in thousands of hours of audio- and videotapes.
Moshe
Feldenkrais originated two interrelated, somatically based educational
methods. The first method, Awareness Through Movement, is a verbally
directed technique designed for group work. The second method,
Functional Integration, is a nonverbal contact technique designed for
people desiring or requiring more individualized attention.
As
exemplified in the quote above, Feldenkrais's Awareness Through Movement
lessons incorporate active movements, imagery, cues for sensory
attention, and various informative and suggestive material. A typical
lesson lasts about an hour and combines a few dozen thematically linked
movements. Lesson themes may include developmental movements such as
rolling, crawling, and standing up; functions such as posture and
breathing; systematic explorations of the kinetic possibilities of the
joint and muscle groups; and experiments in somatically based imagery
and visualization.
These lessons are not "physical exercises"
such as calisthenics; they are somatopsychic explorations which foster
improvement by accessing inherent neurological competencies, increasing
self-awareness, and facilitating new learning. The initial movements are
usually very small with an emphasis on ease, comfort, and learning so
that gradually one becomes aware of how the musculature, skeleton, and
entire personality are involved in every movement. From seedlike
beginnings, small movements grow into movements of greater complexity,
magnitude and speed. The result is learning to move with greater
efficiency and satisfaction.
Awareness Through Movement lessons
often evoke a trancelike state. Unlike a typical exercise class, one is
not told where the movements are leading or shown what they look like;
thus, what one learns arises organically and as a surprise. Often only
one side of the body is physically worked at a time but the other side
is worked mentally; that is, in the imagination. This mental practice
refines kinesthetic sensitivity to the point where muscular impulses and
patterns are clearly felt and differentiated with minimal mobilization.
Throughout the lesson, one is guided to integrate and apply one's newly
discovered skills by means of verbal suggestions or stories.
The
individual lessons of Functional Integration are based upon the same
logic as Awareness Through Movement. They are used with a broad spectrum
of people from those with physical limitations and discomfort,
including neurological and musculoskeletal problems, to athletes and
performing artists. The method of Functional Integration is neither a
medical nor a therapeutic practice; it is learning-based, primarily
nonverbal, and directed at enhancing the efficiency, coordination,
grace, and self-possession of a person's movement. Lessons are done with
the student lying on a soft but firm work table, or standing, or
sitting. The practitioner gently touches or moves the student in a
variety of ways to facilitate the student's awareness and stimulate
organic learning and vitality. Each move in the lesson is part of a
communication Feldenkrais has likened to dancing. Through touch, the
practitioner partially discloses or hints at a functional motor pattern,
and the student's nervous system responds with altered muscular
responses. Gradually, with repetitions and variations, the student
assembles or synthesizes-mostly at an unconscious level- a new
neuromuscular image of movement which can later be translated into
active performance. At the end of a session the practitioner helps the
student to integrate the learning in everyday life through alternative
movements based upon the lesson's functional theme and through verbal
suggestions.
In recent years Feldenkrais has become well-known
for his work with brain-injured children and adults, but he is equally
respected in the theater and dance worlds for performance training. May
people have sought his aid for muscular and joint problems, and others
for personal growth. By working with the whole person, Feldenkrais's
techniques promote self-esteem and learning skills.
Within this
broad educational context Feldenkrais focused especially on the
unconscious sensory-motor experience that lies beneath the surface of
human behavior. This includes but is not limited to: (a) sensations of
the muscles and joints; (b) the sense of gravity, balance, space, and
time; (c) kinesthetic associations; (d) motor skills and competencies;
and (e) self-image. Feldenkrais spent a lifetime exploring and revealing
the inexhaustibly rich, multidimensional world of human movement (Note
1).
A PARALLEL AWARENESS OF MOVEMENT
One of the most
striking parallels between Feldenkrais and Erickson is that the origin
of their awareness of movement was grounded on their personal
discoveries while overcoming physical traumas that impaired their
movement abilities. Erickson said:
I had a polio attack when I
was 17 years old and I lay in bed without a sense of body awareness. I
couldn't even tell the position of my arms or legs in bed. So I spent
hours trying to locate my hand or my foot or my toes by sense of
feeling, and I became acutely aware of what movements were. Later, when I
went into medicine, I learned the nature of muscles. I used that
knowledge to develop adequate use of the muscles polio had left me and
to limp with the least possible strain; this took me ten years. I also
became extremely aware of physical movements and this has been
exceedingly useful. People use those telltale movements, those adjustive
movements that are so revealing if one can notice them. (Haley, 1967,
p.2)
For many years
Feldenkrais's knee injuries were a major problem in his life, sometimes
confining him to bed for weeks at a time. He knew that certain movements
aggravated his condition, but only intermittently. Therefore, he felt
that there must be some unconscious aspects of his movements which
contributed to reinjury and which he could correct if he developed
sufficient awareness. He lay in bed experimenting with tiny movements so
that he could feel the subtle subconscious connections between all pats
of himself. He studied biology and the neurosciences which supplemented
what he had learned from physics and from his training in judo. In this
way Feldenkrais reeducated his own movement habits and learned to walk
efficiently and painlessly. In the process he learned a great deal about
learning itself.
Thus, both Feldenkrais and Erickson had the
intense motivation and curiosity to undertake the extraordinary project
of becoming precisely aware of their own muscular efforts and movement.
They learned to sensitize their feelings to that twilight reality at the
boundary of intention and muscular action, emotion and sensation,
conscious and unconscious experience and expression. Through a
subjective, inner process of discovery they each acquired the
perceptiveness to observe the subtle reflections of life in the visible
and palpable body. Their experience of discovering and utilizing their
personal resources prompted the vision that now awakens these resources
in others.
A PARALLEL PHILOSOPHY OF LEARNING
While neither
Feldenkrais nor Erickson espoused a "theory" per se, a working
philosophy of learning is discernible throughout their writings. This
philosophy is essentially a positive and growth-oriented, and hoes
beyond the therapeutic dichotomy of sickness and health. In fact, the
work of Feldenkrais and Erickson is as much transformational as it is
remedial.
Learning entails going beyond one's limitations. One
senses in Feldenkrais's and Erickson's work a tremendous enthusiasm and
confidence in people's ability to learn. Yet, they lament, people limit
themselves instead of using their potential. Erickson noted, "when we
were very young, we were willing to learn. And the older we grow, the
more restrictions we put on ourselves" (Zeig, 1980, p.75). Similarly,
Feldenkrais remarked that as people get older "movements or actions are
gradually excluded from their repertory" (1981a, p.xii). In order to
convince people of their potential, Feldenkrais and Erickson often
reminded them of the learning they did as children: learning to stand
up, to talk, learning the alphabet, learning about the body and sex
(Feldenkrais, 1981a; Zeig, 1980). These learning parables are woven into
Erickson's inductions and Feldenkrais's lessons as affirmations of the
fact that people can learn.
Both
men attached importance to the therapeutic and self-actualizing value
of human learning; they demonstrated how learning new abilities can lead
to such positive transformations that symptoms spontaneously disappear.
The key is that learning builds self-confidence. Erickson said, "Most
neurotic ills come from people feeling inadequate, incompetent" (Zeig,
1980, p.222). And according to Feldenkrais, what makes therapies
effective is that "your acts and responses must contain, even in your
expectations or imagination, feelings of satisfaction and pleasurable
achievement or outcome" (1981a, p.37). They carefully and masterfully
created learning situations which established a foundation of success so
that feelings of accomplishment could generalize to other situations
(Feldenkrais, 1981a, p. 92; Zeig, 1980, p. 314).
For
Feldenkrais and Erickson, learning is not fundamentally an intellectual
process; Learning is a sensory motor process involving the entire self,
and results from doing. Feldenkrais quotes an old Chinese saying: "I
hear and forget. I see and remember. I do and understand" (1981a, p.
89). Erickson said, "The thing to do is get your patient, any way you
wish, any way you can, to do something" (Zeig, 1980, p.143). Both
Feldenkrais and Erickson were men of action who enjoyed the life of the
body. Erickson's polio, despite the physical restrictions it caused,
seemed only to heighten his appreciation for physical experience.
Telling a client to climb Squaw Peak was an example of one of Erickson's
prescriptions, parallel to Feldenkrais's more general emphasis on
physical activity.
The concern for experiential learning is
reflected in the way Feldenkrais and Erickson trained students to
practice their methods. Erickson taught that learning hypnosis was like
learning to swim: You have to get in the water (personal communication,
November, 1979). Most people spent their time in an Erickson seminar "in
the water". Likewise, Feldenkrais's training programs bear little
resemblance to academia where objective knowledge is often dissociated
from subjective experience. Instead, Feldenkrais crates a personal
learning context where students have the opportunity to discover in
themselves the kinesthetic sensitivity he learned through the work he
did with himself.
Underlying these methods of experiential learning
is the assumption of somatopsychic unity which has profound implications
for everyone in the helping professions. This unity is the basis for
psychic complaints "surfacing" in the body and for neurotic complaints
disappearing as a result of physical improvements. Out of the experience
of their own integrity, both Erickson and Feldenkrais transcended the
traditional mind/body dichotomy and saw human beings as fundamentally
whole. Thus, Feldenkrais emphasizes that he does not touch bodies but
rather persons. And when Erickson spoke to a person's unconscious mind,
he was likewise relating to a whole person.
Learning and the Unconscious
Erickson described the
unconscious as "made up of all your learnings over a lifetime, many of
which you have completely forgotten, but which serve you in your
automatic functioning" (Zeig, 1980, p.173). Feldenkrais said, "Immense
activity goes on in...us, far greater than we appreciate or are aware
of. This activity is related to what we have learned during our whole
life from inception to this moment" (Feldenkrais, 1981a, p. 6).
There
is a special, other kind of "learning": phylogenetic knowledge,
learning acquired and passed on through evolution over countless
generations. When Erickson taught the little bedwetting girl to control
her urination by imagining being frightened, he used reflexive,
phylogenetic potentiality that with awareness she could learn to utilize
(Zeig, 1980, p. 82). Similarly, many Feldenkrais techniques are based
upon utilization of latent, neuromuscular phenomena, including tonic and
righting reflexes, grasping and sucking, protective reactions, and
muscular synergy. Thus, for Feldenkrais and Erickson "the unconscious"
is not the reservoir of difficult-to manage instinctual impulses
depicted by Freud, but a life-sustaining activity which supports our
thinking, feeling, sensing, and acting. Accordingly, many of their
techniques are designed to reduce the interference of overly conscious
direction and will.
Curiously, in light of the foregoing
discussion, Feldenkrais rarely if ever uses the tern "unconscious"; he
refers instead to the biologically specifiable entity, the nervous
system. However, he speaks of the nervous system in a way that is
comparable to Erickson's use of "the unconscious". When giving lessons,
Feldenkrais will say, "Don't you decide how to do the movement; let your
nervous system decide. It has had millions of years of experience and
therefore it knows more than you do" (Note 2). This injunction parallels
Erickson's characteristic induction: "You don't know what all your
possibilities are yet. Your unconscious can work on them all by itself"
(Erickson & Rossi, 1979,p. 46).
Organic and Hypnotherapeutic Learning
Feldenkrais's
philosophy of learning is perhaps best expressed by what he call organic
learning. Organic learning is related to the physical development of
the body and nervous system codependent interaction with the outer
world. The first few years of life display the most intense expression
of this learning which is linked with organic growth. However, for human
beings, there is no limit to potential growth since neurological growth
is concomitant with new learning and is, in effect, the direct
continuation of our embryological and infantile ontogenesis.
Unfortunately the social norm is for organic learning to stop at puberty
except in the social sphere. The personal somatic functions usually
become arrested in their development or gradually deteriorate, causing a
host of preventable somatopsychic difficulties from ulcers to backache.
The
parallel between organic learning and Erickson's hypnotherapeutic
learning is that each represents an inner-directed, highly personal
learning process which unfolds the individual's potential. This process
lies at the heart of how the person experiences and regards him or
herself. Both of Feldenkrais's methods (Awareness Through Movement and
Functional Integration) are intended to reinstate the self-perpetuating
movement of organic learning. They lead the student through primal
sensory-motor pathways and forests of discovery where the nervous system
has retained the memory of, and thus the competency for free and
natural movement. Analogous to Erickson's hypnotherapeutic learning,
this process of reconnection with the inner, intelligent, sensory-motor
self reinforces the impulse of growth, individuation, and creativity.
The essence of both organic learning and Ericksonian learning is that
they are self-directed. As Erickson relates:
I didn't know what her
problem was. She didn't know what her problem was. I didn't know what
kind of psychotherapy I was doing. All I was a source of weather or a
garden in which her thoughts could grow and mature and do so without her
knowledge. The therapist is really unimportant. It is his ability to
get his patients to do their own thinking, their own understanding.
(Zeig, 1980, p. 157)
Similarly, Feldenkrais
has called himself "a funny sort of teacher who doesn't teach, yet the
students learn" (Note 2). The two methods thus create the conditions
that nurture the flowering of individuality and self-realization.
PARALLEL TECHNIQUES
Creating a Learning Context
Analogous to some of
Erickson's "reframing" procedures, Feldenkrais often resituates his
students' problems in a learning context. For example, a woman
approached Feldenkrais to be treated for her scoliosis. Feldenkrais told
her that he would not deal with her "scoliosis" since many therapists
had already tried unsuccessfully to "correct" her spine. She could, of
course, go to a surgeon; but if he straightened her spine surgically,
she would surely lose mobility. Feldenkrais explained that he could help
her to learn how to move without pain and with ease in all cardinal
directions. Furthermore, by learning how to perform functionally
symmetrical movements, she would learn to appreciate in herself and
improved skeletal organization and, in effect, learn to "straighten"
herself.
Feldenkrais's learning orientation is atypical of most
somatic approaches which ( a) diagnose and isolate specific structural
or physical problems; and (b) attempt to cure or correct these problems;
by (c) administering authoritarian, directive forms of manipulation and
behavioral prescriptions. In contrast, Feldenkrais (a) situates the
problem in terms of the availability or unavailability of choices and
options open to the person; (b) engages in a mutual search for new
options of behavior and experience which can lead to more favorable
outcomes; and (c) utilizes already present competencies and works
indirectly to support the person's ability to discover solutions through
awareness and learning. In the following sections I describe how this
general approach is embodied in Feldenkrais's techniques which parallel
those of Erickson.
Utilization
The "utilization
principle" (Erickson & Rossi, 1979) is recognized as central to
Erickson's work, and it is likewise important in understanding
Feldenkrais. Feldenkrais and Erickson often match the student-client's
ongoing experience and behavior in order to facilitate learning and
change. In one dramatic example, Erickson joined in with the agonized
chant of a terminally ill cancer patient in order to induce hypnotic
anesthesia (Zeig, 1980, p. 185). Once I saw Feldenkrais work, rather
grossly I thought, with a small boy with an athetoid form of cerebral
palsy until I realized he was matching the child's rhythm and quality of
movement; the boy was able to learn far more easily from this resonant
pattern than from very smooth movements which lay outside his range of
experience. Bandler and Grinder (1975) have discussed utilization in
terms of "pacing and leading" and say that in pacing, "the hypnotist is
making himself into a sophisticated biofeedback mechanism" (p. 16).
Feldenkrais's methods indeed exemplify a sophisticated biofeedback
mechanism. Functional Integration creates a direct kinesthetic linkage
whereby the practitioner and student become " a new entity", joined by
the hands of the practitioner (Feldenkrais, 1981a, pp. 3-4). Feldenkrais
kinesthetically "paces and leads" the students breathing, muscular
tonus, rhythm, and other subtle qualities and styles of minimal
neuromuscular behavior.
Feldenkrais's movements often accentuate
the student's way of holding the body; his hands shape themselves to the
musculoskeletal contours, supporting and exaggerating what is already
being enacted and taking over the student's own muscular effort. For
example, Feldenkrais might lift and support a pupil's hunched shoulders
or tightened lumbar arch. Once, while working under Feldenkrais's
supervision, I was attempting to release a muscle spasm in an elderly
woman's pelvic muscles. He came over to me, put his hands on mine. and I
felt his and my hands merge with the woman until the three of us were
moving as on "ensemble". As her spasm released and her pelvis began to
softly move, Feldenkrais rhythmically intoned, "Don't contradict her
nervous system. It is very intelligent. It has been making life feasible
for this woman for 76 years. Help it to do its job" (personal
communication, April, 1979). For Feldenkrais, muscular tensions are
intelligent, useful behaviors that serve some purpose to the person.
Utilization
means cooperating with these unconscious patterns and adjusting to the
individual so that "we can all do our own learning in our own way"
(Zeig, 1980, p. 224). Thus it may be helpful to lengthen further the
side of the body which is longer, or twist the student in the habitual
direction of musculoskeletal torque; this establishes rapport with, and
enables reorganization of those individual-specific patterns which are
often called "symptomatic". Paradoxically, when a person is pushed
sufficiently in his or her own extreme, it begins to feel right for the
person to spontaneously correct his or her posture. For example, if a
man habitually carries his head to the right, by gently increasing his
natural "bent", his own "biofeedback" will redirect him toward more
symmetrical functioning. However, if the man were corrected directly, he
would perceive it in his self-image as an unnatural movement to the
left and his unconscious bias might undermine the correction. In another
instance, Feldenkrais taught a student to open an eye which could not
open properly by exaggerating the eye's closure, thus rendering the
movement of opening, however slight, more perceptible. Even as a young
man, Feldenkrais only played football with him until one day the boy
insisted. on his own, that they do some math homework together. In this
case, utilization of the boy's rebellious feelings toward his father and
his positive feeling for sports were the means to carry him beyond his
learning block Note 3).
Indirect and Paradoxical Techniques
Erickson was
well-known for employing indirect and often paradoxical techniques in
hypnosis and psychotherapy. As in some of the examples already
discussed, Feldenkrais, too, avoids direct and obvious approaches and
believes that an indirect solution is often the most effective and
elegant one.
For example, in Functional Integration Feldenkrais
often works only with the "good" side and not the injured or restricted
side of the body. A person with an injured leg depends heavily upon the
"good" leg which, therefore, often becomes strained from doing the work
of two legs. Working on the "good" leg helps the person to move easier
and gives the "bad" leg a chance to rest and heal. In addition,
passively lengthening and shortening the "good" leg effects an
isomorphic, reciprocal movement on the opposite side of the pelvis and
spine; thus, the "bad" leg undergoes the same movement but indirectly.
Indirect movements can bypass protective reactions which may be
considerable in cases of pain and trauma and help teach the person how
to move in a healthful manner.
Feldenkrais's " artificial floor"
technique illustrates how he can elicit the learning of whole functions
through partial cues conveyed through any part or parts of the body
(Feldenkrais, 1981a, pp. 139-142). With a pupil lying supine on the work
table, Feldenkrais applies subtle pressures to the sole of the foot
with a flat board or book in order to "simulate walking on even ground"
through proprioceptive cues. While on the table, the person probably has
no conscious inkling of what is being learned; he or she is simply
absorbed in pleasant kinesthetic sensations. However, upon getting up
and walking, the pupil will appreciate that his or her nervous system
has undergone a substantial reorganization in its "image" of walking. In
this manner Feldenkrais teaches "sensory-motor excellence to normal
individuals and to individuals with problems such as cerebral palsy.
Feldenkrais's
indirect techniques are made possible by what neurophysiologist Karl
Pribram (1971) has called the "hologramic" nature of the nervous system
whereby each part expresses an image of the whole. This idea also helps
explain Erickson's ability to "mind read" from minimal cues.
Feldenkrais's and Erickson's techniques represent a refinement of what
we all observe in nonverbal communication: the signaling of intentions
through partial and initiatory actions. We follow a person's attention
through eye movements and posture; the readiness to speak-or even its
content- is conveyed by changes in a person's mouth or breathing; and so
forth. By extension we can conceive how, by delicately moving a
cellist's scapula, one could not only "relax" the musician, but much
more precisely, convey the means to bow the instrument in a new way.
Every motor skill is inscribed in a global pattern of organization in
the person's body and nervous system. Erickson pointed out, for example,
that writing is an action of the entire body (Zeig, 1980, p. 319).
Accordingly, our wealth of lifelong motoric learning has created a
kinesthetic matrix of associations as individualized as "our own
linguistic patterns, our own personal understandings" (Zeig, 1980, p.
78). The efficacy of these indirect learning techniques is therefore
dependent on a Feldenkrais practitioner's ability to "speak"" with the
hands in a way that the individual student kinesthetically understands.
Pattern Interruptions
"Differentiated" and
"nonhabitual" movements form a group of Feldenkrais techniques which can
be understood as analogous to Erickson's pattern interruptions. Just as
Erickson often prescribed out of the ordinary behaviors and even
engineered situations in order to shake people our of their patterns,
Feldenkrais often creates sufficiently novel and unfamiliar learning
situations to do the same. "Differentiated" movements may refer to
moving the eyes, head, shoulders, and pelvis in separate directions;
"nonhabitual" movements may consist in simply reversing one's habitual
way of interlacing the fingers or being asked to perform unfamiliar and
familiar movements in novel positions. The situation of learning
something radically new produces a major shift in the brain and often
induces a trancelike state reminiscent of Erickson's "confusion
technique". Feldenkrais's differentiated and nonhabitual movements are
modeled on the organic, experimental learning of children.
Normal
motor development follows a rhythmical course of increasing
differentiation and synergistic integration. For example, discrete
movements of the extremities are differentiated from global actions
involving the entire; discrete finger movements are differentiated from
undifferentiated hand movements such as grasping, with each succeeding
differentiation supported by integrated activity of the whole body. In
cases of abnormal development such as cerebral palsy, Feldenkrais may
initially go with, and pace a person's spastic, undifferentiated
functioning that displays the action of "higher" neurological
inhibition. In cases of stroke or even stress-related muscular tension,
people regress to less differentiated functional states; and
differentiation must be reacquired. Again, Feldenkrais's approach is to
"pace and lead", shifting between undifferentiated and increasingly
differentiated patterns.
Nonhabitual and highly differentiated
movements displace a person from his or her customary mind and body
"set". The person who, for example, has back trouble or is depressed is
transported to a novel situation where he or she has not already learned
how to have this problem (Baniel, personal communication, July, 1983).
The new way of acting is therefore not tainted with recollections of
inability and discomfort. When learning, we disengage from customary
patterns and awaken to discover ourselves capable of doing things
formerly believed impossible.
Hypnotic Communication
Functional Integration as described by Feldenkrais certainly evokes the image of trance experience:
Functional Integration
turns to the oldest elements of our sensory system- touch, the feelings
of pull and pressure, the warmth of the hand, its caressing stroke. The
person becomes absorbed in sensing the diminishing muscular tonus, the
deepening and the regularity of breathing, abdominal ease, and improved
circulation in the expanding skin. The person senses his most primitive,
consciously forgotten patterns and recalls the well-being of a growing
young child. (1981a, p. 121)
Similarly, the
Awareness Through Movement extract at the beginning of the chapter calls
to mind many Ericksonian patterns of hypnotic communication, including
embedded and indirect suggestions. And, the effect of the lesson is
certainly "hypnotic". Yet, interestingly, Feldenkrais does not refer to
"hypnosis" or "trance" either in practice or theory, His language is
situated in the context of human movement learning, and it is
sensory-based. "States of consciousness" are invoked primarily insofar
as they are embodied in sensible qualities of activity. In actual
practice this is not as restriction as it may sound since movement is an
expression of the self.
Feldenkrais's parallel "hypnotic"
approaches may be summarized as follows: (a) the induction of a
positive, subjective state which is conducive to learning, including
feelings of ease, comfort, reduced muscular tonus; (b) the sensitivity
to an validation of self-experience; (c) the training of somatopsychic
skills including imagery, memory, attention, physiological and
neuromuscular control; (d) the utilization of life-experiential and
species-experiential knowledge; (e) indirect approaches; (f) pattern
interrupting techniques; and (g) emphasis upon mutual respect,
codependent interaction and communication where practitioner and student
reciprocally learn from each other.
An Illustration
Once Feldenkrais
worked with a middle-aged man who had been in a wheelchair for 16 years
after an automobile accident and subsequent spinal operation. His legs
were spastic and he sat quite stooped with a depressed look on his face.
Feldenkrais began by seemingly attempting to straighten the back
directly, gently pushing with his hands into the middle of the kyphotic
curve. As long as Feldenkrais supported him, the man sat erectly; but as
soon as he took his hands away, he slouched into his original position.
Clearly, the man's nervous system would reject any willful attempt, on
his own part or anyone else's, to straighten his back.
Then
Feldenkrais asked him to stick out his tongue and do the movement
animals do to lap water (which involves a wavelike movement of thrusting
the head forward). He was asked to repeat the movement slowly, reducing
his effort, and making each movement more comfortable than the last.
After resting, he was asked to repeat the movement with his face turned
to the right, then to the left, and finally while moving his head slowly
from one side to the other. As his movements gradually involved more of
his spine and entire self, minute by minute he sat more erectly in his
chair; and after about 15 minutes, he sat with his head held high and an
alert, pleasant look on his face. Feldenkrais then pointed out that his
legs were relaxed and no longer spastic. Next, Feldenkrais had the man
lie down on the table on his back; and in the process his legs became
spastic once again. Feldenkrais asked the man to think of what he had
been doing with his tongue. As the man imagined the movement of lapping
water, his legs again relaxed. After working nonverbally with the man
for about 15 minutes, Feldenkrais had him move back to his wheelchair.
But as he started the effort of lifting himself, his legs again became
spastic. After Feldenkrais reminded him of the tongue movement, he was
then able to manage himself much more easily without his legs becoming
stiff.
In order to understand the movement of lapping water,
experience the movement yourself and observe what your head and neck do.
You will discover that if you perform the movement slowly, gently, and
repeatedly, your entire body will become involved in the act. Notice
that although the active, intentional, and conscious movement is to
thrust the head forward as the tongue reaches for "water", the
relatively passive, unintentional, and unconscious phase requires
straightening the cervical arch and taking the head into its most erect
position. Thus, in light of what has been said, we can see that this
movement is an indirect technique of learning improved posture and
spinal organization; a utilization of the man's forward stoop in a
pleasant-feeling movement; a pattern interruption of his usual manner of
seeing himself and holding himself; a " naturalistic trance induction"
involving repetitious movements and sensory-based suggestions for
increasing ease, comfort, and satisfaction; and a utilization of latent
phylogenetic and ontogenetic neuromotor patterns involving movements of
the mouth and jaw in organic relation to the first cervical vertebra,
the tongue, swallowing, breathing, and locomotion. Finally, we can see
how the new movement quality can be used as a kinesthetic reminder- and a
form of "posthypnotic suggestion"-for the possibility of increased ease
and lightness of movement.
THE ARTISTRY OF FELDENKRAIS AND ERICKSON
Feldenkrais and
Erickson are artists as well as therapists and teachers. As
artist-scientists, they continually go beyond themselves and never
abandon an experimental attitude. With their students they consistently
attempt to provoke creativity, individuality, and originality of
thinking. For example, when Erickson said that the practice of
psychotherapy should be "charming and interesting", he was going beyond a
solely practical, therapeutic frame of reference. He was challenging
himself as an artist to be inventive as well as effective. Analogously,
Feldenkrais directly compared his lessons to "procedures...in learning
to paint, to play an instrument, or to solve a mathematical
problem...Pianists of genius when practicing...always...discover an
alternative to the habitual" (1981, p. 95). Thus, over the years
Feldenkrais developed literally thousands of different Awareness Through
Movement and Functional Integration lessons, and Erickson displayed a
similar virtuosity of styles and techniques.
A Teaching Seminar
demonstrates how Erickson was able to find unexpected ways to humor and
stimulate his students to "think in all directions" (Zeig, 1980, p.
128); and Feldenkrais, like Erickson, tells stories to teach flexible
thinking as well as moving. He relates that he once was seated opposite a
man on a train who was reading from a book held upside down. After a
few moments of bewilderment, wondering if the man were crazy, joking, or
only pretending to be literate, Feldenkrais asked him why his book was
upside down. "Upside down?" the man replied. "How can a book be upside
down?" The man had gone to a school in a small Yemenite village where
there was only one book to a class. The children sat each day in a small
circle reading their book from "all directions" (personal
communication, March, 1979).
REFERENCE NOTES
1. For information
concerning Feldenkrais's work and trained practitioners, contact the
Feldenkrais Guild Office, P.O. Box 11145, San Francisco, California
94101
2. Feldenkrais, M. Professional Training Program, June, 1975.
3. Feldenkrais, M. Unpublished autobiography, undated.
REFERENCES
Bandler, R. &
Grinder, J. (1975). Patterns of the hypnotic techniques of Milton H
Erickson, M.D. (Vol. 1). Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications.
Blechschmidt, E. (1977). The beginnings of human life. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Erickson, M. & Rossi, E. (1979). Hypnotherapy. New York: Irvington.
Feldenkrais, M. (1949). Body and mature behavior. New York; International Universities Press.
Feldenkrais,
M. (1967). The case of Nora. New York: Harper & Row. (Out of print,
but available from the Feldenkrais Guild Office.)
Feldenkrais, M. (1972) Awareness through movement. New York: Harper & Row.
Feldenkrais, M. (1981a). The elusive obvious. Cupertino, CA: Meta Publications.
Feldenkrais, M. (1981b, May). San Francisco "Quest" Workshop. Washington, DC: ATM
Recordings.
Haley, J. (1967). Advanced techniques of hypnosis and therapy. New York: Grune & Stratton.
Pribram, K. (1971). Languages of the brain. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Zeig, J. K. (Ed. ). (1980). A teaching seminar with Milton H. Erickson, M.D. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
Zeig, J. K. (1982). Ericksonian approaches to hypnosis and phychotherapy. New York: Brunner/ Mazel.
About the Author
 Mark Reese, Ph.D. was s one of the world's foremost authorities on the Feldenkrais Method. Adding to a broad, interdisciplinary background which includes philosophy, biology, theater, and music, he is a graduate from the first U.S. Feldenkrais training program. Mark studied with Moshe Feldenkrais in San Francisco, Amherst and Tel-Aviv, and has taught practitioners in more than 30 domestic and international Feldenkrais Professional Training Programs. He taught advanced trainings throughout the world, including at both Esalen and the Omega Institute.
Mark published
extensively on the Feldenkrais Method and related health issues, and
is co-author of Relaxercise: The Easy New Way to Health and Fitness. He
also appeared on television and radio. At the time of Marks passing on
June 23rd, 2006 Mark was working on a biography of Moshé Feldenkrais.
This book is currently being completed by Cliff Skoog his long time
friend and editor and his widow Carol Kress.
For a complete list of Mark Reese's Products click here.
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