Moshe Feldenkrais was ahead of his time in understanding the need to do less to learn to have quality movement. I call this the “Feldenkrais Less is More Rule”.
Before I get into that, let’s talk posture for a second.
One of the biggest challenges people I work with must overcome is their beliefs about good posture.
Suffering pain, they are often doing everything they can to have “good posture”.
What they often don’t realize is that all that effort they’re putting into having good posture is detrimental to having quality movement.
There are two common misconceptions about posture I come across all the time.
One is about the importance of good posture in relieving and preventing back pain. My colleague, Todd Hargrove, wrote an excellent blog post with scientific studies and systematic reviews showing that the connection between posture and pain is a myth. (Click here if you want to read his post).
The other misconception about posture I come across all the time is the means to getting good posture.
By this I’m talking about the all too common recommendations to:
- “pull your shoulders down and back”
- “pull in your belly button”
- “lift your chest while tucking in your lower ribs”
- “tucking your pelvis”
- and so on and so forth….
I get it! I was schooled in physiotherapy 25 years ago and used to believe and teach these things. Yikes!
Gladly, I’ve learned a bit over the years and have come to understand posture in a very different way.
The problem with all that work to correct your posture is that it is:
- insanely effortful
- interferes with effortless breathing
- making you to become more rigid and less responsive to the constantly changing needs of the moment
- you become less adaptable as a human being
- you end up more vulnerable to injury
- places undue stress on your entire system
- is unsustainable in any functional, healthy way
If you want some ways to start exploring what does make for functional, adaptable “posture” you can check out these posts:
- Feldenkrais For Lower Back Pain
- How to Find the Power & Strength to Move with Grace & Ease, Even if You Have a Back Injury
These are only a couple of ways to begin to understand how you can come to having more functional, adaptable posture. There will be much more to come.
In the meantime, let’s get back to posture.
When “Good Posture” Is Not So Good
Often, after a new person’s first Functional IntegrationⓇ (private, hands-on) lesson, they feel as though their posture is “wrong” or “poor”. Although they may feel great —- no pain, lighter, more grounded, easier movement — they still feel their posture is “wrong.”
And so, some want to go right back to their old habits. Why? Because they think that’s what they should do to “have good posture” and “prevent pain”.
The analogy I often use to describe what’s going on in these situations goes something like this.
Lets say you buy a new oven. You get it installed and are all ready to bake your favourite cookies. You put those delicious little dough balls in the oven as you always do, only to have them burn. “New oven” you figure… “Just have to make a little adjustment”.
So you bake the next batch 25 degrees cooler and check them a couple minutes early. Crap! They’re burnt again.
Time to call the repair man.
The repair man comes and tests the thermostat.
Aha! When the dial on the oven reads 325 degrees, the thermostat is setting the oven at 450 degrees. No wonders your cookies are burning!
It can be the same with our own perceptions.
Although you may feel that your posture is “straight” and “good,” in fact you’re a little backwards of your centre and you’re holding your back far shorter and narrower than is healthy. You are so used to this you feel and think you’re “straight”. And heck, you’ve been working mighty hard to get to this place! But in truth, your “thermostat” and your “dial” aren’t calibrated properly.
Again, I know how that feels. I’ve been through the process (and continue to be in process) myself.
Here’s the good news…
There is something better than good posture.
Quality movement is infinitely better than “good” posture. The beauty of this is that quality movement tends to lead towards more ideal posture.
I’ve mentioned “quality movement” in previous posts. Most recently, in Getting The Greatest ROI From Your Feldenkrais Lessons, I kept mentioning the importance of how you move over that you move and encourage “quality movement” more than once.
But what exactly makes for quality movement?
Feldenkrais clearly describes the four elements necessary for quality movement.
1. The Absence of Effort
2. The Absence of Resistance
3. The Presence of Reversibility
4. Free Breathing
This and the next four blog posts will be a series dedicated to helping you understand and move with greater quality.
Because when you learn how to move with better quality, you improve the quality or your life.
That’s a pretty bold statement. And I and my fellow Feldenkrais practitioners aren’t alone in thinking so:
…we are fundamentally moving animals that move intelligently. The more intelligent our movement, the more intelligent we are as animals.” [emphasis mine]
If you think about this question for any length of time, it’s blindingly obvious why we have a brain. We have a brain for one reason and one reason only, and that’s to produce adaptable and complex movements. There is no other reason to have a brain. Think about it. Movement is the only way you have of affecting the world around you.” [emphasis mine]
So let’s get started…
First, to be able to move closer to having anything like quality movement, you have to learn what it takes to learn better.
The important word in that above sentence is LEARN.
Learning anything requires that you sense differences — that you can make distinctions between different sensations.
If you want to learn to be a better sommelier (wine taster), you have to develop your ability to make finer and finer distinctions with your palate (taste and smell). Want to learn to play music better? You’ll have to learn to make finer and finer distinctions with your ear (hearing pitch, timber, tonality etc.).
So if you want to learn to move better, you need to make finer distinctions in your sensations related to movement (pressure, position, muscle tone, weight and so forth).
Here is where things get interesting…
The Feldenkrais Less Is More Rule
There are a couple laws of perception that are extremely important to wrap your head around. They aren’t hard to understand, although it seems that many find them hard to believe.
Let me assure you, experts have tested these laws, and they are still used to understand the nature of sensation and perception. Heck, they even show up on MCAT exams (medical school entrance exams).
I was taught these as one law, the Weber-Fechner Law. But in fact, as I delved into the science behind these laws, it became clear that they are in fact separate.
The Weber Law describes a law related to the detection of a Just Noticeable Difference (JND) between two sensations. The increment needed in order to detect a change, the JND, is smaller for weak stimuli compared to stronger stimuli.
What does this mean, exactly?
It means that if you’re holding a 2 pound weight, you’d only need maybe two tenths (0.2) of a pound more weight to notice that there is, in fact, a difference. But if you’re holding a 20 pound weight, you would need a full 2 pounds more weight before you’d notice a difference.
The Fechner Law describes the inverse relationship between the intensity of a stimulus and your ability to sense that intensity. Formally, it goes like this: subjective sensation is proportional to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity.
Here’s a simple way to understand what these men discovered…
Basically, the more intense a stimulation, the less able you are to make distinctions.
Here’s an example to make this clear.
If you’re standing in the noon day sun and I come up behind you with a flashlight, you’ll never notice the difference in the increased intensity of the light around you. But at dusk or dawn you might, and at night you certainly would.
In terms of movement, the harder you work at doing anything, the less you’re able to notice small changes in your organization. The less effort you use to do something, the more subtle differences you’ll detect.
Another example…
If you try to lift the back end of a Mini Cooper, you’ll never notice the difference in the weight you’re lifting if I put a 5 pound book on the roof of the car. But if you’re holding a small bowl of 10 cherries, you’re probably going to notice the extra few ounces if I add another few cherries.
So what?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, if you want to learn to move better, you have to be able to make more and better distinctions.
The more varied and refined your ability to make distinctions, the more you learn.
Think of it this way. If you want to learn to be a wine taster, it helps if you develop your palate. If you want to develop your palate, your ability to taste small differences, you have to savour the wine. You have to be mindful, pay close attention, and linger with the taste sensations. You have to grow your library of distinctions.
Chugging your wine, swallowing fast, drinking mindlessly is not going to help you here at all. Sure you’ll get drunk faster, which is perfect if that’s your intention. But you sure as heck won’t be able to make many distinctions about the wine. And you won’t be learning to be a better sommelier.
In the same way, if you want to move better with more skill, grace and power, you have to develop your ability to make distinctions in movement. To do this you have to move slowly and with less effort.
This point is critical. So let’s take a look at it again but in a different way and in relation to the Feldenkrais Method.
The reason we move slowly and are always looking to move with less effort in Awareness Through Movement lessons is not because we are interested in relaxation, sloppy movements, dopey states of mind or a laissez-faire attitude to life!
The reason you are constantly invited to move with less effort is because you will learn faster.
You are creating a profoundly more potent learning environment for yourself when you move slowly, mindfully and with less effort.
Feldenkrais said it well when saying things like, “You have to move slowly in order to learn to move fast.”
So now you know why you have to move slowly and with less effort when learning a new skill. Its because of the biological laws you are bound to. You’re just wired that way!
Sometimes, less really is more.
Now you know how to bring yourself to the task of learning to move better, with more skill, grace and power.
Over the next four blog posts, we’ll explore each of the four elements of quality movement.
You can start exploring these ideas right away in everyday activities.
Simply do whatever you are doing with less effort.
Anything and everything, like:
• washing your hands
• chopping veggies
• carrying groceries
• holding a pen
• getting into a yoga pose
• doing the dishes
• pulling weeds
Do it all with only the amount of effort required to get the task done.
Notice which activities you tend to use unnecessary effort, whether it be holding your breath or tightening your jaw or stiffening your chest.
Using less effort will help you sense more subtleties within yourself.
What do you do? How do you do it? What subtleties do you pick-up about yourself?
Share your discoveries. Where do you work harder than necessary? How? What subtleties do you discover about yourself? Leave a comment below.
Learn to have better movement through Awareness Through Movement® lessons for $0 by clicking here.
This is an edited version of a previous post.
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