I had the strangest experience yesterday, and I'm still processing - so please, bear with me.
I had been struggling with pain, for many months, in my lower back and left hip. It got so bad, I was beginning to convince myself that I probably needed some kind of horrific surgery or other. I could not get out of bed without pain.
And then, one of my clients introduced me to her Feldenkrais teacher, and it has changed my mobility completely.
It's been wonderful, and exciting and, above all else, such a huge relief to discover that I do not have to live in pain, and I do not need any kind of surgical intervention. I can learn how to help and heal myself.
So I've been working 1:1 with my teacher, and I've started taking group classes.
Yesterday, I was in class, with the teacher and two other students, and the teacher was asking us about how our bodies moved under certain circumstances. The two other students observed that their right foot and ankle were lifting up from the floor as their body began to move.
OH NO! My foot and ankle were driving down into the floor!
WHAT WAS I DOING WRONG??????
I watched my new friends closely, and noticed that there were other differences in our movements - we were sitting on the floor, and they had the palm of their left hand flat on the floor, but my hand didn't reach... was my arm somehow shorter in comparison? Is THAT why my right foot was doing something different to them?
In what way was I not meeting the requirements for this lesson? What new way to fail at being a person was this?
Now, before we continue, I should be very clear about one thing - my teacher had done NOTHING to make me feel this way, she had said NOTHING about anyone being 'right' or 'wrong', this was all me, feeling quite certain that, as usual, I was the awkward one, I was the one who couldn't look as lovely as the other students, who couldn't 'do it right'. Nobody else in that room did or said anything to support or endorse my belief, this was all going on in my head.
I struggled for a few more minutes to make my foot move like theirs, to get my hand to go how theirs did, and I couldn't do it, it felt horribly unstable, I didn't like it at all.
And so, when it was quiet, and there was time for me to talk, I told my teacher what I could see - that my hand wouldn't go where the other people's hands were lying, and that I thought maybe that was why my foot wasn't behaving.
And my dear, sweet teacher very gently pointed out that the reason my body was doing what it was doing.....
was that this is the thing we have been working on together for the last seven weeks, and wasn't it wonderful that my body now automatically supports me by driving that right foot into the floor, rather than leaving me unsteady and unstable by lifting up...
OH!
Wait....
So I'm not doing anything wrong?
I'm not doing anything wrong.
I'm ok, this movement is working for me, my body is working for me. It's good to feel unstable and strange when I do the lifting ankle thing, that's what I've been learning for seven weeks, I've been learning how to use my body to support me as I move, and would you just look at that? ... my body IS helping me, my foot is supporting my movement, I can lift my left hand clear off the floor if I choose, my body is stable, and supported, and my wonderfully clever right foot is countering the movement of my torso, balancing me and keeping me steady.
Not. Wrong.
And then my new friend next to me says that she has been watching me, as I have been watching her, and she has noticed that, at rest, my foot lies very differently to hers on the floor - and that maybe there's something important in that.
Not for a moment does it occur to me that SHE might be 'doing something wrong' - isn't that interesting? In my mind, I am almost certainly 'wrong' but my friend... oh she is either 'right' or 'just learning something new' or 'not quite there yet'.... all of which are potentially true, but why don't I speak to myself with that same empathy, generosity, encouragement, understanding?
And then our teacher sits by us, and shows us, gently, and without judgement, how the differences in our habits are influencing the ways we are moving, and how one way feels stable, strong, powerful, and the other can feel a little unsteady. She quietly works my new friend through the same discovery that I made in our private classes a couple of weeks ago.
And as I watch them working together, I realise that, as students, we have both been making silent assumptions about ourselves being somehow 'wrong', and suddenly it's clear that if we stop using our comparisons to judge ourselves harshly, if we stop getting in our own way, we can a) realise that we are experiencing something GOOD, and b) help each other and both be stronger and more capable for it. I am not wrong, I am growing, just like my friends beside me.
And there we sit, on the floor, looking at our hands and our feet, and how our bodies were moving differently, thinking and talking about what feels good and bad, and our third friend becomes involved, and then she is discovering that if she moves her foot to lie how mine lay, at rest on the floor, her neck pain is very much eased, and she can move further and with more ease.
We are three very different people, tall, short, slender, curvy, younger, older, new mothers, mothers with grown children. We were born in very different places, raised by different parents, in different communities. And yet, we have discovered that our three bodies all benefited from the exact same small adjustments to the way we were habitually moving. And as we harnessed the power of talking with each other, sharing what we could see and feel, I could see us all growing each other's experience.
It was a beautiful thing, to watch another woman's face change as her body found ease and joy in the simplicity of quality movement. It was an amazing thing to watch the strain of continuous pain wash away from a beautiful face as she discovered that she didn't have to hurt all the time.
That classroom is a powerful place. Life-changing things are happening there.
Our teacher has spent years exploring this body of work, every nuance, every detail, such that she can now talk us through how we might take our imagination on a walk and find a new way to move. She has the words, the experience, she has immersed herself in this work so deeply, she knows what we might feel before we feel it.
She's got this. She can take us on journeys that we cannot even dream of.
All I have to do is let go of some things. Let go of this view I have of myself as being 'the kid who was always terrible at physical activities'. Let go of this belief that my body is somehow less useful, less capable, less beautiful than everyone else's. Let go of the certainty that I'm always 'doing it wrong'.
As I learn this work, I am discovering these new ways of moving my body, I am building new movement habits, using the power of my mind to influence how I move, even how I prepare to move - building new pathways in my mind that open up new possibilities in my body.
And I'm learning how to build new mental habits, new emotional pathways, too.
I'm growing, and my strong, capable, beautiful body feels amazing!
