Dr. Feldenkrais
said: ”I am not after flexible bodies, I am after flexible brains.”
In one sense, he meant that the brain regulates all activities, physical
or mental. But he also believed that his work can change the quality
of thinking , including abstract thinking. “I believe that the
unity of mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just
parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while
functioning. A brain without a body could not think… the muscles
themselves are part and parcel of our higher functions. This is true
not only of those higher functions like singing, painting and loving,
which are impossible without muscular activity, but also of thinking,
recalling, remembering and feeling”.
Dr. Feldenkrais’
Awareness Through Movement lessons are unique in providing the opportunity
to actually feel the process of thinking. The movements follow a thread
of thinking and feeling until a new skill emerges and a new thought
with it. In order to learn a new movement and do it with a quality
of ease and freedom, there can be no gaps in the thinking process.
Most people that engage in the process report a dramatic increase
in the clarity of their thinking, especially if thinking is central
to what they do.
Aliza
Stewart teaches classes designed to highlight this property of the
Feldenkrais lessons. They are open to anyone who looks for new ways
to nourish the mind.
“As
a philosopher and educator, I have spent countless hours in places
and pursuits that have ostensibly been concerned with thinking—or
more eloquently, with “the life of the mind.” While we
philosophers have long known that dualisms such as mind/body are problematic,
we have not found a way to demonstrate a unity. We have not found
an alternative way to explain how we go about thinking, learning,
and being the bodies that we are.
The Feldenkrais Method addresses this issue. As a practitioner, I
have been able to understand the work I do as a philosopher and educator,
in a more dynamic and compelling way. I find myself thinking, not
merely abstractly, but as a tangible experience. With the Feldenkrais
Method, ideas become a creative act that emerge in the full physicality
of the world”.
- Chris Moffett, Philosopher
and Educator
