AWARENESS THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL, NO 20 2007‘The Feldenkrais Journal's published annually forthe memibers of The FeLDENKRAIS GuiLD" of North America. Inquiries regarding this publication slivul be divected . The Fenisenawais Guinw, 94 Non Albi Avene, Portland, OR s7217 you have au astcte, pues, danny, ot beter Une ellos sub we Journal, please send them directly tothe editor. Send one copy to Gay Sweet Scott, Editor, Feldenkrals Journal, 2747 Woolsey Streot, Berkeley, CA 94705, and senda second copy to Elaine Yoder, tt Journal, 472 Clifton Street, Oakland (CA 94616. the editorial committee is happy to comment on fist drafts or works in progress. The deadline for submissions is May 1, 2008. The next issue will hhave an open theme. For more information about format, length, computer ‘compatibility ete, please contact Elaine Yoder at elaineyoder@earthlink.net. 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All ights revert tothe authors and artists upon publication a 1 the tex tac forthe Feldentratsournalis Utopia an Adobe Original type family designed by Robert Slimiach. was frmatedinfoDesign on Macintosh. The printings (as always] well done by Bacchus Press in Emeryville California,13 4 44 48 56 The Feldenkrais Journal number 20 Table of Contents Letter from the Editor Dedication to Mark Reese ‘Transcription ofa talk by Mark Reese, June 28, 2005 Aremembrance Elizabeth Beringer Learning, teaching, awarenessandthe brain Guy Claxton, Know thyself: ye risk of serious inquiry Dennis Leri Bookreview Carl Ginsburg ContributorsLetter from the Editor ‘This edition ofthe fournal returns to the theme of Awareness because of the wealth of articles the topic has generated. We are particularly lighted to have the opportunity to publish two talks. The first isa uanstiiptof Math Reese's last public ceat trang ns June vu, ne seen a transcription of Guy Claxton's presentation to the International Trainer and Assistant Trainer meeting in Munich in 2004. Both talks are examples of master teaching informed by years of study and engagement, Their presence and clarity is moving. Carl Ginsburg has contributed a review of current publications relating to recent research that supports Feldenkrais’ insights and Dennis Leri contributes the firstin a series of articles he is writing about self knowledge. Itsarich volume. All the articles speak to each other. would like to thank Blizabeth Beringer for providing the opportunity to edit the Journal lizaheth will eontinne as Advisory Faitor Her dedication has ensured the publication has continued to survive and evolve for over 20 years, Thanks also to all the editorial board for their help. The Journalis the result of many contributions and contributers. special gratitude to Carol Kress and Dennis Lerifor their help with Mark Reese's talk; to Elaine Yoder, the Assistant Editor, who gently maintains schedule against all odds; and to Mar- sgety Cantor, our intrepid designer, for her fine eye and ear. Our next issue will be Open topic to be followed by an issue dedicated toTeaching. Topics serve tivulate, illuminate, and direct our understandings of our perceptions. They are a lens. We hope future writings may include some case studies as there has been a derth ofthem of late. While they are stories che stories can be provocative as, the students the protagonist. Other plans for the nextyear include ensuring pact iccuee ofthe Journal are available on line for Guild m natily as a device (oclasify low ts Again, thanks to all who make this publication possible, Gay Sweet ScottFatt 2007 {THE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL-NO. 20 ‘This issue ofthe Journal is dedicated to Mark Reese who passed away on June 23 of 2006. Mark has been our most frequently published author since the Journal’s inception; his fine writing, critical participation and personal support greatly contributed to the Journal, and even more pro- foundly to our community as a whole. Mark had the ability to write and speak lucidly about the complexities of the Method while never resorting to reductionism. He gracefully navigated the conjunctions of science, meta- phor, and practical wisdom. His persistent curiosity, discipline, and willing- ness to examine his own understanding remains a gift—an example of what is possible. Itis with immeasurable sadness that we mark his passing here. —Flizabeth Beringer and the Journal StaffTranscription of a talk by Mark Reese, June 28, 2005 EDITOR'S NOTE Mark Reese came to Dennis Ler’s training in San Rafael, CA at the end June 2005 to teach @ half day to fourth year students. The following isthe tranceription of hic talk, Students! ques- tions were not recorded, AAs one reads, their omission serves to demonstrate Mark's ability to respond and, at the same time, to continue his commitment to articulate his understanding of our workin the light of his practice, his scholarship, his life. After the talk Mark said he wished the training was at least 200 hundred people—maybe ‘more. To honor his wish here isthe text from that beautiful afternoon. ® Hello, everybody. There has been some preparation for my appearance. [told you about ry Special Forces haircut. 6o much ofthe last year hac been occupied by illness iteeems as though that is what should be talking about. But even though I've had some illness, Ymsstill not qualified actually to speak on the subject. So I better speakto the Feldenkrais, Method. ‘As faras the illness goes, working on a book as Ihave been for many years, it’s good preparation, actually, for being sick. There isa kind of asceticism to writing, where you try to clear everything else away. How many of you have read The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Manni {read it years ago in college. tis great book. In it everybody gets sick as a way to {go away and become enlightened about various topics and think about different things. ¢ is really not clear whether the central character of the bookis ill or ust ill with the human condition. Buthe has tuberculosis. It was a period of time just before they found an effec- treatment, He goes up toa chateau, way up there, and has all these very interesting conversations. The whole rest of his life he doesn’t have any thing else to think about, so he looks at everyting froin te perspective uf die magit siuuntain, have been looking at all of you and everything else from the perspective of the magic mountain. twas a shock to go outside; rarely go out of doors You did your first practicum today? Was it fairly relaxed? Or was it not so relaxed? Any breakdowns? Itvaries, there are no rules. People don't have to breakdown or have anxieties ‘about the practicum, but people usually do, more often than not. So has there been any discussion in the course of the practicum of, how shall we call it, some kind of theme or ‘overarching idea or intent or something to the lesson you gave a person? Was there some talkabout that? Were you asked? Did you ask? So you can kind of do any random collection, of things for halfan hortr? Or fe there supnased ta he sme relationship between one thing and another that you do? {Student|: *... coherent.” hat’s great. $o1t has coherence. 1hat 18 a good word. It coheres. So the “It” was wo give a lesson, So what more needs to be said on the subject? [probably did last time I came here, but] wanted to tell you how lucky you are to have Dennis as an educational director. ‘There isa story that comes in many forms, including the Sufi story, the Nasruddin story \where hei looking for something in the treet. Someone asks him what's happening? He says he lost his key. Where did you leave it? Over there, he ost it over there. Then why are you looking over here fort? Because there is light here, more light to find it, But he is on the wrong side. He's looking where it isn't.‘Thisisa story that fits alot of different situations. Butit fits the Feldenkrais Method, or teaching, I think, in that many things are much easier to teach than to understand. [And that there is @ great appeal in organizing your thinking about something based on ‘ways of communicating. But the thing is, the communication isnot the thing itself. The ‘vommunieation io come kind of experience you're trying to communicate, For some the communication is easy, to communicate is easy, and you get these people who are really good communicators. The people who are the best communicators and make the most money att often say very little. The better communicators like the politicians and such say almost nothing at all. There isan oda relationship between communication and substance. ‘The better the communicator, the less they have to say, although it's not always necessarily, the case. I don't know ifyou've heard this story before; tell me ifyou have. Years and years ago, in the old days, Feldenkrais taught the work with Functional Integration in the training in Tel Avivin very organized procedures, where basically you do this and then you do that. and then you do that and then you do that. Some of these were similar to ATM¢ lessons, others not, but basically people copied those things. They did not do them under his supervision Deeauye tiete was unly« tiny tou for 2 oF 13 peuple Lo practice is aun daey would prac tive on their own. So basically Feldenkrais would just demonstrate procedures x, 7. There ‘were these kind of formulae. You know about that kind of thing. ‘When the people who had studied in Tel Aviv with Feldenkrais came to Amherst, espe cially ones who had not been to San Francisco where Feldenkrais had taught Functional Integration ina different way, they felt (and everybody should feel) that their training was better than everybody else's training. That's a good thing, ( Thope you guys feel that your training is that. You invested a lot of yourselfin it) But the idea was that they started teach- ing things in terms of what they had been taught, rather than what Feldenkrais taught. Certain kinds of shorthands developed, certain terminologies. One had to do with the terminology of pattern (Nid Tell yon shout this last year? Was t thinking ahaut this then?) the terminology of what s the person’s pattern? The idea of going with the pattern, or not ‘going with the pattern, Thisis something that Feldenkrais never talked about, for good reason. Another idea was the idea of function, what sa function, and the idea of function stood for this “it” that was supposed to have coherence. T can tell youa story where something lke that would fall under that definition. 1wasin a hospital in Melbourne, Iwas working with a woman, interviewed her and gave her a lesson. Afterwards, some therapists asked me what it was I thought I was doing, They thought it ‘had to do with mobilizing this, or trying to teach her to do this or that. Basically what I told. ‘them was that this was a smoking lesson. This was a woman who had a very sad story. The woman had had amnesia and tried to kill herself, and she had some sort of brain damage ‘and gone into a coma asa result ofthe drug overdose. Ifyou think about smoking, you can'temoke in a hospital, wae very restrictive ina Catholic hospital; they don't want to encourage that kind of thing, But there were places she could go to smoke, so basically the ‘whole lesson had to do with organizing and bringing the hand to the mouth to smoke. That vwasa very nice thing todo, in terms of giving her something that she would really want. She was dependent on other people, so this could make her abit more independent. “That isa kine! oflesson that has that sat ofring to it, dant you think? W's gat nies speeificity. Iti easy to communicate the idea, its easy to visualize, ight? But alot of lessons do not fall into those kinds of categories. [am sure you have seen alotoflessons in the training that looked like you could not derive something so simple from it. This idea of function came to be correlated with fairly simple types of ATMs. This whole set of teaching principles was very, verv interesting, because itwas all fictitious, all ofit, I~wasall based ‘on things that were not there. Because these patterns that you went with or against, there\weren'tany patterns realy. And these functions that supposedly lessons were about, by and large. there weren't any of those. Then the idea that there was particular concept of att and Ft transportability, the idea that the Fl isthe ATM and the ATM isthe FI. The idea is thatthe ATM lessons fall under seve clas uf ation, So that basic ATM lessons would be side bending, twisting flexing, extending like that, in various positions. But go through the 600 orso Alexander Yanal lessons, go through the transcripts of hundreds of lessons, and I challenge you show me how many aTM lessons follow that type of rubric. You will find a few, but very few. They are, by far, the exception to what an ATM looks like. But that did not bother the teachers of, the Method, Here you have 600 lessons and they have all kinds of different complex mow ‘ments, this one is on the floor, this one is walking, this one is fast, this one i slow, this is cfforcul, this is effortless, this is baby-like, thisis dance-like, whatever. How do youmake ‘those into any sort of neat category? Iti very, very difficult. Iwas just very, very nice to say, okay, we have extension, flexion, all that. Also very nice that people wha hd hackgrannds either in the selences or measurement. or health were used to being routinized for assessment, Its very easy 10 do thatifyou take a specitic thing and move in particular plane. Once you start mixing and making more complex move ‘ments, tis harder to show exactly what the improvement, IIs more complicated. Sv this is asortof fictitious way of developing the whole thing. Thate to admit many years ago was one ofthe ones seduced by this fictitious mode of twaching. [taught it this way, and I liked teaching t that way, hecause it was so clear, Butt was the clarity that Nasruddin had looking for his keys under the light post, because there wast’ any Funetional Integration there. So you are pushing through the pelvis, you are trying to find a direction, le’ say, side bending or one of these other movement directions, ‘And you see f you move the pelvis ina direction that relates to thatkind of flexion, and you try and see how far that idea gets you, itreally doesnt get you very far Ithas very, very limited applicability. thas very litle depth, In your training, does that mal skeleton, and see where it logically progresses? Lets take a movement like a chain move- ment. You lie on your baek, and you reach toward the ceiling, and you moves if somebody pulls you by the hand or the wrist, and they keep pulling you toward tne ceiling, fyou imagine itcan be done by a machine, by some sort of pulley system, you would be pulled tothe ceiling and over. Eventually you'd actually be pulled over onto your side, with the arm pulling the shoulder, the shoulder pulling the chest, the chest turning the spine, to the pelvis, tothe legs, and so forth, right? So there isa particular logic to that, a particular organization to the movement. Inthe course of Functional Integration lesson, this is aan extremely good sort of thing to have in mind, to have in your feeling, that you feel that Ifyou turn the various parts in relation to each other, asi doing the overall turning, you ‘would have something that would be a coherent lesson. But the question is, what would the person take away from that? Feldenkrais defined funtion ingas function isthe rel ‘and your action, So if you want to improve someone's functioning, what you want 10 improve is not tis or that, notnecessarilya particular skill or action. Butts that broader issue, of improving a person's ability to direct themselves orto do what they want, basically to do what they want—without a ot of interfering funny business. “This goor way, way back to Feldenkrais in the 1oa0s reading Coné and heing aware ofthe idea of resistance [Emile Coué 1857-1926, French pharmacist and psychologist The idea that you want to do something and a lot of what prevents people from doing ‘what they wantis that they have these thoughts that come up, these feelings that come up, ‘that contradict their intention, So Feldenkrais kept looking at this indifferent ways and talking sheutit-and going into itina deeper and deeper way. He got ideas, lke cross-moti- vvation—expressing this idea that you are doing something, but in a sense the desire to do it {s contaminated by intentions that really don't belong. Its like you are trying to be a good lense, the idea of followings movement through the rae Ausherst cention Jonship between youfriend, but there are financial issues or social issues and things get confused. There are mixed motives and people don't sort them out. Feldenkrais said that what his method was about was sorting out those motivations. He wanted to bring the person to be able to do a single thing and know what they were doing and not have those entanglements, (One of the reasons Feldenkrais liked movement as a vehicle for teaching is because these ‘movements were fairly simple where alot of things we do in life, where we want to have simplicity and directness of action; itis so complicated because itis social relationships, speech, and everything. But take a movernent of sitting and standing up again. Itis simple enough that in halfan hour you can make a significant difference in the coherence with which the person does: So was one ofthe people seduced by this idea of function years ago. Someone transcribed lecture of mine and I edited what they wrote and it ended up in a Feldenkrais Journal on funetion. I said that there are these little functions, and from the litte functions vou get to the big functions. This was my idea, that you take these simple movements, itcould be flexion, or side bending, or twisting or things ike that, and you create a certain coherence {heve, aud at svmne ull level itis workings ata deeper hevel, What T sink 1 is the beginning we really are trying to workat the deeper level more pertinent to the person So what are these deeper levels? What is function? I think that Feldenkrais very, very clear on the whole thing from the very beginning, that he's talking about those things that make human life possible. Life in general possible, and then human life in particular impossible—I mean possible. I gota postcard from friend, with a poem by Theodore Roethke saying we need more people who want to do the impossible, ious Feldenkrais says in The Case of Nora, look atthe person and I try to think in my imagina- tion, what would be the ideal for that person? What would be the ideal for that person in terms nf the species, in terms af that person aca human heing, and what wand he the {deal for that person personally? Do you remember that? Does that stick in yourmind? Most of Feldenkrais's books, or huge, huge sections of them, are devoted to talking about ‘what is ideal function from the standpoint of the human species. So, for example, he talks about the idea of standing and weight bearing, In an efficient standing there is a feeling of weightlessness. So what itis you are trying to convey every time you push through someone's skeleton, is that feeling of movement going through the person and the person. feeling absolutely weightless or effortlessness, So he talks about breathing, being able to ‘move in a way that you are not interfering with the breathing, breathing in a way that is not interfering with the movement. He talks about “the big one,” the most important one, reversibility, which goes back again to this idea of self-direction. The ability—reversibility—is one way of saying that at any moment you can do what you want. Itmeans that suddenly there isn'tso much inertia, or force of habit, or compulsion to a behavior that whatever weare doing in this particular ‘movement we are stuck and have to follow it through. As though we're some sort of VCR that didn’t have a rewind button. I've had machines like that. You had to go all the way to the end ofthe tape to get back to the beginning, There are arguments like that where people feel the need to restate all ofthe things that they know that no one agrees with, that Are not going ta make the argument go any further. But there isjust a need ta restate the argument because all the steps were just so perfect, even though everyone knows at the end of the argument, you ate going to have to throw that away and talk about something different, that you're going to have to approach the subject from a different way. But when, people have those compulsions, they are itches that just have to be scratched. So thisis an example of non-reversible behavior. Non-reversible thinking is another kind of behavior. You know, that example isnot such a weied situation.TIE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 Fatt 2007 I thinkin every kind of lesson, at each moment, itis possible at least in our imagination, atleastin our intention, to be looking for a more ideal form of human organization. It means when we touch the person, we are trying to touch the person in such a way that we elicit the kind of breathing that makes the person feel, “Ahi! This makes it possible to be al gain, I don’thave any exper Illness, but this is just an example. Twas suffocating at night, until they put this tube in, 'm using this as an example, to talk about the importance of breathing, of vitality, but the thingisitis not only for the person who is drowning that you give the oxygen. Any human being, ifyou can touch that point, find that direction, where the breath just comes by itself, there isa kind of vitality that springs from that which is just exquisite itisjust immeasur- able. So itis worth it to keep that in mind, and touch the person fifty, a hundred, two, three, five hundred different ways that do not achieve that, itis well worth it. Because when you get there, everybody is very happy with what you've arrived at. You have to reach very, very high, though, to get to that kind of thing and not getfrus- trated and not have funny thoughts like to think that itis better than itis, or itis worse than itis, or thatit should be different than itis. You just keep that intention, that thought, bring- ing the knowledge you have to bear on the subject and having that intention and know that Greve is is orientation, Ifyou lift the person, ifthey are lying on the back and you lift their head and you turn their head alittle bit this way, and alittle bit that way and you have that conviction that there is « particular orientation for the head that for that person is ike the difference between life and death. treally all boils down to life and death. t realy did for Foldenkrais. When [ was in my 20s in the training Feldenkrais was talking about standing in a way that the snake wouldn’tkill me. You know, [had not been aware of any snakes par- ticularly that were going around San Francisco at that time. Itseemed preposterous to me, Bur those connections: They are vivid for me now. like to assume that people in training and everybody else can appreciate that directness more than I somehow. You know how it iswith different things, that you can kind of know it, and not know it. You kind of know it, and yeu find that lesson again and again So itis the ability to move. The ability to move ishalf the intention to go somewhere to do something, and foritto happen. Iti like that. This is magic. Thus the basic ideas of Func- ‘onal integration, things lke givinga person a feeling of upright standing whici is efficent with a high center of mass, giving a person a feeling of ease of breathing. One of the exam- ples from The Potent Self—have you alread The Potent Self? 1 was going through The Potent Self, and Iwas thinking most ofthe book is about sex, and alot ofthe book is about the organization of the martial artist and that sort of reversible movement. Itseemed tome that the next number of examples that he gives are about cating. He is talking about—there wwasn'tthe term ‘eating disorder” at that time—but he is talking about people who have problems of eating too much or eating too little and social things about eating and having confusing sensations. People become so alienated from themselves that they lose the abil- ity to even know what organic sensations are telling us. Is ita sexual sensation, is ita diges- tive seneation, is ita breathing sensation, what is telling them? People are inculeated in practices of education, training, movement, that deliberately detach us from that kind of sensory awareness, so we actually do not know what our feelingsare and do not have that ability to act on them. Feldenkrais was trying to plug people into their own feelings basically. He is talking about these so-called difficulties with eating and problems with sexand what does it mean? Again, he is talking about kinds of necessities that face any living organism, Self-reproduction was a term he used later, selfsmaintenance, referring to things like self-maintenance of breathing, eating, drinking, and self-preservation. He says tat self-preservation is the most crucial, because you see that sex can wait, you don't want it to wait, butt can take years. In terms of eating, there are animals that eat a big meal and then sleep it of for six months, hibernating. But when you come to breathing, people can only hold their breath for five or sic mimutes. Self preservation, is like a combat situation and " Thad a cituation going about the illness. about thesomeone is attacking you. Weare talking about split-second dilferences in terms ofhow the nervous system has o react. fall ofthe vital lif functions, Feldenkrais sai, self-pres- ervation isthe most stringent. I really puts the nervous system othe test, and think he belleveditwas also what exerted certain selective pressure onthe species as far as human evolution went. Go these are these ver, very basic things and these are the things that are going onin every lesson. [think hatif you thinkabout | thinkyou'l find those things ate there: itis the same ability that makes it easy to get up and down from a chair easily, Itis the ability to attack, to run away, simply to move fast, efficiently. To do that you have to doit in away with breathing and swallowing, because these things ae all connected Does this make any sense? Sol think that these are the fundamentals whatever the person’s particular request, and often people do not have such a particular request. Often people will present an inventory of annoyances and discomforts. And sometimes it is hard to get anything more, or clearer or sharper than that, But usually then you can identify some kind of something which is obviously very useful and teachable during the period oftime, something thats going tobe reproducible. Because by giving them something teachable, aside from the value of whatever its you are teaching, inthe course oflearning that thing, you are reinforcing Sensations that he person is golug wo beable w access lave un. ln ver words, you ate teaching the person to get up and down from the chair efficiently. In the course ofthat, over and over again, comehow the person is given afeeling ofa certain part of the foot. And the feeling of weight bearing going to that part ofthe foot becomes something thatthe person takes with them for the rest of his or her life. If you can find one element like that, to clarify, itis worth so much. Iis something that can be done in a short period of time. People won't forget itifitis vivid, You cannot talk people into those feelings. Itis not about talking about itor explaining, Ieisabout the feeling, the felingin the fet. And thats the thing that s gong to make fe easier for them to get out ofthe chair ifthey have trouble with ther back. Orifthey area public apeatear at oon as they feel the feet they're goingtoleabletotalh, they are not foing tohave stage fight. tis going tobe that feeling in their feet that maybe gives them self-confidence in another situation. Any questions about what {have said sofar? [Students question} {think we are trying to unlock certain very important doors for people. think that attention and patience and interest and curiosity al those things bring people into the project. Any other comments or questions? Dennis, any? [Student question), ‘The claim Feldenkrais makes in Body andl Mature Behavior—have you tead Body and Mature Behavior?—worth reading and re-reading, Ttell you. The claim he makes, he says it over and over and over and over again, he says there is only this: there is a whole situation. ‘And that whole situation means you, andthe environment. And it means your thinking, and your feling and your sensing and your moving and your autonomic viscera fee- Ings fanctionings sensations, and the Intellectual part All ofthat is happening at every moment and that itis irreducible, and causality does not operate there. None of the parts cause the other parts in that whole situation. In other words, it is not the environment that is determining things, like whatever the Marxist polnt of view is, iis not the intellectual, luke what the cognitive psychologists saying, tls notthe emotional. Theres no causali operating there, But instead, there awhole sltuation. So your behavior has todo wi your response toa current situation bringing io bear all ofyour previous history. And that isthe thingina nutshell [Student comment} My feelings that you are going in and out of compartments, and there are no real compartments there. Maybe there are. but think they are imaginary compartments. Even the environment and the nervous system: The nervous system has an Image ofthe environment, an expectation ofthe environment. Ihave had this conversation many times,people will not go away from the idea of saying, what is this stuff about the body, or what isthis stuffabout the mind. There are these categories about mind and body. The idea that the mind is separate and the body is separate and that they interact with each other ‘causally; so that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, everybody grasps ‘that, Peuple see wliat we do iu Feldenkrais as body movement and for some reason t meaningful to people. The people who are in trainings, the people who are drawn to the ‘work, we feel these differences, but to be able to explain it ina language and ina culture ‘where the idea of the body is 0... Is difficult. Thats one of the reasons why Feldenkrais ‘would do things like create problems. For example, movements that you could not do, you didn't know how to do, soit was obvious to you that you had to think or whatever else. ‘What have you done with breathing in your training, with the idea of eliciting breathing? Is thata meaningful question for you? askifit’sa meaningful question, because I found out, more last year than [ realized, because I have conversations with Dennis and other trainers, he particularwnrds that Y've come to nse, orto make sense of, are actually 50 different from their formulations that they actually don't have a clue about what!'m talking about lot ofthe time, and I don't quite have a clue about what they're talking. about. By having more conversations with Dennis, I's only recently [feel lke Iu statins to get an idea of what he means by certain things, and with some other trainers I'm talking. to. 'm getting an idea that the nature ofthe beast isso experiential and so difficultto find language for, that the tendency is going to be if the individual is going to develop it, they're {going to find very individualized ways of making sense of your own experience and you expect everybody to immediately know what itis you mean. So when I say “elicit the breathing” it makes perfect sense in words that I've been using and teaching with, and it may make absolutely no sense to you and I may need to ask other questions to get the information Lwant. {Student "Elicit breathing” isthe question?] [student comment] Give me an example of that, [student] ‘Thatisa good example, and one of the physiological reasons tor that n part, we breathe with our shoulders. We use our shoulder muscles in orderto breathe, and in different positions we are able to use those muscles or not. When Iwas having difficulty breathing during the night I could not lie down, IfT could sit up, 1 found it easier to breathe. Iwas able to.use those shoulder muscles in a way that made it easier. It would have been even easier if somebody were lifting the shoulders while Iwas breathing, Ty have helped me bring up the upper ribs so didn’t have to do the work myself would have elicited a much easter breathing. T want to try to help you to go another level of precision, though, in your formulation of that idea of shape. You run into this with the people who were taught patterns and the Ie of exaggerating patterns. Take someone with a rounded backand the idea that you exaggerate the roundedness as being some notion of support. The problem with that is that what you want to dois something to support the activity ofthe person. The roundedness of the back isnot itself an activity. The person can have a fused spine, for example, in which case it is not so much an activity as the shape ofthe back. Not only that, but if have the same shape of my back rounded, and tam here, and Tam here, itis entirely difforont fram ‘a muscular point of view. If am here, and you want to support the shape of my back, and you press down here on my back, rounding it, you will make me feel horrible, even though. itincreases the roundness of my back, because itactually increases the muscular wark to be sitting like that. Whereas if am leaning back, and ifyou press in this way, then I might be able te hroathe Ift'm leaning forward, and you supportme from the front, then it will, make it easier than fam leaning back. So the thing to think about is whatis the personactually doing, because sometimes the same shape can lead you to something entirely different, based on where the person isin gravity and what the action is. Butit isa good first approximation because it gives your eye something to fasten on to, because itis easy for ‘most people, not for everybody, but itis easy for most people to see line in space. So they will ee a silhouette ar thay will spa samothing ahout the shape of the hack and say, okay, here sa way. Does that make sense? If am sittinglike this, lam over-using my flexors. ‘am stopping myself from falling backwards. If am sitting like this, itis actually the back ‘uiscles that are overworking, not the flexors. the flexors are not doing anything. And certainly, they are chronically short, but if my back muscles were not holding me... that is ‘why itis just so fatiguing, So, other examples [student] Also in part, ifyou were to lift your head to that height on your own, you would be Jwvolving the stermum and the upper ribs. Those muscle groups are directly involved in breathing, Itis what you are doing, you are interrupting and the person is not having to workin those situations. You are bringing people toa position that is more like their rormal postural position, their normal standing, That is standing, soall of sudden, as you bring them toward their standing, itis like that is coherence itself. There is a coherence to standing. Itfs no mean, eazy trick, to stand up. So ite where we hold our heads, how we hold everything. So as you are working with the person, as you are holding them in differ ‘ent ways that relate to that kind of standing, there is a nervous system sense there, there is ‘coherence to that kind of standing, and the nervous system starts making—it seems ike ittome—the nervous system starts making faster connections about what would make iteven more efficient, about how the standing could be even alittle bitbetter than it was before. Whereas when the head is put in another kind of positon, it could be avery nice movement, a very nice position, butt does not so much relate to that more basic home position that people come back o. Do youwanta litle break before we do something? Some exercise? What do vou think? Dennis? {Student} Okay, what ave you dente, {Student Itdoes, mentioning it to me helps me out. I think if you are moving the person slowly, people breathe forlots of different reasons. the breathing pattern as itis has very little to do necessarily with their need for oxygen. More obviously, itis an indicator of an emotional state, or something to do with the autonomic nervous system, or safety, or what Ihave to do to work. For most people, ifthey can just slow things down. For most people, ifthey can just give you their attention—and most people are happy to do that—itisa very pleasant kind of feeling that will induce the slowness of the breathing without your having to askthem todo it. Thatis the magie about the movement, as I say, itelicts it. I think that is one way tothink about what ie taking plare Certain mavements are going to he more meaningful than others. You have people in situations and what they are basically doing—lifting the shoulders—itis kind of a general thing people do for self-protection. Many people will lie m positions where they are lifting things in the air and ff thelr muscles stop working, things would just fall down. They could not stay there by themselves. They do notreally have the support. If vou can look at the person and see what needs the support, [think that is another example of the same type of thing, But t can be anything. Itcan bea movement they enjoy, that interests them. Other kinds of things you think about, with the breathing? In terms of lessons, what do you think about while you are working moment to moment? Isit something you do at the end of the lesson, or something you do at the beginning of the lesson, or something you do all the time? How isthe breathing ? How is your attention to breathing?‘THE FELDENKNAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 Fatt 2007 {Student} Right, right. Is this too much of a “doing” orientation, Dennis what do you think? In terms of eliciting the breathing, in terms of principles consistent with this training? [Student] What's that? Say it Itis consistent, the idea of eliciting the breathingis akay Von do nat necessarily always have to be just watching. You are also seeing what happens if you do this ‘or you do that. And in the sense of istening, you are seeing if something makes it possible {or the person to breathe more abdominaily or with the movernent of the ribs, or slowing, the breathing down, orspeeding up or not breathing at all of less effortful breath. Tjust suggest that this a view thatis one ofthe things Feldenkrais presented in our training, the idea that there isa way in which—and he used the word “manipulation” without the con- notation of acting unethically or in effect controlling people the idea that we manipulate the skeleton and we also manipulate the breath, Itis not quite the same thing, [student] ‘That isa subtle one. That is for next year. That is very subtle. Shall we have a little break before we do something more experiential? Good, good. Itis very interesting to compose lessons around the breathing and around the eliciting oft. 1. Feldenkrais Journal, number 7, 1992FALL 2007 ‘THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 Aremembrance Elizabeth Beringer Mark Reese was born on March 15,1951 and grew up in Tuscon, Arizona. He was one of Moshe Feldenkrais’ original American students and was pivotal in introducing the Feldenkrais Method in the United States. He was. highly respected toachor and was one ofthe first American teachers ‘chosen to train new practitioners. He worked asa trainer for over twenty years. In that period Mark directed or co-directed more than 25 trainings, personally graduating more than 1000 students. Inaddition to his own students Mark traveled extensively presenting the Method and working asa ‘guest instructor in numerous programs on three continents, making him one of the most active and {influential Feldenkrais trainersin the world. “Mark graduated from the San Francisco Professional Feldenkrais Training in 1977. During the 70s, he also traveled repeatedly to Israel and worked closely with Dr. Feldenkrais. After graduating from his training he moved to San Diegu where Ie fyunnle Ue Sutter Califurnita Feldenkrais Tustiute ‘and raised his family with his first wife, Feldenkrais trainer, Donna Ray. Their first child, Nathan, was born in i986 and Filip in 989, Mark was extremely active during his years in San Diego doing basic trainings, advanced trainings, specialty trainings for professionals, recording tapes and videos, conducting research, maintaining a long term private practice, and of course raising two very active boys. He alco travoled extensively. For many years he apent the summer with his family in Aslago, Italy and various parts of Germany where he directed training programs. In some of our last conver- sations he remembered this period very fondly and felt he'd done some of his best teaching there. Mark's interests were diverse and he read widely. In the 1970s he helped to found an experimental theater group. The Birnam Woods Theater group was a kind of “theater commune,” in which they interwave their passions for acting. music, language, and Shakespeare tagether into musical theater experiments, Mark often referenced his experiences with acting and especially with Birnam Woods as an especially vital time of his life and a source of creativity in his later teaching. He had a wonder: ful faculty with language and could speak about the Method from many ditierent perspectives. With this ability he made contact with many academics whose work dovetailed with his interests, most notably Edward Reed, Alan Fogel, and cognitive developmentalist Esther Thelen, His dialogue with Dr, Thelen eventually resulted in her training with Mark to become a practitioner and the develop- ‘ment ofa close friendship. knew Mark for thirty yearsas both a friend and colleague. His engagement with the Method was ‘passion that permeated his life, He was rigorous in what he wanted for himself, his students, and from his colleagues and thus he was always innovating. He would often be the one who would start the ripple of¢ new innovation through the training community. When we taught together he would invariably bring some new twistto the familiar or anew piece of work that would enliven and enrich. :my own thinking and teaching. He brought a wonderful lucidity to hic teaching that was at once pre cise and at the same time always artistic and often funny. He had a smart and sharp sense of humor that particularly loved. ‘Markwas one of the most active writers in the Feldenkrais world, Over the years he wrote about the Method from many different angles, including a monthly column in alocal holistie paper, case studies, articles on the connection hetween Fricksanian hypnosisand Nr Reldenkeaie’s approach, and a description of the Method from the perspective of dynamic systems. Atthe time he died he was deeply engaged in the writing of Moshe Feldenkrais's biography, aprojectinto which he'd put an ‘enormous amount of time and research. He was far enough along inthis proyect that his wate Carol Kress will be able to bring out the first volume within the next year Mark married long time practitioner and assistant trainer Carol Kress on December 31,2004 She cared for him throughout his illness with tremendous tenderness and resolve. His sister, Shelly, his children, and a few close friends were also great sources of solace for Mark ashe struggled with an extremely aggressive cancer. The dignity and strength that he bivuglit tu te ups aud duwis of recovery and relapse was impressive to all ofus who were around him in these last years. Mark died athome, June 23, 2006.Learning, teaching, awareness, and the brain Feldenkrais Conference Munich, December 2004 Guy Claxton, University of Bristol INTRODUCTION Since 2001 Feldenkrais trainers and assistants have been meeting in Europe in the International ‘Trainer and Assistant Trainer Academy (ITATA) Part of our meetings has been dedicated to advanced training and presentations by invited guests from science and the arts. In December 12004 Guy Claxton, Professor of the Learning Sciences at the Graduate School of Education the University of Bristol, England, was our guest. Claxton has written several books that have captured th interest uf Fekenikrais teachers including: Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, and Wise Up: Learning to Live the Learning Lfe.\lana Nevill in England and Catl Ginsbura invited him to present his ideas on learning and awareness to the 50 trainers and assistant trainers gathered in Munich, Germany. The following isan edited transcript of his presentation, Inhis talk Guy outlined his view of learning, teaching, awarcness, and the brain, The tran= script includes the day's lectures and discussions with the participants. ‘Appreciation goes to everyone who made it possible to share this with the Feldenkrais ‘community. —Roger Russell, TATA Coordinator ‘Thank you for inviting me, The day starts with a bit of structure and then becomes chaotic or at least, unpredictable, non-Hinear I'l alta ya for a little while. Please feel free to interact. You don't have to be too quiet and student-ike. Feel free to be noisy and disputatious. Depending on how that goes, we'll have a general kind of question-and- answer session which we can broaden as much as you want. Twas asked to start with seeing if could say anything that would help you to think ‘about the nature of teaching and learning in the context of Feldenkrais practice. 'm going to meditate around four elements—the relationship between leaning and teaching and the role that awareness, or conscious awareness, or different forms of conscious awareness, have in the context of diferent kinds Uf lest sing antl (caching and to say where brain science is with respect to that in terms of some plausible speculations. Tve been a dabbler in a whole variety of different body-spiritual kinds of pursuits. I've also been involved in what is ealled East-West psychology, developing the relationship between scientific psychology and studies of spiritual and meditative practices, Ifyou're interested in that we can go there. !'ve done little bite of Alexander and little hits of Feldenkrais. My experience with Feldenkrais is not uncommon, finding it simultaneously both intriguing and boring, After alittle while the boring won out over the intriguing. But the intriguing is what got me to accept your invitation. ‘Vm interested in things that might be called neighboring or neighborly concerns. I don't know ifany of you have experience with a practice called Focusing. It’s a psychotherapy practice, which I thinkis cognate to what you do. I've done a little bit of training in that. I've one little bits of Tai Chi, little bits of Rolfing, and deep tissue work a long time ago in an ashram in India, [know a litle bit about what your worlds but not very much lite bit from the consuming side rather than the producing side. This is to situate myself and, ifyou want, yan ean pick up on any of these links.PALL 2007 ‘THE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 1 also want to say I consider myself to be here wearing three hats—at least three hats. Onc is the role of teacher in that you invited me because you suk Ihave sume experience or knowledge to share. So I'm delighted to do that. One is the role of learner. I'm looking forward to hearing and learning more. I've become interested in a number of different ways in the embodiment of knowing. Some of you will be familiar with and may be even ‘more well-read in the kinds of literatures I've been reading. For example, a very interesting bookis called Philosophy in the Flash. And a great hero of mine isthe late Francisco Varela. You may be familiar with some of his work. Someone whose work {ike very much is Andy Clark, cognitive philosopher, who has written a wonderful book recently, Natural-born Cyborgs. Enjoy the title. 1'm looking forward to exploring those issues, with me not in any kind of expertrole but among people with common interests. Also, Thave to say that I'm partly here with akind of anthropologist’ hat to observe and be interested in how your tribe functions. 1 find myselfin an interesting period, My workis connecting with surprisingly different groups ‘of peuple. “here Is the invitation from you. Inthe last month or next, ave been or will be talking to national coaches of young footballers in the U.K. through the National Football Association, On the fourth of January I'l be talking to forty Army generals, who are interested in the role of intuition in decision-making. I've been working with a group of dancers. One of the things that has interested me is the privileged position of the dabbler. ‘You getto be invited into lots of different uibes aul Le ilsigued abut how chey function, what theirhabitsare. For example, 'm interested in cultural habits about time-keeping, and cultures’ internal disputes, All cultures have their family feuds. 'm interested in discovering what the internal disputes are, 'm interested in discovering what your relationshipsare with neighboring tribes, some of whom you will disdain contemptuouly. Others you will consider to be friendly neighbors. m interested in how that works out. Itseems to me that being interested in surfacing and making conscious and articulate the unconscious habits ofa trbe1s nota million miles away from the work of Feldenkrais itself—of surfacing, making articulate and interesting the internal culture of the body. There may be parallels to be explored there. want to start with setting outa framework. Thisis by no means comprehensive. It’s by rho means definitive. Teaching and learning as activities, like almost everything else, are oo complicated to be put into any simple framework. It will always be like a fishing net. ‘There will always be interesting and important fish that are too small tobe caught in any particular net, Nevertheless i's useful to construct nets of a medium-sized mesh in order to give usa way of surfacing questions and thinking about issues we might want to think about. I present this not in the spirit ofa definitive, well-researched, to-be-thoroughly- belioved framework, but in the spirit of something that might provide ue aunony natty tools for articulating the kinds of discussions we might find useful. In the process | hope the framework itself wll be subject to question and development. LEARNING AND TEACHING snvesrigaTIOn {OWT ATTENTION Iwacinanion INNER GUIDE nrumion moon serren neect exPLAINER/TELLER6 TIIE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20, vat 2007 Iwant to look at these different media or channels through which we can learn and then try to connect them with Linplic to teaching, Teachingis a parasitic activity. It’s parasitic on learning. There isa famous “Peanuts” cartoon in which somebody says “T taught Spot to whistle.” In the second frame Spotis conspicuously not whistling. In the third frame someone else says “How come Spot isn't whistling?” In the fourth fame the teacher says “I taught him to whistle. I didn't say let learned to,” So there is quite @ lot of toaching without learning that gnes on in educational settings, school settings my natural home. But if we are to be effective as teachers— it’s like teaching is a wrench that needs to connect with the nutat the other end of the process, Otherwise we don’t get any purchase on the learning process. People in the U.K. in teaching are finally discovering this. In order to be effective, in order to be powerful ‘asa teacher, you need to be running around to the other end of the teaching and learning process, so as to be as interested and knowledgeable as possible in what's going around the other end. Likewise, I'm sure, for you, fin teaching, Learning is very definitely primary IMMERSION {tend ta ike lists af things that begin with the same leter, So this is the seven “I's” of learning. immersion is the first one. Immersion slike to be immersed in water, to bein something, Someone pointed out to me the other day thatthe English word “understand” fs often taken to mean a kind ofluvellectual o cuguitive activity. Ifyou turn the two parte around, to “understand” isto stand under, as to stand under a waterfall. I's to be immersed in something, to understand something properly I's the difference between something like intellectual knowledge and carnal knowledge. I'you're familiar with the phrase “carnal knowledge,” you'll know that specifically refers to sex but we can use it more bivsall. So immersion is learning from direct experience. Immersion isthe most fundamental form oflearning that we have—the form of learning that, ifwe were computers, we would say we come bundled with. We come pre-installed with this wondertul, subtle, brithiant, natural learning ability inherent in the plasticity ofthe central nervous system to detect, extract, and make use of patterns and contingenciesin experience. We'te not alone, We're not the only species that does that by any manner of means. Butit's what gets us started, and it remains throughout life our most fundamental, most brilliant way of engaging with learning. The most important thing about that form of earning is that I proceeds through our life, unless it's interrupted or blocked, jammed up, or neglected in some way or other (which as you know can easily happen) It’snota childish form of learning. There are people who have presented this form of learning as though it were kind ofa starter kit which you then grew out of But of courseit’s very powerfully the kind offearningur one is parasitic. Unless itis blocked, that form of learning proceeds without conscious intent, often without conscious awareness, without instruction, without guidance, without effort. It'sjust partand parcel of our design specification. ‘As [navigated my way around since arriving last night, Thave learned a tremendous aiount about Munich, most of which Teannotarticulate to you. Alot oft ve heen noticing without noticing that 've been noticing, like the different way a hotel room said out. But! did notice that ts not universal practice in German hotels to supply you with a {ay for making ea in your hotel room. This drew itsetforeily to my conscious attention atfive o'clock this morning, There are al kinds of other things. We ate all the time subtly adjusting, noticing, and responding to those kinds of things. T want o come back and talk about what isthe value added. It's phrase thats used alotin England at the moment, Whatis the value that is added to learning by making it conscious? The starting point s that itis actually problematic because so nivel of our learning proceeds beautifully and effortlessly below and without conscious awareness. Incleed there are a whole lot of ways in which consciousness a mixed blessing. You te kinds oflearning on which your practicepate 2007 ‘THE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 know only too well from your practice that there are ways consciousness interferes with, jams up, diverts, perverts, complicates, and eongeals different kinds of earning. So's y mixed blessing and thats part of what want to explore with you today. Immersion, as{'ve described it, iskind of non-selective. It’s what neural networks do. You can just Input a whole lo of diferent experiences to a neural network, which tsa simple computer simulation of. simple set ofneuron-like elements hooked up in very simple ways and designed to change the strength of connections between them in rule-bound ways. So you don't need a tutor. You don’t need anybody else to tell them whatto do. Ifyou give them a whole lot of experiences to learn from, these neural networks will very rapidly distill perceptual subtleties and patterns that are, in some cases, as complex or more complex than those that the functioning human brain can distill. There isa classic example ofa very simple neural network with twenty-two elements (think of how many neurons there are in the brain): thirteen input layers, seven hidden units, and two output nits Input into this was a whole otof sonar echoes, which either came from a mine in the 10a oF froma rock. there is a huge overlap between these kinds of echoss. I's an important thing fora minesweeper to be able to know. Up until recently this was done by human operators, who after several months at sea were able to distinguish between the ping of amine and the ping ofa rock with about eighty-five percent accuracy. Ihat's as good as a human being gets. After five or six hundred trainings on these things, aneural network was able tn outperform the hnman sonar operator. With these very few little unitsitwas able toassign highly complicated auditory phonic patterns to these categories more reliably than a human being, Why it could be more reliable san interesting question. But a neural network s very passive. Itneeds almost no tuition, and then t becomes generative. Likewise there are neural networks that can very sophisticatedly tell the difference between different human expressions, between a male face and a female face, between ayoung face and an old face. These distinctions are extremely difficult to articulate, yet ‘well do them. We do them when we don't know how we do them just like that, and it’s not difficult to train a computer network to do them. The intriguing thing is that these ‘computer networks, like the human brain, don't know what they know. The patterns, ‘that become installed in those brain-like systems are often very different from the kinds of categories and patterns that we use to articulate those differences. It’s asifthere are Aitferent levels “This may be of relevance to your work. I don't know. For example, face-reeognition programs do not have anything like what we call eyes, noses, mouths, chins, orhairlines. "They have nothing that corresponds to that vocabulary. What they have isa set of foggy, holistic patterns, which they've distilled and for which we have no words. We have no word for the relationship between the contour of aface and the shadow, or between the different light and shade of one side ofthe nose from the other. 'm struggling in language to point at things that we have no easy way of pointing at. Yet these are the ways that these computer programs and, plausibly, our own brains actually do the job. So the waysin which our systems do these jobs, pattern recognition and maybe movement as well, are very differemt from the ways we have to talk about these kinds of things. ‘We'll come back and talk about that later because your job isto get into people at the level of machine code. Is what computer people would call machine code, isn it? You're engaged with adjusting the machine code of the human being, the neural code of a human being, not adjusting people's articulateness, although articulation may be one of the tools that you can use. INVESTIGATION ‘The second “I” is investigation. Let’s take vision. Ifimmersion is looking at and being, eceptive, investigation is laaling for Ir'sthe ahility tn he mare ealactive and pro-active inyourlearning. Again this is evolutionarily given, as you sec in any young child or any domestic animal. It's the ability to go out and test, to look for, to experiment, to prod things,to shout at them and see what happens, to go and stick your finger in that inter-esting looking socket to see what. The parents amongstyou will know that isa fairly inbred, self destructive habit. Investigation is very important because it enables us. It potentiates earning very powerfully. Putimmersion and investigation together. The way in witch psychologists wud ww refer to the balance between these two is between bottom-up and top-down processing. Bottom-up is kind of passive, receptive letting the world reveal itself to you. I's open- minded, being open. The investigation tends to be more “If it's this, maybe there's that, so let me go and look for that,” or “Here's an interesting looking hole, let me see what's behind it,” ete. There isa stronger internal drive, a stronger internal control, Part of what {s interesting about human learning is the way in which we can regulate the balance between those two. I've presented them there as if they're different kinds of learning, But actually it's ike shifting a dimmer switch for your living room lights. Sometimes we can bbe more receptive and passive. “Okay world, show me what you've got.” Atother times i's very important, the way we go looking, Obviously part of your ob isto play along that continuum, isnt? art of itis to draw people's attention to whatis thereto help them to see what they hadn't seen. I'm guessing now. But also part of your job isto direct thetr attention, to say “Ligin this place and you might find something interesting," rather than "Just dig anywhere.” Tap-dawn is more structured, more controlled. and often more hypothesis-driven. Ithink ‘gettinga flexible balance between those two ways of learning is very important because sometimes people get stuck in one or the other. We lose flexibility along that dimension. sconomical, and efficient for us to be more scalpel-like, mare dirertod i IMITATION Imitation is a very important form of learning, which is coming into the forefront of academic study at the moment. Last year Iwas at a big multi-disciplinary conference on Imitation that was held just outside Paris. The two volumes of the proceedings of that conference have just been published by mr Press. Ifanyone io interested, I'll give you the: details. Itwas driven by research by neuroscientists uncovering what are called mirror neurons. Gallese and Rizzolati have discovered, as most of you know, that there are mirror neurons in the brain, Most neurons in the brain only get excited by one thing, They live for only one kind of thing, and only get excited when that happens. But mirror neurons get, excited, unusually, by two kinds of things. They get excited by seeing another person or person-like form produce a gesture. They get equally excited by me, myself, making a gesture even if can't see it. There is a built-in mapping between what I see other people doing and what my brain readies itself to do by itself. You see this in the young child in peek-a-boo games, I's as our brains are almost ready to mirror whatever they see ‘round them in terms of the actions of conspecifics, other human beings, chimpanzees, orwhatever. We actually have to learn to inhibit mirroring. One of the functions of the frontal lobes, he development uf de fivutal lobes, is Teas tbe mute selective about that mimicry. There are certain kinds of neurological disorder you may know where oe ofthe symptoms is adisinhibition of mimicry. People become unable not to mimic or to copy what they see around them, Alexander Luria devised one ofthe tess. lst across from Ilana and say, “Here's the tes when Itap once on the table, you tap once. When Itap twice, you don‘ttap” ‘hiois reckoned tobe culturally vory important bocauce ete ue up rom an early age, to absorb not ust the physical habits (the making fist, smile, or what have you), but it readies us tobe eager absorbers of the cultural habits that we see around us, whether they're physical habits, turning up on time orbeing fashionably late or the kind of vocal accent your parents speak around you. And there are aso the mental and emotional habits, Aswe imax, childenn learn their amtinnal hahits They learn what toe Frightened of terested in, what to find amusing, what tobe scared by. You learn what to find disgusting ‘ery much in terms of looking athe triangle between the lump of shitover there and the‘expression on your mother’s face as you would move toward it. That referencing process is very fundamental, built-in, and very powerful Do any of you know the work of Michael Tomasello? He works here in Germany. I think he's at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, He's written a really interesting book around this ‘called The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition. I's a quite difficult book, but really Interesting, A lotof research is going on in the area with chimpanzees and little children, but clearly this remains a powerful and interesting dynamic between people. Ithas a powerful and. honorable place in the spiritual traditions—the darshan, the sitting with the teacher. You know the old Zen story af the young monk who went to the Zen master after five years and said, “Master, when are you going to start teaching me? I've been here for five years, serving you and clearing up your clothes, etc,, and I haven’thad a word of wisdom yet, about Buddhism, enlightenment, or nirvana.” The master says, “When you brought me my tea, did Inot thank you? When you folded my robe, did I not thank you?" Itis modeling, ‘That form of teaching has a very powerful effect. Again, in your world, I'm sure, it’s very powerful whether you draw attention to itor not. ‘There are crude versions of this. Some of you will know about NLP. You can sell people stuff beter Ifyou miicror de body laugiage. 1 like “You'll like wie betes.” There ace crude and rather Machiavellian versions ofthis. Participant Would it be necessary to be the living model for empathy? etaxrox Very much 50. Built on that ability to imitate comes the ability to create internal ‘models of other people—to begin with the people you like and admire and rely on around, ‘you—and then your ability to shift your center of personal gravity, your center of operation. Instead of looking at the world and operating from within your normal default model of self, you are able to shift that center of observation and reaction so that you are dwelling in the modal of someone else. Again itmay he a vory powerful tanl, ane of the strands that the Feldenkrais teacher can develop, rely upon, weave into this process. We're getting into deeper territory here; we can come back to this if you want, ‘want to tag another aspect just quickly skimmed. Inere1s no research on this that T know but I'm convinced this is important. As we grow up, go through childhood and into adolescence, a very important part of that process is becoming more selective about what and with whom we have that imitative relationship. I think the quality of that relationship iscalled admiration. I'll just throw this out as an idea for discussion. The functional ‘connection we have with people we admire is that we keep open the channel of imitation with that person. I's like “I wantto be like them.” panricrpant It’s the same time when the peer group starts very strongly. exaxtow Absolutcly, I’ a very important point. When the peer group starts to contest with the home or family as to who is going to be the most powerful magnet for that imitative growth, There are lots of kids in school who have turned 180 degrees, and who are sitting in class saying to themselves, “Td rather become anything than be like you.’ In response to participants questions and observations regarding teacher student relationship So one ofthe questions—all Ihave is pieces ofa jigsaw puzzle here—is how important is the establishing of an imitative relationship with your students. How much energy should you be putting in? Is this even something we consciously want to try t build? Or does this become too Machiavellian? We want to try to cultivate, as much as possible, that attitude of respect and admiration from them to you because that opens them up to one of the most important of the nonverbal learning channels. 1 don't know. Is this interesting? 9Good. Italked about imagination, thanks to your prompt about empathy. One of the ways started ta talk shout that was i's like we internalize models of ther people First of allthere are Mom, Dad, whoever else, and then more broadly. Someone I forget who said, “takes a village to raise a child,” Someone has written a chapterin a book that edited ‘while ago which 1 called “Becoming Village” Is aut just ti takes a village 0 salse the child butin the process ofthe village raising the child, the child becomes the village. ‘The child, in other words, has to learn to incorporate in her own brain-mind a range of perspectives which contain conflict, dissonance, and different points of view. We become that community of not always easily co-existing voices, needs, and perspectives. We develop that. I's a very important part of empathy, of developing that ability so important in today's world, ofbeing able o look at the world through the eyes of people who are not your natural friends and allies. ‘The other day someone told me astory about Gandhi. I don'tknow ifthis is true, but 1justheard this story. Itwas Gandhi's habit, when faced with a difficult predicament, to fire ofall look at it through the eyes of a Hindu. Then he wuld quite deliherately look tit through the eyes of Muslim. Then he'd look titthrough the eyes, say, ofa British person. Only when he had co-activated those different perspectives did he feel able to begin to formulate acourse of wise action. I's very uselul, very interesting, his1s going beyond the bounds of Awareness Through Movement. particiPanr Feldenkrais spoke repeatedly about being able to speak from different points of view; He would forcefully argue first one position and then the other. particirast twas his Hasidic roots, It's the nature of Talmudic study. Feldenkrais also felthis French education encouraged the ability to argue disparate points of view. cuaxtow Iwantto flag this. There is something at the edge of my thinking you can help ime with. I suspect that the ability to practice and enjoy looking at the world through other people's eyes as young children do—pretend play, being a pirate, being whatever—is absolutely natural to them. Within that natural propensity, and the growing facility todo that, lie the seeds of mindfulness, There are a whole lot of different definitions of ‘mindfulness, but one of the important characteristics of mindfulness is to dis-identify with a particular point of view. Instead of heing player within a particular emotional, motivational, or action-based drama, you find a perspective which is outside it, from hich you can observe it. You can be more dispassionate, that isto say not unfeeling but ‘without the passionate engagement. Ihe cultivation of mindfulness, as I understand it ‘within Buddhist practice, involves developing that perspective. I suspect, this is my theory ‘or hypothesis. developing that ability would take “the view from nowhere.” Somebody ‘wrote a philosophical book with that ttle, The View from Nowhere. The view from nowhere is the distillation of your ability to take a view from ots of different places. Ifyou practice thatabliity © lovk at dhe world Uarough uifferent peuple’ eyes, that serves you in good stead when it comes to developing the ability to take one step back from your normal Guy Claxton view ofthe world Iwas at a conference in Harvard a little while ago where someone was talking about ingualism., She'd done some interesting studies on people who had been bilingual from an carly age. She discovered that they were moro able to deal with abstract cognition of various kinds because they'd got used to disembedding from the form of a particular language. I's like people who grow up in different cultures. participant speaks about the unsettling experience ofa bicultural existence and the difficulties facing an immigrant child torn between two languages and two culture family and host country. She concludes, “Cultures see things ditterently. You either aie ‘or find something else."PALL 2007 ‘THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 ctaxron I don't know. It's an interesting empirical question—how important the language is. Maybe we can come back to that, One of the tools that is important within ‘your toolkit is something to do with cultivating a tamiliarity with taking that one step ‘backwards from your normal perspective, which enables you to see ina different way, Claxton facilitates a diatogue between those who wish to clarity the need to accept and respect a person's reality while at the same time trying to create conditions which allow the learner to discover new ways of sensing, thinking, feeling, and acting and the need to stay open and keep learning as a teacher-practitioner. Participant It’s really experiencing the integrity ofthe other point of view, meaning, how it makes sense to that person. You have a lot of respect for it, meaning that you don’t try to change it. ctaxton Yes, absolutely, although it’s an interesting question, an interesting issue. 'm intrigued by the paradox within psychotherapy or counseling terms, that I'm more familiar ‘with, which is that l accept something in order to change t.In other words, the acceptance {sactually not innocent. Deep down underneath the acceptance is a non-acceptance. 'm practicing accepting this. Why would Iwantto try and accept something fT didn'twant to do something about it? Otherwise I'd justletitbe. That's another interesting conversation ‘we could have, Participant Feldenkrais said that he's not teaching anything. He's ust creating conditions for someone to learn what they will learn, which means “Who knows what they need to learn?” He had a very good idea about that. PagricipaNt ‘There Is always a tension In this situation. 1 think Feldenkrals really respected the fact that what people would learn would be something he did not invent. ¢LaxToN [think thats also something about being able to inhabit other perspectives. Carl Rogers used to say that empathy is the ability to lay aside your own view of feelings and beliefs and to walk gently around in someone else's world asifit were your own. ItSavery nice description. It's somehow being able to inhabit both layers with integrity. parricieant We actually go with patterns versus leading first. In that way we have acceptance. Through that acceptance a learning condition can be created so the person doesn't feel like they're being made wrong or judged, CLAXTON Sothey become more open. participant It’snot quite asyou describe it, buti’s part ofa process. You can then go on. and say. “Now you yourself notice this pattern. Now you're free to see what itis and learn something else.” So we do use that. ciaxron I'yagentler way of putting it Hike Usa participant I'm interested in what Moshe called the dance between two nervous systems. In that process of accepting the other person's pattern, or having empathy for it, and having some idea that there is change available beyond that pattern, something +happens in the practitfoner that transforms the perception. Is notjust that Thave an idea of “Okay, Laccept you and now I'll show you what else theres,” but thatin my empathy I'm ‘transformed and there is @ new reality created, a third reality. aLaxton Yes, it’s like you're able—this is probably not an accurate re-description of what you were saying—to slip easily into a whole variety of different sets of clothes in your ‘own way of being because your practice has taught you to dis-identify with a particular set of physiological clothes. You're more available, more open to dressing up with the client ‘or student. Is it something like that? panrictpant Formeit goes beyond dressing up in different sets of clothing, although ‘like that because it's like the child, We're trying on these things. Maybe | actually am changed by it That's what makes me interested in continuing, !learn by the transformation that happens to my own perception in each interaction. Thats actually what the aliveness isin the work. Otherwise I would get entirely bored. participant ‘There's also something about who is doing the accepting,'The implication hereis that the practitioners doing the accepting. Quite often what [find is that you act: ally have to match the person so well that, infact, they do the accepting, cLaxrox Sure, it's maybe where the imitation, the empathy, comes. participant Where you can find and they can accept, then very often their own system starts to reorganize. Then I follow that reorganization, What you have to carry is the “okay-ness” of accepting. Ifyou really meet there, completely neutrally, their system will reorganize and we just follow it out because it’s not like you're teaching somebody a completely different language. cLaxron Tid love to find some ways of trying to capture what that quality of reorgan- ization is, You need to get both ol you in an FMRI, a neuro-imaging, machine atthe same time, Itshows you what is going on In the brain. artierpant mentions talking1o Francisco Varela about that possibility and getting wid: “"Thave enough trouble with one person.” CLAXTON Absolutely, Linked air inachines ae probably @ nightmare, IMAGINATION Imitation gives you the ability to build internal images. Imagination then is almost like an evolutionary tale. Children go through these, building them, not kicking the earlier ones away. They build out of each other. Imagination builds out of imitation because the imagination gives you the ability to inhabit other people's worlds and to act “as if’ to pretend to take on those possibilities. That opens up the possibility ot mental rehearsal. From my litle experience of Feldenkrais, know this isalso a very important element. 1 rememhor Chantal having me lieon the floor. Iwas kind of freaked because we'd been doing almost nothing for quite a while. Then she said "Now do really nothing, Stop doing it. Justthinkit” (thought, “This is getting weirder and weirder.” You'll know that neuroscience shows thar imagining yourself performilng a movenent has almost the same central effect. Itactivates, almost to the same extent, central areas of the motor cortex even though the frontal lobes are putting an inhibitory ring around that activity so that it doesn’t follow its natural outflow into full-blown muscle movement. So this again is quite a sophisticated ability. I's the ability to corral Very simply, the frontal lobes boss the rest ofthe brain around. They do it by very quickly throwing out inhibitory fields of activity which stop activity going down [gesture indicating the length of his body] ‘The ability o inhibit imitation is eally fascinating. Research suggests that the tendency to imitate is always there in us but, we learn to control and inibit it.FALL 2007 THE PELDENKHAIS JOUBNALNO. 20 Participant _Isn{titso that inhibition is going through all of that? First you have the immersion, and then you inhibi cuaxron Yes, you become able to carry out these internal experiments at the level of the brain. Ofcourse, this inhibition isa mixed blessing because sametimes we over-inhibit over-narrow, over-edit. t's like when we become what we cal self-conscious. We get so involved in that inhibitory function that we can’t even perform smoothly. There isn’t enough brain power lett over to do a simple action like carry a cup ot tea because 1m six years old and someone says, “Be careful you don’t spill tha; remember the new carpet,” and, ofcourse, Ispil it. ’m busy because all my brainpower has gone somewhere else. participant Have there been any studies with echolalia and disinhibition? craxton Yes, echolalia isthe inability to not keep saying things again and again because you keep imitating yourself hear myself say “I hear myself say.” In most echolalia I would compulsively repeat the last words of your sentence, or of someone else's. It happens interpersonally, but also intra-personally because I hear myself hear myself say something, aay something, It’ almost like the other person the other person is aaying it because hear and it comes back through my ears through my ears. ‘There is an interesting bit of research about mental rehearsal, which is very much up yourstreet. There are two kinds of mental rehearsal. Sports people use this method. There {is good scientific research to show that itis effective. Imagining yourself doing a good golf swing is effective in improving your golf game. But the research I read alittle while ago suggests that thisis only effective, or much more effective, ifyour mental rehearsals frst petson rather than third person, that isto say if you're activating the motor corollaries. You're not just looking at yourself out there asa picture. Ihat’sright up your street. t's exactly whatyou do. think imagination has been treated as a kind of junior form of know: ingin the educational field, which is where Ido alot of my work. People are beginning to discover again what a powerful part of the learning toolkit imagination is throughout life. rwrurrron In this context I mean by intuition sensitivity to forms of knowing which arise from the inside and which are il-formed, hazy, or which don't conform to the prototype of aclear proposition with supporting evidence and supporting statements—that patriarchal, scientific prototype. Intuition is vague, unsubstantiated. In the sense I'm using it i's sensitivity to a kind of feeling of pregnancy in your thinking or imagery. There isa chapter in Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind where I write about it being like the image of the growth and having ofa baby. Intuition is like the baby notready to be born yet, butit’s kicking, You can feel its activity. Although an idea isnot yet ready to be born fully into consciousness, nevertheless there are intimations of activity. These are extremely fruitful and useful. important nat to go overhoard in this. Your intuitions can he wrong. I'simportant te have bad intuitions, Gut feeling is not always a reliable guide to action, although some people in their epistemological growth sometimes go through a stage where they fll in love with gut feeling as ifonly were valid, Po any of you know an interesting book called Women’s Ways of Knowing, edited by Mary Balenky and four or five other people? the subtitle has something to do with the growth of voice and mind. I’sa study of a group of American women in their thirties and forties who were coming back to education. Most of them had pretty unsatisfactory experiences of education when they were girls. I's about the growth of their own sense of themselves as knowers. It exploresa kind of progression from feeling mute and voiceless to an increasing sense of authoritativeness with respect to the process of knowing from'Knowledge has nothing to do with me; it’s the fancy stuff that ‘goes on in universities” through toa kind of passive recipient. “Knowledge is made by ‘white men in lab coats, and the only role Ihave is to consume itas best | can.” Yes, mostly 2324 dead white men. t's better if they're dead. Then sometimes there isa flip—not always. But there isa flip from that sense of being in awe to saying “Fuck this patriarchal shit. Itjust stinks. Itsucks. The only friend I've gots [points to his chest). know i's true because [feel it On the other side ofthat is more balanced, more differentiated. "Yes, there is authority {in here and also intereating thinge I can learn from other people's explaratinne” Isa more delicate balancing of those two different sides of knowing. I's an interesting book. ‘William James had a lovely phrase. He talked about how important was “the reinstate- ‘ment of the vague” in our mental life. You work with the vague @ lot, don't your A large partof your job i helping your students take seriously something that they don'tyet know is there or not. It's certainly how Focusing works. I's like you're probably doing i right if ‘you're not sure you're doing it right. You can't quite put your finger on it. I's notin focus. ‘But something is there for which you don't yet have a conceptual system toneaten up and make sense of. I's vague. In Focusing i's called the feltsense. You work with the felt sense and finding ways to encourage and support your students in some kind of magical process whereby that felt sense, like a lens, gradually comes into focus, You're playing a role. want to throw a challenge in here. The way I've described itis as though you're being midwife.’ a process of coming into focus, which is neutral. It's like the pattern is just there. But actually Lieve is a lot of teaching, coaching, and guidance that goes into what pattern is coming into focus and how you are infiuencing that process. You're not just helping to see what's there. You're influencing a process of perception, which is selective, interpretative, and in some ways myopic. You're encouraging them to see what you think isvaluable to see. You might dispute this. But! thinkits very important. I draw support forthis from a very interesting paper that acolleague gave me to read. I's aclassic paper in sociology by Howard Becker. I's called “On Learning to Get High.” I's about the kind of studentship someone goes through when they're learningto smoke cannabis. Do you remember the first time you did it? You didn't teet anything, Ur maybe you did and thought "Is this it?" Gradually, your community helps you to see what i's about. Yes, you learn "Oh, fou loarn what a gnnd trip is ete. I's a process of socialization into a very sensory experience, panricirANT Whataboutthe sttuation where you flad yourself in a session, having done something without having thought about doing it? After you're there, you see that it makes, sense, It’s not vague at all. I's actually very clear and very spectfc. You find yourself there and go, “Ofcourse.” cxaxron Yes, t’slike another version of intuition. Thisis a big family of things. particreant Hopefully you know where you're going. You just know'to go with this or to say that. You develop a rationale afterwards. eraxton Focusing, Eugene Gendlin's work, isa neighhnring trihe that would be inter- ‘esting to explore. participant What do you mean by “sense” in Focusing—more the “meaning” or mure the “sensing,” or both? Because it’s sort of double. There is a shift ofthe felt sense. Is that then moaning? ‘exaxrox ‘the way Gendlin talks about itis meaning is more well formed than sensing ‘The felt sense is necessarily ll formed, amorphous, and tentative, and vague. Meanings, slightly more crystallized. It's taking shape more, even though you may not yet be able to articulate it clearly, I don't want to speak for the way in which Gendlin uses these words. ‘The learning process in Focusing involves getting a sense of an embodied something. Youeats 2007 {THE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO, 20 don't quite know what tis. You then engage in a patient process of very gently trying out ‘ways of articulating that. You often stay very close to it. You use physical language say ina psychotherapeutic session. Someone doing this process will say, "I don't know what itis. It’s kind of heavy. It’s more like there isa kind of weight.” It's like that process of finding the right way and always listening. Gendlin sometimes caid the autharity te the pra-arti cchild in your chest. The child can understand but can't speak. You're like the mother saying, “Oh, sweetheart, are you hungry? What isit?” You offer simple verbal suggestions back. When you ger tright, the baby goes, “Yes!” that's the feltshutt. It pens up a process ofinnerflow. slate Participant Feldenkrais often talked about those things. He talked a lot about intuition, except he kept saying it wasn't mysterious. Itwas the accumulation of what you've learned but wasn't available atthe tip of your consciousness. ctaxton Orit’s certainly not available at the level of articulation. So you can't say what Itis. One of the slogans from Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind (and it’s not mine) is that we know ‘much more than we know we know. It's being able to tap into that. ‘There are.a whole lot of other things beginning with “1.” You ean click on intuition and have an interesting time exploring inspiration, insight, inkling, and impulse. What you're talking about is impulse. I's like “Go with this one.” Isn't “inklings" a lovely word? An. inklingis small. You don’t quite know. Ifslike a hunch. Inspiration, insight, and impulses. Inspiration is like a good idea. Insight is like seeing into the depth of something, You can have fun playing with and unpacking those. All of these are like embedded menus. You can click on any one of these and go down to another level ifyou want, PARTICIPANT Can we point backa little way to when you were talking about vagueness and whatis interesting about us to an anthropologist. I think we're very comfortable with vagueness.as Feldenkrais practitioners. But we're also ina stage of our development in terms of articulating work at the level of assistant trainers, trainer candidates, and trainers, So there is vagueness at the practitioner level and then there is a necessity to articulate, for instance for assessment. taxon When people are exploring something in the way you're doing, the process of being able to articulate itis often way downstream of mastery. You can do it, but you don't know what itis that you're doing, which i the case for most of you. You can articulate it up toa point, but you can't capture itall. That seems to be absolutely normal. There are lots of experimental studies of getting people to learn to master a computer environment bby pushing keys. You look atthe graph of the development oftheir ability o do it, their competence, and the development of some kind of intuitive sense of whether or not this is the right thing to do, but you don't know why. The graph of the development oftheir ability to explain why they're doing what they're daing is muich slower Interestingly, Antonin Damasio's studies show this. There are certain forms of brain damage tothe frontal lobe in ‘which you develop the ability o articulate what you're doing at the same speed as ordinary {olk, but you never learn how to control itsmartiy. You can become a pundit whulst ‘remaining practically stupid, which iskind of weird. Participant Butcommon. ‘ctaxroy Butin terms of our public theory of knowledge it's deviant, pawtictpant All ofthis discussion of trying to articulate creates a tremendous amount of conflict in our community between what I'l briefly bracket as the “masters” and the26 ris FELDENKMAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 rat 2007 “bureaucrats.” I published this in the newsletter a couple of times in different ways. There is areal discovery of the tradeoff between the ability to articulate and the ability to do. cuaxron Yes, but] think the distinction is that there are different considerations about Ue welative value of vagueness and clarity, depending on precisely what enntoxt you're talking about. In working with a student, a certain necessary element of the ability to inhabit the unclear in your relationship with them may be absolutely vital and essential. You don't want to neaten itup. It’s an important part of that process, whereas at the more sociological level the movement toward being able to articulate what you're doing may be a very valuable thing to be looking for. ranticrpant ‘There are also pressures on us, legally and otherwise, to be able to state lists of competencies and so on—what it is we're going toward. Then the clash gets stronger. eravran Lots of other professional groups are experiencing precisely that tension toward accreditation, professionalization, articulation, and al that kind of stuff. Alot of people are saying "But something important is lost in that process.” parrictpaxt Wehave aprocess now for moving from, say, assistant trainer to trainer. We "want the trainers to be able to articulate in acertain way. We throw questions at them, and the immediate reaction of most people is, “I can't answer this; it's impossible forme.” When they do articulate it, often this muddies up the actual thing that they're doing. ciaxrow [thinkyou justhave to live with that tension. You have to give up the idea that there is an optimum place that you can ever find on that dimension, Participant From your perspective, could there be some way of beginning to formu- late and articulate a developmental prncess? Is there a developmental process? Is that optimal? Is there something we could begin to explore in some way that we perhaps don't understand? exaxton Absolutely, and you're not alone in this. There are all kinds of neighboring tribes. The one that came to mind just then was midwifery. Yes, the baby has to be born, Dut the relative value of intuition, as opposed to clarity, technology, accountability—those {issues are powerfully contested in that profession at the moment. ‘Other fields include psychotherapy, obviously. There isa pressure toward examinations, accreditation and the same things. There are dozens of fields I'm sure. Sports coaching: sports coaches are really used to making powerful life judgments about eight- or nine- year-olds—whether they've got what ittakes. They've seen their ole as being powerfully selective. They have the intuition to say ofthis nine-year-old, “Yes, he’s worth investing in,” “She's never going to make it.” participant Yet youhave famous football coaches who didn't even finish school. They're the most famous among them. cuaxron Absolutely, so ithas nothing te da with intellect. panricreant I'm married to a violist who always works on his playing. He will get up in ‘the morning and try something, He'll be happy and feel he's done something good. Iwas a musician and want to ask him about it, but he says “I don't wantto talk about it” He feels that if he talks aboutit. twill disturb the process. Obviously i's true forhim. From your research isit true that articulating disturbs the continuation of the process?Fant 2007 THE FELDENKRAIS JOURNAL-NO.20 eLaxtow Ican'tanswer that from any research. But I know thatit’sa self-fulfilling prophecy in a way. Artists and creators of all kinds often have very powerful beliefs about process. Those beliefs are active. They have an effect. For some people to know more, to be able to understand the process of creativity, would be quite damaging. Others, who ie digenseiane and being able to articulate the process, The physicist Richard Feynman was once speaking to someone who was talking about physics solving all the problems. Feynman said "It does no harm to the mystery to understand a litte about i.” the mystery isso much bigger that it doesn’t mind it youtry to articulate ita bit, are no less creative, are very interested in having, vantictpant ‘There has been some research on creative problem-solving that shows these are the kinds of problems where you have to reframe the question or think about itin a different way. When they ask students to articulate step-by-step, itseems to interfere in the creative problem-solving, either with reaching a result or by slowing the people down. Afterwards, people were able to make an explanation ofthe creative process. I'sa question of when the articulation comes in relation to the creative problem-solving. ctaxron Yes, whetherit comes. That’é a complicated icnue. Lwant to come back to thatif \we ever get to consciousness. A participant quectinnewhather Claxton Lnowe about any research making distinctions between written, oral, and gestural articulation ‘tAxToN Idon’t know about that. Again in order to explore that question, !@ wantto get ‘more specific about what the creative project is, what stage we're at. There is some very interesting work done by a Dutch neuroscientist, Cees Van Leuven, about the importance of sketching and the way in which either visual sketching or drafting in words acts as a kind of amplifier of your creative process. By putting your imagination out there, you are able to have a conversation with itor to make use oft in a way that we are not equipped to do if we were doing tall inside our heads. There isa positive process to that drafting, that making of interim objects, whether t's piece in yourdiary, a model, askeich, or whatever itmay be, that can have a-very positive effect. Creative peuple de tlss alte tine. Puctng ‘tout into the world adds a dimension to creativity which oral expression may not. I think there isa lot more about that to be unpacked. We certainly know that articulating, trying to put things into words, particularly too soon, can also have a very negative effect—this, kind of disorder, to which men are particularly prone, called premature articulation. But Vllcome back to the pros and cons of articulation. INTELLECT ‘Now we getto the less interesting but more familiar. Intellect is the whole domain of language, focused attention, analysis, and articulation. It's very important tool of learning. But. as say to teachersall the time, is no use having that he yer only tao. i's ‘one compartment in the toolkit. In terms of the work you do, what isthe right moment to use that tool? I's like doing surgery. lt’sa fine oo}, that scalpel of linguistic decision, logic, snail si. There’ nodhlng wrong with i. But we lve in aculture that gives intellect, undue, uncritical prominence. There are interesting questions about when the right ‘moment to use that tool is, and in what ways. vanrictrant Because the learning process for becoming a practitioner isso he: experiential, being abl to articulate sa core issue for alot of us cxaxtox There are all kinds of benefits of being able to clue people in fast to what you're talking about. I's like saying “See what's going on in your left shoulder.” I's reallygood shortcut to be able to try and manage other people's attentional focus. On the other hand, it can also preempt experience in all kinds of ways when you give people too clear ‘amap. They start giving you back what they think they're supposed to feel. They use the articulatory map in their impatience to get toa perceptual point that they haven't got to really. They can kind of fake itthrongh language particiant ‘The major problem in the training programs, particularly when there are people in the training groups who are so secure with intellect, is hat they're afraid of losing control, no longer knowing what's going on. They keep going back and asking “What happened to me? What was that all about cLaxron They're cycling through that loop and not getting to the embodied experience. Panticreant For the trainer the question is how you run interference with that, subvert that tendency and block it? Laxton Yes, how do you subvert that tendency and block t? Do you know those magic ye pictures? I've come across people that I've acked, “Can you see them?” They'd eay, “Well, sort of.” You can’tsort of see them. You either do or you don't. But they don't want to ‘admit that they can’t. You must get students who say “Yes, I think I've got it.” And you know ‘damn well that they haven't. INTERACTION Interaction isthe social side: That's not only you as a discussant with, butalso the impor- tance of, the group. fd be interested to know whether this is an underused channel, how ‘much the students can learn with and trom each other in a way that you might orchestrate or facilitate. They actually could learn quite alot, as primary school children do who we encourage to work together around thelr tables. or whether your classes are traditionally ‘more like everybody is on their own mat relating like spokes of a wheel to you. Down this side of the diagram [See p. 15] I've put what the teacher's role can be. How do Tas ateacher try to maxtinize tearnlng Uuvuh iuunetsiun? How du Taya teacher try to engage with learning through imitation? So thisis the teacher as parasite, as organizer, ‘as someone who is trying to hook in to each of those forms of learning, These are just ‘examples. There is much more to be said down this ine. As someone who is maximizing your students’ learning through immersion (which is what you do alot), you suggest activities, organize space, create interesting things for them to do, etc. In other words, your job is to give them interesting and fruitful things to be immersed in. Then you have the ‘more focused kind of investigation. I've included the phrase “joint attention." Developmental psychologists get very excited about jolntattention and the way in which little children learn to focus, to have joint attention, and how important that is for the development af empathy and all kinds of important things. [liked that phrase at half past five this morning when Iwas putting these slides together because the word “joint” has four different meanings. Itmeans “together.” Ttmeans joint asin “elbow.” So ithas a physical meaning of joint. ithas.a meaning of "ro be jointed,” to be articulated, to be bendy. Something that is jointed is something that ‘can move in parts. in bits. That's very Important because part of the power of language, ‘and of focused attention, isto be able to isolate alittle part of the system—to joint the physical system. The word “articulate” in English is very useful. It means both to speak and to joint or segment. implies clarity. But the power of language to enable us to take our understanding to bits, and to work on bits ofit, isa huge development over learning by immersion which is kind of holistic. I's the whole neural network slowly changes with, varying experience and that ability to take your experience to bits and to zoom in alittlebit, And obviously the role of the teacher, the opportunity ofthe teacher, isto be amodel. ‘The use of imagination takes you down the line ofthe eacheras the leader ofthe guided ‘visualization to use that channel ‘Access to those less clear ways of knowing s dependent upon your state of mind, ‘The more purposeful, busy pressurized, eager voware, the harderitis to see those faint patterns. Thereis alot ofresearch in Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind that shows the more you put people under pressure, it could be positive like offering a reward or encouragement, as well as negative piessute, the more the tendency for them to narrow thelr cone of attention. 80 they're only paying attention to what they thinkis most likely tobe relevant. In other words, ‘youre trying to avoid the effect of that kind of urgency or stress, or what-ever triggers & preconscious process of selection whereby you say “I's probably not that; it’s not going to be ‘that; but these four things are probably going to be” Under some circumstances, that's ighly efficient. Butit also makes your thinking and perceiving more narrow and stereotyped. I's like you're backing the favorite asi it werea horse race. varticirant What matters most in our work isto find out what the other person wants. eravran Provisely conclusion. andl the more you are in hurry, the more you're trying to jump to the PARTICIPANT this san absolutely central Issue because In che process of dung tlte work you need open attention. You need to be ina state of non-anxiety concentration. cLaxrow Yes. In order to gain access to that broader, more bottom-up, more open attention, the role ofthe teacher is powerfully that of someone who is optimizing the right tnneutal an emutional mode or mood in people. It's not just dropping into meditation teacher's voice: “Just lie back; everybody's okay. Bring your attention gently to your right foot.” We all know that mood-inducing voice. There are other ways. I'm thinking of Milton Erickson and his way of tricking people into a trance moment, ranticirane Wewere watching film about Celibidache, who was a great eandnetar here in Munich. The conductor makes the orchestra by the way he is embodying himselfin leading it. The same thing is true when you're doing a really good job of teaching ATM. It's a very important part of what we're doing that we have skill n that area. cxaxon The metaphor of the conductor of the orchestra has some power to it. Panricreant When you're really doing that well, you see everybody in the learning process. You know when you're on and when you're ofl panricreanr When you said you were bored in a Feldenkrais lesson, I wondered “What does one do to make Feldenkrais lessons boring?” vaniicirase Iwas thinking that maybe the teacher wasn't quite there, CLAXTON Ormaybe wasn't. 'm not going to blame anybody else for that. We've talked about explaining the role of telling and the double-edged quality of that, and of setting up the interactions. I don't want to say any more about that. “The previous list mapped the space of teaching and learning, summary of points or channels and directions. Itis not to prescribe any given trajectory or optimal route through that space. I's simply to say that there are these channels and dimensions. 2HOW TO BE A GOOD TEACHER ‘+ Depends on what the learning goal is + Depends on where the learners are + And in what phase of the process they are © Tnvulves flexible urganization ofany all of die le yg/teacliing nodes CHANGING HABITS CAN BE + Physical + Mental + Emotional + Attentional Now the work begins, which is very specifically to say what the learning goal is, where these people are, where we are in some developmental process, and then to have a higher level Orchestration of the ditterent media, the difterent channels ot teaching and learning, so that you are doing your best to connect and to facilitate and amplify the learning, All that is 4 set of questions that any educator or primary school teacher needs to have at the back of her mind. "These are dimensions along which I could be moving. How do [get to the place in this seven-dimensional teaching and learning space which matches where they ate as Closely as possible” ILdvesn' give the answer, DUC a way Uf deseaibing the pioblen ot the issue. ligive you crude example, I used to run a teacher training course, what we call a PGCE course in the U.K. back in the 1970s. It’ one-year Post-Graduate Certificate to turn people who have got degrees into people who can teach their subject in high school. The students would come in very skilled at knowledge management and intellectual learning. ‘They had mostly come straight from university. They were fairly confident oftheir intel- lectual learning skills, We would give them more ofthat, except that instead of learning geology they'd now be learning Piaget, philosophy, history of education, or something, We'd fill them up with this intellectual knowledge and send them out into schools. The mada was that mare or laseaistomatieally allthis gaod knowledge wonld translate expertise in the classroom, which of course is nonsense. Ittends to work the other way around, We lecturers in education lived in a world of complexity and philosophical discussions about what education is for, theories of development, ete. That was the world we lived in and there’s nothing wrong with that, except thatthe world the students were livingin was “How do [keep the buggers quiet?” We got cross that they weren't paying due respect to all this good knowledge we were giving them, We simply had no sense of the necessity to engage with what was up for them at different stages. By the time they got Unougls wo de Urea ern, Uae end of eis yeas, Uiey were alist seatly Wheat some ut Hie theory because they'd learned how to keep the buggers quiet. They'd passed their teaching practice. The anxiety wasless, they were on the way to being able todo it. Then, and only then, were they ready to take a step back and say, “What isi that 'm doing, and could I be doingit differently?” When you're walking across swamp you don't want a complicated act of options. You want a plank. Here's a simple model. Nobody these day's makes mayonnaise. Has anyone in this room ‘made it? Yes, do you? Okay, the art of mayonnaise making is alive and well in Europe, ifnot inthe UX. You know the important thing with making mayonnaise, don't you? Exactly. The oils explicit understanding in the learning process. You putin one litte bit and you beatin alotin practice. Then you put another little bit, and you heat ita lot. After you've done that tediously fora while, you can start pouring the oll in faster, In other words, only after you've done all the beating, the slow introduction of the knowledge, will people be ready for a {aster stream of being able to articulate or understand what they're doing. {find that very useful. Ifin doubr, feed your wisdom in slowly rather than faster.FALL 2007 "ME PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20 ‘These are a few thoughts about trying to geta bit clearer about the ballpark of the learning goa, the learning activity that youand awhole ot of other people are involved ‘This is not specitically about Feldenkrais, but t's trying to think into awhole ares about changing habits. It’s a simple description, but | think part of what you do is chang- ‘ng physical habits. Part of what [do is changing teachers’ habits. They can be physical, ‘mental, emotional, or attentional. This covers psychotherapy. It cavers aspects of quite alot of things. ‘Habits are skills and processes that lave fallen below the threshold of conscious awareness, Iwas thinking about three different kinds of habits. There are physical habits that have sunk out of consciousness. Driving a caris one example. Once upon a time you thought about it—changing gear, looking in the mirror, ete. Now it’s become automatic. Alot ofthe component skills you just don’thave to think about anymore. So you're busy having a conversation whilst smoothly changing gear. There are other habits (maybe physical habits) which never went through consciousness. You just picked them up through learning by immersion. I think there are an awful lot of those, There are some models of learning that assume that everything goes through consciousness betore it sinks down, But I thinkan awful lot of our learning is just picked up on the margins or oven below the horizon of swarenoss Or there are ways of speaking—regional dialects. or accents, habits that never went through consciousness. I's not onlyin childhood. Its all the time, ‘Then there are habits that went through consciousness bur have sunk below: 1s increasingly problematic as to how you change them. As you might imagine, i's like raising sunken wreck. There Is something there that you can float up to the surface. With some of these other physical habits, i's like there is no pre-existing way of articula- ting them. They were never articulated, They never went through that system. Particieant In our community it’s interesting how teachers who are admired can sometimes be heard or seen in the gestures of thelr admiring students. When those students begin teaching Awareness to others they are usually not aware of that. cuaxrow Sometimes those things that people pick up are relevant, and sometimes they're relevant or superstitious. used to study with a Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Sogyal Rinpoche, He has a particular habit when he's teaching, He's akind of oly-poly Tibetan guy, Oriental people are handicapped in that thetr noses are not sharp enough tokeep theirspectacles up. When you havea flat nose, it's easy for your spectacles to slide down. Atregular intervals he would punctuate what he was saying by pushing his spectacles back up his nose and saying, “Is that clear? Istarted doing itin my classes. 1 havea sharp nose. My spectacles stay put. ‘Ihe third kind ot habits are perceptual. They are the most problesmatte uf ull wecause perceptual habits are self-concealing, That isto say you don't know that you have perceptual habits because they skew the instrument through which you look. Ifyou've only ever looked through red glasses, you have no idea that you're looking through red ‘lasses. That's what you look through. Someone from the outside can say “Why are you looking trough tue ved ylassese™ You say, “What red glasses? t'm not looking through red glasses” That's where you need mindfulness. I would say i's the only tool which opens the possibility for you to see outside your normal perceptual habits. In away, mindfulness is learning the knack of adopting a different perspective from which those perceptval habits themselves become visible, that s to say conscious. Once they become visible, they become equivocal. You can then thinkabout them, argue about them, and practice them. Equivocal means capable of being questioned participant Ifyou lie around and do alot of ATMs and you just leet yoursett: You feel it physically and maybe you feel the whole sympathetic/parasympathetic change happen.But ifyou don't address—the lenses through which you see things—then it becomes what | feel to be mindless. I's like mindless mindfulness. cxaxrow I've heard Buddhist teachers say something similar, thatthere is akind of mindless mindfulness vanticreanr ‘The interesting thingis that there are teachers who teach Awareness “Through Movement ina way that you only get he mindless snfndfulsiess part. There are other teachers with whom you get that deeper layer. The trickis what makes the difference between the one and the other. particieant ‘there are working groups on awareness, Laxton That sounds very important. Does everyone see that as a key question? To articulate various possibilities of being aware would be great. That would be very helpful for me. I'm just about to have to write an article on mindfulness. pamricrpant Thereis this thing about perspectives. Sometimes we're bringing into awareness domains of human experience and what's perceivable most people haven't thought ofas significant or even perceivable. So we have a domain level problem as well. People don't know how important this stutt is. So they stay mindless, One ofthe issues is how to integrate the domain of sensory-motor experience into something that's mean- ingful for them. RELOCATING SELF gocentric vs. allocentrie space Moving from player Or"fan” ‘To witness / spectator And the inhibition of habitual responses Less “tup-dowi" aud more “bouwnicup” feel 1'm making some progress with how to connect that with this sense of being able to. take different perspectives. There i recent work on the visual system in the brain, which Jdentiies several different visual systems. Tisis from Consciousness, a book published earlier this year by Jeffery Gray. There are actually tw different systems that construct two different kinds of visual space. One tells you where stuffisin space. A different one tells you ‘what stuffs. Egocentrie space isthe space I have to inhabit to know that to get that pen | have to reach out tori. ts the space of grabbing, 1am atthe center of that workd and space goes out from me ‘There is another kind of space I can inhabit called allocentric space in which Texistas an object. There is perspective I can take where I can pull back and see myself as one among ‘many people in this room. One of my visual systems operates from egocentric space; and 1 eau alse operate feo sisotliet visual systeus, whicls is sure like he eunscivus visual system, so these people argue, where i's more neutral ‘Claxton daws two circles, and surrounds one by smaller circles, and the other by larger circles. “These spaces have different properties. This is one of the intriguing experimental results that make this distinction, There isa visual illusion called Tichenor's circles. There are two circles that are the same size. The visual illusion is very compelling, Even though you know and can imagine they're the same size one still looks smaller than the other. However, letPALL 2007 {THE PELDENKRAIS JOURNAL NO. 20, this be a coin on a table, and this actually a sort of physieal disc. Although they look to be different sizes, if you askme to reach out and grab them, my hand makes the right size My hand is not fooled by the illusion. My consciousness is fooled, but the grasp I make is accurate in terms of the physical size of these two things. In my conscious system I'm going thrangh all kinds of eompensatinn, which adjusts the perreptnal size relative to their context, But that’s no use to me in terms of grabbing. ‘You have to reach fast. Both systems are going at the same time so you have to reach. fast so that your hand is not captured by the illusory system, Therefore your system adjusts from the feedback. The other version of this is that you make the circles different sizes that appear to be the same. Then your grasp differentiates. It’s like you have a form of unconscious seeing which isin some sense more accurate than your conscious seeing, rantrcieant You know all the famous things Piaget did with glasses and the amount of ‘water. They found out that children actually know exactly but to say it they go for the illusion, ctaxron _It'salanguage thing, There isa very nice version of that called Conservation of ‘Volume, You have a mug of orange juice, and you tip it either into a short fat container or into a all thin one, It's the same amount. You say to a kid, “Is there more or lessin here?” ‘They say there's more in here pointing to the picture of the tall container. They seem to be captured by the illusion. But actually there are ways of showing that they're not. One of the cutest ways of showing that they're not isto dress this up ina litle story. You say going to tip this into here and into here.” You have a toy giraffe, which has a very tall neck. ‘He needs a tall thing to drink out of. You have a short, fat hippopotamus. He's very low 10 the ground and he drinks out of that one. You ask the child which is happier, which gets the ‘most orange juice—the giraffe or the hippopotamus. They say i's the same. Ifyou putit into astory form, they're able to articulate what they really know. varricreaxt And we went with Piaget foryears and years. exaxrox Iknow. Ile has alotte answer for. Participant So there is the visual, spatial perception of the egocentric dimension. ‘Does the egocentric space precede the allocentric? From what you're saying, it would not because you perceive the breast from the beginning, CLaxton IUSvery sensory-motor. The movement, the motivation, isall bound up. In ego- centriespaceitislike, "Tm up o something. Iwant this. 1'm reaching for this. like that.” ‘hat space has my emotion, motivation, need, and capability right atthe center otitand perceptionis the servant ofthat. When 1 was working with children in beginning reading and the whole issue about making letters. I found if experimented with making the shapes and understanding above and below, infront of and in back of, beside, around, straightin their own bodies they were then able to go on from the egocentric, seeing the shape, feeling te shape, seeing te shape on another child anu making stapes ogedter. Then diey evuld begin to putiton the page, whieh isallocentric space. But before they could feel the egocentric space, they had alot of trouble with what we would call dyslexia. But when they 0 backto the sensory exploration and make that bridging, many of them were able to shift thas always seemed to me to be developmental—a natural part of evolution. A participant refers to turning in order to look backwards in space: “What came to my ‘mind was survival. This kind of quick movement, if you're in the jungle or ina situation, youhave to do lt. Maybe there'e a higher grade function and lower grade function for survival 33