Tag Archives: wholeness

Progress as seen through The Feldenkrais Method

This is a method that attempts to bring us all closer to more wholeness.  I believe that as we progress through our lives it is often a case that allows us all to fragment or compartmentalize ourselves more and more.  On the other side of that, occasionally we see people that really flower in their age.   Interestingly, I am beginning to have a feeling that movement away from wholeness is why we often see greater physical and mental ailments as folks age.  But, I believe that age is not necessarily a creator of ailments!  Ailments can be presented to humans before during and after birth and throughout the lifespan.  Ailments themselves can be creators of opportunity and blossoming into life with more wholeness.  Finding that wholeness is what I believe creates a happier and more physically comfortable life.

Moshe Feldenkrais created a method for observing the human process and finding distinctions and connections between what he sees as four main categories of real-time existence:  feelings (emotions), senses, movement, and thought. In his book, Awareness Through Movement.  He speaks of an old parable where, “a man without awareness is like a carriage whose passengers are the desires, with the muscles for horses, while the carriage itself is the skeleton.  Awareness is the sleeping coachman.  As long as the coachman remains asleep the carriage will be dragged aimlessly here and there.  Each passenger seeks a different destination and the horses pull different ways.  But when the coachman is wide awake and holds the reins the horses will pull the carriage and bring every passenger to his proper destination.  In those moments when awareness succeeds in being at one with feeling(emotion), senses, movement, and thought, the carriage will speed along on the right road.  The man can make discoveries, invent, create, innovate, and “know.”  He grasps that his small world and the great world around are but one and that in this unity he is no longer alone.” “