Flexible: to be or not to be?
What’s your idea of flexibility? Is it being able to touch your toes, turn around easily, pick up the kids/grandkids or a host of movement related things? All of us would like to remain as flexible as we can, of course, as our movement flexibility allows us to enjoy what life can offer.
Studying the Feldenkrais Method, as I have for the last three years in the professional training program, I’ve been challenged many times with regard to my own flexibility (having just hit 68), but its not just my physical flexibility that is being challenged. It’s my mental flexibility as well. The number of times I’ve immediately thought ‘Oh - I can’t do that’ when faced with perceived difficulties during an Awareness Through Movement lesson might well turn out to be a significant number. However, Moshe Feldenkrais encourages us in a number of ways to change the way we think and I’m working to embrace that.
Two of his thoughts that particularly resonate with me are:
‘What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, its flexible brains’ and (paraphrased by one of my trainers) ‘fixed patterns of thinking often correlate with fixed patterns of action’. These thoughts work (at least in my mind) with the axiom that is credited to Henry Ford: ‘If you think you can, or you think you can’t, you are right’.
I’ve long thought that, as we age, we can become a distilled essence of what we’ve been in the past. That can extend to the way we dress, the way we do our hair, the way that we can restrict ourselves in thought and action, in an unconscious manner. Add to that the inevitable injuries, illness and restrictions of the body and we can find our world becoming considerable smaller, we can ‘wall ourselves in’. I think its rather nice to contemplate opening up rather than closing in.
So…back to physical flexibility. There are many ways that we can help ourselves: keeping active, going to the gym, walking etc. All of these things are predicated on our mental state. Motivation is paramount and, if we haven’t moved a lot for a while, knowing it’s going to be slightly tough means that motivation might be challenged. We are geared to outcomes and the idea of ‘no pain, no gain’. Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons are the opposite of that - you are encouraged to make small, gentle movements in order to be able to tune your awareness into how you are moving much more than the movement itself. The finding of the how allows us to re-find ways of moving with ease and can lead to the unlocking of ‘fixed’ movement restrictions. Often the movements are unusual as that unusual nature can open up new areas of thinking and therefore learning about ourselves, to help us break out of a fixed mode. That the classes focusses on ease, gentleness and ‘small’ can be a very attractive way to re-find our flexibility.
Coupled with this, and perhaps of greater importance, is the idea of unlocking our ‘fixed’ mental restrictions. The ‘I can’t do that’ because of………(fill in blank here). By bringing our awareness to what we are doing, Moshe Feldenkrais encourages us to be ‘in the moment’, to avoid a goal oriented approach (‘I must get this movement right!’) and to attune ourselves to realising what our bodies’ potential might be - to be more ‘ourself’. The flexible brain notion is pretty powerful. That includes allowing yourself to enjoy the process and not worry about the outcome - a challenging notion of and in itself.
As a life long goal oriented person this has been my greatest challenge. Physically I can happily now get up and down off the floor with ease, sit crossed legged (which had been a challenge), allow my rib cage to move (believe me - a bigger deal than it sounds!), do full squats and survive, walk long distances and be comfortable etc. Mentally I’m still working on the challenge of not being goal oriented and allowing myself to be immersed in the process. Rigid thinking is a bugger to try and avoid, but the process of doing that is more and more important to me and more and more liberating.
To be a life-long learner is a worthwhile pursuit. I wonder if its yours? My physical flexibility is a work in progress as is my mental flexibility. Flexible: to be or not to be? That’s certainly my question.
You can find out more about our upcoming Re-Find Your Flexibility series of classes by following the button below. And here’s a gratuitous link to see me spiralling to and from the floor 😀
Cheers, Chris.
