Guest Post: Debra Lerman, Physical Therapist and Feldenkrais Practitioner
Yoga and Feldenkrais® are complementary practices that support ease of movement, body-mind connection, and increased awareness. I’m excited to collaborate with Debra Lerman, physical therapist and Feldenkrais® practitioner, to offer a retreat on the Osa Peninsula in Costa Rica. In February of 2021, we’ll offer a weeklong immersion with daily yoga and Feldenkrais® practices to calm your nervous system and support lasting changes.
This post offers some thoughts from Debra on how conscious movement and meditation encourage greater awareness and connection to our true selves.
How Yoga and Feldenkrais® Work Together
In her book Awakening the Spine, Vanda Scaravelli writes, "In yoga the participation of the brain in the functioning of the body during the asanas is indispensable, as the brain has to watch and follow each movement of the body." She points out that, "The adherence and contact with what is going on in the present moment is a healthy state of awareness."
This “adherence and contact with what is going on in the present moment” is intrinsic to yoga practice - moving into and out of certain asanas or postures - and to the way yoga is taught. An instructor gives verbal instructions, and the students listen, think, feel and move into the image that they have of the correct asana (pose).
The Feldenkrais Method® also encourages a type of awareness practice. In a Feldenkrais® class, also called Awareness Through Movement® class, the instructor directs the student to move slowly, in a small range and with ease, putting effort into attending to changes in varying parts of the body in relation to each other and the environment. For instance, rolling the pelvis and feeling the pressure change along the sacrum. Then rolling the pelvis toward the head and away, noting how this rolling pulls and pushes on the spine, allowing the low back to come toward and away from the floor. Feeling what happens in the neck and head, and how the chin moves in relation to the chest.
The student is listening, thinking, feeling, and imagining all at once, always moving toward the most comfortable and efficient movement possible. When this same student returns to yoga practice, their increased body awareness allows them to listen internally on many levels, adapting to a posture with respect for and consideration of their individual musculoskeletal system, nervous system and history. They can find a sense of stillness within the flow of yoga as well as the flow of moving through life.
Connecting Body, Mind and True Nature
Experiencing stillness within the flow can feel for me like absolute clarity and effortless concentration. The system becomes organized. I feel more at ease standing and sitting. When I sit to meditate, I can more easily find a posture that doesn’t distract me with discomfort. A posture that is itself the right state of mind. In sitting, as in everything I do, I am “expressing my true nature.”
In his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, in the chapter entitled Posture, Shunryu Suzuki writes:
“Doing something is expressing our own nature. We do not exist for the sake of something else. We exist for the sake of ourselves. This is the fundamental teaching expressed in the forms we observe, just as in sitting, when we stand in the kendo we have some rules. But the purpose of these rules is not to make everyone the same, but to allow each to express his own self most freely. For instance, each one of us has his own way of standing, so our standing posture is based on the proportions of our own bodies.... The most important point is to own your own body.... When we have our body and mind in order, everything else will exist in the right place in the right way.”
Stillness and Movement Combined
We are all truly unique, and the mind-body connection is so intimate. Moshe Feldenkrais proposed that moving in accordance with our inner self, including our anatomy, physiology, and history, clarifies and improves our self-image and thus our ability to move forward literally and metaphorically.
We move forward in ways that are appropriate to ourselves, with the ease, power, and grace that is our birthright, “expressing our own nature.”
In the moments of sitting, not trying to attain something, I learn stillness, effortless concentration, and become more skillful at resting in this state. Meditation deepens my somatic and yoga practices. I become more able to listen internally and externally, and track myself as I move. During an Awareness Through Movement® lesson, I am able to hold onto myself and express my essential nature while bringing myself into a movement or posture that is common to all human beings. The same is true during a yoga class while practicing an asana that has been practiced for thousands of years.
The combination of yoga and Feldenkrais® merge in a way that brings to mind a question Scaravelli poses: "Is it the element of unification, beyond limits of thought where body, brain, and intelligence come together, opening the communication with the vast immensity in which mind and universe meet?" The practices support each other and our experience of "thinking, feeling, sensing and moving, the creative interplay of conscious (what we think about ourselves) and unconscious (what we know without thinking).”
We hope you’ll join us in Costa Rica to rest in retreat and explore the depth of movement, stillness and awareness that Feldenkrais®, yoga and meditation can offer.