Do Less

Do less - a surprisingly difficult concept for many of us to grasp. How often are we told to "do our best", "try harder", "be all that we can be" and my personal favourite "no pain, no gain". And yet "do less" is a central concept in The Feldenkrais Method. One that I find very difficult to convey to my students. If you ever join one of my Awareness Through Movement Classes (and you'd be very welcome) you'll hear my mantra of "now do less", "do this so you can feel the organisation of the move and don't strive for the end", "make it smaller", "do only what's comfortable", "you will learn more if you do less" and many more variations thereof. And at the end of the class those who heard me will find greater benefit than those who couldn't translate my words into their own actions. But that's ok too because it takes a while for us to change our conditioned mindset and few people leave an ATM class without some benefit.

Why do less? Well, we in the Feldenkrais community like to quote the Weber-Fechner law which states: "The least perceptible difference in stimulus is a definite fraction of the stimulus already present"* Which basically means (in relation to our work) that the smaller the movement you make, the easier it will be for you to perceive a change. If you're making a big movement - say striving to bring your head and elbows towards your knees (in a movement akin to a sit up) - it will be much more difficult for you to notice the subtleties of the movement in your back, pelvis, shoulders, stomach, ribs, breastbone etc; than if you make a much smaller movement - get nowhere near your knees with your elbows - but are able to pay attention to the organisation needed in your torso to perform the movement. By bringing your own attention to this organisation you are increasing your nervous systems ability to chose the easiest path of action.

Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais liked to say that we should have three options to perform any one task. Often we learn one way of doing something and that's it. Which is fine as long as that one way of doing it serves our purpose. But what happens when something stops you from using that one way - perhaps an injury, perhaps just a reduction in your flexibility as you grow older? How do you then learn new ways to perform that same task? Through self awareness. Through options. If you know what you're doing then you can change it.

But how many of us can say we know exactly how we stand up from sitting, for example. Do you lead with your head? With your nose? With your shoulders? Which muscles do you tense to stand up? Where exactly do you place your feet and how do you get the momentum to stand? If you knew how you stood up from sitting you could find other ways of doing it. But if you don't, then you're stuck doing it the same way, even when that way starts causing you difficulty. The same goes for walking, reaching, sitting, bending and everything else you do in your daily life. What was easy in your youth gets harder as you age and you don't know what to do about it. That's where we step in. We can help you become aware of your organisation and change it in a way that suits your movement - not mine, not your partners but your own way of moving.

Albert Einstein was quoted as saying "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."That fits in with our Method perfectly. One of the benefits of awareness is to simplify. To use our bodies only to the extent necessary and not more. Lets see if I can use an analogy to help explain this. It's generally known that it's a bad idea to drive your car with the handbrake on. I don't know why exactly it's bad, but I know it has something to do with increased wear and tear. Well it's the same for us. If we carry unnecessary muscle tension and use excess force in our movements, then we're creating excess wear and tear on our bodies.

A common misconception of our Method is that we want to make everything so easy that we end up as floppy rags. That is not at all what we intend. Rather we want to help you use your large muscles for tasks requiring strength and your smaller muscles for tasks requiring precision. We want to help you use your skeleton effectively to carry and transmit force and not be using muscles you don't need, to compensate for lack of structural stability. Because as a result of using yourself only to the extent that you need, you not only carry less tension, which will reduce stresses on your body, but you're free to be aware of the subtleties of your self-use and surroundings, and you'll be able to react to any change in situation.

This is getting to be far too long a blog post. I will return to and elaborate on many things I’ve only touched on, at another time. Let me just leave you with a situation I found myself in today that just happens to be quite a good example of what I'm trying to say here.

Today I put on a pair of roller blades for the first time in over a decade. I have only once before in my life ever been on roller blades and that was when I was much less fearful of the consequences. Nonetheless I've decided I want to try it again. I had my husband come down to be my physical support and in case he needed to scrape me off the pavement. To my great surprise I was able to get up on the roller blades and take some very tentative... well, steps. I was very awkward and not at all able to affect the direction in which I was traveling or find a smooth gliding motion. Very quickly too, I felt my calf muscles and ankles become sore. My Feldenkrais Practitioner husband was of course watching my movement and suggested I relax my legs and breath. Easy for him to say! But of course it worked. Not only did my legs feel better but I was able to sense the subtleties of the movements in my feet and then be able to adjust the pressure and direction needed for me use the roller blades much more smoothly, and even turn a circle with them! So the unnecessary tension in my legs through fear of falling was actually making it more likely that I would fall since I couldn't adjust easily to my situation. Once I "did less" I was able to find better self use and master my roller blades... well maybe not master... yet.

*Weber-Fechner law definition taken from "The Feldenkrais Method Teaching by Handling" by Yochanan Rywerant. pg. 16.