Sensing Thinking Feeling Moving (The Lost Art of Writing pt.2)

It’s been a while since my last blog post and I’ve been diligently practicing my running (cursive) writing. It hasn’t gotten any prettier but it’s already gotten a whole lot easier. And I’m happy to report that there have been times when I’ve surprised both my husband and myself with a very witty retort.

So why would my running writing practice affect my fluidity of thought? As mentioned in part 1 of this blog, Norman Doidge reported on a connection between fluid thought and running writing. Though he looks at it from the angle that running writing is representative of fluid thought, as a Feldenkrais Practitioner I took that knowledge and reversed it. I know refinement of movement can affect mental capacity, so since I wanted to improve my fluidity of thought I refined my running writing to access that potential.

Here’s the theory behind it. Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais said that four components make up the waking state – sensation, feeling, thought and movement.

Sensation being our 5 senses plus our kinesthetic sense (orientation in space, pain, passage of time and rhythm). Feeling is our emotions, self image, confidence, inferiority etc. Thinking being all our cognitive thought (memory, knowing right from left, good from bad, understanding and knowing we understand, classification etc.) Movement is all temporal and spacial changes in the body and it’s parts (moving through space but also breathing etc).

Moshe then goes on to say that “… not a moment passes in the waking state in which all man’s capacities are not employed together." Awareness Through Movement pg. 32

And if you think about it, that's true. We can't know where we are without a kinesthetic sense of our bodies in space or by locating ourselves through hearing, smell or sight [all sensation]. We can't know who we are without some emotional connection to that knowledge [feeling]. We can't do anything without intention [thought] and we need movement to live.

Moshe continues by saying that while we can speak of these elements individually, in reality they are so closely linked that they cannot be separated. Therefore if you wish to affect any one of these elements you will also affect the other three.

Now I have to admit that this is a concept that I struggled with at first. How I got started with understanding this concept was with the idea that limited movement – be it due to pain, injury or enforced stillness (back pain, illness, plane travel, staff meetings etc) - not only causes physical discomfort [sensation], but tends to play on our emotional state – lack of concentration [thought], making us short tempered, sad or depressed [feeling].

So while The Feldenkrais Method is predominantly known as a method for improving movement, it is actually through movement that we aim to improve the whole person.

Of course ultimately if this is all a bit too abstract for you, but you want to get rid of chronic pain you've had for years, please feel free to ignore the rest and come to us just so that we can get you moving again.