dedicated time

Photo by Ross Parmly on Unsplash

unpolished thoughts 1/20/2019

I’m about to get on an airplane.

Tomorrow the second segment of the Feldenkrais Training Academy in Seattle will begin. It’s a certification program for Feldenkrais practitioners, but in my case, already being certified, I’m concentrated on the fact that this is basically a maturation program.

The ability to self-regulate is the superpower that underlies all the others. If you are an acrobat or a mathematical genius without the power to self-regulate, your potency is severely dulled.

We all try to create the most optimal conditions for ourselves to do the work we feel we are meant to do in the world, but the conditions could always be better.

I mean two things by that.

First, the conditions we find ourselves in are never guaranteed to remain as they are. What we are doing well here and now may well not be viable tomorrow.

However, and this is the second point, the variable we can always control is our self.

(Except when we can’t.)

It’s always a pleasant surprise to find myself mildly irritated by something that I realize would have completely defeated me in the past.

The annoyance still annoys because I’m still human and I haven’t gone numb. But there is something I know how to do now that I didn’t know before.

I can step just a little bit outside myself to see what I’m doing right now and ask myself whether it’s what I truly wish to do.

Am I satisfying a temporary impulse for short-term gratification, or am I centered in myself, deciding what serves me best, and acting from that place?

This center is a much more familiar territory to me now than it used to be.

Still, it’s not as if this territory covers the entire map of my life just yet.

Self-sabotage is not the problem it used to be, but now there is a new problem:

I want to make a larger contribution.

This means continually visiting foreign lands where what I already know is not enough.

One example, which I wrote about recently, is discovering a need to become more fluent in the many different channels of online communication.

This new task has introduced me to all kinds of situations where self-regulation is not my default setting. It has also introduced me to all manners of new vices that can distract me from what is actually important.

This training, which involves flying across the country for two week trips several times a year, is introducing me to all kinds of new conundrums related to money, child care, co-parenting, and long-term relationship building.

I’m interested in conquering a new narrative in which I am at home in the world wherever I may be, fully capable of meeting all my responsibilities – and still available to digest new information, make experiments, and continuously stretch my imagination.

The ability to simultaneously communicate with the world while freely moving through it is essential to making my contribution.

That’s why I am committing to continue publishing this blog on a daily basis for the next two weeks, even while I’m in training.

Of course, the training will provide me plenty of new things to write about!

Along with many surprises, I know I can count on one thing in the days ahead: dedicated time to slow down and listen to how my insides respond to my contact with the outside world.

That’s the bread and butter of the Feldenkrais Method, after all.

Time to discover new distinctions in my experience where I previously had no nuance.

Time to more deeply imprint in my body the sensation of moving weightlessly.

Time to get to know myself better, separate from my history and more connected to my possibilities.

Time to collect whatever I can, and share it with you.

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