unpolished thoughts 1/24/2019
When you and I are connected, what happens?
How is it different than when we are not?
It’s not a simple thing to put into words, but obviously there is a world of difference between those two moments.
When we are connected, we feel each other – even while we continue to feel ourselves.
The longer we are connected, the more likely it becomes that how we feel will shift to a new place distinct from where we started.
But many variations are possible.
When we are connected – for example, if we are holding hands – we might sometimes find that the other person makes it harder to feel ourselves.
If we don’t enjoy the connection, our first impulse when it ends might be to immediately search for the old feeling again.
All of these factors impact whether or not the connection can be a source of learning and growth.
These past few days, I’ve been reporting on experiences with my classmates at the Feldenkrais Training Academy in Seattle.
As we play with the very simplest elements of Functional Integration, the individual hands-on format of the Feldenkrais Method, we are experiencing the phenomenon of co-regulation.
Regulation is what we do to modulate ourselves internally in response to the surrounding environment.
Co-regulation is when we do that together.
Whatever may be objectively taking place, our experience is always subjective.
We can only respond to each moment with what we are aware of and based on the capacities we have already developed.
We simply do the best that we can.
But watch what happens in any alarming situation and you’ll see some that people that maintain more calm than others.
Those of us who feel agitated are glad that they are there.
In a different situation, the calm ones and the ones who were agitated might well change roles.
But if there is no immediate danger, we all have the opportunity to get quiet and listen inside. If we are connected to another through friendly touch, and both engaged in the act of listening, we create a situation fertile with the possibility for change to occur.
Of course, Functional Integration isn’t the only situation where we connect in this way.
In dancing, in lovemaking, in giving comfort to a child, and in so many other situations, we use connection to create a change in each other’s experience.
Two joined nervous systems can’t help but impact each other.
In the training, we have been exploring what it means to take over a small amount of the weight of another person’s leg while they lie on their back..
When we lift one of our own legs we have a certain subjective sense of its weight. But when someone else lifts our leg for us, the effort we previously made is no longer required.
But what is so fascinating in a Functional Integration lesson is that for many of us, even with another person lifting, we continue to make the same effort. It can often be quite a process for a client to allow the practitioner to take over the effort of bearing the weight.
It could be that there is something in the nervous system of the client that makes them fearful of giving up that control.
But another definite possibility is that the practitioner is holding the client’s leg in such a way that the client doesn’t feel clearly supported. In this case, for the client to allow the weight to be taken over, something might need to change in the practitioner.
That’s why we’re practicing.
In any case, it’s a dialogue, and there are plenty of shifts and adjustments taking place inside of both of human beings.
What’s magical is when – whatever the previous experience of the client and whatever the current level of training of the practitioner – these two humans find the way to listen inside of their connected selves together.
When this happens, new possibilities emerge.
The client now has the opportunity to listen to themselves inside of a larger field of felt experience formed in connection with the practitioner. Now the process of regulating internal noise to find more clarity becomes a collaborative experience.
As she works, the practitioner listens both to the insides of the client as well as her own. She rearranges herself in different ways to make the task of lifting the client’s limb less effortful.
If you’ve ever experienced Functional Integration, you might know what it’s like to feel that your leg becomes much lighter in a practitioner’s hands.
But of course, objectively, the weight of the leg hasn’t really changed at all. What changed was your subjective experience.
I myself have about 6 years of experience with the Feldenkrais Method, including about five and a half years of formal training.
It was a beautiful experience yesterday to experience my leg becoming lighter within the space of a few minutes thanks to the curious and friendly touch of two different classmates, each of whom have less than three weeks of formal training in this work.
This was a beautiful confirmation that what we are training to do here in Seattle is a deeply human practice.
It’s no small thing when we can give each other the experience of moving through the world as if we were light as a feather. But it’s something we are all capable of when we are willing to connect with someone in a caring way that allows them to expand the way they experience themselves.
Moshe Feldenkrais once told his students that in this practice, “to correct is incorrect.”
In practice the idea is not as easy to understand as it might sound, especially when we are in a position of trying help people improve their experience.
But in fact, when we don’t correct people – when we stop giving them the message that they’ve heard a million times (“you’re doing it wrong”) – they begin to have a new experience.
We don’t even have to speak.
Just with the use our hands we can communicate something new. Our hand express things like, “I’m curious about you,” “I don’t think there is anything ‘wrong’ with you,” or “you deserve to be cared for.”
When we do this, the person can we touch can remove some of the echo of “you’re doing it wrong,” and begin to feel new things.
Their subjective experience of who they are can change.
The more we can clearly feel the deeply beautiful and lovable being that lives inside each one of us, the more that human sensation inside of us can capture the resonance of another human.
In this training we are practicing to gradually tune into ourselves with increasingly clarity, so that we can more readily access our capacity to mirror and reflect back the humanity of another.
No one has all the answers, but we can lend each other a hand and ask questions together.
Sometimes that human connection makes all the difference in the world.
Thank you Seth !
Thanks for reading!