A – T – M times four

I was a bad student today.

My dear friend and colleague, Donna Blank, was teaching the morning Awareness Through Movement® lesson at the An AY a day study group for Feldenkrais® teachers and trainees this morning. For the second day of AYAD’s third-anniversary celebration, she chose Alexander Yanai 23: PALATE, MOUTH, AND TEETH. 

This lesson — which is about way more than its title reveals, especially when taught by a tremendous teacher like Donna — is the one I remember from the first time I experienced it. It’s one of those lessons that is the Feldenkraisian equivalent of the 1966 sci-fi movie, The Fantastic Voyage, which is to say that these lessons are mind-altering, soma-revitalizing inner journeys.  My sense of the proportions of my head, trunk, breath, of myself was forever altered.

Today, as then, I marveled at how the kinds of silly things I used to do as a kid, like sliding my tongue slowly along my teeth, feeling each one, in turn, spacing out (or, more accurately, spacing in) in the classroom, could become the catalysts for such surprising and significant shifts in my felt sense, in how I notice and know myself. 

Then it happened. During a moment of rest, I started thinking of the letters A – T – M, about what they could stand for besides Awareness Through Movement. My mind wandered away from the lesson.

What’s worse is that not wanting to forget my meander, I rolled over, sat up, and reached for a pad and paper.

I left the lesson to scribble down some phrases, scratch out a few words, ponder, wonder, and wander some more. After a bit more writing and rewriting, I looked at what was on the page. Once I’d renumbered the elements of the draft, it was done.

Here’s what I came up with: a poem for my classmate, fellow explorer, and courageous comrade. It consists of four lines, one for each of the decades we’ve known each other.

During the after-class discussion, I read it to Donna and the 150 other members of the international Feldenkrais teacher community on the call. In case you weren’t there, here’s the poem:

A – T – M times four

All tiny movements.
Attention to myself.
Accessing the moment.
Action that’s mindful.