In appreciation of limits

In a Feldenkrais class, the teacher creates the conditions for students to figure things out for themselves. Instead of showing or telling you how to move, you are asked to follow directions designed to reveal long-lost abilities and new skills. 

How does this work?

Lessons often use what you might call an invisible teaching tactic: without drawing attention to it, these kinds of implicit instructions close off the easy, everyday options, asking you to discover an alternate action. Rather than coaxing you to move in a specific manner, they create a movement puzzle to solve (while silently demonstrating the teacher’s trust in your inherent ability to learn for yourself). 

We do this by asking you to take a position that eliminates your typical ways of moving. For instance, if you hold your head, arm, and shoulder together and move them together, this stops all movement in your neck. Like a beaver’s dam, these added constraints redirect the flow of action. In this example, the restrictions call for unusual, unfamiliar, subtle, and significant motions in your ribcage and upper back.

Such limits don’t simply ask you to alter your movement; they also change how you sense yourself, altering your kinesthetic perception of your body and your capacity to move. In the example above, holding your hand, arm, shoulder, and head together and moving them as a package means no motion in your neck and, therefore, no sensation of movement there. Instead, you can begin to sense what’s happening in your chest. The educational application of this kind of tactical restriction changes your physical action, which alters the activity of your nervous system and changes how you sense yourself.

It is rare for a teacher to explain how these carefully constructed limits lead to learning and increase liberty. Be that as it may, I have found it helpful to make them explicit. When students do not understand these restrictions and the purpose they serve, they can easily ignore or push past them. When they do so, they are more likely to overdo and hurt themselves and miss the potential benefit entirely. When you appreciate how restrictions can reveal greater freedom, you have a better chance of getting what the lesson offers.