Embodied consciousness

My writing is deeply personal, focusing on what I find intriguing, important, or imperative. I strive to share stories, news, and ideas that will resonate with other somamauts, those who are passionate about the somatic arts and sciences. This personal touch contributes to making this blog a relatable and engaging platform for our community.

The feedback from the readers of this blog has been overwhelmingly positive and encouraging. Often, people comment on how what I wrote about relates to their experiences or ideas. A few folks have let me know of spelling and grammatical errors or commented on my poor choices of the source of some of the quotes I used and questioned the veracity or wisdom of some statements.

For instance, someone responded to the post regarding certification, fearful that the change I was advocating for would have prevented her — a professional dancer and university instructor — from becoming a Feldenkrais teacher. I got the opportunity to explain that I was not talking about medical certification and that her work positions demonstrated that she already had a profession and, therefore, would qualify to enter a teacher training program.

I’m deeply grateful for the responses the blog receives and the personal emails, texts, and calls I get. Thanks to my readers replying, questioning, engaging in dialog, and, sometimes, deciding that there’s something I need to learn or understand, I know I’m not shouting into the void.

In this context of reaching others, I was recently delighted to receive some thrilling news from Anuj Agarwal, the founder of FeedSpot, an RSS reader. Mr. Agarwal informed me that my blog, the one you’re reading now, Wrestling for Higher Consciousness, had been selected by FeedSpot’s panel as one of the Top 50 Consciousness Blogs on the web.

What a surprise! I had no idea that anyone other than Feldenkrais teachers, trainees, and students, folks in the greater somatics community, a smattering of cyberneticians and philosophers, and a few close friends knew about my writing. The award was particularly meaningful because it acknowledges a focus that is often overlooked or even lost in the field today: the importance of awareness or consciousness in somatic practice.

With the preponderance of the current “chicken-parts” marketing approach — a term I use to describe the trend of focusing on separated body parts in somatic marketing, such as courses about shoulders, feet, spine, etc. — the consciousness-raising of moving mindfully — awareness, attitude, perspective, and the phenomenology of daily life — fades far into the background, if not being abandoned altogether.

A trend I've observed in the marketing of Feldenkrais courses and products, which I call the "chicken-parts" approach, tends, like buying poultry at the supermarket, to focus on separate anatomical sections — shoulders, feet, spine, and so on — instead of the integrity of the whole person. While this approach may make our approach more accessible and applicable, it often overshadows the crucial aspect of the consciousness-raising aspect of moving mindfully: the exploration of attitude, standpoint, and the lived experience (or phenomenology) of daily life.

I'm not suggesting this practical approach is somehow misguided or inherently wrong. Indeed, I've used it myself in my courses. For instance, there’s the public workshop, On Your Feet, I created in the late 1980s, which then became a popular professional training program for physical therapists and a post-graduate program for my Feldenkrais colleagues.

Revisiting Feldenkrais’ public workshops in depth over the past couple of years and recently returning to the first year of my teacher training in preparation for an upcoming gig as the guest trainer in a current program brought back, most vividly, what made Moshe’s teaching so incredibly exciting, engaging, and meaningful. Though he often referred to anatomy, it was always in the context of functional ability and developing your capacity for turning intention into easy, efficient, and effective action.

Equally importantly, the founder of this eponymous methodology continually highlighted our attitudes toward education, learning, and ourselves, their relations to how and what we notice, and the very real and inescapable consequences this embodied attention has on our ability to learn. He alternatively hinted at and made explicit how this awareness brings to light the often unconscious but pervasive and persuasive quality of your embodied perspective.

I appreciate this award’s recognition of my writing about what some might consider the more abstract — or even esoteric — aspect of Moshe’s methodology. By this, I mean the focus on self-awareness: how you make sense of what you sense, how you live in your skin, and its relevance to how you feel about yourself, others, and the world you and I inhabit. In other words, the work we do with ourselves and others isn’t simply or only about the body or movement, but it is also — and at least equally — about consciousness.