Preparing for a workshop…

I’ve been experiencing myself learning at an exceptionally fast pace lately.  For example, taking on this world of technology and all it has to offer is relatively new for me.  This is my first blog, and I’ll soon jump into the world of websites for my company, FELDENKRAIS® Manitoba, and my studio, Sunyata Movement Studio.  It is interesting to me that I seem to have been enjoying this journey into the technological world.  I have, until very recently, lived a fairly simple life, with few “gadgets”. Now I have a cell phone, a PDA, an excellent mp3 recorder, a laptop computer (as well as a desktop), and a video camera.  What is most curious to me about this, is that I’m actually quite enjoying myself! I am not one to go out and buy gadgets just because I can (I’d rather buy a canoe, or snowshoes!). But once I have a vision for what I’d like to do, I see if I can find tools that will allow me to see that vision to reality.  As this is not a world I am familiar with, the learning curve is pretty steep.  But this is where it gets fun! Because I’m pursuing my own vision, and because learning is fun, I find myself actually wishing I had more time to spend  working at developing my technical skills in this digital realm.

 Instead, I’m spending time doing other interesting and fun things, like preparing for the next workshop I will be teaching this weekend: Freeing the Shoulders, Arms and Hands.  In preparation for the workshop, I’ve been rereading a wonderful book titled The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture, by Frank R. Wilson. Wilson is a neurologist who became fascinated by the human hand, and how the brain organizes the human hand while watching his young daughter practice piano, and wondering how she got her fingers to move so fast.  In reading some of his transcribed talks on the internet, and reading his book, it didn’t surprise me to see that he mentions at least one Feldenkrais® practitioner in his acknowledgments. Just read a couple of these tidbits from the book…

“People are changed, significantly and irreversibly it seems, when movement, thought, and feeling fuse during the active, long-term pursuit of personal goals.”

“…thought becomes action, and action becomes thought.”

“…the brain teaches itself…”

“In other words, getting better means increasing the repertoire of things that you do when something goes wrong.”

and he quotes Austin: “…so called physical skill is largely mental activity.”

I have also recently taken up Yang style Tái Chi, and find myself learning and living what Austin so aptly stated.  It is both from close to 10 years of studying the Feldenkrais Method®, and from my short study of Tái Chi that I have experienced the wonderful sense of “moving stillness”, and what Moshe Feldenkrais spoke of as effortless effort, and the feeling that walking is like floating across the floor. From this place moving in any direction becomes possible. From this place I can turn myself towards anything I desire, hence the experience of “limitless possibilities”, and the name of my studio “Sunyata Movement Studio“.