What makes the Feldenkrais Method® so unique and potentially so effective? Why do I say “potentially”? Why do some people seem to find such profound lasting change, while others have a unique and interesting experience to be sure, yet fleeting and forgettable? What can you do to maximize the benefits of your learning experiences, whether they be in the Feldenkrais Method or any other learning context?
In the Feldenkrais Method, we have a deep respect and understanding of the need to create a “safe learning environment” for our students. We also attempt to create an environment in which we can foster curiosity and exploration, and in particular, deep attention and awareness. We also encourage our students to look for pleasing, enjoyable qualities of being even as they sometimes struggle with aspects of some lessons.
All of this is related to the fact that more than anything else, in the Feldenkrais Method, we are enabling/enhancing our understanding and capacity for learning. In other words, we are involved in the process of “learning how to learn”. This is where so many students miss the point of engaging deeply in the process of learning, especially in the Feldenkrais Method. The movements in the Feldenkrais Method are just the means by which we engage in enhancing our attentional capacities, and revitalizing our innate, profound capacity to learn. And it has taken neuroscience some tome to catch up and explain why methods such as the Feldenkrais Method can be so effective.
Check out the following quotes from <”The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph From the Frontiers of Brain Science
“The cerebral cortex”, he says of the thin outer layer of the brain, “is actually selectively refining its processing capacities to fit each task at hand.” It doesn’t simply learn; it is always “learning how to learn.” The brain Merzenich describes is not an inanimate vessel that we fill; rather it is more like a living creature with an appetite, one that can grow and change itself with proper nourishment and exercise.”
“Finally, Merzenich discovered that paying close attention is essential to log-term plastic change. In numerous experiments he found that lasting changes occurred only when his monkeys paid close attention. When the animals performed tasks automatically without paying attention, they changed their brain maps, but the changes did not last. We often praise “the ability to multitask.” While you can learn when you divide your attention, divided attention doesn’t lead to aiding change in your brain maps.”
Other discoveries have had to do with the neurotransmitters (chemicals in your brain). When we experience the sense of well-being after doing something satisfying, it is like a reward. Reward in learning is important because it is then that we “secrete such neurotransmitters as dopamine and acetylcholine, which help consolidate the changes in the brain that have just been made. (Dopamine reinforces the reward, and acetylcholine helps the brain “tune in ” and sharpen memories.)”
Another important brain chemical is brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF. BDNF seems to do many things, and is crucial in infants and youth as it is what makes learning so effortless at these stages of our lives. After these initial critical learning period of youth are over, the only way the areas of the brain that need to be “turned on” to allow enhanced, long lasting learning are activated is only when something important, surprising, or novel occurs, or if we make the effort to pay close attention.
For those of you familiar with Feldenkrais® lessons, you know that very often you are doing things that are very novel to you as adults, and that often, surprising changes happen. And, you are constantly directed in your use of attention.
It may be interesting to know that I’ve heard it said that Moshe Feldenkrais had once made the comment that he could do the same thing with his students teaching them mathematics. That, to me, says much about what the work is and isn’t about.
Here is some more from the book that may inspire you to continue learning in the true sense of the word:
“We have an intense period of learning in childhood, every day is a day of new stuff. And then, in our early employment, we are intensely engaged in learning and acquiring new skills, and abilities. And more and more as we progress in life we are operating as users of mastered skills and abilities.
…We still regard ourselves as active [in mid life], but we have a tendency to deceive ourselves into thinking that we are learning as we were before. We rarely engage in tasks in which we must focus our attention as closely as we did when we were younger…By the time we hit our seventies, we may not have systematically engaged the systems in the brain that regulate plasticity for fifty years…
…To keep the mind alive requires learning something truly new with intense focus. That is what will allow you to both lay down new memories and have a system that can easily access and preserve the older ones.”
