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Wasted effort shortens the bodySuperfluous effort shortens the body. Efficient action involves growing taller, lengthening the limbs and the spine. This is a fundamental idea in Feldenkrais. Scan your feeling of height as you sit in your chair reading this. Then clench your jaw--do you grow taller or shorter? Tighten you shoulders. Taller or shorter? Grip your stomach like you've just had a fright. Taller or shorter? This theme is integrated into the lessons in many ways. In measuring lengths in the scans. In monitoring the maintenance of length (as we might monitor easy breathing) to recognize and interrupt superfluous effort when it arises during an action. In many lessons where the question appears almost as an aside--where does the top of your head go?
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Lengthening
This idea of lengthening is. of course, influenced by F.M Alexander's technique whose central principle is that of lengthening and widening.
Alexander outlines the conditions which lead him to his discovery in his book "Use of the Self". Excessive hoarseness had lead him to abandon his career as an orator and he had found no useful advice from doctors. Embarking on a course of self disovery using a mirror, Alexander attempted to find a cure for himself.
The pivotal moment being Alexander's discovery that "...the best conditions of larynx and vocal mechanisms and the least tendency to hoarseness were associated with a lengthening of the stature."
Feldenkrais had lessons with a student of Alexander's, Walter Carrington, "...until the day that Alexander saw his newly published book, Body and Mature Behaviour, and told [Carrington] to desist. Alexander was emphatic about the danger of confusing two incompatible principles and considered Feldenkrais’s approach to be gravely misleading. The principle of prevention does not accord well with the principle of doing and feeling." So describes Walter Carrington in his review of Judith Stransky's book " Joy in the Life of Your Body" which, whilst primarily a book about the Alexander Technique, also extolls the virtues of the Feldenkrais' method.
I have yet to try this lesson so maybe some of these ideas are mentioned in the lesson but ,if not, I thought it might be interesting for people to know about the origin of this idea of lengthening.
ideas and origins
Thanks for your contribution, John! This is terrific to bring in other perspectives and traditions.
It's interesting to consider in our of work what the "origin" of an idea is. I suppose in one sense its origins lie in evolution, mechanics, physics, neurology. And any thinker and doer who has worked with the human body in action has an idea of lengthening in their work. (Being skeptical of absolutes, I would be interested to hear of movement practices that cultivate compacting and shortening! Perhaps Iron Shirt Qigong?)
I don't mean to deny however that Feldenkrais learned from his immediate surroundings and predecessors--not at all.
Our work is in some sense in the dark ages where we all learn from a teacher who learned from a teacher....even in formal academia where there is an attempt to break this down (no one goes to the University of Isaac Newton vs. the University of Albert Einstein), people persist in cultivating and identifying themselves with lineages--as this website and my work does, a practitioner trained by someone ... trained by Moshe. And we inherit their battles with one another too.
Just a note that the ideas listed here as "principles" (a growing, not an exhaustive list) are ideas that recur in many, many lessons. The one lesson on the theme "growing taller" that is posted so far is one approach among many. Another implementation of the theme is to work with awareness of length while in a movement and noticing the moment of shortening--much less active cultivation of lengthening than in Walking Backward.
This review of Stranksy by Carrington is here and it makes interesting reading. The question of the relationship between doing and not-doing in the various methods and techniques is intriguing, a deep one.
Origins Of The Method
The idea of lengthening is not an unintuitive principle and it is indeed probably embedded in a number of disciplines.
The fact that it is made explicit in the Alexander Technique and that Moshe did some study of the work suggests that at the least it confirmed the importance of the principle for him.
To note influence does not mean to lessen the value of the work as some are wont to do. Feldenkrais' method bears the mark of a number of methods, in some cases these are accidental parallels and in others the product of concious influence. The genius of the method is the sheer breadth of it and its' maleability.
I hope I didn't come across
I hope I didn't come across as defensively rejecting the idea that Feldenkrais got it from Alexander or anything like that...my apologies for giving the impression. It's much more interesting to go into the content of the ideas than questions about invention and priority.
Origins of Somatics
There's a very interesting article by Ed Maupin on the origins of the Somatic Movement but I wonder why he omits to mention Feldenkrais and Alexander, both of whom I have always understood to be major figures in this movement? You can read the article on www.somatics.de
Laurance Rudic
http://www.laurancerudic.blogspot.com
Origins of the method
Not at all. I was merely curious as to why an article on the origins of the Somatic Movement should omit to mention Feldenkrais and Alexander.
For the record, as a young acting student, Alexander lessons were a regular part of voice classes. I remember the teacher constructing a large 3-sided box with mirrors which had graph lines drawn on them. I had to stand inside the box and view my body from both sides in order to see the discrepancies in my postural curves. The teacher noted in his report that I had a "pissing against the wall stance". All this only succeeded in intensifying my poor body-image. Also, for a young, nervous and physically-active actor like myself, I found the concept of lengthening through mental imaging very difficult to understand.
Many actors and performers have a habitual 'state' of high tension and emotion that allows them to go onstage. This was my case and I was very unwilling to give it up for the low tonus state which my voice teacher was advocating. I felt it was 'boring' and lacked emotional and physical dynamism. It was only years later after I had been studying FK's method of awareness in action, that I was able to explore and come to appreciate FM Alexander's work.
Laurance Rudic
http://www.laurancerudic.blogspot.com
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