Awareness Through Movement: Health Exercises for Personal Growth

Did you know that AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT by Moshe Feldenkrais (1972 and in later editions) is more than the name of a book? It is also a "movement" within health and fitness studies, with its own acronym, "ATM." Some specialists are busy doing scientific studies of Feldenkrais ATM to see whether and to what extent it really "works," i. e., does what it claims to do. Other experimenters are extending ATM to solving problems that I doubt were tackled by Moshe Feldenkrais himself, including obesity and eating disorders. *** Moshe Feldenkrais's text is built around a fair number of "do-it-yourself" exercises, most illustrated but some not. The exercises can be as simple as how to get up from sitting on a chair to breathing, using either side of the lungs consecutively. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) was a brilliant, extraordinarily well educated scientist, at one time a student of radium pioneer Marie Curie. A major goal of Dr Feldenkrais is to help people sit, stand, walk and move comfortably and pleasantly. We are to become as conscious as we can (in time we shall improve!) of every part of our body, including eyelids straining as we strive during a dull lecture to stay awake. *** I, for one, have been taking weekly one hour "Feldenkrais" classes off and on for nearly a year. I have found the book AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT a great help in forming a "big picture" of what all the scrunching, twisting, contorting and rolling I have been doing as directed in class is supposed to accomplish. Balance while standing and walking is a large part of it. Not doing any exercise to the point that it hurts is another part of ATM practical lore. Different cultures inculcate different postures. Think of the Japanese who "sit" on their haunches. Moshe Feldenkrais teaches that there are better and worse ways to reach any culture's habitual posture. And most adults do many things wrong. Hence, we experience avoidable, correctible pain. Replacing old bad habits with new good ones is what ATM shows us how to do. We make tiny, tiny movements of neck or torso or shoulders. After each series of repetitions (Feldenkrais's favorite number in the book is 25), we relax and pause. I was surprised to read that those pauses were perhaps the most important parts of an exercise. We are to use pauses to remember what we had just been doing and then try to make what we were doing correctly stay with us as new good habits. The author also stresses (something I had not heard in ATM classes with two different teachers) how very important it is to be doing our exercises while listening to and following the instructions of the teacher. This is consciously intended multi-tasking and the authorized Feldenkrais instructor is carefully trained to make her every word count. *** This book AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT carries credibility. The author gives his view of how spirit, imagination, memory, muscles and bones are meant to work together in humans for good posture, easy, pleasant motion and exertion of no more "will power" than is absolutely required. If you are not taking ATM classes already, this book should motivate you to sign up somewhere near your work or home. If you are already taking classes, then AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT, the book, will likely deepen your sense of where all the minutiae you are exposed to in class are leading you. -OOO-