Intelligence in Action
The Myth of Ageing
Graeme Lynn, GCFP, CSTAT
Imagine, for a moment, clenching your fist for the next few hours, and consider the probable physical consequences: the hand and arm, and eventually even the shoulder, neck, back, and chest would begin to hurt; if you were to forget you were contracting the hand, you might come to think that some thing separate from you is afflicting you, perhaps a disease process of some kind; and you would notice that the options, flexibility, and freedom available to the open hand are not so available to the contracted one. Pain, affliction, and limitation.
More than a hundred years ago, F. M. Alexander observed that each of us tends to contract upon ourselves, both in common ways and in individual ways, and that, because of the nature of habit - habits of how and what we feel and how and what we do - we have basically ceased to notice that we are doing this self-contracting. The causes of such unnoticed patterns of contraction are myriad: reflex responses to stress, injury, surgery, disease processes, and traumas of every kind, occupation, lifestyle, emotional patterning, character strategies, core beliefs, poor nutrition, faulty development, imitation in youth, and other factors which instigate habituation of faulty movement and postural patterns or habits of doing (or of movement and coordination) - and thus, of feeling (or self-sensing). We come to act through patterns of contraction and sensory 'amnesia' rather than of expansion, release, and sensitivity. We overlay mechanically sound responses to the physical demands brought upon us in the context of living with misdirected effort. We tend to move ourselves in characteristically limited ways and in patterns of undue tension whose availability to conscious control and feeling has been lost.
For instance, every time you stand up, you might unknowingly tighten your neck - a very common pattern in many people. After twenty years of doing so, you develop pain in your shoulders, neck, or upper back. Your doctor tells you, 'It's a slipped disk,' 'It's arthritis,' 'You're getting old,' or 'It's in your family history,' but, in fact, it's in how you do what you do, what Alexander called the use of yourself.
We tend not to notice how we use ourselves in movement until we begin to suffer the consequences of this in the forms of pain, stiffness, afflictions that appear to come upon us unexplained, limitations in what we can do, or the necessity to curtail our activities - the supposed signs of ageing. However, it is not a problem of ageing but of learning. And what we have learned wrongly or traumatically or from force of repetition or however can be un-learned, and better use can be re-learned, because there is a natural design of human function developed over the millions of years of our evolutionary adaptation to gravity and because each of us has a virtually limitless capacity for learning in the form of the human nervous system, our natural intelligence.
Two effective forms of somatic learning or ways to renew the use of yourself in action are the Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method, developed by two geniuses of the twentieth century, F. M. Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais, the former, an Australian actor, the latter, an Israeli Renaissance man. Both created effective methods of self-education through exploration of the sensory-motor processes.
Alexander suffered recurring hoarseness of voice on stage, a problem for which the medical profession could find no pathology, for there was none, and so could offer no cure. Rather, there was a fault in what Alexander came to call the use of himself. He observed over several years of self-examination, in the beginning via a complex arrangement of mirrors, that in the course of any action, but particularly during oration, he tended to contract upon himself, thereby, in his terms, 'shortening his stature'. Although he was able to observe himself in the mirror doing this contracting, because of the chronic influence of that habitual action of contracting upon feeling or self-sensing, his ability to sense himself inwardly had become incompetent, that is, he could no longer feel what he was doing from the inside: the sensory-motor patterns, the patterns of sensing and moving himself, had become unconscious. And he could not change this contracting by doing something else (another kind of contracting) but only by un-doing - which is much less straightforward than it sounds - and 'directing' himself to, or invoking, a new manner of functioning.
In his case, this misuse of himself in action derived partially from the way he had learned oration, partially from the physical attitude consequent upon being raised in the British Empire and being the first-born male in a large family, brilliant, ambitious, and eager to make his way in the world, and for other reasons personal to him and general to us all. His own pattern of self-contracting was unique to him. Over time, he came to observe that each of us has his or her own unique patterns of doing so, dependent upon our own combination of personal history and common heritage. And he gradually developed a means of attending to and revising these patterns, and of helping others to do the same. In time, he founded a school to train others to teach.
Such teachers schooled in the Alexander Technique teach through instruction and with their hands, which hands are uniquely trained to sense subtleties of movement and tension. The teacher's expertise is in his or her ability to best organize or coordinate, through refined and gentle manipulation, the pupil's movement, coordination, and response to gravity via an ongoing address to the pupil's core dynamic. ('Manipulation' here indicates the strategy of touch and handling and in no way implies brusqueness, force or psychological coercion.) The Alexander teacher guides the person through primarily gentle active movements while always finding and facilitating the easier way, which easier way is rooted in a deep understanding of and feel for this core dynamic around which all movement is organized. At the same time, the teacher enlists the individual's innate capability to attend to him- or herself and to become aware of habitual patterning, and, through this gentle guidance, stimulates the person's sensory-motor self-exploration and growing capacity for freedom and self-control of the physical mechanism. The teacher works to ease out chronic action of muscles that are doing too much and coax the appropriate degree of activity from muscles that are under-used. Through thus guided simple activities such as sitting, standing, lying down, bending, reaching, and walking, the pupil learns to free him- or herself from misuse patterns and allow natural poise and balance to re-emerge. In time, the person becomes able to generalize the principles learned so that lightness, ease, and greater freedom of movement become the common experiences of everyday life.
Feldenkrais, for his part, was faced with an inoperable knee injury and the likelihood of a lifetime in a wheelchair. With a background in mechanical engineering, physics, neuroscience, and judo, he embarked upon an extensive and in-depth exploration of his movement capabilities and, eventually, of human movement in general, and thereby not only regained his own ability to walk but also established a technology of human movement and a method of relearning exemplary coordination through refining awareness, which has found universal applications.
A private lesson in the Feldenkrais Method, called Functional Integration, is designed around a movement theme particular to the individual's learning requirements or presenting limitations. Using refined touch and skilful handling, the Feldenkrais practitioner gains an intelligent sense of the person's unique neuromotor organization, and thereby initiates, stimulates, and directs a process of sensory-motor learning, clarifying and then undoing patterns of habitual tension and stereotyped movement, and leading the individual to better coordination options. The Feldenkrais practitioner uses primarily gentle passive movements and mirrors, 'goes with', or supports the client's habitual pattern of coordination. By thus sensitively reflecting to the client his or her own characteristic patterning, the practitioner enables the person to become aware of, and thereby think and feel through, and so release, those very sensory-motor patterns that limit the quality of movement. This growing awareness is the foundation of coming to sense yourself better, and thus to move better, and thus to free yourself from limitation and pain. Further benefits range from improvements in well-being and vitality, ease and efficiency, to enhanced performance.
Like the Alexander Technique, the Feldenkrais Method can help anyone, young or old, fit or unfit, who seeks improved coordination - artistic, athletic, or in daily life - and those with sensory-motor deficiencies of any kind caused by deterioration in structure or function, such as stiffness or tension, back or neck pain, inflexibility, arthritis or joint disorders, voice or breathing difficulties, postural or spinal problems, post-traumatic or post-surgical limitations, myofascial or musculoskeletal pain, and so on.
And also like the Technique, the Feldenkrais Method is founded on the understanding that a person changes most readily when the newly proposed manner of action is more pleasant than the old - unlike stretching, circuit training, or aerobic exercising, for instance; that effectiveness comes, in fact, through reducing effort - that is, by working 'smarter' not harder (which is especially important as we grow older); that learning is natural and interesting to us; and that anyone at any age can change.
To schedule lessons, please contact Graeme in Toronto, Ontario, at 416-964-7026, or click to email.