Intelligence in Action
The Infinite Network of Possibility
by Graeme Lynn, GCFP, CSTAT
Imagine for a moment walking down a country road at dusk and seeing in the distance a figure coming towards you. The light is dim so that you can't distinguish the features or the clothes of the person, still you can tell it is a friend. How is it that you know?
You know because your friend and, in fact, each of us has a characteristic quality of movement and coordination, what F. M. Alexander called an habitual manner of use and, Moshe Feldenkrais, an unconscious pattern of self-organization. It is an essential component of non-verbal communication and body language. It derives from our inheritance and our past experience or learning, and we are active as it, generally unconsciously, in all our actions.
What we inherit through our family of origin, in terms of our physical characteristics, is still the subject of much scientific research: organic strengths and weaknesses, bone structure and body type, facial features and so on. How and what we learn, in terms of movement and coordination, is an even more complex matter. In Ida Rolf's book, The Integration of Human Structures, she tells the story of a man who, in the Second World War, suffered severe injuries to his leg and pelvis and who, though he lived and was otherwise healthy, consequently walked with a pronounced limp. After the war, he married and had a son. Remarkably, before the boy reached puberty, he was limping in the same way as his father... This is not some weird aberration. We are all like that child in very complex ways.
The ability of the human nervous system to learn is immense and immensely subtle. And we do not learn only, as in the above example, through imitation. Our physical development altogether - while partly open-ended and partly directed by our genes - is largely a matter of learning. Our physical expression of emotion, character, and core beliefs is learned. Our self-organization whereby we adapt to our work and lifestyle is learned. Especially how we reflexively respond to stress, injury, traumas of all kinds, even disease, poor nutrition, and surgery, and then habituate those responses, is learning.
Stress and trauma, emotions and beliefs, imitation and development, in fact any experience or factor that instigates a physical response, which response is repeated, is learning - specifically, sensory-motor learning. Most of such learning develops unconsciously, that is, it results in habits - of sensing and moving. And unfortunately, there are many ways for that process to go wrong.
The human structure, in terms of the skeleton and soft tissue, has a very wide range of adaptability to patterns of use. However, the chronic or recurrent aches and pains or, worse, the rheumatic, fibrocystic, neuralgic, and arthritic conditions that many begin to suffer, even in early adulthood, result from patterns of unconscious or habitual use, or rather misuse, which the structure can no longer tolerate. When stiffness, chronic tension or muscle contraction, chronic over-use or under-use, misalignment, sheering stresses, ischemia, hyper-mobility and so on go on too long, pain begins and degenerative conditions inevitably result. Fortunately, this process of deterioration can be reversed.
Habitual patterns of misuse and the consequent degeneration can be corrected through renewed sensory-motor learning. The Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method truly represent the best of such ways of learning. Through these sophisticated sensory-motor learning methods a person becomes more sensitive to the quality of his or her movement and more integrated in movement and coordination. The sources of pain and decline are thereby undone. The body is freed in action and regenerates.
There is a natural design of human function developed over the millions of years of our evolution in the context of gravity, and each of us has an almost limitless capacity for learning in the form of our nervous system or natural intelligence. These methods take ingenious advantage of these facts and, through refined techniques of gentle manipulation, facilitate learning of greater sensitivity to the physical self and improved quality of movement, no matter what the problematic causes. Soon, a person can more readily feel when an action is not harmonious with the structure and more easily find a coordination that is right and feels good. In this way, one resolves problems before or if they've set in and enjoys greater ease and agility in the body as the common experience of everyday life. ('Manipulation' here indicates the strategy of touch and handling and in no way implies brusqueness, force, or coercion.)
Moreover, age is not an obstacle to such renewal. The possible connections in the human nervous system outnumber the stars in the cosmos. This virtually infinite network of possibility is the source of our nearly unlimited ability to learn or re-learn. We use only a small portion of these connections even in our prime. Most so-called signs of ageing - pain, affliction, and limitation - are actually the results of complex learned patterns that can be undone and remade through the means used in these methods. The Alexander Technique and the Feldenkrais Method open new neural pathways through designed 'lessons' that are tailored to an individual's particular needs or presenting limitations. These 'lessons' provide concentrated sensory-motor experience, relevant to the person's present state, that he or she therefore naturally enjoys. This design and this enjoyment make such learning attractive, interesting, usable, potent, and much quicker even than the trial-and-error development of childhood. This is how and why these methods can resolve functional limitations effectively and can resolve other problems that may arise in the course of our lives and further enhance the quality of life.
To schedule lessons, please contact Graeme in Toronto, Ontario, at 416-964-7026, or click to email.