Category Archives: Health

Working with Internal Organs: No Guts, No Glory

I was lucky enough to do a day-long workshop with Elinor Silverstein at the 2018 Feldenkrais® conference. The subject was working with internal organs: “No Guts, No Glory.”

Feldenkrais training focuses on skeletal movement, so the idea of relating directly to our viscera intrigued me.

During the demo, Elinor’s fingers danced lightly across her client’s abdomen as she described the path. Then she led us through self-examination, recommending we use the pressure of “half a grape.”

Throughout, Elinor was bubbling over with infectious delight.

3D rendering of a male skeleton torso

3D rendering of a male skeleton torso

Elinor pointed out the open space in the middle of the skeletal model, where our internal organs nestle. It’s between our diaphragmatic arch and the pelvic bowl, and it’s huge! What an opportunity. And we lose that opportunity if we don’t help our clients and ourselves become aware of what’s going on there: digestion, elimination, acid reflux.

I’m not going to lie—feeling your way into the right amount of pressure takes practice. I did get nauseated during the first part of the session. But by the end of the afternoon, I was starting to get a handle on the Goldilocks pressure, just enough to connect and listen through my fingertips, and for my internal organs and tissues to listen to my fingertips. Closing the loop.

Fight or Flight

Vagus nerve vector illustration. Labeled anatomical structure scheme and location diagram of human body longest nerve. Infographic with isolated ganglion, branches and plexus. Inner biological ANS.So many of us live with the fight or flight switch constantly On. In other words, we live with lax vagal nerves. Our digestion suffers, and more.

Every Feldenkrais lesson offers the opportunity to tonify your vagus nerve. Notice during the next lesson you take how your breathing slows and deepens, how your circulation improves, how the floor beneath you seems to soften. All that is you shifting into para-sympathetic mode, rest and digest. Doesn’t it feel refreshing? That’s why you often finish a lesson feeling lighter, more cheerful, rested.

Falling into Winter

The fall caught me off guard. How about you?

The first time I really became aware of the seasonal shift was a few days ago when I noticed an familiar bird singing: a chickadee. I realized that I’d actually not heard a chickadee since I moved to Malden. Sketch of a black capped chickadeeSo I unfurled my Merlin Bird ID app, wondering who else was in town, and discovered that many of the birds I was listening to were quite different than the ones I’d heard last spring. House sparrows were still there, and Northern Cardinals and American Robins (English ones are different, y’all!) but now joined to the chorus were Blue Jays, Tufted Titmouse, Chipping Sparrows, White-breasted Nuthatch. Gone were Catbirds and Baltimore Orioles.

My neighbor and I chatted yesterday, as I went by on my morning walk with Boodie. He asked if I still walked three times a day in the middle of winter. I told him, yes, that’s why I had winter clothes, and we shared a laugh. But it made me think: how often do we give up moving because of bad weather? Stop going outside, and stay in controlled environments? Daily movement, whether you call it “exercise” or walking your dog or gardening, is essential for our health, in all senses. Winter, when flu begins to circulate, is exactly when we need to take even better care of our health, and yet that’s when many of us move less.

Movement is necessary, yet not sufficient. My neighbor walks regularly on the high school track. He’s rarely challenged by uneven pavement.

Yesterday on my walk, I tripped on the pavement and fell. No big deal: I fell well, got up and kept walking.

None of us can live forever in controlled environments. Electricity can fail. Shoelaces come untied and we trip over those. A tornado touches down (yes, even in Massachusetts). Pandemics arise.

Are you prepared for changing seasons? The changing seasons of your life, as well as of the earth?

How are you cultivating resiliency, and, better, anti-fragility? So that, whatever happens, you’re able not only to take care of yourself, but also others around you?


Today I’m sipping the first ginger tea of the season. Like to join me? Here’s my recipe, in another of my autumnal musings. (Scroll down to the bottom of the blog, and, if you like, send Finn Finn fond thoughts as you go.)

When Practice Pans Out

So this year I’ve already fallen twice. Which has actually delighted me.

What I learned, again, is that I can trust myself. That the years of work, time, and attention I’ve devoted to practicing and teaching the Feldenkrais Method® have given me skills I can draw on instantly.

The first time I fell, I slipped on the ice and fell backward. I caught myself on my hands. My hat flew one way, the dog poo bag another. A little boy walking to school asked if I was alright, and brought me the poo bag, holding it with two fingers. The position I landed in was actually a transition position from a specific Feldenkrais lesson which I’ve re-visited multiple times, because at first I couldn’t use it to get up, and I wanted to learn it.

Illustration of a human figure in multiple positions: standing, lying, walking, dancing, anything you can imagine. When practice pans out.Last Friday, Boodie (my dog) and I were walking really fast and my left foot hit a heave in the sidewalk. I fell forward, again onto my hands and knees. Just skinned my knee and bruised my toe.

I know you’ve heard me say this, if you’ve come to class with me, but it bears repeating: all our lessons on the floor are so we can bring what we learn into the rest of our life. So we can be more aware, resilient, calm. Enjoyable as it is, Feldenkrais matters because practicing it makes us more equal to the demands of our lives.

Have you found that to be true for yourself?

Cultivate Equanimity for January 2022

Would you like to cultivate equanimity?

That’s the theme which I’ve chosen for class in January 2022.

Photo of a pond near Boston in winter. Just to gaze at open water seems to cultivate equanimity.Actually, the theme chose me. It simply presented itself last week. It feels right for so many reasons.

The world continues to feel chaotic for most of us. Erratic weather. The spread of COVID, with new variants, and our continual need to adjust—my heart goes out to school teachers, parents, and children. And to those staffing our hospitals. The folks who keep our buses and trains running. And the other essential workers—our grocery staff, garbage collectors, and here in the Northeast, the folks who plow our roads.

I’m thinking of those of us who work from home and our isolation. We can keep healthy physically, but we’re stressed mentally. Humans are inherently social creatures. As my husband used to say, we’re pack animals.

Cultivate Equanimity

What can equanimity offer? The possibility to recover your balance. Find your footing again when you’re knocked off balance. Metaphorically speaking, and literally. Slip and recover. Renew your trust in yourself. Refresh your ability to pivot, change course. Another way to visualize equanimity: it’s that calm place at the center of the storm. It’s your heart beat. It’s your breath. It’s the ground supporting your feet.

Or as Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the Feldenkrais Method, writes:

“So, to balance the cortex means to reduce all points of excitation to normal activity. In this pursuit, you will find that there is no point of excitation possible without an inhibition. In reducing the excitation, you also relieve the inhibition. When you level the cortex, you bring it to that state which some people call nirvana and we call eutony. Suddenly your brain becomes quiet and you see things that you never saw before. The possibility of making new combinations, which were inhibited before, is restored. The great value of this technique is that by reducing tension in a particular group of muscles, it provides a methodical study of the entire self-image, and through study, improvement….The correction of these flaws is neither conceived nor experienced as the treatment of a disease but as a general resumption of growth and development on all levels.”
― Moshé Feldenkrais, Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais

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If you’re like to nurture your own equanimity in class with me, join us Thursdays at 12:30 pm ET/11:30 am CT/9:30 am PT. Remember to register here: it’s a new link for 2022.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

Dark Days & Ginger Tea

I woke up to the dark this morning. My first Nor’easter’s blowing in, bringing rain and wind. It’s loosening leaves still left on the trees.

On our walk this morning, Finn and I met another dog swathed in a billowing brand-new, yellow rain slicker, still with its store tag on. His human wore a matching slicker.

I’m finding myself strategizing about the best times to walk with him. Listening to the weather report—when will rain be lightest? Preparing the pile of old towels for drying him—it takes a lot to dry a Tibetan Terrier!—and wiping his feet. It’s our wet weather system.

Still life with fall flowers and fresh gingerAnd I’ve returned to a trusted fall practice: keeping a pot of ginger tea simmering on the stove. Taking advantage of the farmers market, I’m using just-harvested ginger,  with beautifully translucent pink and white skin. The smell, the feel of the warm mug in my hand, the spicy taste are enormously comforting.

How do you prepare for dark times? What familiar rituals do you practice to lighten your day? I’d love to know.

BTW, If you’d like to make fresh ginger tea yourself, it’s simple. Fill a big pot with water. Set to simmer. Chop and add several ginger bulbs. Taste after an hour or so. You can add more or less ginger, depending on your taste. If you like, add fresh lemon juice and honey to your cup. Research suggests ginger stimulates your immune system, as well as your senses. Enjoy!

What Triggers Anxiety

A despairing human figure sits surrounded by question marks.We’re living in extraordinarily unsettled times, no matter where we are. It seems there’s little that we can control right now, except the way that we choose to respond to this chaotic world. Yet it can feel as if we don’t have choices, as if circumstances trap us. Moshe Feldenkrais suggested that believing we have no choice creates anxiety.

Feldenkrais also lived in unsettled times. He lived through pogroms in the Ukraine. He fled the Nazi invasion of France. The method he developed is his response: to cultivate self-knowledge through movement.

In the Elusive Obvious, Feldenkrais writes:
“When choice is reduced to only one movement or act without any alternatives, anxiety may be so great that we cannot even do the only possible movement. . . Anxiety can be a positive, useful phenomenon. It assures our safety from risking what we feel would endanger our very existence. Anxiety appears when deep in ourselves we know that we have no other choice—no alternative way of acting [emphasis mine]. . . . Without learning to know ourselves as intimately as we possibly can, we limit our choice. Life is not very sweet without freedom of choice.”

I teach and practice the Feldenkrais Method® for many reasons, not least of which is, to help us discover and expand our range of choices, both physical and mental. So that we aren’t forced to dwell in the shape of anxiety. So that no matter what comes, we have ourselves to rely on.

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As a specific antidote to anxiety, here’s a breathing lesson to play with.

What Happens When Your Habits Stop Serving You?

We’re all in uncharted territory. Our daily habits are useless. What do we do? Maybe the first step is to become calm.

Front cover of Atomic Habits bookI’m reading Atomic Habits right now.

It’s an odd book to be reading at this particular time, from one point of view. The coronavirus has forced most of us out of our daily routines. Habits have dropped by the wayside. We’re working from home—if we’re lucky enough to have jobs. Or maybe supplies considered essential to doing our jobs safely aren’t available, and we have to jury-rig alternatives.

On the other hand, it’s actually the perfect time to be reading this book. Because we have the opportunity, maybe now or in the coming weeks or months, after this pandemic, to consider our old habits, decide which we value and which we want to change, and cultivate new habits. There’s absolutely no way we can go about business as usual.

The chapter I read this week is “The Secret to Self-Control.” James Clear, the book’s author, describes research done with American soldiers who became addicted to heroin during the Vietnam War. When they went back home, only 12 percent became re-addicted after three years. The re-addiction rate for heroin addicts living in the USA is 90 percent when they get home after rehab.

Researchers found that “addictions could spontaneously dissolve if there was a radical change in the environment” (p. 92).

We have a remarkable opportunity right now to observe our habits in their absence, both personally and globally. We are experiencing a radical change in our environment. Willy nilly. The ground has dropped out from under us.

A face mask in a clear box.I realize reflection isn’t possible for many of us right now. I just listened to a story on This American Life about a family of three in a New York apartment, 500 feet in size. Both parents sick with COVID-19. The mother locked in the bedroom to protect their two year-old. The father doing his best to care for his child during what they’re calling “Inside Time.” They don’t have the luxury to reflect right now. Nor do our first responders. Nor do the migrant workers in India who have nowhere to shelter and no way to practice social distancing.

But it’s clear to me that most of us will realize when we’re past this crisis, that we can’t go back to business as usual. We have a chance to craft a new Normal. We can choose new habits on a personal, country-wide, and international level. If we want.

Or we can try to go back to whatever Normal was before this pandemic. And wait for the rug to be pulled out from under us again. Because this isn’t the first pandemic we’ve faced; it won’t be the last.

To put it in the most mundane terms, how many times do you need to stub your toe on a chair before you decide to move the chair to a different place? How many times do you need to dislocate your shoulder before you decide maybe there’s a way you could move without dislocating your shoulder?

How do you create the conditions in which habit changing is possible?

A quality we’ll need to cultivate, both now, if we can, and later, is the quality of calm. That place in yourself you can trust without question. Buddhists call it bodhichitta or buddha nature. It’s the gap between your in-breath and your out-breath. It’s the space of potential, before you act or react. You touch it during contemplative prayer or meditation, or in a Feldenkrais® lesson. Essentially, it’s compassion.

Does this sound like a quality you’d like to cultivate?

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A girl walks quietly on a crowded streetGoing Deeper

If you’re interested cultivating calm, come to Finding Calm, the free online intensive Russ Mitchell and I are offering April 24-26. Come  Friday, Saturday or Sunday, or to all three sessions.

Let’s cultivate calm together.

More about Back Pain: Crooked Author Interviewed

If you’re an adult, you likely have had back pain or you know someone who does. It’s a sad fact of contemporary life.

Students in a ballet class. Dancers may think back pain's inevitable, even when they're young. It's not!Even folks you’d think would be pain-free, like elite dancers and athletes, may be moving through it. Someone told me a couple of years ago that half the first-year students at one of the best US dance programs come to campus with back pain. And these students are professional caliber. Heartbreaking! And unnecessary.

We can talk for quite a while—and if you’ve been in one of my classes, you know I do!—about why back pain is endemic in our society.

Front cover of CROOKED: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry & Getting on the Road to RecoveryIn 2017, investigative reporter Cathryn Jacobson Ramin published a groundbreaking book on the “back pain industry”—a disgusting phrase if ever I heard one. Her own pain led her to look for help. She found a whole lot of stuff which doesn’t help, and can harm. And she found some modalities which do help: the Feldenkrais Method® is one. (If you’ve not read Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, do! Aside from the great info, it’s a good read.)

It turns out that Cathryn has practiced Feldenkrais continuously since publishing Crooked. She was interviewed recently for the Feldenkrais website. She said: “I’ve sent countless people to Feldenkrais. I mean it is my ‘go-to,’ absolutely… it is a matter of gaining confidence that you can move and you will not die. And that is what Feldenkrais does: to actually tell your brain that you are in no imminent danger and things will improve.” Read the full interview here.

If you know someone living with back pain, share the interview with them. Or visit the Crooked website, which is chock-a-block with resources to help change their trajectory.

The takeaway: we don’t have to live in misery. We don’t have to suck it up, or push through, or grit our teeth. If we choose, we can move away from pain.

Lose Your Balance & Find It Again

What do you think of when you hear the word “balance?”

Do you immediately think— “I wish mine was better.”

Join the club!

It’s hard to stand on two legs. It takes us about a year to learn it, to build the muscles necessary.

Winged Victory of Samothrace: the wide base ensure it won't lose balance.

The Winged Victory of Samothrace

“. . . The human body is badly suited for standing. Statues of human figures have to be strongly connected to a heavy base to prevent them from toppling over at the slightest disturbance.”Moshe Feldenkrais, Body & Mature Behavior

Humans start with a disadvantage: we stand on two feet. We’re top heavy: our trunk and head are on top, and our base is tiny. In Body & Mature Behavior, Feldenkrais writes: “A Martian visitor would not hesitate to conclude that the human body is the closest to an ideal frame designed for movement and the least suited for standing motionless.”

Finding Balance

Little boy rides a bike. Lose balance and find it again.We humans are always seeking to be in balance. Whether in standing, so we don’t fall over. Or in dealing with a psychological challenge. What’s interesting: balance is inherently unstable. When we seem to be in balance we’re actually constantly moving, making tiny adjustments in response to our changing environment. We’re afraid to lose balance, yet we’re continually losing and finding it again. Just watch a baby learning to stand up! The only way to develop the ability to stand is to fall repeatedly.

Maybe losing our balance as grown-ups could be no big deal, too.

What are tools you can use to clarify your balance?

  • The ground
  • Your breath
  • Your skeleton
  • Your muscle system
  • Your awareness

Ready to Lose Balance?

Lose balance & find it again walking a slack line

The only way to walk a slack line: lose balance & find it again!

Join us for the next series! Find details here.

Improving How You Sit

The media is continuing to focus on improving sitting: NPR just published another story on the subject. Given how much back pain we Americans are living with, it’s great to see the buzz growing.

Take Control of Your Environment

image of a cashew: how do you sit?Once you realize most of the furniture we humans have designed to sit on has nothing to do with promoting good function, you can begin to customize your sitting solutions. For example:

  • Sit on a jacket
  • Carry a wedge-shaped cushion
  • Use a short stool for your feet

Forget about ever using the back of the chair: designers created the shape of the back of most chairs without reference to the human spine and pelvis. Typically, chairs (plus car and airplane seats) invite users to collapse into the cashew shape I’ve referred to before. Recipe not only for back and neck pain, but also digestive problems!

When you’re improvising your solution, remember your goal is to create clear support for your sit bones and have your feet completely in contact with the floor. Your shoulders will be slightly forward of your sit bones. This position is new to many of us, so it won’t feel “natural” at first.Photo of the front cover of CROOKED

Limit the amount of time you spend sitting, when you can. Take frequent breaks. As a designer of ergonomic furniture said in Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery, when asked what the best position for sitting is: “The next one.”

Active Sitting

In an environment you control, try varying your relationship to your computer: stand, sit on the floor, or in a QOR360 chair designed to promote active sitting (that’s the next-gen ergonomic chair I use and endorse wholeheartedly).