Movement is Life.

For me, it is literally my life.

I am present to movement a great deal of every day.

I am forever examining how I do what I’m doing.

If I’m practicing for class I’m looking for hints that will lead me to variations for the choreography I’m using.

If the pattern or move isn’t making sense to my body, I can take it apart and see what the moves or the micro moves are that comprise the pattern or move. If I learn it more easily and comfortably this way, maybe my students will too.

Can everybody do this? Will this quickly make sense to everyone? If not, how can I break it down into it’s elemental parts? What are it’s elemental parts?

Being present to movement means more than thinking about it. I am in the experience. I am moving, thinking, sensing  and feeling simultaneously. **

I feel myself in some sort of motion constantly.

My heart beating

My right knee is rolling inward as I sitting here

Blinking my eyes

Vibration in my hands

Scratching my chin

What is that delicate aluminum foil sound when I turn my head right and left?!

Breathing

Some days I feel it so deeply in my low back it aches – why not today? What’s different? My back or my breathing?

My fingers bending and straightening as they type

The tension I habitually hold in my neck and shoulders to type (energy wasted that doesn’t even help my typing!)

I think about how I move. I think about how others around me move.

I wonder why people move the way they do. What life history has created their movement personality?

I wonder how much of their movement is conscious.

I wonder how much of my movement is conscious.

What choices have they made, conscious and unconscious, that has them where they are, movement-wise?

I wonder why I move the way I do…

Why does my index finger bend that way when I use my middle finger?

I think alout about how to make my movement better. How can I move more smoothly, with less effort or strain? With less pain?

Can I create movement that is both beautiful and virtually pain free?

What about creating movement that gets the job done with less pain?

How can I help others move with more ease and less pain?

How can I help others move more efficiently and effectively – for higher levels of performance?

 How can I do what I do better?

How can I communicate more effectively in such a way that benefits my students?

How can I share my overwhelming love of movement and the realization that instead of moving less as we get older, we need to move as much as ever, if not more? And in many, many different ways?

How can we make longevity a standard quality of life rather than an exception to the rule?

Movement is Life.

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(By use of the word “longevity”, I mean more than a long life; I am describing a vibrant, healthy life in which we remain physically balanced and competent as well as mentally and emotionally agile. By today’s standards, this is considered a re-definition of aging.)

**In his book, Awareness Through Movement, Moshe Feldenkrais proposed that we cannot separate sensation from feeling from thought from movement. We may fail to notice the information that we are constantly receiving, but the experience exists nonetheless. Dr. Feldenkrais referred to this as the “four components of the waking state”.