Embodying Freedom, and the Shared Regret of Ida Rolf and Moshe Feldenkrais

I hope you are finding ground, community, beauty, and nourishing connection amidst the intensity of these mythic times.

I am grateful to have Dr. Ida Rolf and Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais as foundational influences in my somatic lineage. I have witnessed in others, and experienced in myself, so much healing, vitality, learning, possibility and joy in the weaving of Rolfing® and Feldenkrais® over these last two decades. Interestingly, both Dr. Rolf and Dr. Feldenkrais had similar regrets at the end of their lives. Both were concerned their work would become a form of highly effective physiotherapy, helping people move better, and get out of pain, but what each of them held as the heart of their methods was human freedom and transformation.

As someone who has danced with back pain through the years, and who is still in the long, slow, patient healing process from an Achilles tendon torn while playing basketball a couple years ago, I don’t want to underestimate the importance of having ways to reduce pain and deepen coordination, organization, and skill in movement, but I also think it is essential to ask, as Moshe and Ida did, Reducing pain in service to what? Improving posture in service to what? Moving better in service to what?  

How do these practices and methods help us to, as  Thich Nhat Hanh says, walk as a free person, sit as a free person and eat as a free person?  How do practices support us in deepening the freedom to become more fully ourselves, respond wholeheartedly to our times, and bring our unique medicine to this world?

For both me and Erin, movement and embodiment have always been at the center of the mandala of our work. As we like to say, embodiment matters. It really does.

Life is movement, and when we can learn through our movement, we can continue to refine and learn through our whole life.

Whatever qualities we would like to see like to see more or less of in the world, we can start close in. We can start with bringing those qualities to how we move.

Would you like to live in a world with less domination and objectification? Notice where you objectify or dominate yourself in your movement. (Often it is so commonplace we don’t recognize it.)

Would you like to experience more respect and more reverence for life in the world? Tend to your quality of movement, to how you touch and interact with the living world around you and within you – it is a potent place to grow reverence and respect.

One of the lines we often repeat when teaching movement is, “How can this be less effortful and more pleasurable?”  Imagine that as you move through your day, you could send ripples of deeper satisfaction, experiential wholeness, and care out into the world.  That is a nourishing ripple to offer to others, as we are continuously barraged with images of outrage, violence, and suffering.

I am so excited for my upcoming deep dive into movement, attention, and learning in Embody Integration: The Foundations of Natural Movement which begins on May 12th. This is open to all body shapes and ages, and will offer a rich toolkit for deepening strength, mobility, grace, and sensitivity in how you move in the world. The course is recorded so you’re welcome to register even if you cannot join live. It will offer a rich collection of recordings, from two minute somatic refreshers to ten to twenty minute guided movement practices that you can return to over and over again to support your deepening practice.

Wishing you ease, satisfaction and pleasure in how you move through this day.

With love,

Carl

p.s.  Our live Grief Tending Ritual in Salt Lake City on Labor Day weekend is filling fast, but we do still have  few spots left if you would like to join us. You can find out more here.

p.p.s. Scroll down for details on other upcoming classes, including Tai Chi and Natural Movement in the Park,  A Council for Grief-Tenders, and Erin and Leilani’s Take Heart series.