On Awareness Through Movement

I used to be a real coward, and in many ways I still am. I explained to my Mum the other day how safe and simple running 100kms is (providing you’re not trying to win the race or break any records that is) for instance… it’s simple zone 2 endurance, falling forwards, putting one foot in front of the other, slow enough to still be able to chat and breathe through the nose. When you’re hungry you eat, when thirsty you drink.

As Suzuki, the famous Zen Master would say: “when tired we sleep, when hungry we eat; this is Buddhism”. And indeed Buddhism has a lot to say about such simplicity (or cowardliness) in living.

I’m reminded of coastal towns I used to visit when travelling. I’d sit close to the sea, gazing out at the water, drinking coffee and writing (always) something in my note book. I was perfectly happy to not be in the water, but close by instead; comfortable yet inspired. Cowardly you might say, yet safe and responsible at the same time.

I didn’t need to prove anything to anyone. Nobody knew where I was, what I was writing, and what I did or didn’t do with my days. I didn’t even have a phone back then, or a future plan of any kind, nor a home. But when I was hungry I ate and when I was tired I slept…

This poised position on the seafront returns vividly as I read, for the third time, Moshe Feldenkrais’ ‘Awareness Through Movement’. He speaks profoundly of the resistance and tension existing always between heritage, education and self-education. We must continue to test, change and rearrange ourselves over time if we are to remain authentic, organic beings - to be reborn over and over, despite the cultural norms we’re raised into and the formal educations imposed upon us.

Personally, I’ve deliberately sabotaged my career path several times, in order to find greater simplicity, creativity and ease in my everyday life. I turned down academic success and opportunities (a game I quickly learned how to cheat and/or ‘win’ at), management and teaching positions in various capacities, plus stressful and unrealistic dreams concerning my writings, magazine and movement teaching company.

Avoiding the pitfalls of life is not easy but essential to stay interested, engaged and actually learning something. One’s ability to run says nothing of their ability to sit or to walk. One should always be sceptical of apparent shortcuts or safety nets in life - chances are it’ll take your spirit, even if it adds a few extra numbers to your bank account. This ‘spirit’, or innate curiosity for learning and life, is not about health; just as movement is not about health per se.

The most alive or spirited people I ever met were never the ones counting calories, taking supplements or having successful, sturdy business per se.

That being said, we cannot judge books by their covers - it’s impossible to tell who’s on the ‘right path’ and who isn’t; least of all ourselves…

As Ido Portal once said: “the Buddhist sits all day and gets enlightened; the supermarket cashier sits all day and gets depressed”. It’s never the thing itself, but our idea of it, that matters in the end. The story we tell ourselves - our ‘self-image’ as Feldenkrais terms it - makes a huge difference!

Where is our attention when we walk? What identity or dream or quest are we living out when we go to work, buy a house, enter a relationship, drink our coffee?

Some of the happiest, or equally most miserable, people seem to (on the surface) have no reason at all to be so…

It’s at least 50% psyche or ‘self-image’ that matters in the end, not necessarily our actions or decisions themselves.

The Feldenkrais Method invites us to give full awareness to each and every posture, gesture, action throughout the day. Walking, standing, sitting, laying. These are the movements that make up our daily lives - our performance under the sky, you might say.

Will you perform them well or will you blag, cheat, bluff your way through it?

This awareness, and small daily adjustments, radically transformed my body, posture, vitality, presence throughout my 20s and 30s. It helped to resolve my back pain, anxiety, procrastination, depression, fear of failure etc to a large extent; issues, in some cases, that I didn’t even realise I had.

That being said, there’s no escaping life… and when I was unexpectedly exiled from Europe for a year in 2023, my self-image took a bit of a battering. It was hard to to realign my purpose, lifestyle, daily habits and choices with what I thought I was or wanted to be. I had to ‘start over’ again, with few friends, social support, money or opportunities available in the UK. Add to that the bureaucracy of background checks, no established home to return to and British culture being vastly different from Amsterdam’s, my positive approach and self-acclaimed adaptability couldn’t save me from feeling rather worthless and indeed ‘exiled’ in ways.

After trying to re-apply my Amsterdam ways, and meeting resistance every step of the way (in London, Bulgaria, Cumbria etc), I surrendered to ordinary living and getting my basic needs in place - a home, a job, an income, a community etc. Yet still I struggled; not because of my new reality, but mostly the story or ‘image’ I had of it.

A cafe job is as much of a holiday, an artistic practice, a learning journey or a complete disaster as you wish it to be. Reality is always kind, always enlightened, and always for the best, if you’re able to see it ‘as it is’; and always problematic if you do not.

In Jiro Dreams Of Sushi, Jiro the sushi master has the life that most people passionately claim to hate. 7 days a week of diligent, monotonous work in a small, cramped train station restaurant. No windows, no holiday pay, no security, no sexy perks, no dream escapes. And yet he lives a philosophy, and believes in that philosophy, enough to find consistent fulfilment, week in week out.

It’s never WHAT you do but HOW you do it.

That being said, there are phases of development for every human, and at a point there’s a certain status, reputation or sense of higher purpose that, in the eyes of society at least, we perhaps all desire to reach.

Does one judge oneself only through the eyes of others though? Or can we legitimately be content enough with our own self-image, entirely apart from others’ views and opinions?

Perhaps it’s a constant trade-off… we weigh our own perceptions against that of others, and use that feedback to move forwards…?

Humans are peculiar in this respect - we can marvellously fail at fitting in, making friends, finding our individual role in the community, despite our shared innate needs and primitive drives. We have the ability to specialise, construct fictionalised versions of ourselves and find reasons to even enjoy and esteem those that lack balance, humanity and connection in their everyday lives: the reclusive novelist, the stoic endurance athlete, the savvy entrepreneur and the minimalist ‘vagabond’ traveller are far from ideal characters that I’ve subconsciously adopted at various times throughout my life, in order to foster certain skills and experiences that, at some point, I probably became a bit too ‘proud’ of or attached to.

Hence the goal is to realise this and return to ‘wholesomeness’…

As Feldenkrais describes in depth, through our various inner systems, can the human ever avoid such detours or somewhat unnatural tendencies, compared to the more spontaneous and simple (in ways) behaviours of animals for example?

It’s our gift and curse as conscious humans to be able to create fictions ‘greater’ than reality. These fictions give us enormous power and profound tools to experience, relate, create and navigate our lives; and they can run riot over our simpler, basic evolutionary needs also if we let them.

The troublesome diets of athletes (endurance athletes, weightlifters and fighters especially), the loneliness and disconnection from nature inherent for tech jobs, the therapy/coaching industry at large (selling ‘help’ probably best carried out by family and friends) and the often delusional talents of many artists (and funding bodies that support them) are some of the most problematic examples I find.

I’m certainly not above these tendencies myself (as already discussed), and yet I’m also weirdly proud of having tried so many of them and witnessed first hand the challenges involved. I’ve probably suffered more than necessary in this regard, through my various life experiments, and sometimes wish I’d never gotten a phone, a website, left my home country or even gone to University…

Life would’ve been simpler, and in some ways more ‘natural’, had I just become a floor layer like my Dad or a Chiropodist / Massage Therapist like my Mum.

Ironically, I ended up living out these parts of myself in more part-time amateur-ish ways - learning Thai massage and Reiki when travelling, teaching floorwork, running barefoot ultra-marathons, making homemade shoes and giving intuitive massage sessions in Amsterdam.

We never fully escape our pasts, our heritage and the formal education ‘forced’ upon us by whatever system we were raised into. Self-Education is our only means of true freedom, and this too is a messy, long, complicated road. Changing and improving (or even discovering) one’s subconscious ‘true self’ is difficult. It takes persistence, confusion and, I dare say, a healthy dose of suffering along the way. And the self-trickery involved is endless. The experts can’t be fully trusted and nor can the humble advisors.

“If the path is clear then it’s probably somebody else’s” (Carl Jung)

Often one must break, or at least damage, oneself in order to be rebuilt and put back together again in a better form. The multi-linguist that forgets her Mother tongue is a great example, as is the gold medal runner who walks strangely lop-sided (or in pain) and/or the zen Buddhist who loses the ability to play and to laugh.

This is the price we pay for self-improvement often: an (at least temporary) lack of health, self-confidence and clarity.

Many have no doubt died along the way, in pursuit of their higher self and/or dreams. And so the great line to end it all… taken from Paterson, an art film I watched again recently…

“…but would you rather be a fish?”

Fish or human. Simplicity or complexity. The known or the troublesome unknown. The choice is ours.

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