Feldenkrais: “I began to Notice How Seemingly Tiny, Innocuous Movements Could Produce Significant Change”

Why try Feldenkrais? My own experience is that it can increase awareness and bring greater freedom and ease of movement, which is useful to me both in playing and daily life.

To first-timers who are curious to try it, I’d say that you need no previous experience to attend a class and that it can appear to be very gentle at first - allow yourself to adjust to what might seem like a slow pace and be prepared to let go of traditional pressures around the activity of learning.

The brain’s learning speed is slower than its ‘doing’ speed

Emma Alter, who teaches Feldenkrais for the MU, often reminds class members that the brain’s learning speed is slower than its ‘doing’ speed.

I have found any changes brought about by this learning method to be subtle at first and eventually to be quite powerful, helping me to economise my physical use of self and to approach musical and wider life challenges with calmness and clarity.

Emma leads the classes with humour, warmth, great insight and a fantastic amount of in-depth knowledge which she wears very lightly.

I love Emma’s non-judgmental, non-competitive, observational, playful approach. It’s an unusual combination of skills and it helps to make the classes fun as well as informative and revelatory. I often find I play with greater ease and my sound has more variety and depth as a result of the classes.

Exploring mind-body awareness as a musician

As a musician (I’m a pianist), I’ve had a career-long interest in techniques that help to promote mind-body awareness.

This started with Alexander Technique lessons as a teen that I was lucky enough to be able to access regularly as part of the educational programme at the Yehudi Menuhin School.

Over subsequent years I tried Qi Gong under the gentle guidance of viola prof. Thomas Riebl at IMS Prussia Cove, continued Alexander lessons with the amazing Louisa Gnafkis at the Bloomsbury Alexander Centre, and more recently began Pilates led by the inspirational cellist Joely Koos.

Soon after lockdown began five years ago, Feldenkrais Resources for Musicians offered a series of online taster sessions, in which I found that Feldenkrais was the ideal online pursuit for those cut off from society.

Feldenkrais encourages you to experience first-hand how changes to the organisation of your skeleton can be brought about through the asking of a series of questions and guidance through the making of small movements. The teacher doesn’t need to be in the same room as students or even to demonstrate. It’s ideally suited to online interaction, therefore. No prior knowledge was necessary to participate for the first time.

Having dipped my toes into these exploratory waters, I was delighted to learn that Emma Alter was teaching regular Feldenkrais lessons online for MU members and I signed up for these Friday morning sessions, which are helpfully videoed and posted for those who want to follow-up later.

I began to notice how seemingly tiny, innocuous movements could produce significant change

Emma’s approach is consistently kind and practical, uncomplicated on the surface but containing great insight.

She reminds us that Feldenkrais the man was a scientist, and so had devised an observational approach that treats one’s own body like a laboratory. The emphasis is firmly on observation rather than judgement, and this in itself I have found to be a very useful tool for a practising musician.

I began to notice how seemingly tiny, innocuous movements could produce significant change.

I usually find there comes a “magic moment” in a Feldenkrais session where my breathing changes and the small movements we have been making somehow click together into an intelligible and pleasing rhythmic whole. Emma encourages us to ensure that these Awareness through Movement, or ATM exercises feel good, as then we will quite simply want to return to them.

The same principle could and of course, should, be applied to playing our instruments! Over time I found the incremental changes to my instrumental approach brought about through Feldenkrais sessions became more tangible.

My fingers felt more in contact with the piano keys, for instance. Pedalling became more efficient. I began to apply my new-found knowledge to my teaching, noting that students can also benefit immensely from this approach.

Promoting awareness through a series of questions

Using a series of questions to promote awareness rather than reeling off a list of instructions might be a longer route, but the eventual outcomes are often worth going the extra mile.

By way of example, I asked a couple of violinists who were working with me recently to mentally measure the distance between their left elbow and left hip joint and the increased awareness of the space between the two that my question generated afforded them much greater release on the opposite (right) side.

If I’d just asked them to drop the hip and free the elbow on the left side the short-term effect may have been similar but my instruction would have needed to be repeated several times to limited effect.

This way, the student gains ownership of the process through stimulating awareness of what they’re actually doing. Once they’re aware they have the option to make changes independently of a guide.

To give the reader some idea of the measuring techniques that can be used in sessions:

• How gently? Like stroking the soft hair on a baby’s cheek (not even the cheek itself)
• Distance: How far is your shoulder from your ear lobe? How far can you turn easily to look behind you? Is this the same throughout the session or is there any change?
• Smoothness: Turn your head slowly from side to side in lying at beginning, middle and end of a session. How smooth is the movement? What is its quality as well as its range?
• Heaviness: How heavy do your eyes feel in their sockets? Is it the same on each side or does one eye feel heavier than the other? Does one eye lead? I learned more about dominant sides to the body in Feldenkrais.
• Tempo: Not allegro (gym pace) but adagio (at ease). Often Emma encourages the class to slow things down so that we have an opportunity to sense what’s really going on.
• Effort levels: Be lazy. Sometimes we move at a more flowing tempo but always with ease, for as Emma gently reminds us, lazy equals efficient, and efficient means that our skeleton is better organised. Then the muscles don’t have to work so hard to overcompensate. It’s not about stretching, but about sensing where the limits are, and gaining greater freedom through that sense. So we are never encouraged to hold a pose but to go towards something and return. Often I have the sensation that I can leave some tension or holding at the point of change and move away from it back to somewhere more central to my comfort and ease.

We often develop unconscious patterns of holding

Emma often gives us a constraint in order for us to feel more clearly what we are doing when we hold in certain areas of the body. When the constraint is released invariably I find I have gained greater mobility in other areas.

For instance, if you fix the pelvis, the leg has less freedom to move. Once you release the pelvis, the leg has greater range (at least in my experience) than it did even before the constraint was put in place.

We often develop unconscious patterns of holding that I have found Feldenkrais useful in changing through awareness.

My legs get longer in sessions. When I stand up after a session in lying, everything is in a different place, my head sits differently on my shoulders, my feet make contact with the floor in a new way. My shoulders and my spine are in a new relation to each other and to my pelvis. When I turn to look behind me, I have become more like an owl. The range and the quality of movement have increased.

Giving yourself permission to rest

Musicians are used to striving, to pushing through when the going gets tough. Emma gently encourages each individual to rest before they need to…that way the rest periods will be shorter because less recovery time will be needed.

For a highly trained musician used to taking instruction in an intense atmosphere, this degree of autonomy and freedom can take some getting used to, but I have found that the wide range of applications of this approach can benefit all aspects of life, from playing to walking, sitting in rehearsals for long periods of time, performing, unloading the dishwasher or doing that dreaded admin we all know must be done.

We rarely give ourselves permission to pause for a moment when engaged in activity (musical or otherwise), permission to rest before we need to, or at all.

At the end of a session I often play with greater rhythmic freedom

As we generally play or sing a little at the beginning of the session with Emma and then a little at the end, the effect on sound and timing/rubato/freedom in playing is measurable, along with wider beneficial effects on breathing, standing, and use of the body.

At the end of a session I often play with greater rhythmic freedom, while my fingers feel more in touch with the keys. I imagine this is because I’m using my body more efficiently, freeing up space to be more creative.

Musicians are used to distinguishing between minute variations of pitch and rhythm, but at the same time, in order to achieve such consistently high quality levels of performance they can develop habits, patterns of use, over a period of years or decades of which they gradually cease to become aware.

Feldenkrais is a gentle but powerful way of opening up awareness to these patterns and of offering the participants alternative ways of doing. All of the practices I have followed - Alexander Technique, Pilates, Qi Gong - have elements in common.

With a wider range of options concerning how (and to what extent to move) comes greater awareness and freedom of choice. For this I, and I know many others, in the class feel very grateful. It’s a joy to listen to colleagues’ experiences in the feedback that Emma encourages during the sessions and to hear their journeys of discovery or rediscovery.

Thank you Emma, and thanks to the MU for putting these classes on. In my view they alone are well worth the subscription fee!