Humans are a very creative species. Creating art and sharing information is how evolution happened, and storytelling was essential. Yet now that we know all of this, what stories do you tell yourself that might hinder your progress instead of support your growth? Knowing how you get in your way is more important than being upset that it happens. How clever are you in supporting the process of not getting what you want with your lifestyle, your relationships, or your dreams?
Do you sabotage your own learning by telling yourself you can’t do it, or take on too much at one time so that it’s impossible? Do you know the steps in place that you need, in order to make your goal more achievable? Can you identify what happens right before you are trying to, learn a new skill, or change a behavior, that holds you back? Knowing what you do to hinder an activity you’re trying to do, is the key to figuring out how to get out of your way.
In The Feldenkrais Method™ we explore the first movements required to do an activity. Organize yourself from the beginning, and see what do you do to try to achieve your goal. In other words, how do you get in your way? Whether it’s holding your breath, or doing something totally not related to your goal, or possibly a variety of unrelated things. Knowing where you hold yourself back is more important than even reaching your goal.
If your goal is to be perfect right away, it’s the ideal way to set yourself up to not get what you want. Just as an infant would have to do, you have to keep trying different ways to reach your desired outcome. You only have to make small changes to make a big shift. Think of a boat. If you change your course of direction only one nautical mile, you wind up someplace totally different in the end.
Often people think they have to do something drastically different in order to get different results. The brain doesn’t work that way. The subconscious brain is essentially a filing cabinet that knows what works together to make sense of its’ surroundings. If you tell it something totally opposite of what it knows to be true, your entire belief system is going to get in your way and not let you achieve your goal. The brain’s job is to keep you safe, and it likes to repeat the familiar. That’s why if you tried to give it something totally foreign it will reject it as nonsense. Hence this is where people often think The Feldenkrais Method™ is magic. We speak the language of what makes sense to the body, so the nervous system accepts the information very quickly.
If you want to really learn something new, you have to go at it like a baby. Without judgement, with fun as the goal, and a fresh curiosity of asking the questions why and how. Breaking things into tiny steps and knowing how you do what you do is the beginning of learning. Once you know how you organize your learning you can realize what extra effort you are doing that may be unnecessary. Once you recognize this extra effort, you can slowly begin to delete them. This practice needs to be done slowly, (did I say that enough times?) and with awareness, so the brain can adapt to the new information, and your belief system will give it the green light. This is where the magic is. It’s so complex because it’s so simple.