The Feldenkrais-Specific Approach

Feldenkrais-specific approach or: How to develop competencies for practicing the Feldenkrais Method in a way compatible with its underlying principles – A paper by Barbara Pieper for the IFF Special Committee on Quality and Competency, April 2001

Preliminary note

The question of Feldenkrais ways of developing competencies for the practice of our increasingly professional Method is highly sensitive to : a) values linked with the Method, b) core contents of our work, and c) procedural implications of the Method. To make this broad question more concrete we follow the viewpoint of a practitioner asking: How can competencies be developed in a way compatible and comparable with the experiences we have as practitioners while teaching or taking a Feldenkrais lesson? We discussed time and again among ourselves how we could apply our experiences of teaching or taking ATM and FI lessons to the issues entailed in quality and competencies.

Here we introduce ten “Feldenkrais ways” of acting within the context of quality and competency processes

I  Process-orientation and flexibility

The question of developing competencies for practicing the Feldenkrais Method is analogous to giving a lesson. We act in a paradoxical kind of situation. We do not have a specific aim for the lesson. We stay open to change and the unexpected. However we have a more or less clear intention about how to proceed with the project.

II First person perspective

a) In a Feldenkrais lesson we do not push around bones or mobilize joints. We address a person and his/her intentions, needs, wishes, and his/her looking and longing for transferring these into appropriate action. Criteria of quality and competency are therefore dynamically related to the person’s process of development and growing. The correct posture is not as important as the ability of the client to implement or to improve what s/he intended to do (so- called “better functioning”).

In terms of the practitioner’s job this first person perspective means that criteria relating to the practitioner’s competency have to refer to her/his (and the client’s) process. Instead of statically demanding specific skills cut off from the context (e.g. technique one, two, three...  bringing a knee into a particular position), the practitioner is asked to teach the client how s/he could organise herself/himself in such a way that the knee participates better in the intended action.

b) The first person perspective considers each individual within his/her environment, taking into account the different agents or stakeholders, institutions, laws, cultural differences etc, the client has to deal with and respond to in his/her everyday existence.

Transferring this to the practitioner’s environment means considering the different actors, groups, institutions involved; trying to understand or surmise the logic underlying their actions; and finding out who should or should not be involved in the process of developing competencies and deciding about them.

III Working within a function

Within a lesson movements are seen in relation to the personal behaviour in which they are embedded. The practitioner thus refers to a person’s self-image and purposeful action. S/he offers a learning-setting helping the client to explore, discover, identify, and - perhaps - abandon unnecessary effort which interferes with the movements constituting the action.

A process of developing competencies could be seen analogously: It refers to and concentrates on those meaningful actions leading to enhancement of the practitioner’s qualification. Focusing on the function of developing quality and competency can serve as a guideline for dealing with interfering habitual (sometimes “parasitic”) movements such as ego-tripping or endless money and power games.

IV Shifting perspectives

As practitioners we are used to shifting points of view.  For instance during a lesson we shift from the (assumed) client’s inner perspective to our outside view of his/her movement organisation. We shift from global to differentiated movements, hoping the client will learn to discern them. And we provide for appropriate integration of the experienced movements into the client’s intended action. While working we constantly train our ability to sense, feel, and understand another person’s self-image, movement organisation, and “logic of living”. As professionals we shift from an internal interest in qualified work to the external demands of making a living from this. We switch point of views to cope with a range of different agents/institutions who have to be taken into consideration in order to be able to do the job: clients, state (tax, laws..), , insurance companies, trainings, colleagues, Feldenkrais Guilds, other competing professionals.

This ability to shift perspective is a wonderful prerequisite and precondition for coping with such a complex process as developing competencies for practitioners teaching Feldenkrais.

V Working with constraints

Embedding constraints into a lesson can help the client to regain awareness of parts of his/her self-image and movement organisation – parts that have been habitually “forgotten” or not used anymore, or never previously experienced.

Similarly, quality and competency processes can offer the practitioner a framework for reflecting on his/her practice and bringing into awareness forgotten or as yet unknown knowledge, skills, and abilities, which s/he then wishes to improve.

VI Interrelationship/connectedness and interdependencies

In a lesson we “negotiate” with the client’s head, leg, arm, trunk, in the context of how they interact so as to allow that individual to act purposefully.

Being trained and accustomed to sensing, feeling, thinking, and acting in categories of interrelationship and connectedness, we are also prepared (or should be!) to apply this precise ability to the competencies development project, taking into account how the practitioner’s general and specific environment affects his/her doing the job and vice versa.

VII Acceptance: Going with the system, not against it.

While teaching we follow the client’s system. We try to enhance what is possible while taking into account the perceived limitations. Otherwise the client’s limbic system would say “No!”.

Similarly, a competency development process which avoids the practioner’s resistance (a “No!” on the part of the community’s limbic system) but gives her/him options or choices, and includes a learning component, is more likely to be accepted in the Feldenkrais community.

VIII Participation

An action becomes easier when each muscle can participate equally (relative to its size) in this process. For instance the strong muscles of the pelvis are more involved in lifting a suitcase than the lower arms.

Similarly, the ease, elegance, and satisfaction within successful implementation of a  competencies development project will relate to and address the participation of all those who functionally belong to or take part in this “movement”.

IX Respect for the practitioner’s ways of self-direction

Giving lessons we rely on trust and the client’s innate capacities for self-direction/self-education.

This Feldenkrais principle should be implemented within a range of worldwide standards so that the practitioner feels himself/herself supported and encouraged to make choices regarding a personal and professional process of qualification. Of course individual, social, cultural, etc. differences should be recognised as we do in a Feldenkrais lesson.

X Mindfulness, attention, and slowness

As a rule movements explored in a lesson are done with mindfulness, attention, and slowness, allowing the client to perceive differences better and to observe how partial aspects of a movement are constitutional elements within an overall action to which they belong. Quality of sensation (H. Jacoby) and time are required for integrating new experiences into a client’s self-image and everyday existence.

Similarly a process aiming at successful implementation of competencies in the Feldenkrais community and in the individual practitioner’s acquisition of qualifications requires mindfulness and time for understanding the “overall action” of quality and competency on the part of the IFF, the Guilds, TABs, and especially for practitioners’ everyday work. The process has started for their sakes.

In Conclusion

The special committee’s proposals are intended to reflect these ‘Feldenkrais’ ways of approaching quality and competency on the level of organic learning interwoven with cognitive elements – as in the metaphor of the DNA spiral we used at the IFF Annual Assembly 2000 in Neuburg/Germany. The role-games tried out in Neuburg - and now further developed and implemented twice (in Germany) - proved to be an appropriate tool which meets these specific Feldenkrais ways, taking into account the practitioner’s environment and addressing very concrete requests concerning his/her further qualification. This has also encouraged us to look for other Feldenkrais-specific tools.

·& [i] see ABC Report IFF Annual Meeting Neuburg/Germany, May 2000, published in IFF Newsletter Jan 2001

[i]. The role-games tried out in Neuburg - and now further developed and implemented twice (in Germany) - proved to be an appropriate tool which meets these specific Feldenkrais ways, taking into account the practitioner’s environment and addressing very concrete requests concerning his/her further qualification. This has also encouraged us to look for other Feldenkrais-specific tools.