Dan Clurman: A Feldenkreis Demo

Dan Clurman guides Serge Prengel into a Feldenkreis exploration in a way that you, the listener, can follow as you listen. Dan Clurman is a certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner who has led Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® classes for over 25 years. Serge Prengel has been exploring how to live with an embodied sense of meaning and purpose.

Transcript

So I'm with Dan Klarman.

Hi Dan.

Hi Serge.

Dan is a Feldenkrais practitioner and a communications coach and he views the body as essentially a communication process system,

Something like that.

Yes,

It's a system that is in communication with itself,

Organizing itself,

Organizing our perceptions.

In the field of gravity.

Yeah,

And so today instead of talking about that in generalities,

We're going to use some of these tools to put it into practice and experience it in the moment.

So Dan is going to describe some movements which I'm going to follow and we're inviting you,

As you're listening,

To also follow them and be part of this process as it unfolds.

Great.

Okay,

We're going to take a very basic movement that we,

Almost everyone does every day,

Which is rotation.

And you can do this right here as you're sitting.

And one thing I would say as you do the movements is to do less than you could do.

To make the movements light,

Easy,

Less effort as you do them.

So less effort as opposed to,

But not necessarily less distance.

Right,

Well that's the whole thing is deciding what is less effort and what is easy to do.

Because the assumption with Feldenkrais is you want to invite opportunities to learn about your own organization in ways where you don't experience stress.

Where you're doing something that's light and easy to improve.

Okay,

So I'm going to try a couple of different things because in some ways that first stumbling block is,

Well,

What is easier?

What is less difficult?

So I'm going to try just moving my head.

And what I'm noticing is I'm,

As I move my head,

I'm on a chair that swivels.

So my head moves my body and chair at the same time.

Right,

Now if you didn't swivel and you just remained more or less body facing forward and head facing forward and you just,

Let's make even simpler,

You just turned to look to the left and come back slowly and came back.

Yes,

That would be good.

Now as you turn and look to the left,

Feel where in yourself you tend to feel the feeling of turning.

Slowly.

And come back.

So there's part,

Something I expected to feel it in my neck and also a sense in my head.

Not directly,

I feel it more in my neck but also a sense in my head.

But what I'm surprised about is feeling it also in my chest.

Okay,

Nice.

So you're noticing the movement affecting several regions of yourself.

I should do it.

Now when you turn and look to the left,

Notice if there's any straining that's going on in your neck at all.

And if there is,

Do a little bit less.

So you're turning to look to the left but you stop before any straining and reverse back to your starting position.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And so as I'm going to do it,

I also want to remind people who are listening to this that,

You know,

Please try it at the same time.

Yes.

And don't do it if you're driving in a car.

Yes.

So just turning.

And come back.

So it's a steady thing.

It has a beginning,

A middle,

And an end.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So it felt very satisfying.

I noticed how I turned much less than I did before.

And it was not with the sense that it would be straining to do more.

But it felt like a little bit was enough and I didn't have to push more.

Yes.

So that is,

From a Feldenkrais perspective,

A nice direction to go because now you're in a range which feels easy to do and you can work with that more easily.

There's less noise in your system,

So to speak.

So let's do another aspect of this.

So with the movement,

We could look at the movement as having three phases to it.

The initiation,

The sense of turning,

And then at some point noticing you're going to reverse that movement and come back again.

And then you're going to stop when you come back to your initial,

You could call it neutral starting place.

So let's do it as one smooth movement,

But being clear that you're going to reverse before there's any straining and coming back.

But do it all as one movement and then pause when you finish it.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what I noticed when I was doing it is that I probably did it even less of a turn than before.

And then when I arrived at the end of the turn,

I paused a little bit.

And my sense of it is that I raised my head a little bit before turning back.

So I don't know if that was visible or it was just inside,

But it felt like almost taking some,

You know,

Kind of a little bit of revving up before the turning back.

Yes.

You could call that your initiation recruitment,

That you organized a way to launch into the movement pattern and it affected how you did the rest of the movement.

So noticing that is sort of noticing your initiation.

So let's add another variation to the movement where we're not a variation,

But something now we could come back to at the end of what we're doing.

When you turn in this nice,

Light,

Easy way that you're doing,

When you turn to the left at some point,

Right as you're about to reverse,

Pick a spot on the wall that could serve as a marker or a reference point of how far you turned comfortably.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Go ahead.

Good.

And you have that reference point?

Yes.

So what I noticed is I went a little bit beyond the point which I came back to eventually,

And I felt there was a slightest bit of a strain there,

Even though I had gone there before.

So I retraced a little bit before picking that spot and then came back.

Nice.

And that would be a sensitivity to adjusting to how much effort or how much you're doing is enough.

Mm-hmm.

Which is a nice thing to know when you're moving so you don't injure yourself.

Right.

Okay.

So let's add another variation to this from a Feldenkrais point of view.

Now,

When you're turning to the left,

And we're going to do the right side too,

When you're turning to the left,

Instead of looking with your eyes into the direction,

Continue to look with your eyes straight ahead and let the rest of your head turn to the left.

And this might feel strange because it's not something you habitually do.

So you might need to do even less to turn your head in order to keep looking forward.

I'm not quite sure I heard.

Do I keep my gaze straight from the beginning or only once I get to that point?

You're going to keep your gaze straight,

Just your eyes looking straight ahead.

The rest of you can turn all the way through the movement.

Okay.

Very hard to do this.

Yeah.

So you might do a fraction of the size of the movement.

That's okay.

Yeah.

And come back when you feel ready.

Nice.

So it took me two or three tries to do that with the temptation to have my eyes turn and my face not moving until I got it.

Yes.

And this is from a Feldenkrais perspective where it's called a differentiated movement.

In other words,

One part of you is going one way and another part of you is staying in a different direction.

So now let's try it again.

Again,

You can make the movement very small if that makes it easier.

And you might notice there was a slight tilting of your head as you were doing it.

See if you can turn your head so it stays level as you keep your eyes looking forward.

Again,

Just playfully.

This is not a serious thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

It's kind of weirdly playful or playfully weird or something like that.

Yes.

Yeah.

How was that?

So I had the sense of adjusting the movement constantly.

First,

Taking a moment to keep my eyes straight.

And then once I felt they were straight,

Going by little tiny increments,

And then coming back,

And I probably didn't move that much,

But also a sense of paying attention to sensing whether my head was tilting or not.

Yes.

So I may have done some adjustments.

Yeah,

You're making little tiny adjustments.

To how you're doing the movement and very attentive to the feedback you're getting as you move.

Yeah.

So now we just kind of let that go and just rest for a moment.

And all of these movements are in a certain way repatterning something that's pretty habitual,

Which is often when we turn our heads,

We're going to automatically turn our eyes with the head because they're in sync with each other.

And this pattern of turning the head without turning the eyes is breaking a very basic pattern.

It's interrupting that pattern.

Usually when you interrupt the pattern,

It frees something up because you're changing the pattern.

So one way to play with that,

To check that,

Is now when you turn your head to the left,

Let your eyes look into the direction in a very natural way.

Let your mouth relax,

Your face relax,

And just turn and look to the left with the head and the eyes,

Slowly finding again what's a comfortable range and reversing back to your starting point.

Okay.

So what I'm noticing is a little bit of a,

You know,

Slow start,

Then turning less than the point that you had asked me to identify before,

Then doing the same thing of kind of looking up a little bit,

Kind of almost revving up before turning back.

Good.

Okay.

Another variation.

Good.

And anytime you want to rest,

You can rest,

Because even though it doesn't seem like you're doing a lot,

You are in a way doing a lot because you're focusing a lot.

It's pretty intense,

Yes,

Going in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So if you like,

You can sit back or whatever,

Anytime you want.

Resting is a good thing.

There's action and non-action.

So let's add another variation to the movement that,

Again,

Might change your patterning for you.

That is to interlace your fingers and look at the finger that is on,

The index finger that's on top of the other index finger when you automatically just interlace.

And now you'll see either the left or the right hand,

One index finger is on top of the other.

Now reverse it so the other index finger is on top of that finger.

So you're interlacing now what we might call a non-habitual way.

Okay.

Now take your hands,

Put them behind you so that you're comfortably there,

And find a comfortable position for your elbows where it feels like your shoulders can relax.

Let your face relax.

Let your jaw relax.

Now let your head be entirely passive.

As you turn to the left,

You're going to let your arms and your torso be the prime mover,

And your head is just going along for a ride.

Your eyes can do anything they want.

They can look into the direction.

And do it in a way where you're not holding your breath.

You're breathing naturally in the rotation and coming back.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So the head,

No efforting from the head.

And again,

The size of the movement can be as small as you wish.

It doesn't matter.

And then reverse and come back.

And do this a few times so that you become familiar with with the effect of letting another region of yourself,

In a sense,

Power up the movement.

Notice how the rest of you wants to adjust into this,

And your head is just passive,

Going along for the ride.

I'm feeling a lot is happening in the chest itself,

That as if the movement of the arm is moving the chest,

And the head is just kind of simply following,

Is attached to it.

So would you say the movement is allowing for participation lower down in yourself than before?

Not just,

Yeah,

Participation,

Or leadership,

Or.

.

.

I'm noticing also that the movement is much smaller than before.

And right now,

The last one I did,

I noticed my eyes were moving first,

You know,

Almost like when I say it's a smaller movement,

It's like the eyes want to compensate by going ahead.

So the eyes are,

You could say,

Initiate an initiation aspect of the movement,

And then the rest of you starts to be influenced by that.

Yeah.

So now in contrast,

I just consciously did not start with the eyes to see what the difference was.

Interesting.

Where did you start with?

What was the next place you went to to start?

I went with my arms,

Shoulders,

And chest.

Almost right now,

What I'm doing is I'm keeping my eyes fixed on you,

And moving this,

And then the eyes can't resist and follow,

But just to try and experiment to see what it.

.

.

Variations on the theme.

Yeah.

Okay,

And take your hands down,

Arms down,

And just absorb what you've been doing.

So from Feldenkrais method,

After you do something,

It's nice to just stop for a moment,

Pause,

And notice how what you did affected you.

Like,

Is there a ripple effect anywhere?

Is there a sense of awareness of some region of yourself?

Maybe,

Maybe not.

You just check it out.

Definitely more awareness of the torso,

And what goes with it is a sense of more space.

So part of it,

Of course,

Is the opening the arms,

You know,

Expands my chest,

And there is that sense of space,

But it's also like the slowness of the movement and the expansion together give me a sense of.

.

.

Like the sense of deliberate slowness.

Mm-hmm.

So it's almost like you're able to be with the nuances of the movement.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So there's a very satisfying quality.

Satisfying to the quality of the movement itself,

You mean?

Yeah,

The quality of the movement and the experience itself,

Because it feels like the opposite of rushing and the slowing down,

But also the space is held as you're holding the space.

So there's a sense of,

You know,

Just like when you see a movie of somebody swimming underwater,

And the movement is smoother and slower.

Mm-hmm,

Mm-hmm.

It's almost like an aesthetic quality.

Yes,

Yes.

Okay,

Let's add one more variation,

And then we're going to translate to the other side.

So now put both hands on your thighs,

Wherever it feels comfortable,

And you're not going to swivel in your chair,

Although that is a possibility,

Of course,

And feel your.

.

.

See,

You're turning to your left.

Feel your right knee,

Keeping both feet in place,

Not moving your feet,

Feel your right knee slide a little bit forward and your left knee slide a little bit back,

But not moving your feet.

And just feel that,

And then come back to your neutral starting place.

Now you naturally started to turn your head with that.

Yeah,

So I'm going to say,

Don't turn your head yet.

Keep looking forward a little,

And just maybe one,

Two,

Three times,

Sliding your right knee a little forward,

Your left knee a little back,

And you'll feel that slight swivel rotation,

Say,

In your pelvis.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I'm feeling that,

And I'm also feeling,

As I did before when I was turning,

But even now when I'm not,

Feeling the chest going up a bit,

That sense of more forward and up.

Yeah,

And again,

We could say that.

.

.

Yeah,

My hand,

The right hand that's on the knee that goes more forward,

Tends to also kind of move together with this even more than the knee.

Okay,

So again,

It's your initiation through your knees is affecting other regions of yourself higher up.

They're participating.

Now,

As you.

.

.

So,

We're playing with a different point of initiation in the movement,

Adding that variation.

Now,

As you slide your right knee forward,

Left knee back,

Naturally let that somewhat spiraling,

Rotating movement that's there at the base,

Just let it freely translate upwards and let any other regions of yourself that want to get on board,

So to speak,

That are invited in,

To rotate to the left in whatever ways they feel inspired to.

Okay.

And at some point,

Of course,

You'll notice there's a natural place to reverse and come back to neutral.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

At first,

It was just my torso,

And then the head just couldn't resist,

Like naturally followed,

And it was a very,

Very small movement,

And then it felt right to turn back.

Right.

So,

This is getting a sense of the way in which the movement distributes through you,

How one part of you starts to recruit another part of you,

Recruits another part of you,

And they all join the party.

Okay.

One more time,

Initiating through sliding the right knee forward,

Left knee back a little,

And then letting that ripple effect come upwards through you and rotating as you wish.

Yeah.

So,

It felt like,

So it was kind of,

At first,

My eyes were anchored in looking at you and feeling the movement starts in raising my chest and up and very slightly to the left,

And then it kind of followed with more of my body following to the left and my head,

But again,

A very small movement,

And then turning back.

Nice.

Okay.

And now,

Just let's rest,

And we're going to translate this to the other side in a much shorter way,

But before doing that,

Just resting,

Absorbing,

Feeling the effects of just doing these subtle small movements and the overall quality of your sense of just being here,

Being embodied,

Maybe some new awareness of different regions of yourself or a sense of internal or external space.

Mm-hmm.

And also,

Reminding people as they're listening,

If they started just listening instead of doing it,

To come back to following the instructions and trying it as we talk about it and do it.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

And now,

Without thinking about it very much,

Without having a particular strategy,

Just turn and look to the left as you wish and come back and notice.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

I felt that more of my body was involved in turning to the left.

My torso,

Not quite the pelvis,

But the torso was more involved than at the beginning when I was doing it.

Mm-hmm.

And if you check in with your whole body,

Notice if there's any region that wants to become more involved in the rotation as you get ready to turn and look to the left once again.

You just tune in and notice.

Is there any region of yourself that,

Yeah,

There you go,

Enjoys participating?

Yeah.

So,

Definitely my chest,

A sense of,

You know,

Like breath coming into my chest,

My chest calling for it in a way,

And the chest taking the lead in some way.

Maybe not so much that the movement originates from the chest,

But the sense that the chest is almost like the inspirational leader of the movement.

Nice.

Nice to recognize.

And now,

Imagine,

Before we do a very quick translation to the other side,

Imagine that a friend of yours is calling to you from your left side,

And you just turn and look towards your friend and come back again.

So,

I felt actually some involvement from the chest,

But less than before.

Okay.

Okay.

Good.

Okay.

And last thing we're going to do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just to check it out,

Just out of curiosity.

And last thing is,

Now,

You've learned all these things about how you rotate to the left,

And you've noticed some changes in the patterning,

You could say,

Of how you do it.

Now,

Imagine,

In your imagination,

However you do that,

Turning to your right,

And just doing it in your imagination,

Or even if that's challenging,

You can pretend you're doing it in your imagination,

And it's going to be the same thing.

And don't do it yet,

But just pretend or imagine you're turning to the right,

And notice in your imagination how you might do that,

In whatever way you do that.

It doesn't matter how you do it.

You can just pretend you're doing it,

Too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

As you might think I was doing it,

And I noticed that as soon as I start imagining it,

The movement starts happening.

So,

I'm consciously limiting it,

But it's hard to just imagine it without having the beginning of a movement.

Okay.

Nice to notice.

So,

Then,

Imagine it and let the movement unfold as it does,

Of turning and looking to the right and coming back,

And just notice how that is.

So,

Very much involving the chest.

Yeah.

And that was the region that got more involved on the left,

Too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Now,

We did many different variations,

But we're not going to do all those variations.

Of the various variations we did,

Is there one you want to use in turning to the right that you think might be useful or interesting?

We did the hands behind,

The eyes going,

Remaining forward,

The head turning,

This time it would be the left knee going forward,

The right knee going back,

Any of the variations you want.

Maybe you could just play with it.

In the imagination was putting the left knee forward and the right knee a little back,

And when you mentioned the arms,

And I'm curious to trying the arms.

Okay.

So,

Feel free.

And remember,

When you do the arms,

You don't have to use as much work in your neck or head.

Okay.

So,

I'm noticing the eyes initiating the movement,

Going first,

Then the chest clenches in,

Opens,

And when I get to the end,

It opens even more,

And then coming back.

Mm-hmm.

Final thing we're going to do,

You're going to combine both directions and find the range of movement,

Once again,

That feels light and easy and feels globally nice for you,

Not just locally in one region,

But where you have that sense of other regions feeling free to become involved,

To participate in the movement,

And you're going to start initially with just tuning into the natural rhythm of your breathing and harmonizing the movement into the natural rhythm of your inhalation and your exhalation.

So,

Usually when we move and we're naturally breathing,

There's another degree of functionality that's added.

So,

You're just tuning into your rhythm of breath,

And then when you feel ready,

When you're in that rhythm,

You'll do the rotation to the left and the right and continuing to breathe in your rhythm of breath and finding that place of reversing out to the middle again and going to the other way that feels light and easy.

That invites participation through you.

Yeah.

So,

I kind of settled in a pattern of breathing out,

Turning,

Breathing in when I'm at the end,

Just kind of keeping it,

Breathing out.

And so,

The breathing in at both left and right and coming back.

But to initiate the movement,

It felt right to first breathe and get to most breath and then letting the breath go as I turn.

Mm-hmm.

So,

You're doing the rotation on the exhalation itself.

Yes.

Yeah.

And you're recruiting yourself a little bit for that on the inhalation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

And that's a typical Feldenkrais lesson.

We use several variations.

You discovered different patterns of organization and you readjusted in a way.

You changed your organization slightly to discover ways to use more of yourself as you were doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so,

I assume that people who are doing this at the same time are not necessarily finding things that are similar to what I'm doing,

But finding their own patterns.

Exactly.

And that's why even sometimes looking at somebody doing it,

You don't need it.

It's better to just listen to the direction sometimes in that everyone has their own unique way of organizing both perception and action.

And the beauty of this method is you get to discover what your way of doing this is.

And the next time you do this lesson,

They're called lessons because they're educational in a way as opposed to repetitive or mechanical exercises.

Each time you do this Feldenkrais called each time you do a lesson an approximation of something.

Because you keep learning and you keep adjusting and you keep refining and you keep noticing and you discover more and more variations of how you like to do what you like to do in an easy way,

An efficient way,

Maybe even an elegant way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I noticed you use the word organizing.

So,

I think that's a very nice word.

I want to stay a little longer on that,

That sense of marshaling your resources,

Something about involving the whole organism or something.

So,

Do you want to talk a little bit more about this organizing?

Yes.

Yes.

That essentially as a biological organism,

We're organizing different directions,

Paths of movement,

Different shapes of ourselves in different circumstances to deal with the circumstances of a situation.

And that's part of our aliveness.

We have this kind of formative quality that is just the way that we live our lives.

It helps shape how we live.

And it's very easy similarly to say you could call it psychologically to develop habits,

Which we need.

We need habits to do what we do.

Otherwise,

It becomes pretty hard to do all the things we do.

The problem is as we grow and change in age and contend with different experiences,

Injury,

The habits need to update themselves.

We need to adjust to changing biological conditions,

Social conditions.

And unless you give yourself opportunities for reorganizing how you do what you do,

A habit that was once useful at an earlier phase of life might not be so healthy at another phase of life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

It's a moment to notice the habit.

And as you go very slowly,

To have the opportunity to notice there's different ways of doing,

Some different ways of organizing to do that movement.

Exactly.

And with the Feldenkrais Method,

One of the things you're doing is you're introducing little bits of novelty,

You know,

Little pattern breakers,

Little variations.

And we did that in this lesson.

And one of the things that the body seems to like,

The body-mind system you could say,

Is when some variation is added in,

It starts to automatically gravitate to something,

A configuration,

A new way of doing something that feels a little better in some ways,

You know,

A little more optimized.

And it does it without even having to think about it.

It's just the addition of something new creates a possibility for a new kind of organization to emerge.

Right.

Right.

So,

Little experiments.

Yes.

Little small experiments without intending to necessarily create something new,

Just playing with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

So,

Yeah.

Is there something else you'd want to add to this or you want to say about just doing the process?

So,

It's interesting because I had no idea what we would be doing other than simply slowing down a movement and paying attention to it.

And so,

As I told you when we were talking before the recording,

My frame of reference was doing gyrotonic,

Which is,

You know,

Doing a specific movement and noticing the involvement,

Engaging,

For instance,

The core and noticing how you turn and just really paying attention to that and noticing what happens as you notice and as the body changes.

And so,

In a way,

This was surprising because the movement was much smaller than I had expected.

And so,

The experiences were more subtle.

But I am actually pleasantly surprised by how,

While being subtle,

It actually feels like something is,

You know,

Something is happening.

It's not like,

Oh,

Not much.

But there is something in that subtlety.

And generally,

The sense of feeling more,

Like I feel like my butt is more firmly in my chair.

My feet are more firmly on the ground.

And that sense of feeling the rotation,

You know,

Smaller,

But feeling the sense of rotation more present,

As opposed to being more rigid.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

So,

It's almost like it sounds like the rotation,

You can feel the quality of the rotation internally in a way that just has a maybe a little bit more satisfying quality internally.

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

For instance,

As I'm sitting still right now,

I have a consciousness of my torso as potentially rotating left or right.

Mm-hmm.

So,

Different from the sense of sitting and kind of being rigid,

Not moving.

Mm-hmm.

Yes,

Yes.

And from when you started this,

When we started,

The movement was,

Seemed to me,

More centered in your neck-head region.

And then as you went through the lesson now,

You just mentioned your torso,

You mentioned your pelvis,

Your hips as being something that is you're in communication with now as part of your rotation.

Yeah.

So,

Essentially,

Like calling in more parts or calling in the whole body or more.

And so,

This happens to be something that I'm very interested in,

That notion of mindfulness as noticing parts of the self,

Parts of the body,

Parts of the system that are not involved.

Mm-hmm.

And so,

This feels somewhat similar to the notion of waking up parts that are not normally involved in how I do things.

There's like an economy of doing things that is more narrowed down,

And this is like recruiting more parts into it.

Yes,

Yes,

Yes.

In a way,

You're distributing the action throughout yourself.

Yeah.

And noticing your own,

You could call it parts,

You could call it regions of yourself.

I like the word region because it's less part.

It's more something that's part of the overall space.

But I like also the idea that in doing this,

You're noticing the resources that are there for doing part of the work,

Contributing.

Yeah.

And that's a lot of what the method does that I find quite beautiful,

Quite satisfying,

Is contacting the whole global system and noticing what region wants to contribute some sort of resource into organizing action,

Organizing perception.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

I can see the reluctance you have to using the word part because in a way,

The normal,

The default mode is a part does something,

And this is more involved,

More of you.

It's the whole field of yourself,

Whatever that might be.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yes.

That includes the sense of space as well as solidity.

You mentioned at one point,

Wow,

I feel like my ribs,

My torso,

There's kind of more space at this point.

Yeah.

And that sense of space for us as human beings is quite precious in a way since we live in a time period in history where people feel quite compressed and don't have enough space.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

So,

Very,

Very happy with that experience.

Thank you.

Oh,

Good.

I'm glad.