When Feldenkrais practitioners say, “Learn to Learn” they are reminding us that, every instant of our lives we are offered the possibility of choice, choice in action, in intention, in feeling, in thought, even in our values. Are you a machine that is programmed to do the same thing with the same input, or are you a thinking, feeling, living person who can make choices. That doesn’t mean we suggest you always choose to do something different.
When faced by a choice, do you agonize? Or can you feel within yourself a real basis for your life, and it is through that sense of your true self that you are able to spontaneously make the right choice, right for you, right for that instant.
The FELDENKRAIS METHOD® of Somatic Education helps you learn at a deep level your true self so that choice becomes easier, more natural.
Many of the articles in this series will give you movement sequences that inform your choice. They will be brief, more like tastes than the full meals of AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT® lessons, or FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION® lessons. So, enjoy!
Improving Through Rolling
Maybe you have plans to improve or fix yourself – but do you know that you already have innate intelligence for improving? Watch a baby learn to roll, you’ll see —curiosity, play, and an effortless kind of intelligence at work.
Rolling is one of the first ways we learn to move in the world. It teaches how the eyes, head, spine, ribs, and pelvis cooperate, how momentum replaces effort, and how the floor becomes an ally rather than an obstacle.
Here is Baby Liv, offering a beautiful reminder of how organic and highly individual rolling really is—guided by curiosity, timing, and relationship to the ground rather than instruction:
That same spirit shows up in our Awareness Through Movement™ classes. Rolling lessons often bring laughter, surprise, and those small “oh!” moments when movement becomes easier than expected. We explore, pause, and try things differently. In the process, people often find more ease in turning, getting up and down, balancing, and breathing. It’s a gentle and enjoyable way to begin the year—less about resolutions, more about rediscovering how well we’re already designed to move.
If you’re curious to see how this looks in practice, here are two short glimpses from very different ends of the spectrum.
Here is an excerpt from a past class where we were practicing rolling together. You’ll get a sense of the atmosphere, the pacing, and the moments of discovery and enjoyment that often emerge:
Free Your Breath For Easy Sleep
Now into my seventh decade, I am finding that I wake up during the night because my breathing is obstructed. That is, one or both of my nasal passages are blocked and I struggle to breathe. When the nasal passages are blocked, the body will naturally find an alternate air pathway via the mouth. Consequently, there is an associated increase in snoring or other heavy breathing. Apart from disturbing my wife, this also leads to a variety of consequences, not the least of which is a dry or even sore throat. My system is actually trying to expel carbon dioxide, but is blocked in full or partially, and so it wakes me up in order to deal with the problem at a conscious (groggy) level. If this has happened to you, you probably recall the sense of confusion when you have woken up from this. At the same time as my system is adjusting the breathing to be through the mouth, the system may also be trying to find an optimal position for the rest of me… and that also leads to additional discomfort.
The best solution I have found has to do with understanding the rhythm of breathing, which is clearly and simply outlined in the best selling book, Breath by James Nestor.
The simplest solution would be to effectively breathe out through the nose.
But the nose is blocked, and so we appear to have a problem. Yet, if I persevere, the breathing begins to ease within a minute or two. Here’s what I do:
- First, select your position – would you be more comfortable sitting upright, or lying on your back, or on your side (and which side?)
- Select the nostril that is easier to breathe through. You will continue to use it.
- With your thumb of the hand on the less easy-to-breathe side, close the nostril that is not responding. I find it is best to cover the entrance of the nostril, not squeeze the nose.
- If breathing is difficult through either nostril, then, of course, breathe in through the mouth.
- Keeping your mouth closed, breath out slowly but effectively. Count how many seconds that could be.
- Breathe in, but a shorter time. (For example, if you breathe out 6 seconds, try breathing in 4 seconds).
- Reduce any sound of breathing. This makes a big difference.
Repeat - After a few minutes, you will find that your breathing through this passageway has improved substantially.
- Now take a big breath in, hold it, and proceed to the other nostril.
- Holding the nostril of the easy-breath side closed, breathe out to the best that you can. Not a lot comes out initially. That’s important. Count how many seconds…
Remember, you already have a lot of breath stored in your lungs.
- And then breathe in with minimal struggle or effort, even if it is a small amount.
- And breathe out again. Repeat this cycle, always reducing any struggle or effort; keeping any breathing sounds to a minimum. Soon you will discover both parts of the cycle become more free.
- Do it a few more times and you will realize how sleeping you are, and before you know it, you will drift off into a much more pleasant sleep.
Better Meetings with Feldenkrais® Principles
Applying Principles of the Feldenkrais Method® to meetings can enhance productivity, communication, and overall well-being. Here are some principles that are particularly beneficial for meetings:
- Meet Participants Where They Are: Recognize the different perspectives, backgrounds, and current states of mind of each participant. Tailor the meeting’s pace and content to accommodate these differences, fostering a more inclusive and effective discussion.
- Take the right amount of time: Take time to fully explore topics and ideas without rushing. This also allows each participant to participate, feeling included. This principle allows for deeper understanding and more thoughtful contributions, leading to more thorough and well-considered outcomes.
- Attend to relevant information. Bring the attention back to key points and avoid overloading the meeting with too many topics or tasks. Prioritizing quality over quantity can lead to more meaningful and actionable discussions.
- Don’t Rush: Avoid the tendency to make quick decisions or rush through many items.
- Be Expansive. Pause to sense the larger picture.
- Pause and Breathe. Remind participants they can pause at any time and breathe. Have a “pause break” during the meeting. Participants will settle themselves and be more attentive to the upcoming topics and discussion.
- Listen More: Encourage active listening, where participants genuinely hear and consider each other’s ideas. This can lead to more collaborative and innovative solutions, as well as a greater sense of community and respect.
- Introduce Novelty and Variety: Incorporate new ideas, formats, or activities to keep the meeting engaging and stimulate creative thinking. Changing up the routine can prevent stagnation and maintain high energy levels.
- Inclusive Attention:
- Practice Inclusiveness. Ensure that all voices are heard and valued. Creating an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute can enhance the richness of the discussion and lead to more comprehensive outcomes.
- Attend to the Quality of Movement and Self-Direction: Encourage participants to be mindful of their own comfort and well-being during the meeting. Simple practices such as adjusting seating positions or taking breaks can improve focus and overall participation.
- Decrease Effort to Increase Ability to Discriminate Finer Sensory Changes: Promote a relaxed and open atmosphere where participants don’t feel pressured to perform or compete. This can lead to more genuine interactions and insights.
- Connection of Head and Pelvis: Head Guides and Pelvis Drives: In the context of meetings, this principle can be metaphorically interpreted as aligning strategic thinking (head) with grounded actions (pelvis). Ensure that ideas and plans discussed are both visionary and practical.
- Self-Organize: Encourage participants to self-organize their thoughts and contributions. This principle helps create a more fluid and dynamic meeting environment where everyone feels responsible for their role and input.
By incorporating these Feldenkrais Principles into meetings, you can create a more effective, engaging, and harmonious environment that promotes better communication, creativity, and collaboration.
Tone up for Your Best Sleep
Do you wake up with aches and pains, even though you slept deeply? Maybe you were too relaxed!
Can you be “too relaxed”?
Consider being extremely relaxed — all your muscles are completely relaxed, in your arms, hands, shoulders, chest, abdomen, thigh, calf, even your feet. What can you don – nothing! Even to breathe you must have some tonus for your diaphragm to contract and relax, and for your eyes to be open and to focus.
By “tonus” I mean the degree of tightness of the musculature. You can sense a localized tonus by flexing a finger. Or, if you flex the whole hand, the tonus is a little more general. Interestingly, by flexing both hands, there is a generalized tonus that begins and by releasing, a sense of relaxation (which is used by various relaxation techniques). Awareness Through Movement® lessons invite you to move in particular ways, hence requiring increased tonus, and then releasing the movement, hence reducing the tonus, producing a sense of relaxation. Thus, many people find that their general tonus is significantly decreased. And they then go to sleep.
But another aspect, that is not as well known, is that the intention of ATM® is for a person to be ready to act – as opposed to the vigilant state they might have been in, and in contrast to being so deeply relaxed so as to inhibit action. But to be ready to act implies an optimum level of tonus, not loss of tonus. This touches the surface of a whole body of understanding of the needs of the human systems sufficiently to get a glimmering of the implications for some sleep problems.
People who sleep so deeply that they lose almost complete tonus, often are awakened by aches and pains. Other people may experience acid reflux due to their digestive system slowing down. These people find that standing up, moving around alleviate these difficulties, but then they are wide awake… and maybe feel anxious about the problem returning if they fall asleep (you can see the pattern). Thus, doing ATM before sleep with the additional intention of being ready to act can help you not only fall asleep easier, but your body will learn to sleep in positions that are less likely to produce stiffness or acid reflux.
When you sleep, your mind and your body sleep, yet we often separate these two. The Feldenkrais Method brings together a congruence of the mind and body so that, as you ponder your sleep challenges, you also begin to bring together awareness of your psychological needs and the needs of your body. Through applying the principles of the Feldenkrais Method, you can begin the process of learning new ways to improve your sleep – through increasing your understanding of your sleep cycle, and doing Awareness Through Movement lessons through which you learn to reduce any anxiety and also modulate your overall muscular tonus.
Are you someone who does things because you enjoy them?
Here’s an anecdote from author and professional grump, Kurt Vonnegut:
“When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of ‘getting to know you’ questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.
“And he went wow. That’s amazing! And I said, ‘Oh no, but I’m not any good at any of them.’
“And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: ‘I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.’
“And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could ‘win’ at them.” (source unverified)
Copied from: https://medium.com/writers-blokke/a-life-lesson-from-kurt-vonnegut-of-all-people-4cbd3284c740
It’s a thoughtful anecdote. There’s a lot there to unpack.
The Path Towards Wisdom
Aging, Impulsivity, and the Path Toward Wisdom
I think being able to age gracefully is a very important talent. It is too late for me.
— Clint Eastwood
Have you ever noticed yourself blurting out sharp or negative responses in conversation—only to catch yourself later and think, “Hmm, that wasn’t fair”?
It’s something many people experience as they get older, sometimes even noticing it in friends or colleagues who weren’t like this before.
“I’d find myself cutting people off or assuming I knew where they were going.”
—David, age 62
David, a project manager in his sixties, put it this way. Elena, in her late seventies, shared a similar experience: “I was about to blurt out to my grandson, ‘That’s silly, I don’t care,’ before he’d even finished speaking.” Both recognized the same pattern—impatience, jumping to conclusions, reacting before thinking.
The Science Behind the Blurting
Psychologists Hasher and Zacks have called this the inhibitory deficit, that is, the gradual weakening of the brain’s ability to hold back a first impulse as we age. It’s a shift that can make us more likely to respond reflexively than thoughtfully.
Yet all societies have the image of the wise older person to whom we can go for support and guidance: wisdom. Researchers have investigated this opposite tendency, describing wisdom as an ability to pause, reflect, and see multiple perspectives. However, this is not as common as creeping irritability; wisdom requires cultivation over time through openness, reflection, and life’s challenges.
What Makes a Difference?
The Washington Post recently reported on large-scale intervention studies (2025) showing that modest lifestyle adjustments—like exercise, healthier diets, social interaction, and mental challenges—can improve executive function and processing speed in older adults.
These cognitive gains suggest that the “gap” between impulse and reflection isn’t fixed—it can be widened with intentional support.
“At work I felt the urge to interrupt—and then I noticed it, like a push in my chest. I waited, just a breath longer—and I gained clarity that changed how I responded.”
—David
Feldenkrais®: Practicing the Pause
The Feldenkrais Method® offers a unique way to practice this widening of the gap. By slowing down movement and drawing attention to subtle sensations, it trains the nervous system to notice the space before action.
David described it this way: “In class I learned how to stop rushing into a movement, and to feel where I was before deciding what to do. That skill carried over. Now, even in conversation, I can sense the same pause. I don’t feel trapped in my first reaction anymore—I have options.”
Elena found something similar at home: “Instead of dismissing my grandson, I softened, let him finish, then asked him to show me—sparking a beautiful connection.” Later she reflected: “Feldenkrais gave me a way to notice the tension in my chest before I spoke. Once I felt that, I could choose differently. It surprised me how natural it became, like discovering a hidden lever I didn’t know I had.”
In both stories, what had been a reflexive blurting impulse became an opportunity for connection. That’s the gift of Feldenkrais: not to suppress impulses, but to give them new channels. By cultivating presence in how you move and breathe, you cultivate presence in how you listen and respond. Over time, the gap between impulse and action becomes less of a struggle and more of a doorway—into curiosity, flexibility, and, at times, the clarity we often associate with wisdom.
Keep Exploring
If this resonates, you may enjoy some of my other writings on aging, movement, and awareness. Articles include:
For a more hands-on experience, you can also explore my recorded courses and online programs, where I guide you through lessons designed to bring more ease and clarity into everyday life: see recorded class sets here.
References
Hasher, L., & Zacks, R. T. Working memory, comprehension, and aging: A review and a new view.
Baltes, P. B., & Staudinger, U. M. Wisdom: A metaheuristic to orchestrate mind and virtue toward excellence.
Ardelt, M. Empirical assessment of a three-dimensional wisdom scale.
New JAMA study: lifestyle changes improve brain function in older adults (2025). JAMA via Washington Post (read here)