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"Many of us have been raised with the dictum that life is about serious obligations, and that we must accept the toll, as if our moral honesty depends upon our readiness to do our utmost - 'utmost' meaning more power, more involvement, more in quantity. We weren't raised to value our utmost in terms of quality, of sensitivity, of loyalty to our inner selves. It is only when we mobilise ourselves to do something energetically that we believe we have done our share; we do not even take notice of the penalty we pay with our body. To be patient and attentive in the graceful and harmonious way does not seem legitimate to us, as if sensitivity were egocentric, and desire for refinement in movement a luxury.
Perhaps we need to re-define the meaning of achievement and begin to evaluate our performance not only quantitatively, in terms of distance, but also in terms of our inner experience, assessed by our own feelings. Once we come to understand that achievement that is going against the inner sensations of our organism is actually false, we can begin a process of healing." -Ruthy Alon, from Mindful Spontaneity, Moving in Tune with Nature: Lessons in the Feldenkrais Method
I think this book is changing my life, right now.
I just did my first headstand. Yes, it was against the wall, with a bolster (the bolster was for psychological, not physical support), and I didn't stay up very long, but I freaking got up there myself and came down and did it again and holy crap I was so excited I jumped up and down and phoned my parents.
Ruthy Alon really emphasizes the effect your emotions have on your muscles. This is something I sort of "knew" all along, but didn't really know. I feel like I just had some kind of epiphany.
"After all this, if your back hurts, you may still think that all you need now is to know how to properly align one vertebra on top of the other. You don't realize that actually it is the spine of your personality that became injured..." -Ruthy Alon
Perhaps we need to re-define the meaning of achievement and begin to evaluate our performance not only quantitatively, in terms of distance, but also in terms of our inner experience, assessed by our own feelings. Once we come to understand that achievement that is going against the inner sensations of our organism is actually false, we can begin a process of healing." -Ruthy Alon, from Mindful Spontaneity, Moving in Tune with Nature: Lessons in the Feldenkrais Method
I think this book is changing my life, right now.
I just did my first headstand. Yes, it was against the wall, with a bolster (the bolster was for psychological, not physical support), and I didn't stay up very long, but I freaking got up there myself and came down and did it again and holy crap I was so excited I jumped up and down and phoned my parents.
Ruthy Alon really emphasizes the effect your emotions have on your muscles. This is something I sort of "knew" all along, but didn't really know. I feel like I just had some kind of epiphany.
"After all this, if your back hurts, you may still think that all you need now is to know how to properly align one vertebra on top of the other. You don't realize that actually it is the spine of your personality that became injured..." -Ruthy Alon