Do Less
How the Feldenkrais Method is teaching me to create with less effort, tension, and stress.
I watch her through the screen, lying still, face down, on the floor of her room on the other side of the ocean. All I can see is the rise and fall of her breathing, but I know there is a whole world of activity going on in her body right now. According to the instructions I’m giving her over Zoom, she is working on bringing awareness to areas of her body that she isn’t usually aware of. She is tasked with imagining a heavy ball rolling up the back of her leg from the heel to the knee and back again. It is a short distance the ball must travel, but it requires focus to clearly imagine its journey.
This strange activity is part of a Feldenkrais lesson, a movement practice that optimises the organisation of the body for ease of movement. Every Feldenkrais lesson I’ve been in I have been instructed to do less, or variations on that theme. “Can you make it easier?” “Can you go slower?” “Can you use less effort?” “Can you stop before the end of your range?” As someone who’s been encouraged to strive to do more all my life, I find the practice of Feldenkrais utterly confounding. It intrigues me so much that I’ve started a four-year training programme to learn how to be an instructor of doing less.
