November 22
Al Wadleigh on the Brain Shaman Podcast
Article Summary
In this Brain Shaman podcast conversation, host Michael Waite and Al Wadleigh explore how Feldenkrais® lessons use movement, attention, variation, rest, and imagination as conditions for learning. Their discussion ranges from developmental movement and sensory self-image to skeletal support, the organization of the eyes, and Al’s personal work with his voice. The episode concludes with a seated Awareness Through Movement® lesson involving the eyes, head, shoulders, and imagined movement.
About This Conversation
Michael Waite discovered the Feldenkrais for Life podcast and invited Donna Ray and me to appear on Brain Shaman. Donna was not available, so I joined Michael for a wide-ranging solo conversation about learning, attention, movement, and the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education.
Michael’s curiosity gives the exchange its shape. He brings his own experiences and hypotheses into the discussion, while I describe how I understand and teach the Method. Scientific, medical, and therapeutic observations in the transcript remain attributed to the speaker who made them; their appearance in the conversation should not be read as independent editorial verification.
A Note from Michael After the Interview
“I really enjoyed our conversation too. It deeply changed the way I perceive and think.” —Michael Waite, in a later email
Listen to the Interview
Program: Brain Shaman
Host: Michael Waite
Guest: Al Wadleigh, GCFP
Format: Podcast interview with guided movement experience
Platform: Buzzsprout
Original source: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2067421/episodes/15053139
Publication date: May 29, 2025
Runtime: 1:32:11
Permission: Michael Waite granted written permission to edit and use the interview and transcript.
What We Discuss
- Exploratory learning and the developmental movements of infancy and childhood
- Awareness, the sensory self-image, and how attention connects movement across the whole person
- Why posture is better understood as adaptable organization than as a single correct position
- Awareness Through Movement lessons and hands-on Functional Integration® lessons
- Skeletal support, muscular effort, and the experience of easier movement
- Slowness, rest, novelty, mistakes, and imagination as elements of a learning process
- The relationship between eye movements, turning, and the organization of the neck and back
- Al’s long-term exploration of speech, hearing, breath, articulation, and voice
- A guided seated lesson using the eyes, head, arm, turning, and imagined movement
Before You Try the Guided Lesson
The guided practice can be followed through audio alone. Use a stable chair, sit where your feet can rest on the floor, and arrange enough space to extend one arm without contacting a microphone, desk, or nearby object. Do not practice while driving or while doing anything that requires your full attention.
Move within a comfortable range, use less effort than you think you need, and rest whenever your arm, shoulder, eyes, or attention becomes tired. The instructions are preserved in their original sequence in the edited transcript below.
Related Resources
AchievingExcellence: https://achievingexcellence.com/
Feldenkrais for Life podcast: https://feldenkraisforlife.com/
Donna Ray: https://donnaray.com/
Edited Transcript
Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for speaker identification, paragraphing, punctuation, capitalization, and unmistakable recognition errors. Meaningful repetition, conversational language, personal experience, speculation, humor, and the complete guided-practice sequence have been retained. Bracketed passages require comparison with the audio; no timestamps have been invented.
Opening
Michael Waite: From the snow-capped peaks of Colorado, Al Wadleigh is here with us today to teach us how to enhance our learning, memory, awareness, and potential through Feldenkrais. This is a true-blue Feldenkrais party pack. We zoom in, zoom out, fall down, spin around all along the way, learning how to redirect our attention, reawaken our skeleton, rewire our nervous system, and return to that childlike state of learning and aliveness.
Michael Waite: And stick around until the end. We’ve got a sweet little superpower-up lesson for you. Move them bones. Open up them ears for Mr. Al Wadleigh.
Learning, Curiosity, and Childhood Development
Michael Waite: Today, let’s talk about Feldenkrais and how we can use it as a kind of tool or window into neuroplasticity into learning. For me, I feel like it’s a, a very special way to, rare way to return to almost childlike state where my awareness is wide open, and I feel deeply connected and immersed and emotionally connected, physically connected to myself, to the world, um, possibilities are opened up. it really does feel like a weird kind of awakening, a return to a childlike state where I’m not stuck in my habits. I’m not stuck in my thoughts, all the different patterns, thoughts and movements and personality.
Michael Waite: I am still me, but it’s almost like little pause and like. Even if only for a couple minutes and a window opens up for me to like kind of change, that’s the way it feels for me. That’s sort of my perception of it. how would you, um, explain Feldenkrais and how it changes our, our consciousness changes our perception.
Michael Waite: I’m describing that sort of this return to this childlike state of curiosity and possibility and freedom or something. That’s my experience. What’s your experience?
Al Wadleigh: I like what you’re saying there. Yeah, there’s a lot of relevance to what you’re saying. So tapping into that developmental type of learning. That’s what we do in these Awareness Through Movement lessons, and Feldenkrais, he watched babies and children, in their developmental movements.
Al Wadleigh: And he developed some of these lessons based on early developmental design, early developmental movements that we do, that’s common to almost all humans. And so these lessons, these early developmental lessons we go through. And it’s like we’re re-patterning, we’re re-learning, and re-establishing more clearly those early learnings, upon which everything else that has become us has been developed, learned, and built. And so, yeah, when you’re talking about going into this childlike state, I think you’re tapping into that, that quality of learning like we did when we were children, which is that lightfulness, that lightness, you’re on the floor, you’re rolling around, it’s not goal oriented learning.
Al Wadleigh: It’s just like exploration learning. So my baby’s on the floor. It’s just learning how to crawl or trying to reach for something, trying to find it. He’s just playing around.
Al Wadleigh: He’s just exploring. He’s trying this, he’s trying that. You know it’s pretty unstructured. You know, Feldenkrais lessons are more structured.
Al Wadleigh: We take that developmental learning and we turn it into more of a structured strategy, structured pattern, which we call a lesson, so that we can have that kind of experience of learning. So I think when you talk about that, I think you’re really tapping into something that’s really fundamental to the lessons. And that’s, you know, babies are learning, children are learning, just laying down, just, you know, all kinds of new neural pathways. And as adults, that’s process slowed down a lot, right?
Al Wadleigh: When babies, brain is just learning, you know, all kinds of new cells and connections are being made. And then we get into adult. We tap into adult neuroplasticity, which we can still, you know, we still learn and develop. It’s a little bit slower process.
Al Wadleigh: We can start to reinvigorate old neural pathways, we can refine habits in ways that make them better, and we can learn new things, learn new habits, new ways of organizing ourselves. So when you talk about that, you think you’re really spot on with that. So it’s kind of tapping into that developmental learning style, which is a really beautiful thing. And one of the brilliant things about what Dr. Feldenkrais did.
Al Wadleigh: He understood this. And he made it accessible to all of us to be able to do that.
Michael Waite: That’s really interesting because we hear that, um, we learn more easily, much more easily, almost passively as children. There’s all these things like, oh, you can learn languages when you’re at this age or that, or you can develop your habits when you’re in this sort of window of time, but that seems like what you’re saying is, with Feldenkrais, we can sort of return to such a plastic state. And maybe maybe that’s what’s going on is maybe learning itself requires us to be in such a state, such a childlike, however you want to call it, nervous system. And so maybe when we learn as adults, we have to, we have to do that perhaps.
Michael Waite: That might be the, and there might be other ways like repetition or something, but this might be a key into adults, neuroplasticity.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, yeah. So repetition is part of it. We never quite get back in the same state, you know, as a baby is in learning, because our brain has changed as an adult. But we can certainly tap into that potential for learning, and repetition is part of that.
Al Wadleigh: Exploration. It’s part of it. Nondirected goal learning. And being curious, having a sense of curiosity, and being willing to explore different ways of doing things, different variations.
Al Wadleigh: So not trying to find the correct way to do things. So if you’re learning to roll up from lying on your back into sitting. There’s many ways to do that. And we’re not going to teach you the correct way to do it.
Al Wadleigh: You’re going to learn your way of doing it through your, how your personal organization, your personal history has shaped your habits and how you perceive the world, how you move. And so we’re going to work through that through your habits and teach you this beautiful way of rolling up from sitting, from lying to sitting. And the curious thing about that is the more you watch a group of people. So I’ve got a group of 20 people in a room.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, and I’m teaching a class, people had a role from laying on their back up to sitting. And everybody’s going to start out doing it in different ways. I’ll have a different interpretation to the instructions. They have a different interpretation of how they’re going to organize themselves to do this.
Al Wadleigh: And by the end of the lesson. Everybody’s more harmonious. They’re doing it more in the same way. Because the lessons help us shed away our learnings that are superfluous that don’t serve us in our most human functioning.
Al Wadleigh: So like all the stuff we learn, you know, being good girls and good boys, you go to school, learn to sit still, we learn to constrain ourselves, learn to conform ourselves to societal norms, and to not stand out, to put on a mask, as Feldenkrais would say, and fit in. And so all these things are things that inhibit us from being spontaneous and being truly who we are through our movement. These lessons help shed away that stuff and come back to most fundamental human aspect of movement. So we can just have that beautiful, graceful transition from lying on the back to rolling up into a sitting position or coming from a sitting position up to a standing position with ease.
Al Wadleigh: And everybody in the group becomes more like each other in that way because we come more to that human quality that is shared amongst us all. It’s a really beautiful aspect of the work.
Michael Waite: Yeah, and these lessons aren’t telling you, sit in this way, sit up in this way, it’s quite mysterious in a way, because it, it reawakens like within you, this, this lesson comes from within you or something. It’s really hard to even talk about. How is it that without explicitly telling people, um, move this way, naturally, all their bodies, um, simultaneously over time start actually producing the same kind of functional movements?
Al Wadleigh: Yeah. Well, it’s, that’s a good point. So, In Feldenkrais, Feldenkrais was famous for saying, do not correct, or correcting is incorrect. If we correct somebody and say, you know, do it this specific way, then they add effort to it.
Al Wadleigh: They put it, they’re putting conscious intention into it, making it a conscious, voluntary action. And they’re trying to do something correct and meet some kind of external criteria. Instead of feeling what makes sense to them. And going for ways of doing it, a variety of ways of doing something.
Al Wadleigh: They make themselves rigid instead. They’re trying to do something correct. Like, for example posture, right? Everyone wants to have good posture.
Al Wadleigh: So if I tell you to sit up, sit up straight, you know, pull your shoulders back, pull your head back, lift your chest, and pull your shoulders back, then you go sit up straight. And then you do that, you can do that with your voluntary muscles, your voluntary intention for a while. But it doesn’t become second nature to you. Because your muscular habits are preoccupied in doing something else.
Al Wadleigh: As soon as you start, Thinking about your laundry list or you’re sort of getting to what I’m saying, you start thinking about what I’m saying, then you start to, you know, roll the shoulders forward again, you’re to move down towards your chest, and your breathing changes again, and you lose that correct posture. I’m using finger quotes, correct posture, because it’s not correct. It’s an incorrect posture. Because they’re using it, trying to do it with voluntary action.
Al Wadleigh: And so Feldenkrais lessons help us reap pattern, reprogram our unconscious movement habits. So that when we get it, our second nature changes. So we don’t have to remind ourselves to sit up straight. We want to sit up straight.
Al Wadleigh: You can just, you just do it. And that’s not to say that, that’s the correct way of sitting. I don’t want to give that idea because in many ways, many ways to sit that are perfectly fine. You’re watching television, you know, want to sit up all tall and proper.
Al Wadleigh: That’s ridiculous. Now, if you’re studying. You know, you don’t, you’re not going to sit up telling proper. That’s good for, like, joke is good for trying out for a part in, like, you know, Downton Abbey or some kind of English period, you know, piece.
Al Wadleigh: So I want to be able to have many ways of saying. I, softing is appropriate in certain situations. You know? And sitting in a twisted position is appropriate in certain positions.
Al Wadleigh: Like if you’re holding a child is different from, you know, um, reading a book or, you know, watching a movie or looking at the stars or holding your lover. So eating a meal, right? So all these different, Different contexts, ask us to have a different quality of posture. And it’s not just the posture, it’s the movement within that context.
Al Wadleigh: Because we’re not, posture gives an idea that it’s rigid, it’s static, and we’re not like that. We’re not rigid static beings. We’re moving. We’re constantly moving all the time.
Al Wadleigh: We have different organizations. These postures are different organizations in different contexts that allow us to do, feel, think, and perceive the world in different ways that are appropriate to that context. You know what I mean?
Awareness and the Sensory Self-Image
Michael Waite: Yeah. I’m still trying to dig into this mystery because. It seems like we normally, maybe we’ve been miseducated. We normally think of habit change and by habit, I mean, like habits of thought, habits of um, self-perception, self-image, um, movement, all the all the habits of the wider self.
Michael Waite: This requires a kind of conscious effort or control or at least conscious awareness. But maybe I’m getting this wrong, but you’re saying the sort of unconscious side of us can sort of bring forward these new movements. How, how much is awareness or conscious awareness of, um, of the, all this required.
Al Wadleigh: Awareness is huge. That’s why Phil and Chris call it awareness through movement. So being aware of ourselves is a very important part of it. And learning to sense ourselves and sense ourselves accurately, so we know where all of our parts are, how they move in relationship to each other, where they are in space.
Al Wadleigh: And we have a more accurate self-image. And that self-image is one that is in the motor cortex. And in the sensory motor cortex. So, Those images are not exactly like what you look like.
Al Wadleigh: They’re distorted based on use and distorted based on number of nerve endings that are in different parts of ourselves. So like your lips and tongue are huge. Your dominant hand and thumb are large. The other hand is huge.
Al Wadleigh: Your genitals are large. Your legs are small and spindly. Your torsos, small and spindly. So that’s kind of a general, you know, image, but we can fill that out.
Al Wadleigh: And sometimes there’s parts of people that are missing completely from the self-image. Maybe the pelvis is missing because of, you know, trauma from youth. I’ve worked with a woman, um, she’d fallen off her horse and broke her pelvis. And she literally did not feel her pelvis from the waist down to her thighs, because she had so much, you know, pain and surgeries and all this stuff.
Al Wadleigh: By the time she got to me and she didn’t feel it was missing completely from her self-image. So he kind of hold herself along with her arms and pushed herself with her legs. You know, mobilization was not coming from her pelvis. And over a course of working with her for several months, brought yourself self image, the pelvis back into her self image.
Al Wadleigh: And started to she mobilize herself from the pelvis. And I remember her delight and excitement as it started to become a part of herself again. So these lessons help us to fill out, so we really sense who we are, where we are in space, how we’re moving, and sense ourselves fully and completely. And it’s a marvelous thing to start to sense yourself.
Al Wadleigh: It just lights up your mind, it lights up your brain. You start to feel yourself accurately, and that’s a part of every Feldenkrais lesson, just paying attention to what you’re doing. So you may be doing, you’re doing a movement, say like you’re laying on your side, and you’re taking your arm back, and you pay attention to what’s happening in the shoulder blade. What’s happening in the ribs.
Al Wadleigh: What’s happening with the other shoulder? So all these things, you start to move your attention around to and find out what you’re doing when you’re doing something else. And that starts to spread the action throughout yourself. So become, you’re moving more as a whole human being.
Al Wadleigh: More of yourself gets more involved involved in it. We tend to part ourselves out. And think we’re just moving apart. I’m just lifting my arm, but there’s so much more to it than that.
Michael Waite: Yeah, so it kind of connects the, connects the pieces together again, puts Humpty Dumpty back together again in a way. So to speak.
Al Wadleigh: And more than that, not just the body, but everything else that we are. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, your nervous system, your brain, where you’re in space, that all affects how you feel, you’re confident, your self-perception, how other people perceive you. How easily you move, how comfortable you are, and you’re doing what you’re doing, so you can do what you want to do in life, and you can do it with ease, and you can do it with comfort.
Al Wadleigh: You can even be powerful in your movement, but with little effort.
Awareness Through Movement* and *Functional Integration
Michael Waite: And these lessons seem to largely be voice guided, guided by Feldenkrais himself or people like you. but what the voice is sort of directing us toward is, um, movement, it seems like. Maybe I’m an amateur. But I mean, it is called awareness through movement.
Michael Waite: So clearly movement is kind of seems to be the big piece. Is it, is it, is movement all it is or what, what, what, what is sort of the, um, I don’t know, ingredients to all of this.
Al Wadleigh: It’s movement. It’s awareness. It’s creating potent states for learning. It’s being able to put yourself in a place where you’re laying down and reinvigorating and reinforcing your neural pathways.
Al Wadleigh: And it’s really about in the big picture, being able to do what you want to do in your life and do it well, do it comfortably, and being able to really fulfill what your desires are in life, whatever they are. And that can vary from person to person greatly, of course, from a star athlete to a mom or grandmother. so, yeah, there is another aspect of the work, which is Functional Integration. That’s hands on work, in which I work with somebody there laying on my Feldenkrais table, if you can see it back there or not.
Al Wadleigh: That’s my Feldenkrais table.
Michael Waite: Oh, yeah.
Al Wadleigh: And so it’s a low, wide table. My students lay on the table and then I use my hands to guide them. And so when I’m guiding them with my hands, I can feel what their habits are. And there’s a theme to the lesson that I’m working with.
Al Wadleigh: And so I can work with them to teach them this concept and the lesson. So I feel what their habits are. I move them, I interact with their habits, I help modify their habits so they can move more easily and more comfortably.
Skeletal Support and Muscular Effort
Al Wadleigh: And a lot of the work is very skeletal. I guess it’s another key aspect of the work. Very interested in sensing and moving the skeleton. So, the skeleton is your primary structure that holds you up, right?
Al Wadleigh: It gives you this strength. That’s your true core strength is your skeleton. The muscles ideally are in service of the skeleton. They’re there to move the skeleton.
Al Wadleigh: If you don’t, feel your skeleton. Then your muscle is going to do the work of the skeleton. I mean, they’re going to put a lot more work, a lot more effort into your action than is needed. And that uses a lot of extra energy, creates a lot of more stiffness and tension and discomfort.
Al Wadleigh: So, we become very focused on the skeleton. A lot of skeletal awareness we develop through these, um, the awareness and women lessons, the guided lessons, and the hands-on lessons, Functional Integration. It took them very skeleton awareness. So people are always commenting at the end of a class or a private lesson, just how they clearly they feel their skeleton.
Al Wadleigh: When you feel your skeleton, your skeleton will hold you up with minimal muscular effort. And then the rest of your muscular effort is there to move you in pleasant and easy ways. You become free from the burdens of having to work against yourself. It’s our habits that we develop over time, say, you know, if somebody develops patterns of stress, anxiety, which is typically accompanied with the shortening of the muscles in the front, the rounding of the shoulders, tightening of the abdomen, hip joints, other parts of yourself, the jaw, all these parts are, they become habitually tightened and constrained, which means muscles in the back have to work harder.
Al Wadleigh: So you know you’ve got co-contractions and muscle groups. And so now the muscles are doing the work of trying to hold you up. They’re fighting against each other. And if we alleviate that, if you’re alleviated from that in these lessons, you come back to sensing your skeleton.
Al Wadleigh: Then you can let go of those patterns, and then the muscles can just easily and comfortably move your skeleton through whatever you want to do, whether it’s something athletic or, you know, your grandmother and grandfather wants to go out and garden or play with the grandkids. Or you go for a walk or whatever you want to do. You just have you have more ability to do those things. Which is a beautiful thing.
Michael Waite: It seems like just by redirecting our attention to the fact that we have a skeleton and that it’s doing all this stuff, that alone seems to do like 80% of it for me. Like, as you were talking, I just like, my skeleton woke back up and my tension went away from my muscles, to my skeleton, and I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to do, or, you know, make your skeleton do this or that. It seems like it’s just kind of already doing it. And the muscles sort of relax.
Michael Waite: just by that sort of quick shift and awareness of, of, of remembering that you have a skeleton and it’s there for a reason, seems to be doing like, I don’t know, feels like 80% of it, but, but you know more than me.
Al Wadleigh: Very good. Smart skeleton you got there, Michael. Skeletor.
How Feldenkrais Lessons Differ from Conventional Exercise
Michael Waite: and these movement exercises with Feldenkrais are quite different from the normal um, movement lessons we have in ordinary life, um, say, like at the gym, the teaching you how to how to lift the weights or some dance lesson. You got to move this way or that. It’s almost like the opposite of that, where, yeah, can you explain how these movement lessons differ from these normal exercise based things in ordinary life? I guess you’ve already touched on it.
Michael Waite: It’s not about getting it correct. It’s about, you know, exploring, but maybe you can talk a little bit more about that.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, yeah, let’s talk about that. So a lot of exercise. So we can talk about like, you know, people exercise people doing a gym or yoga, stretching, all kinds of things like that. There’s a, very different intention to those, those things that people do.
Al Wadleigh: Oftentimes they are wanting to, well, go back to correct something. They want to stretch their muscles. They want to get stronger. they went to prove their balance or something like that.
Al Wadleigh: And so they do these kinds of strengthening and stretching exercises. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m not against that at all. but it’s just a very different class of experience than a Feldenkrais lesson.
Al Wadleigh: And it’s a very conscious oriented activity as well. So you’re very focused on, you know, you’re in the gym, you’re doing curls very focused on your biceps or doing deadlifts. You know, you’re very focused on different other part of yourself, you’re doing squats. If you’re stretching, you know, you want to create a different sensation and stretch the muscles of your legs or arms, whatever, for some kind of outcome.
Al Wadleigh: And, So this is very different way of working, because we’re not going to stretch and Feldenkrais lessons. We’re not going to build strength like we do in terms of lifting weights. We do improve the length of our muscles. We create length in our muscles, but not by stretching them. Where you do it through the wisdom of the nervous system in your brain.
Al Wadleigh: Which is to give the message of a tight muscle to shorten and lengthen and shorten and lengthen and shorten and lengthen, the adaptation of that is that the muscle begins to lengthen and let go. So if you have the tight muscle. So say you’re laying on my table, giving a lesson, and your ribs are shorter on one side, mutually contracted. And I’m not going to try and stretch that out.
Al Wadleigh: I’m actually going to go with it. I’m going to bring those ribs together slowly and gently. And then hold them there and I’m going to take over the work, then I’m going to let them come apart. And I’ll do it again.
Al Wadleigh: I do it a few times, so that you have that experience of somebody else taking over that work for you, so you can let it go. Do it anymore. And do that from a different number of ways, maybe from the legs, from the arm. So you keep getting a different message that these parts can shorten and lengthen and shorten and lengthen. And the ideal state is a nice balanced state where the muscles are neither contracted or overly lengthened, so that they’re in a potent state of action.
Al Wadleigh: They’re ready to do something. And same thing happens in the Awareness Through Movement, the verbally guided lessons. So you go into an experience through a guided lesson and you have that experience of of alleviating of lengthening your muscles by leaving alleviating yourself of the tightness of the muscle, but not by stretching by moving, create different movements that interrupt and change that habit, that change that pattern. So then the muscles lengthen.
Al Wadleigh: So you finish a Feldenkrais lesson, you feel tall, you feel lengthened. You’ll lengthen down, you feel good, the tensions are gone. It’s a beautiful thing. And um, very different from those other models.
Al Wadleigh: They’re different. Does that make sense?
Narrow and Wide Attention
Michael Waite: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Feldenkrais does actually seem to embrace this focus, almost extreme focus, almost more than a squat or a bicep curl or something, where you’re really honing in on this little tiny part of yourself, but what differs is, well, yeah, it’s almost even more laser focused, but then it sort of zooms out. It’s like this weird, um, interplay of zooming in and zooming out, focusing and relaxing and looking at the whole, looking at the par, looking at the whole, and it’s like weird little, um, balancing act or like it’s a 2 instrument or 12 instrument orchestra, and you’re kind of shifting focus, more flexibly. That’s how it feels.
Michael Waite: It’s not just a focus exercise. It a focus exercise and a opening widening exercise. And I guess the 2 sort of blend together in a weird way that wakes you up or changes your habits. How would you describe that whole, that whole focus and unfocusing aspects of things?
Al Wadleigh: Absolutely. Somewhere in one of those books, I think it’s awareness to movement. Dr. Feldenkrais talks about how we start with very narrow scope. We start with one part and then we gradually expand out, include more and more parts, till it becomes a whole complete action.
Al Wadleigh: So I think you’re horning in on that, it was really spot on, and that, that is a key aspect of the work. And within that expansion of awareness, law and direct attention to other small areas. So there is that attention moving from the narrow focus to the larger focus, how are things connected, and at another element, narrow focus, and then again span the awareness, taking the whole self again. So these sort of things start to combine.
Al Wadleigh: And yeah, it’s a very cool part of the work. And being able to use your attention like that is really important. And again, you’re bringing awareness to different parts of yourself, you’re starting to build these linkages. How are things things related in this movement, this functioning that we’re exploring.
Al Wadleigh: So very good, good, new, intuitive, intuitive into that. Very good.
Attention, Rest, and Neuroplasticity
Michael Waite: Yeah, and it’s actually very interesting because if you look at totally separate non-Feldenkrais, um, work on how to increase adult neuroplasticity, um, learning, et cetera. there seems to be sort of 2 parts of the puzzle first. You need to increase your focus and attention, alertness, um, and the neurochemical side of it would be like, um, epinephrine, and um, acetylcholine and dopamine. So um, you would sort of narrow your focus.
Michael Waite: And then you would relax it in stage 2 with sleep, for some kind of deep rest or little other kind of unfocused exercise like wandering through a forest or, you know, walking around or something, relaxing. then it seems like, actually, these, these 2 pieces actually, um, are happening in, in Feldenkrais as well, you’re doing that sort of, narrowed focus, um, visually with your eyes, um, but almost your eyes are closed, so it’s, um, I guess your inner eye is sort of, this visualization side of you is like, um, lasering in. And I think that is, that is maybe increasing these, um, these focus based, um, attention-based neurochemicals, like acetylcholine and neuropinephrine and dopamine. But we don’t need to get into that side of things.
Michael Waite: But that’s another language for it. But then you’re opening up the lens. Your eyes are kind of coming off to the side of your head or getting more panoramic and that’s relaxing things. Yeah, and then also, actually, after the lesson or within a lesson, there actually are pauses.
Michael Waite: So maybe that’s, um, doing some of that processing of what I’m calling a sort of stage 2 of learning of, they’re relaxing and unfocused. So I’m kind of, um, throwing spaghetti all over the wall here, but yeah, um, comment on that.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, yeah, cool. yeah. So, So Norman Doidge, you familiar with him as the author of Norman Doidge? You read any of his books on neuroplasticity?
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, yeah, the brain that changes itself or something like that. Yeah. Brady changes itself and the brain’s way of healing. So in brain’s wave of healing.
Al Wadleigh: He introduces Dr. Feldenkrais. Beautiful chapter in there. Dr. Feldenkrais, how he developed his work. And he calls Dr. Feldenkrais, one of the first neuroplasticians. In Feldenkrais, really understood that we are changing the brain with this work.
Al Wadleigh: That it is creating potent states and learning. Neuroplasticity, that wasn’t a catchphrase, you know, back in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, wasn’t until the 2000s that came online. But yeah, Feldenkrais was tapping into that, and these lessons tap into that. And they meet in a lot of the similar criteria that has been laid out.
Al Wadleigh: So yeah, there’s these very focused points of attention and a lesson. It’s not just visual. It’s kinesthetic as well. Sometimes it can be auditory depending on the lesson.
Al Wadleigh: And then there’s this widening of the aperture of attention to sense more of yourself. And then there’s these places for resting. And resting. So letting your going internal, sensing yourself as you rest, let your brain just process what you’ve been doing.
Al Wadleigh: And we often rest for 10 seconds, maybe to a minute, maybe longer, which is plenty of time for the brain to review what it’s been doing. And integrate it and improve it, you know, in some of the recent things I’ve read and heard about, um, resting, you know, the F MRI. So neuroscientists can now see what happens in the brain when somebody rests in the brain. Yet, they can see that when you’re resting after a task that rain runs through, what’s just been doing and then runs it backwards.
Al Wadleigh: Does that a number of times forward and backwards? Refining it. And you can feel this in a Feldenkrais lesson. So, not all Feldenkrais, lessons, some Feldenkrais lessons are, are, they’re kind of taxing.
Al Wadleigh: They require a lot of attention. Well, the movements are challenging, and if you stop, and you take a rest. Then you come back to it, it’s easier. Because your brain has done something to process it, integrate it, and learn what you’ve been doing.
Al Wadleigh: And so when you come back to that same movement, it’s easier. And so I’d like to take you through something here in a little while, that will hopefully bring to light a number of these points that we’re discussing. so yeah, resting is key to to it. And then, you know, after a lesson, take a rest or take a walk.
Al Wadleigh: It’s a perfect way to continue the integration. Of the whole lesson. Resting during a lesson is a very key and very important part of what we do in the Feldenkrais method. We are tapping into that ability, neuroplasticity to learn and change the brain.
Why Slowness Matters
Michael Waite: What role does, does, um, speed of movement playing this. It seems to play a huge role. specifically slowness. I know there’s a lot of extreme slowness in movement in these exercises.
Michael Waite: Would there ever be a case where you would intentionally, um, move fast, would that, um, do anything or is slowness the key?
Al Wadleigh: Slowness in the beginning is key. So going slowly. And when you’re going slowly, you’re widening the aperture of your attention, so you can really pay more attention to what you’re doing and feel what you’re actually doing. If you just started a lesson, started moving really fast, you go your regular habitual speed, you’re just gonna, you know, your mind’s going to go down, your tentions go down the habitual trough of awareness.
Al Wadleigh: You’re gonna miss a lot of stuff. And by slowing down, you’re able to widen that aperture of awareness and start to pay attention with the guidance of the teacher to sense what you’re actually doing when you’re doing it. So that’s one of the key principles of the work. You slow down, you use less effort, you can sense more.
Al Wadleigh: There’s a relationship between how much effort you’re putting into something and how much you can sense. It’s a principle in physics called the Weber–Fechner law. And so an example of that is, if you’re carrying a 40-pound sack of potatoes. And butterfly lands on that sack of potatoes, you’re not going to feel it.
Al Wadleigh: You’d have to add another pound of potatoes before you felt the difference. They have to add a lot more effort to change that effort. If you’ve got a feather between your index finger and your thumb, and that butterfly lands on it, you’ve got the sensitivity now to feel that butterfly. And we want to cultivate that quality of sensing when you’re, when you’re doing a lesson, especially in the beginning, so you make small, slow movements.
Al Wadleigh: Now, we do do fast movements and lessons. Usually later in the lesson. And those serve a different, different function, different purpose. So once the pattern is established, once the lesson is moving along, we can speed it up.
Al Wadleigh: And then there’s some lessons where, like, rolling, like, due to, you know, Feldenkrais on judo rolls. judo rolls. And so those require some momentum. So we do those fast, but not from the beginning.
Al Wadleigh: In the beginning, we chunk them down very slowly, do very different parts of a judo role. So you learn it, you really get it in your nervous system. So that then when towards the end of the lesson you start dispute it up, you’ve got that elegant momentum and it goes very easily and very comfortably. So speed has a place in lessons.
Al Wadleigh: But the most important part is in the beginning, when you’re learning, you got to slow down, you got to pay attention, expand the aperture of your awareness, so you really are knowing what you’re doing. How are you doing it? And then you can start to affect the quality of that. You start to have that, those choice points, to have moments where you can change the quality of what you’re doing.
Al Wadleigh: With your awareness and with your intention. So I think that kind of speaks to that speed aspect.
Michael Waite: That makes complete sense because we can also, um, we also know, say if you watch a movie in slow motion or you actually completely pause, um, to get a still frame, you’re going to be able to notice more things in that scene and say if you take an actual picture, and it’s a still picture. It’s paused and you have one pixel move or one little piece of that picture move, you’re gonna, you’re gonna notice it. But if it’s a video and, um, you can throw a gorilla or something crazy into that, and you might not even notice it because you’re just, there’s too much movement, the movie’s going too fast or you’re, you’re at the doctor’s office and waiting with nothing to do and you’re just like noticing all these small things you would never notice, you’re like, oh, because you’re just sitting there doing nothing. So yeah, I think in our everyday life, we, um, we notice that when we, um, pause or we move slowly, you do just, um, notice more things.
Michael Waite: This is very interesting. Yeah.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, I think you’re referring to that experiment with, repeated number of times, I think. You got some people playing basketball. Yeah, like white uniforms and black uniforms and they’re passing the ball back and forth and people watching are supposed to count how many times they pass the ball. And a guy in a gorilla suit walks through the scene.
Al Wadleigh: And then later they are asked, you know, did you notice a guy in the gorilla suit? They’re like, what guy in the gorilla suit? Show him the video again and, you know, half of them are like, you just planted that. You tricked me or something like that.
Al Wadleigh: But no, they’re so absorbed in what they’re doing. They miss the gorilla.
Pausing and Rest in Daily Life
Michael Waite: How about pausing? I guess you’ve already touched on it that we are kind of doing this replay of the lesson of what we’re trying to learn of the experience. But yeah, maybe dig it a bit more into pausing and rest. There are these moments within the lessons where you’ll just lay there for, I don’t know, a minute or so.
Michael Waite: Yeah, talk a little bit more about that. And maybe not just in the lessons, but in ordinary life, maybe it’s sleep, maybe it’s sitting with our eyes closed in the bathtub, whatever. It’s all kind of the same thing.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah. I like that. I like that. Generalize that to daily life a little bit. So, yeah, if you’re doing something, you’re working on something, whether it’s something physical or you’re studying, um, writing something, you’re editing a podcast, whatever, and you get to a point where you start to get a little fatigued, your mind starts to wander, your focus is affected.
Al Wadleigh: That’s a great time to take a rest. That ideal time to take a rest is before that happens. Take a brief rest, you know, 10 seconds to a minute. You can close your eyes, just sense yourself, let yourself go inside.
Al Wadleigh: And then come back and your tension will be refreshed. And whatever you’re working on will be easier and clearer. And you have to, and you can let go of struggling against that fatigue, that mind wandering. And yeah, something like a bath is a great way thing to do.
Al Wadleigh: A sauna. Another thing, a walk. laying on the bed and taking a nap. I take a nap every midday.
Al Wadleigh: I love it. Helps me, integrate my day. I feel great for the afternoon. Yeah, you know, cats and dogs know this.
Al Wadleigh: You know, humans should know it as well. So, yeah, it’s a, yeah, and resting should be a part of everybody’s everyday life, this whole idea of, you know, needing to, you know, push through things and effort and, you know, prove oneself by effort and not sleeping and not resting is, it’s, That’s a bunch of BS. It’s nonsense. It’s not good for the human being.
Eyes Closed and Eyes Open
Michael Waite: I feel like one real quick accessible way into this is just closing your eyes. Closing your eyes is another sort of court feature of Feldenkrais lessons. It seems also. You’re, one, it is sort of, narrowing that cone of attention, letting you, letting you kind of focus on the auditory aspects, the voice and, um, cut out the distractions of all the visual stuff.
Michael Waite: But it is also a kind of rest. So I find that, um, I’m often closing my eyes throughout the day. Definitely when I’m listening to something like an audiobook or a podcast. I do like tend to close my eyes.
Michael Waite: Maybe just because it increases that auditory focus, but also it’s just a nice time to relax and um, it’s almost like a weird little felding crisis lesson in the audiobook, the podcast form. Not, it’s nothing like Feldenkrais, but, but, yeah, yeah. Closing your eyes. Talk about the role of um, eyes closed versus eyes open and how that changes sort of the processing of information or um, that plays a role in all of this.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, so I’m telegress lessons. We do some lessons, eyes closed, some lessons, eyes open, you know what we’re doing. You guys often play a key role in the lesson in terms of organizing it in this. Lesson I want to guide you through here in a little while, uses the eyes, so the eyes will not be closed in this lesson. So but resting, though, in close the eyes.
Al Wadleigh: And, I think what you’re describing is closing the eyes helps to block out the visual stimulation and allows you to move your attention to your auditory system and your kinesthetic system and bring those to the foreground. And for some people who are really visual, that’s a really key thing to do, because the visual information coming in is so dominant for people who are visual. That is hard for them to tune into the auditory of the kinesthetic. And people who are really auditory.
Al Wadleigh: You know, the vision stuff, Doesn’t bother them that much. They’re really focusing on the auditory. They need to focus on that and translate that into the kinesthetic. Some people are very kinesthetic.
Al Wadleigh: The sensations are in the foreground. And so they’re, they’re not paying attention to the visual at all. You know, they’re really into just the feeling, the movement and all that stuff. So, depending on your, your dominant rep system, representational system, is, you know, closing the eyes, opening the eyes is going to make a difference in terms of that.
Michael Waite: Oh, but depending on your, um, sort of main, um, way of processing information or your main sort of senses, you could be plugging up the ears or, um, I don’t know, sitting still or whatever, you’re closing off whatever, um, avenue seems to be your dominant one, um, to get that new, um, experience, new way of saying things.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, Feldenkrais, we’re very interested in tapping into the whole, really the kinesthetic sensory system, all the sensory system, whole sensory system is very, since it’s movement based, we’re asking to sense your physical self in space moving in a relationship to other parts of yourself, is very kinesthetic. And for some people, that’s very foreign experience. for some other people, it’s not foreign at all. It’s just where they live And so learning to do that is a key aspect of the work. And, that’s going to vary from person to person.
How the Eyes Organize Movement
Michael Waite: Maybe we’ll do the lesson at the end. That seems to be a nice, nice place to put it. You could throw it in the middle. That’s okay too.
Michael Waite: But I do want to ask about these open eye exercises. This is actually much more fascinating and interesting to me than just a simple act of having your eyes closed. What are some kind of eye movements or eye exercises we can use? that that can, you know, crack into this whole thing?
Al Wadleigh: Well, your eyes are very key in organizing your movement. So where your eyes move, there’s a presupposition of action in that direction. So if your eyes are to the left, the muscles of your eyes go to the left, that’s going to affect the muscles in your neck, you’re prepared to turn to the left. I’m actually turning to the right, but my left, your left.
Al Wadleigh: And so where the eyes go? There’s presupposition of action in that direction. If your eyes look up, the extensors in your, in your neck, start to engage in your back, and flexors in the front, let go. If you guys go down, the flexor’s engaged, the extensor’s in the back, let it go.
Al Wadleigh: So weigh your eyes moving, there’s a presupposition of action in that direction. Feldenkrais explored this in many ways through different lessons. How the eyes organize the back and how they organize the back differently. So one eye is going to have more influence in the back muscles than the other eye, depending which eye is dominant, how you use the eyes.
Al Wadleigh: Same thing in turning. Yeah, there’s all kinds of nuance. He explored through using the eyes. And then he did lessons that were just of the eyes, just moving the eyes in different ways, you know, circling the eyes, developing that ability to move the eyes, usually and comfortably all around the circumference.
Al Wadleigh: And I’m not, I don’t know if you’re familiar with, um, you know, the NLP concept of eye movements, you know, visuals up, you know, auditories to the side, kinesthetic, internal dialogues down. So if you if you buy into that, then you learn to move your eyes around in a beautiful circle. Without interruption, you create more fluidity through these different ways of thinking. And you’re going to find that as you move your eyes in a circle, that some parts of that circle are not easy to get to.
Al Wadleigh: Some parts are really easy to get to. And that depends on your habit, how you use your eyes, how they relate to your thinking, how they relate to your movement. Certain ways you don’t move, and your eyes don’t move in those directions. And some ways you don’t tap into your thinking.
Al Wadleigh: You guys don’t move in those directions. So there’s all kinds of stuff that happens with the eyes that we can tap into through these lessons.
Michael Waite: Which is really just, like, just miraculous. This is miraculous. Tapping so deeply into the nervous system. This is wild because it’s almost like those Functional Integration lessons where instead of your hand, um, the practitioner’s hand on you guiding along. I haven’t taken one of these lessons.
Michael Waite: Maybe I’m mischaracterizing it. Your eyes are sort of playing that role. Your eyes are kind of moving your back and moving your arm and moving things around. it’s like a little, it’s a little tiny piece of um, brain on our face, but it’s um, wow, what a powerful little doctor.
Michael Waite: Wow, it’s like a little coach. Like, you just move your eyes in this way and like, if you if you pay attention, your back does adjust accordingly, et cetera. Wow. Wow nice.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there’s all kinds of things going on like this. They’re outside of conscious awareness, all the time, that influence, how we move, how we think, how we sense, and how we just experience ourselves to the world.
Al Wadleigh: And so Feldenkrais lessons help improve all of that. Help improve all of that. And that’s just a crazy, beautiful thing.
Novelty, Mistakes, and Contradictory Movements
Michael Waite: Another core feature of these Feldenkrais lessons, too, is novelty of movement, contradictory movements. Right now we’re talking about how if you move your eyes in this way, your back will move this way, in sort of normal synchronized way, but you can play with this and kind of give yourself, give your nervous system a little, rude awakening, like, boom, by combining these sort of strange novel movements together. This does go back to the whole um, literature on neuroplasticity and internal anyway. By having this novelty by having this sort of um, strange um, contradictory kind of experience where things aren’t going right.
Michael Waite: There’s some kind of error or something. That’s the way your nervous system is perceiving it. That is going to, um, increases sort of alertness and focus and, um, you’re going to start paying attention and and ultimately, um, if you do rest afterwards, um, you will be learning and and changing things. So yeah, talk about um, novelty, um, contradictions, errors, all that kind of stuff.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, novelty is really key aspect of all Feldenkrais lessons. I’ll felling rest lessons have novelty in them. It’s so unusual. They’re so unusual, and you get into doing these, you start doing these strange movements, these strange positions, and you have to pay attention to yourself.
Al Wadleigh: And I think one of the brilliant aspects of that in terms of this work is that you’re not. You know, like Feldenkrais, talk about taking the function out of the context, improving the function, and then when you go back into the context of your daily life, it improves. So we do unusual movements, novel movements, and these lessons. And we improve our abilities by doing that.
Al Wadleigh: And you’re more limited if you’re trying to, you know, most as well, like, you can go back to like stretching and exercising and that kind of thing. You’re trying to improve yourself through that, through those activities. But you’re doing them within the constraints of your daily habits. And Feldenkrais lessons takes you out of the constraint of your daily habit, puts you in this unusual situation where you’re doing novel movement, combined with awareness.
Al Wadleigh: And this, then asks your habits to modify, to adapt to the lesson. So your habits are being changed by doing the lesson. Whereas in wrote exercises, They’re not changing. You’re just working within the confines of your habits.
Al Wadleigh: So then when you go back into daily life, you can go back into doing your exercise, your exercise is going to be better. Your yoga is going to improve. Your Tai Chi is going to get better. Your walking is going to be lighter and easier. Because you improve the function outside the context and you go back into the context and it’s better.
Al Wadleigh: So that’s a really cool thing about these lessons. Novelty is just built into all the lessons. And then, yes, about errors. So like, um, errors, are important for learning, mistakes are essential to be made.
Al Wadleigh: And Feldenkrais talked about that. And many of his lesson says make lots of mistakes, like make lots of errors. It’s key in learning to not get it correct, but to get it wrong. Because when you make mistakes, you get feedback.
Al Wadleigh: And it’s another way of doing something. And then you get feedback about trying another way, and you try another way, and you try another way. So making mistakes is essential for learning. There are just different ways of doing something, the variations, and you get feedback on it.
Al Wadleigh: Then you mentioned contradictory movements. So it’s like, You know, looking one direction and turning ahead the other direction, that kind of thing, is that what you mean?
Michael Waite: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, like, for example, um, move your eyes up while looking down or whatever, that kind of thing.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, okay. Yeah, so I’m going to save that for the lesson we’re going to do, so we’re going to explore some of that in that lesson.
Michael Waite: Yeah. Great. Yeah, and this actually kind of goes back to my earlier point about childhood. We are moving in all kinds of weird directions.
Michael Waite: We are making a lot of errors. We are actually falling and falling and falling on our bike. Out of the tree, skateboard, whatever. We’re going in, like, we’re going up, like, like, jumping, climbing things. We’re going like along the X, Y, and Z and all kinds of other axes.
Michael Waite: and no coincidence, we are also learning a lot at that time. so this makes complete sense on those grounds as well.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah.
Technology and Habitual Attention
Michael Waite: You mentioned earlier about the eyes, about how where we move our eyes, does direct our movement. Feldenkrais wasn’t alive during the smartphone era. Now our eyes seem to be quite hijacked by tiny little screens, a little tiny aperture of attention, specifically on the smartphone, but you can also applies to other devices. And now we’re getting virtual reality and stuff, which might be kind of widening the lens, but still kind of controlling our attention in a way that we weren’t used to.
Michael Waite: What do you think Feldenkrais would say about all this technology stuff if he was still alive today? It’s kind of a surprise question you might not have been prepared for, but yeah, do you have any thoughts on? can you maybe, um, I know you can’t speak for Feldenkrais, but um, if, if, if he can use your mouth and body. What do you think he would say?
Al Wadleigh: A couple of different ways to look at that. I think one way he would be like super excited about it. He wanted the whole world to be able to experience the Feldenkrais method. So he did radio broadcasts.
Al Wadleigh: He recorded everything. He recorded everything to make it available to his students, make it available to the world. So I think he would have been really excited about the internet. As being a way to get his work out there and to touch more lives, to engage more people.
Al Wadleigh: So I think that would have been very exciting to him. I think having these little devices that capture our attention, pull us down and inward, and get us stuck like that. He wouldn’t have liked that. He would probably rant it against that, I would guess, because it creates, you know, just a limitation in ourselves.
Al Wadleigh: It comes so focused and inward, and our organization folds around that, and that creates patterns of anxiety. You know, when we fold like this, we’re more prone to feel anxiety and more stress. And he wouldn’t have been into that. He probably would have railed against people having these phones all the time and looking at them.
Al Wadleigh: So I think it would have been both. I think you would have been excited about aspects of it, and he would have, teased us a lot about the other stuff.
Al’s Experience with His Voice
Michael Waite: You’ve used Feldenkrais a lot, um, to change your voice and um, get more comfortable and confident and more, um, in control of your voice, it seems like I, I, from listening to your podcast. can you talk more about that little journey and as well as how we can um, improve or get more connected to and um, happy with our voice. This is for myself too. I’m maybe just a few stages behind you on this and I feel my voice improving a little bit through this podcast, but I would like, I don’t think I’m completely happy with it. Yet.
Al Wadleigh: My voice is a journey. I, I, from most of my life, really did not like my voice. And I was very quiet as a kid, had a speech impediment, very soft-spoken, almost a wispy voice. People couldn’t hear me.
Al Wadleigh: You know, I rarely spoke in groups because if I did, people are like, what? I can’t hear you, you know, and for a very shy introverted person, that’s like the worst thing ever. So I avoided that. When I became a Feldenkrais practitioner, I decided.
Al Wadleigh: My voice is going to be a priority. I wanted to be a teacher, it scared the shit out of me, to get in front of a group and teach, but I did it anyway. And I developed my skills, and I wanted my voice to be something that I improved along the way. So I did a lot of different things.
Al Wadleigh: So I did voice lessons. I do voice warm-ups on regular basis. I was also very dyslexic growing up. And I did not enunciate my, certain phonemes very well.
Al Wadleigh: I believe that I had, based on the work of Michael Merzenich, that I had ear infections at certain points in my development. And so I couldn’t hear certain phonemes. So I didn’t enunciate them. Like, I remember being a kid.
Al Wadleigh: I knew the word mind was different from the word mind. They’re spelled differently. But they sounded exactly the same to me. I could not hear a D. And so learning about that, I started to teach myself to hear phonemes and to speak phonemes.
Al Wadleigh: And I did things with my breath, improve my breath, and my articulation in speaking. And I just work with it in so many different ways. it’s been a long journey and I’m, Still not done with it. Not at all.
Al Wadleigh: I think I’m going to keep doing that through the rest of my life because it’s just, I mean, it’s a rich, rich exploration. And I really like my voice now. I’m very happy with it. And um, if I get tired and fatigued.
Al Wadleigh: My voice is, you know, one of the first things to go. My enunciation gets sloppy, my voice gets weak. When I’m feeling good and I’m rested, my voice is strong, it’s deep, it’s resonant. Yeah, I really like that.
Al Wadleigh: So practice, practice, and intention, you know, warm up your voice, explore, try different things, do some breathing lessons. I’d sell a couple of audio series on my websites for the boys using Feldenkrais for the boys. So those are a couple of options as well.
Michael Waite: Awesome. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah, link that up.
Michael Waite: When you’re talking, it kind of reawoke this early memory me. I keep forgetting about it, but yeah, there were there’s a couple years in elementary school. It might be between ages of, I don’t know, 5 to 7 or 8. I would go to speech therapy.
Michael Waite: they take me out of class and go in there. we would, um, the speech teachers would teach me these, these, um, these sounds and things. And then there’s this one time I was in Boy Scouts, and we had this cake auction and I had to go up there and auction off the cake, you know, get on the microphone, all these parents out there and stuff, and I’m like, Oh God, Oh God. I’m not to say these words or nothing.
Michael Waite: And there’s like these little candy bears on a cake. And I was like, bear, beer, bear, beer. I don’t know how to say this thing. And I was like really confidently.
Michael Waite: I was like, it’s a, yeah, this is the word, I got it. I got it. It’s definitely beer. It’s a beer cake.
Michael Waite: And then everyone’s like, yeah. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, I got it wrong. I got it wrong. It was it was bear.
Michael Waite: I couldn’t even say bear actually. I think everything was beer. but, um, they had to, they had to cancel the, cancel that order or whatever. Sorry, guys, sorry, buddies.
Michael Waite: Can’t have to go down to the bar to get that one. but yeah, yeah, that always, that’s always with me. It was one of my early memories of like failing this cake auction. which didn’t really help the voicing anymore.
Michael Waite: And I was also shy and, um, it’s all connected up. anyway, maybe we can move on to another topic.
Creativity and Daily Practice
Michael Waite: You’re also kind of a craftsman and a builder, which is kind of a creative act. We’re kind of going off on a different topic here, but it is connected to all of this creativity. How has this made you more creative or what have you learned about how to tap into that creative state through these Feldenkrais, these movement lessons?
Al Wadleigh: I think one of the key things for in terms of building, for me, is approaching the movements when I’m building as an awareness movement lesson. So going slowly, really sensing myself as I’m doing it, sensing the ground forces, I’m going to move this object, I’m going to do this. How am I going to cut this hole? I’m going to organize myself for the easiest, you know, most functional way of completing this task, whether it’s, um, you know, moving stones or digging a hole in my roof to install a skylight or whatever.
Al Wadleigh: So I like to bring that quality of sensing myself into those actions. I think that’s probably the most important thing for me is doing it, like I’m doing an awareness movement lesson. So approaching it slowly, being aware of what I’m doing. And I’m not sure that Feldenkrais lessons have.
Al Wadleigh: Make me more creative in what I build or not. let me think about that.
Michael Waite: Probably have, probably has influenced my ability to, or maybe this. How, how, how would, how would Feldenkrais, um, describe, how to, how to, how to be more creative? It might go back to this whole focus, unfocused, zoom in, zoom out thing. That’s a, that’s one idea I have.
Michael Waite: Do you have any ideas on what he might say on um, if someone says, hey, um, I’m not very creative or I’m sometimes creative, I want to be more creative. what would he what do you think he would recommend? He might just bring you through a bunch of lessons and, um, that that’s it. There’s nothing to explain, but do you have any ideas here?
Al Wadleigh: I don’t know what he would say exactly. I don’t know him that well.
Michael Waite: Yeah, yeah. Right.
Al Wadleigh: So it would be, I’m sure it’d be, he had an interesting response to it. so I’ve listened to a lot of his recordings and his talks and people ask questions and, um, I’m not even going to venture to guess how he would answer that. Yeah, Feldenkrais lessons are very creative in nature. And, you know, as Feldenkrais practitioners, when you really embody that work, And to the work, we embody that creativity into the work.
Al Wadleigh: And so we become very creative in working with people one on one, very creative in teaching our lessons, very responsive to what people are doing. So they become a, co-creator of a lesson. It’s not just me dictating to you what it is, but my interaction with you begins to shape the lesson. And so that’s a co-creative process, even though you may not be conscious of that.
Al Wadleigh: That is what’s going on in a Feldenkrais lesson.
Michael Waite: Yeah, you’re connecting with that, with that other person, that the teacher, the voice, you’re, it’s a very special kind of connection.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, watching you. Using you, those feedback. Watching your movements, and those help me to shape my instructions, and help shape the lesson. And that infects other people too, are going to listen to it.
Al Wadleigh: So, yeah, that’s a very cool part of the process. It’s a co-created thing. I’m getting that creation. You may not even be aware of it, but that’s what’s happening.
Michael Waite: Yeah. And we were talking before this call, and I hadn’t realized that you still do, um, these Feldenkrais lessons every morning, essentially, after, after all of these years and just, expertise or whatever. I guess we’re all, um, never quite experts. We all, well, even where we are, these Feldenkrais lessons are immensely beneficial for us.
Michael Waite: It sounds like they’re almost essential to you or something. What happens, um, if you don’t do a Feldenkrais lesson for a couple days or, um, what do you, what do you feel are the main, um, important features of it for you? Why do you keep doing it?
Al Wadleigh: I do it because I love it. I love the novelty every morning as a different lesson every morning. The Feldenkrais left left us a legacy of a couple 1000 lessons, and so I go through and I do a lesson every morning. and many surprises, some lessons I haven’t done very many of, many times.
Al Wadleigh: Others I’ve done, a number of times. And even the ones I’ve done a number of times. I go through them again. And I get something new out of it. I sense myself in a different way or I hear the way he describes the lesson in a different way.
Al Wadleigh: And so that invigorates me. It makes me think about it in a different way. I sense myself in a different way. And of course, I’m a different person too, even though I’ve done some of these lessons and some of them several times.
Al Wadleigh: I go through them again. I experience them in a new way because I’m in a different person. I’ve matured, I’ve learned. And so yeah, it’s just a cool thing to do every morning.
Al Wadleigh: I just love it. It’s part of my daily activity. I started doing this back in 2015. I decided I’m going to go through all these lessons.
Al Wadleigh: There’s a collection of, lessons called the Alexander Yanai series. There’s 550 of them, and I decided, okay, I’m going to do one every morning. I’m going to take notes. I’m gonna do one every morning.
Al Wadleigh: So after I finished the 550, I went, I was doing it again. So I just keep going through these lessons and other lessons from other trainings. so and it stimulates me as a practitioner as well. So it keeps me vital and invigorated and engaged.
Al Wadleigh: So, when I see my clients that day, You know, I’ve gotten some new input into my nervous system, into my brain. And so I may approach the lesson that I give to somebody today or what I’m teaching in the classes today a little bit differently. All that little bit different influence. So I want to have that constant flow of novelty and self-improvement, self-learning to help improve myself as a practitioner.
Al Wadleigh: As a person, as a teacher, as a friend.
Michael Waite: Maybe I’ll start doing that too. I have incorporated these sort of guided meditations. I guess you might call them self hypnosis, um, audio programs, before I go to sleep, for example, um, this might be even a, I’m sort of, even more immersive, um, powerful version of that. Maybe this is something I can play with in the morning or um, other people can, put into their morning or afternoon routine or, um, whatever.
The Mouth, Jaw, Tongue, and Neck
Michael Waite: Before we go to the actual, um, experience, this, I, um, sounds like it’s eye-based one, I, I, one other body part I want to, um, talk about, I’m a bit curious about it is, is the mouth. We did talk about the voice, but um, yeah, the mouth, the tongue. It seems like there’s a lot of, um, a lot of possibilities here, um, and a lot of habits, unconscious habits around this region, um, so unconscious that I can’t even express what they are right now, but I feel like intuitively, the mouth is also one of these special places. Can you talk about that?
Al Wadleigh: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s one of the first places that we first parts of our sub, we start to engage as infants. Of course, with suckling and bringing things to our mouth to sense them because there’s so many sensory nerve endings and the tongue and the lips. Is the first way we experience the world is the first way we take in nutrition. By suckling on our mother’s breast and getting fed. So it’s really important fundamentally like that.
Al Wadleigh: As we age and develop, of course, becomes a place where we hold a lot of tension in the jaw and the lips, in the face. I’ve been working with teaching a series of lessons for one of my classes this month. It’s all about the mouth and jaw, and working with a tongue and all these things. Yeah, so it’s very cool and deeply connected into our nervous system.
Al Wadleigh: And like the jaw is a really interesting part of ourselves in that. The muscles close the jaw, their flexors. And generally the flexors are for, you know, you know, they contract, they close the joints, right? You know, like the bicep, you know, closing the hand, as an act of flection and a hip joint, the knee.
Al Wadleigh: And they’re really that act of flection does something that’s intended for short-term use. You grasp something and let it go. You can fold and you let it go. And extensors.
Al Wadleigh: The opening of joints is something that can happen more of a long period of time, like the muscles in the back that hold you erect and hold your head up. So those are the muscles that open joints. The jaw is contradictory to that. So the jaws held by the flexors, which contract and hold it shut.
Al Wadleigh: And if you want to open the jaw, you’re actually letting go of that and you’re engaging the extensors in the back. And the muscles of the jaw are very connected to the muscles in the neck, and the eyes also are very connected to the muscles in the neck, and so all these things work together. And so if you’re, you know, looking at one of these things in your smartphone, and you’re narrow focused and your head is down, and you’re reading awful things or getting upset on Facebook or whatever, and you’re clenching your jaw, you’re creating all this tension up here, and all these things kind of get stuck together. The eyes, the jaw, the neck, and your breathing is shallow, and becomes problematic.
Al Wadleigh: We can do all kinds of things to open that up. To create freedom in your jaw, to relax your tongue, open your eyes, lengthen your neck, and open all that stuff up. It’s really important to be able to do that. It’s important for the voice.
Al Wadleigh: It’s important for your vision. It’s important for your breath. It’s important for, um, just your overall comfort and your ability to to spread your attention out into the world. I don’t know if that answers your question or not, but that’s kind of rambling about the jaw and the face.
Michael Waite: No, no, it’s great. I think rambling is actually the best way to learn and to do all this stuff to connect. And that was not a ramble. I’ll show you a ramble.
Michael Waite: I already have many times.
Guided Lesson: Eyes, Turning, and Imagination
Michael Waite: Let’s, um, let’s just dig, um, let’s just go straight into the lesson, maybe, if that sounds good, unless there’s anything else you want to talk about. We could just maybe stop talking about and just do it. But yeah, up to you.
Al Wadleigh: Let’s do it.
Michael Waite: Cool. Lets do it.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah.
Michael Waite: Just bring it into action.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, we’ll bring it. Yeah, we’ll bring into action some of these concepts we’ve been talking about. So, um, position yourself in such a way that, you can have your arm out in front of yourself and you’re not going to hit your microphone. Maybe sit back a little bit if you need to.
Al Wadleigh: And so sit, you knew this lesson sitting, you can do it standing. If you’re listening and you’re in your car, don’t do it in your car until you get home, pause the recording. So if you’re sitting, sit towards the edge of your chair and have your feet on the floor. And oftentimes with these lessons, we’ll begin with a scans.
Al Wadleigh: We’re going to do just a really brief scan. So, sense your feet on the floor. And without looking, it would be a temptation to look, but don’t look at your feet, use your feeling sense, and get a sense of which foot has more pressure on them. If there’s your right one, your left one.
Al Wadleigh: And since the heels in particular, And notice if there’s more weight, towards the right heel or the left heel. You know, your feet organized so that the toes are further apart. Or the heels further apart. Or the heels closer together, and the toes further apart.
Al Wadleigh: And then pay attention to the bend of your knees. And then it be hip joints. And how your pelvis is resting in the chair. When you sense the pelvis in your chair, how’s your weight distributed?
Al Wadleigh: Is there more weight towards the right side of the pelvis or the left? And then since you’re, To your back, to your ribs and back. Because you can lower back. Is there an arch to it?
Al Wadleigh: Since your shoulder blades. Is it easier to sense one shoulder blade more than the other? It’s in your shoulders in your arms. Your arms are resting, if your hands are resting on your thighs.
Al Wadleigh: Is one hand more forward than the other? That might indicate which shoulders more forward. And then notice how you’re orienting your face and your head. So facing down a little bit, instead of towards the horizon.
Al Wadleigh: Should I turn a little bit to the right or to the left? And then take a moment, sense your breath. Just notice breaths coming in. They’re coming into your nostrils, your windpipe, your lungs.
Al Wadleigh: They’re going out. And then let that go, and sit forward, and bring your right arm out in front of you. Not shoulder height. And bend your elbow.
Al Wadleigh: So the elbows out to the side. And your hand is in front of your face. Your hand is in front of your face, and you can look at your hand, and look at your hand with your eyes. Pick some part, thumb or the wrist or something.
Al Wadleigh: Now look at the hand, and now turn your hand, your arm, your head, and your eyes all together to the left. To the left. And then come back to the middle. Now if you’re on a swivel chair, you don’t want your chair to be turning.
Al Wadleigh: So you want this movement to be, the pelvis doesn’t move. The movement is in the arm, your shoulders and your head. The pelvis remains where it is on the chair. So do that movement a number of times.
Al Wadleigh: Just turning to left like that, looking at the hand. Looking at the hands, you turn. It goes far to the left as you can and stop there. And look over your hand, mark a spot in your environment, over the hand, the reference point.
Al Wadleigh: We’re going to come back to that later in the lesson and come back to the middle and put your arm down. Rest for a moment. There’s one of those key resting moments. And then come back into that same position.
Al Wadleigh: So bring your right arm out in front. Look at the hand. And turn everything to the left again. As far to left as you can.
Al Wadleigh: Remain turned to the left. And now, turn your head. To the left. Turn your head and your eyes to the left, further to the left and back to the hand.
Al Wadleigh: So, then back to the hand, then turn your head your eyes further to left. So you’re looking over your left shoulder. Back to your hand. And look of left shoulder again, head the eyes to left.
Al Wadleigh: The eyeballs move into left corner of the eye sockets. And then comes back, look to the hand. So keep doing it as a movement. Don’t hold the position in any extreme point.
Al Wadleigh: Come right back, look at the hand again. Is it? And then next time you’re looking at the hand. Come back to the middle.
Al Wadleigh: Put your arm down and rest. Just take a moment, sense yourself. Notice what’s changing. Have you done just a few simple movements?
Al Wadleigh: Then sit forward again, if you’re not sitting forward. Forward again, bring right them out in front. Look at the, right arm out in front, look at the hand, turn everything to the left, again, as we have been doing. You can remain, turn to the left.
Al Wadleigh: It’s time keep your eyes on the hand. And just turn your head further to the left and back to the hand. So your eyes remain looking at the hand the whole time. Which means your eyeballs roll into the right corners of your eye sockets.
Al Wadleigh: When your head turns to the left. So you’re in this turn position, you already turn to the left. You start with the head and the eyes, looking at the hand. The eyes remain stuck on the hand, you move your head further to left, and back to the hand, to the movement many times, do it slowly.
Al Wadleigh: Do it gently. Take your time with it. Eyes remain on the hand to separating, movement of your head and your eyes. This is this contradictory movement you’re asking about.
Al Wadleigh: This helps to differentiate muscles of your neck. Your eyes. Your head. Okay next time everything’s back on the hand, come back to the middle.
Al Wadleigh: Bring your arm down, take a rest. You can do a number of these movements and you start to get fatigued or your shoulder gets tired, your arm gets tired, just stop and rest. There’s no point in any lesson that you’re doing, you run into a place that’s uncomfortable or difficult. That you need to think, well, just get through this.
Al Wadleigh: Just stop and rest. And then come back to it. It’ll be easier. Okay, once again, bring around them out in front.
Al Wadleigh: Look at the hand. Turn everything to the left. Left as far as you can comfortably. Stop there. And now, leave your head oriented towards your hand, move just your eyes to the left.
Al Wadleigh: Only the eyes move to left, and back to the hand. The eyeballs roll into the left corner of the eye sockets. And back to the hand. So do that many times with the eyes.
Al Wadleigh: I looked to the left, I looked to the hand. Look to the left, look to the hand. If you listen carefully enough to the sensations in your neck, you might be able to perceive the movement of the eyes and the sensations of your neck. Muscles of the eyes go through your skull and interweave with the muscles of your neck.
Al Wadleigh: Okay, that’s good. Bring everything back to the middle, bring your arm down, take a rest. So the eyes turning to the left, organize the muscles of your neck and your back to turn to the left. And often though, we’re limited by our habitual framework of orientation.
Al Wadleigh: So the, as I mentioned earlier, like looking at the smartphone or computer, tablet, your eyes, your jaw, your neck, everything gets kind of fixed in this forward position, forward down position. So, You can, the eyes will help organize to left. We start to differentiate these parts. The eyes from the head, the head, the neck, the shoulders, then you start to free that up.
Al Wadleigh: The eyes can be even better at organizing your movement. You’re going to see this in a few moments. So bring your right arm out in front of you again. Look at the hand.
Al Wadleigh: And turn as far as you can to the left comfortably, as far as you can to the left. And remain turned to left like that. As far as you can. And look over your hand and notice how much further to left you’ve turned. You probably gained a few more degrees of range of motion and freedom.
Al Wadleigh: Without stretching, without efforting, without exercising, just using the wisdom and intelligence of the nervous system, you’ve done that. Now just do a few moments. Come back to the front. Go to the left again, do that movement, do that a number of times, just for your own pleasure and enjoyment of appreciating yourself for how brilliant your brain is and how quickly you can learn and make changes within yourself.
Al Wadleigh: You come back to the middle. And yeah, go to the left again, just enjoy that whole process. It’s beautiful thing. You feel that moving all the way through the ribs now.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, good. Come back, bring your arm down, rest.
Michael’s Experience of the Lesson
Al Wadleigh: So that’s part of a lesson. Talk about your experience so far.
Michael Waite: No, that that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. And he did a little magic trick. I didn’t realize I was actually going to move further than my range was going to open up.
Michael Waite: I guess that’s the beauty of it. You’re not telling me, move 3 degrees to the left. I just did it and that was, um, amazing. I also felt a bit like, um, I don’t know, like a, like Mr. Potato Head or something at times where my eyeballs were being moved from, um, where they’re supposed to be to like the side of my head, to my, where my belly button is.
Michael Waite: You’re moving your body parts around into new positions, almost like in the way that animals have their eyes positioned on different parts of their bodies, say the side of their head, um, really narrow in, narrowed in in the center of their face, and I was like kind of literally becoming different creatures or, um, yeah, I was like sort of playing with, becoming Mr. Potatohead. But then once he sort of highlighted this fact that I was moving further, I guess to take this metaphor further, I started to feel like Buzz Lightyear or something. I’m like, wow, I can fly in these new directions and explore these new spaces. And so effortlessly.
Michael Waite: Yeah, so I mean, I’d rather feel like Buzz Lightyear, to be honest, but it was like kind of trippy to feel like Mr. Potato Head. And I know these aren’t probably the analogies you want. You want it to be something more. I don’t know, whatever, but that’s that’s what popped to my head.
Michael Waite: I also, I noticed there’s certain states of, um, I do, I do like learning, um, rambling again, but I guess that’s what Feldenkrais awakens. Just the ideas start start flooding out, but I love learning. I love studying and stuff and there’s a certain brain state I’m in when I’m like really in optimal learning mode, like I can focus. I can absorb the information. And I feel that right now.
Michael Waite: Some people use, I don’t know, maybe they smoke cigarettes or they drink caffeine or they do different things to get into that. They take ADHD medications, that they shouldn’t be taking or whatever. But I feel like Feldenkrais has sort of, um, primed me, um, to not just learn these movements, but it’s like, say if I want to go study Japanese right now or I want, um, I don’t know, learn how to play soccer or I want to, um, I don’t know, study, math or whatever. it’ll probably be some neuroscience type thing.
Michael Waite: in my case, I feel like kind of primed and ready to go, um, which is sort of perfect because now it’s a, it’s what, 8 AM, 830 AM my day, my time, um, and I, I might, have a more productive day. I don’t know how long this will last, but it’s um, it’s certainly better than um, caffeine. I haven’t smoked cigarettes, luckily, um, or taking those medications, but I feel like, like after a cold, nice cold swim across the lake or something, you’re like, okay, hmm, I’m ready to go. I feel like that.
Michael Waite: So yeah, one, Mr. Potato Head, Buzz Lightyear thing, 2 is, yeah, I feel like I feel more, um, ready to learn, like more attentive to information in my environment or on the page or whatever. That’s a bit of a ramble. I want up to you there, Al, but yeah, that’s what those are my thoughts.
Continuing the Lesson Through Imagination
Al Wadleigh: Let’s do one more thing. Right. So bring your left arm out in front. Look at your hand.
Al Wadleigh: You were, just like you put the right one. Now turn to the. Right, as far as you can, comfortably. And just look over your hand, mark that spot. On the wall.
Al Wadleigh: Then come back to the middle. Do it once. Leave your arm up, look at the hand. And close your eyes.
Al Wadleigh: Close your eyes. And now imagine doing that movement again. Don’t do it. Doing your imagination, imagine turning, To the right like that, looking at the hand, To your arm, your shoulders, your head and everything turned to the right.
Al Wadleigh: And in your imagination, you can turn very smoothly. You can have a larger range of motion, you confer, turn further to the right. Just imagine doing that a number of times, just turning further to the right with great ease, great comfort. Very simple, very easy.
Al Wadleigh: And then, After you’ve done that, say 6 or 7 times in your imagination, put your arm down, rest a few moments. Bring your left arm up again. Look at the hand. And this time turn to the right, as far as you can comfortably.
Al Wadleigh: Look at the hand. Now stop in that position. Close your eyes, now, just imagine turning your head and your eyes further to the right. Don’t actually do it.
Al Wadleigh: Just do it in thought. And imagine you can turn, look, way over your right shoulder. You can see that light over there behind you and whatever else is on the wall. Do that in your imagination a few times.
Al Wadleigh: Just with your head and your eyes, looking over your right shoulder, in your imagination. And then we’re getting back to the front, rest a few moments. I’m bringing left arm up again. Look at the hand, turn everything to the right, go to the right as far as you can comfortably, remain there.
Al Wadleigh: Now, imagine looking at the hand, and imagine turning your head further to the right. Don’t actually do it, but just imagine it. So you can do anything in your imagination. You can do it very well in your imagination, you can do it.
Al Wadleigh: Easily, very comfortably. Your hand remains. Eyes remain on the hand, your head turns further to the right. That a few times.
Al Wadleigh: And then pause and disposition in your imagination, and then do it the other way. So, leave your head oriented towards your hand, move your eyes further to the right, in your imagination. So you just think the movement of your eyes. Eyeballs move into the right corners of your eye sockets.
Al Wadleigh: In your imagination is do it in thought. And bring everything back to the middle. Take another rest. And once again, bring your left arm out in front.
Al Wadleigh: Look at it. Turn everything to the right, as far to the right as you can comfortably. Good hand, turn everything to the right as far as you get comfortably, and look over their hand and notice how much further you’ve gone. So just having worked with your imagination, notice how much more improvement you got.
Al Wadleigh: Come back to the middle, bring your arm down. So having done that, work on one side, with more detail, going to the left, and you can easily transfer it through thought, through your imagination. Going the other direction.
Reflections on Imagined Movement
Al Wadleigh: Did you turn more going to the left or to the right? The one we just now did where we use our imagination.
Michael Waite: actually, the increase in movement, a range was even greater than the first time. I don’t know if it’s something to do with this side of my body or the fact that we’ve already done that a different exercise before it, or it’s something to, to the power of the imagination. I don’t know, but it was like noticeably, um, I was impressed by this set, this thing over here, we just did like, you know, 5 minutes ago, um, but this one was even, even more impressive and even more effortless.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, yeah. And that often happens using the imagination. So doing something on one side. And imagining it on the other side, you learn it faster, you often improve more.
Al Wadleigh: Transfer that learning to the other side through your imagination. Is that cool or what?
Michael Waite: Yeah. Maybe I was, um, being a bad boy or something. But I naturally, I noticed that my, I wasn’t moving. I was using my imagination, but my eyes naturally would move.
Michael Waite: I could still do the imagination without eyes moving, but um, maybe I was cheating. I don’t know, but if I did move my eyes, then the imagination became more vivid and it’s easier to imagine. which kind of makes sense because even in dream sleep, no, REM, sleep, rapid eye movement, sleep, we are moving our eyes and that maybe is part of what gives life to these, um, these sensations, these colors and, experiences in our dreams. I’m going off on a maybe other tangent right now, but yeah, I, It was very tempting to move my eyes when doing the imagination exercise.
Michael Waite: I don’t know how common that is or if it’s something we should, um, not be doing or something we should, we should leverage. I don’t know what your thoughts on that are, but that’s something I also know. Just like, wow, moving the eyes really helps increase my imagination.
Al Wadleigh: It’s totally common. Totally cool.
Michael Waite: Totally cool Wow. Learning new things about basic things about ourselves.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah. I think that’s that’s fundamental to these lessons, is you do learn fundamental things about yourself. That you didn’t know that were outside your conscious awareness. You’re tapping into your nervous system, you’re tapping into your brain, these lessons give you a pathway into that.
Al Wadleigh: You know, you’re improving yourself at a very, very fundamental level. And I, as I said earlier, it’s like, it’s outside the context of your normal daily life. But you take it, you carry it into your normal daily life. So I’m very curious to know to find out, I’m sure you are too, how the rest of your day is going to go.
Al Wadleigh: Probably gonna be pretty darn nice. You, you might step out of the studio and you’re going to see different things are going to look different to you. Things might look brighter or clearer. You might seem better off in the distance or things up close.
Al Wadleigh: It’s hard to say. You might find your walk is different, walk more easily and lightly.
Michael Waite: I naturally am more drawn to going outside too. Normally, I would stay inside for far too long on my computer, like going through books or whatever, um, which is, I feel is more productive or whatever, but I’m tempted to like go play outside. Almost like, you know, when you’re, it’s a Saturday when you’re a kid and you’re like, I want to go play outside. What am I going to do?
Michael Waite: I don’t know. I, I, and I got the same feeling each time I’ve done a Feldenkrais lesson. It’s sort of this desire, this, um, this is really strong urge to urge to go play. Which is very nice.
Michael Waite: Yeah, this is great because this is like, um, I think we’re all, um, we all are seeking tools. I want to turn this into like a tool, but it sort of is that can help us do things like focus, help us become more playful, helpless, be more socially connected, happy, stress-free, I don’t know, creative, whatever. And I guess different variations of this or almost any variation of it seems to um, provide that, tap into that natural, the natural um, drugs in our brain or whatever. So we don’t need to take these more harmful substances and things.
Michael Waite: So this might also be like a nice little replacement for people who are addicted to certain things. I know there’s certain protocols of how you shouldn’t should not get off substances. But other kinds of addictions on porn or, I don’t know, Netflix or whatever it is that you’re, you’re, I don’t know, stuck in. It kind of kind of gets you unstuck in general in other areas of real life.
Michael Waite: I imagine because this is like, this feeling is, I mean, I think all those people sipping on coffee would, if they can fill this, they would, they would toss the coffee inside and we would all just be having little Feldenkrais cafes instead.
Al Wadleigh: Right on, man. Like that idea.
Michael Waite: Holden Cafe. And I guess every person’s going to be different too, right? Because I’m saying I’ve been moving my eyes, my imagination increases. We don’t know.
Michael Waite: Maybe some of these things are universal, but it doesn’t really matter. We’re learning how our nervous system works and how we work. And, you know, I’m saying I’m primed to learn. I feel more excited to play.
Michael Waite: This might be universal, but it doesn’t really matter. You’re kind of learning about yourself. That’s sort of the main point.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, everybody’s going to have a different response to it. They’re gonna feel it in a different way. They’re going to have a different benefit from it. And the lessons.
Al Wadleigh: You know, when I finish a class, I’ll often have a discussion, because I have a discussion afterwards, and people will share what they sensed, what they improve, what improved about themselves after the lesson. And almost everybody has something different that they bring up, some person that’s, you know, how they walk. Another person notice something in their shoulders or other person’s a visual thing. So everybody interprets it or integrates it in a way that they need.
Al Wadleigh: The lessons are kind of adaptogenic in that way and that they go to the parts of yourself that need to be improved. And that happens.
Michael Waite: Cool.
Where to Learn More
Michael Waite: Well, um, if people want more of these lessons that you mentioned you have some on your on your website, um, that you provide. There might be some other sources for them. If people want to connect, um, with you, um, learn more of your work, or just do more felding guys in journal outside of, um, your practices, yeah, where can they go? Give us some resources or links or whatever.
Al Wadleigh: You’re at my website, achieving excellence.com. Achievingexcellence.com. people can check out our website, our podcast website, um, our podcast, Feldenkrais for Life. I do this with my colleague, Donna Ray. Which is a great podcast, and her website is Donnaray.com. And the podcast website is Feldenkraisforlife.com.
Al Wadleigh: And Feldenkrais for Life podcast is on Apple, Spotify, Google, all the major podcast outlets. So I want to thank you, Michael, for having me on. Really enjoyed our conversation and meeting you.
Michael Waite: Very cool. Yeah. And I highly recommend your podcast. There are there are a few Feldenkrais podcasts out there, and and you’re just really fantastic.
Michael Waite: The dynamic and the sort of the gentleness and the just hearing yours and Donna’s voices, aside from the content, that itself is quite healing, but you bring a lot of insights into all of this from different angles from the neuroscience, from the philosophy, from all the angles that I love. It’s very multidisciplinary, but focused it on Feldenkrais. And you both exhibit a passion for that. And, and, um, yeah, I do like the calming, I don’t know, I like your voices. Both of your voices.
Michael Waite: That’s also one reason why I go there.
Al Wadleigh: Yeah, cool.
Michael Waite: Thanks so much, Al. Feldenkrais for life.
Al Wadleigh: Feldenkrais for life, man.
Michael Waite: That’s it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the Feldenkrais Method use movement as a form of learning?
The conversation describes Feldenkrais lessons as structured explorations in which a person notices how different parts of an action relate. Variation, sensory attention, and feedback allow participants to discover options without being directed toward one universally correct movement.
Why are Feldenkrais movements often performed slowly?
Al explains that moving slowly makes it easier to notice effort, coordination, and subtle differences that habitual speed can conceal. Faster movement may appear later in a lesson after a pattern has become clearer and more comfortable.
What is the purpose of resting during a movement lesson?
Rest gives the participant time to sense changes and return with refreshed attention. In the interview, Al also recommends resting before strain or fatigue begins rather than treating discomfort as something to push through.
How can the eyes influence turning and other movements?
The interview explores how eye direction can participate in organizing the muscles of the neck and back for movement. The guided lesson uses coordinated and differentiated movements of the eyes, head, shoulders, and arm so listeners can observe these relationships directly.
Can imagining a movement change how it is performed?
In the guided lesson, Michael first explores turning through physical movement and then rehearses related movements in his imagination. When he tests the action afterward, he reports a larger and more effortless range, which the speakers discuss as an example of learning transferring through imagined movement.
Tags
al wadleigh, awareness through movement, body awareness, Brain Shaman Podcast, Feldenkrais Method, Guided Movement Lessons, Movement Learning, neuroplasticity, Somatic Education
