Repetition as a Way to Not Repeat

When I first came to the Feldenkrais Method, my teacher, Joshua Schreiber Shalem, gave me a few recordings of some basic lessons to work with between sessions with him. In the following months, I wound up repeating one of those recordings over 80 times, coming back to it over and over like a worn record, until I had memorized every floor creak and rustle of clothing like notes on a score. Admittedly my movement vocabulary was somewhat limited at the time. This was one of maybe ten lessons I had experienced up to this point, but it was the only thing that reduced my pain and made me feel like myself, and I loved diving deeper and deeper into the experience.

In the years since, I have been delighted, overwhelmed, and awe-struck at the sheer number of lessons and variations that exist in the Feldenkrais method. I have made it a mission to be constantly searching out new patterns to explore and teach so that my classes never become boring. The organic learning process we use is driven by curiosity. If you aren’t interested in what you are doing, you might as well not do it at all! 

However lately, in preparing for many regular classes every week, I have realized that it is wholly possible to do new movements every day without curiosity, to forget that it is not the movements themselves that hold the magic, but the ways in which we approach ourselves through the movement. There is something about repetition that allows us to perceive what was invisible before, if we are willing to be present for it. I have been missing the process of revisiting the same lessons over and over again, the way I would when learning a piece of music, to discover more and more of what it has to teach me. I want to give my students and myself an opportunity to make the work more our own.

My bandmate Will repeating some drum patterns

For this reason, I have compiled a repeatable cycle of 8 lessons that I consider to be foundational to good movement. Every 8 weeks, the cycle will repeat, giving students (and myself) a chance to re-experience each lesson in light of all we have learned between cycles. We will, as my mentor Aliza Stewart put it, “use the repetition as a way to not repeat.” Each cycle will have its own theme that will act as a lens through which all of the lessons will be filtered. 

The first four themes will be: 

Habit invites us to begin by recognizing ourselves as we are. 

Variation adds possibility beyond what we imagine for ourselves. 

Intention hones the process of choice, so we can use our self-knowledge to make the choices we want, to act without getting in our own way.  

Spontaneity takes all the control we have cultivated out dancing, where we can remember how to be our truest selves in movement, unencumbered by doubt. 

The lessons themselves will be derived from early human motor development. The titles are as follows:

1. Co-ordinating flexors and extensors

2. Flexion/folding

3. See-saw breathing

4. Lengthening the opposite arm 

5. Amphibian

6. Lifting limbs on back and front

7. On the belly, tilting bent and tied legs

8. Rolling from side to side 

I have never known another practitioner to create a structure like this (though it is wholly possible that someone has) so it will be an experiment. To those of you who chose to join me for the journey, I am excited to go deeper with you and see what we might find.