This lesson benefits from a low friction surface, at least for your lower body. Consider a smooth mat or floor surface, and if necessary explore sock options.
Once you understand the lesson well, you may benefit from reversing all the lefts and rights the next time you explore it.
In his quote from The Potent Self, “The sensation of effort is the subjective feeling of wasted movement,” the word effort, as Moshe Feldenkrais means it, has a flavor of willpower, unpleasantness, and insufficiency. Though his statement seems “utterly preposterous,” Feldenkrais is unequivocal: he really is saying that sensing ANY effort implies that our movement – by which he means our muscular contractions – could be more efficiently organized for the task at hand.
But muscles have to contract in order for us to act. Isn’t a sense of effort expected? No. There’s a difference between the pleasant experience of necessary, distributed, proportional, and economical muscular contractions and the experience of effort.
But isn’t a little effort easy enough to push through using willpower? This can be satisfying…right? It’s only satisfying because of our cultural conditioning. Effective, efficient actions – even large, fast, or powerful ones – can and should feel pleasant and simple.
When we’re working against ourselves somehow – when it’s effort – we can listen closely and notice the breath catch, the eyes tighten. There are hesitations and discomforts, and we instantly wonder, consciously or unconsciously, if we’re doing it right. We don’t feel whole or confident.
Effortless action, by contrast, has a sense of ease, flow, and pleasure, even when powerful muscular contractions are required. This is the “flow state” that athletes and artists speak of, but it’s always available: in everyday activities, in slow movement explorations like Feldenkrais lessons, and, in fact, in every action of our lives.
By pursuing these pleasurable qualities of movement we can learn to sense the difference between necessary muscular contractions and the “trying hard” sense of effort, and thus to choose – more and more often – not to experience effort. The body, mind, and quality of life benefits that follow are impossible to overstate.
What does all this mean for exercise, when we’re purposely trying to overload our muscles? That’s included in another exploration of this quote in the Curiosities tab of my talk called What is Action is Good?
This lesson is found in Patron Treasures, our collection of lessons exclusively for Feldenkrais Project Patron-level donors.
It was recorded in The FP Weekly Pay-What-You-Can Class on October 22, 2024, in a sequence of lessons about effortless action. The live recording has been edited to improve flow, clarity, and audio quality.
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What an interesting puzzle. Mentally I’m wondering how I may connect the lesson parts more skillfully. Somatically I experience myself as more whole and light and able. And all that even though or maybe because I was often confused and wished for just forcing through.
After trying some other Feldenkrais resources for some weeks I’m happy to be back here on familiar ground and enjoy the clarity and gentleness of your “guidance”.
It seems like there may be many hidden treasures and deep dives in the unpolished recordings of your weekly classes. I was wondering whether it was possible to buy theme-bundled packages of those? And also what your favorite online resources are (if you use any for your own study)?
Yeah, this is a lesson that can’t be “controlled” or dissected very easily. We have to just kind of surrender to its development as the action becomes more and more about dynamic balance. I encourage you to try it again soon, and to enjoy the gestalt without trying to “figure it out,” at least during the lesson.
I review each weekly class and choose my favorites for future Patron Treasures, with a bias toward filling in remaining gaps in genres and topics among The FP’s permanent audio lessons. Themed packages is an interesting idea I will keep in mind! In the meantime, I recommend reading our monthly class email that comes out before the first Tuesday. I sometimes call out recent sequences of lessons that were designed together.
In recent years I study a lot at Feldenkrais First, and some at Feldenkrais Access. I also enjoy diving back into Moshe’s originals.