When I was between nine and eleven years old I wanted to go to dance classes. I didn’t know of any in my narrow world lived within a new build estate. My life consisted of going to school, playing on the estate with a neighbouring friend or two, visiting my grandparents and reading books from the library. Sometimes I would write stories, composition, as it was then called, being my favourite subject. I look back on a culturally deprived childhood, although we always had good food and clothes. I asked my mother once if I could go dancing but she commented that it was a load of nonsense. That response might have been for a variety of reasons; they couldn’t afford it, knew of no dancing schools, or really thought it was a nonsense. I suspect it was a mixture of all three. My parents didn’t have any cultural pursuits in their lives and introduced none into mine.
I had such a deep desire to dance and move my body. Our sitting room was quite big as I remember it and long and when I found myself alone in that space I would free dance backwards and forwards around this room, waving and opening my arms, pirouetting on my toes, slow and fast, sweeping up and down, dreaming myself into being a dancer. I was always worried about being caught, knowing that I would be told to sit down, I didn’t want any interruptions in my practice. I had to do a lot of sitting down and being still unless I was outside and, even then, it was where I was largely unseen. But I chose my times well and after a while I would be able to let go and lose myself in the ‘dance’.
Why I had this innate need to move in dance I don’t know. I certainly don’t think it was from the books I read which were fairly limited. I didn’t get to the library very often and we had few books in the home. Of course, it is totally natural for a child to want to move their body but this felt like a thirst. It was present in my body, mind and spirit.
Along came the Beatles in the sixties and I would get together at a friend’s house to listen and dance to their music. At that time, we had a radiogram at one end of the room which was hardly ever on. Surprisingly my mother bought me a record, Hippy Hippy Shake, and I would dance and dance to this. It certainly enlivened my environment!
However, apart from enjoying dancing as a teenager and a young adult, I never pursued any other movement practice. Eventually, I became a mother, busy with children, goats, hens, dogs, cats and a garden, and living in a rural environment, beginning to learn about the healing power of herbs, plants and homeopathy. This was a huge change from my life growing up. The desire to have some form of artistic physical movement in my life faded into the background until I moved in my thirties to send my children to a Steiner School situated in a Camphill Village.
Within this large anthroposophical village community was a school of eurythmy, an expressive movement art form which encompasses mindfulness and personal development, the latter I had for some years been open to in my life. As I became familiar with the community and worked within it on occasion, I joined in many co-worker activities, one being eurythmy. It was a wonderful opportunity for me to go to a weekly class and satisfied a great need within me. I consider it a healing art and would have liked at the time to do the training but it would have meant travelling, I had commitments so this was not possible for me. I loved that my children had eurythmy at school though as they attended the Steiner/Waldorf School in the village. They were divided in their opinions of it; one daughter and son look back fondly on the classes. My mentioned to me the other day that he liked it when they used therapeutic copper rods. Interestingly, he is now an excellent juggler in his spare time!
To continue on my journey: I also joined the co-worker group at this community which involved writing about my self and the world around me, and sharing it with others. Looking back, I think it was a form of early introduction to writing for wellbeing.
I was already interested in different forms of natural healing and therapies; it may have led me to Shiatsu training and Tai, Chi, Chi Kung and meditation. At an exceedingly full time in my life, now a single parent, and at a turning point mid-life, I decided to attend university to study social anthropology. It was a huge step having left school at fifteen but I was considered worthy of a place. I chose eventually to focus on many modules exploring different forms of healing in other cultures, and changes within societies. After completing a BA (Hons) and an MA, I decided to fully immerse myself in a movement training. Tai Chi and Chi Kung was calling me, I had found a wonderful teacher.
Hence, I attended the Infinite Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Meditation Three-Year Teacher Training Course. I qualified in 2008. Movement had now become an essential part of my life. I held classes and workshops and all was good. Unbeknown to me, of course, a huge life crisis was on the horizon. This brought about change in a big way. A life-threatening event occurred. I recovered after a long time. It left me feeling incredibly vulnerable, yet optimistic for the future. My family had grown by this time of course and were living their own lives, except my daughter in her twenties who remained at home for a while. She was wonderful at caring for me.
After much thought I attempted to continue as I was prior to this event; teaching Tai Chi and enrolling for a PhD concerning the emotional and physical benefits of Tai Chi for older women. I managed for a year with the studies but it was too soon, I was still not completely well and awaiting further treatment.
Not wanting to be idle, I decided to introduce new knowledge into my life at home after listening to what my heart was telling me. In brief, I enrolled on several short courses of writing, both of poetry and prose, leading me to enrol in a two-year post graduate diploma in Creative Writing. I enjoyed this so much and was learning so much about writing and myself that I enrolled in a two-year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, taking the publication route. I achieved merits in both and wrote my first novel, as yet unpublished.
Towards the end of the MFA, and feeling well and healthy again, I decided I would like to come full circle, return to health and wellbeing, integrating my skills. My idea was, and still is, to use my writing skills for wellbeing, combined eventually with Tai Chi and Chi Kung.
Hence, I am a student again, presently studying with The International Academy for Poetry Therapy/Bibliography, https://iapoetry.org/ I presently hold regular writing for wellbeing groups and attend many peer groups and workshops.
During the final year of my MFA, Feldenkrais came into my life. I started regularly attending and still attend many workshops and one-to-one sessions including Feldenkrais movement with writing. These are all on Zoom, the wonder of technology when it is used correctly! The newly acquired skills I learnt and am still learning are so beneficial for my health and wellbeing, alongside Tai Chi and Chi Kung which I still practise. I recently noticed that yoga and writing workshops are available. I consider it wonderful that movement and writing is becoming recognised. I hope one day to complete some training in Feldenkrais, for the moment I will continue to practice it for myself. I also intend to experiment with Tai Chi, Chi Kung and writing. I have started to introduce Chi Kung to the participants in the writing for wellbeing sessions I facilitate with an excellent response. After a recent workshop I was asked by a handful of students if I would teach Tai Chi. Instead of holding a separate class I will eventually offer it to participants of my workshops.
According to the Feldenkrais Institute “The Feldenkrais Method develops and increases body awareness through movement and contact with one’s own body.
Forgotten paths in our ability to sense, feel, think and act are explored – making it possible to lead a fuller life, and make decisions according to one’s full potential”.
Feldenkrais has helped my writing when combining and integrating the two. It assists by making me become increasingly aware of my body, the way in which I hold myself, the tensions which are in my body at certain times, the ideas I have regarding my self-image. This happens to the extent that if, for instance, I am working with the idea of transition, the movement from one aspect of my life to another. As I am offered and instructed into a Feldenkrais practice by the teacher, I focus on particular parts of my body, which, when open to it reveals much of myself to me. If followed by an invitation to allow an image to come to me, my mind and body are so absorbed and open to the image or words that it is possible to allow it to become embodied. Therefore, I am able to move with that image. From the movement which is stimulated, whatever it brings forth in me, provides me with the inspiration to transmit this onto the page, whether by words in the form of poetry or prose, or in a drawing or even simple marks on the page representing what I have thought and felt within the movement. Thus, revealing more of my inner self, so not only changing habits in my body, but mind too. In short, in my opinion, encompassing increased sensations of wellbeing. Each time I practice Feldenkrais on my own, I reflect that I feel the benefits, as I also do with Tai Chi. Therefore, it is another part of my life that has become integrated.
The movements of Feldenkrais can be very subtle, gentle like a whisper. The effects can transfer into my everyday life, whether in the way I habitually move or in my emotions. When we are aware of how we move we can allow certain impulses to move in a particular way, to change, to drop out of our habits, or as Moshe Feldenkrais himself suggested, self-image. Feldenkrais states in an interview that “The difficulty in changing a physical or mental habit is due partly to heredity and individuality, but mostly in the necessity of displacing an already acquired habit.”
This can become apparent in our lives, our everyday, our relationships and in our writing. For me, my experience, however small, reveals a different way of being, maybe for instance in decision-making, providing a sense of renewal which, for me, I perceive within the movement of Feldenkrais.
Here I refer back to the concept of transition and how I was encouraged by a teacher of Feldenkrais to explore this in my movements and in my writing. My experience is that for everyone there can be a form of awakening to a different bodily self-image. We can leave behind habitual movements and personal self-image and shift into a space in which we are aware of our movements and can begin to change them, a bit like we do with our writing, therefore, healing parts of us.
In my opinion, the changing of habits built up can open up so much in our awareness. For me, Feldenkrais merges with my writing practice. I have experienced how writing for wellbeing and poetry therapy can form a release by opening up memories, attitudes, emotions and all manner of buried or hidden parts of life. Therefore, writing combined with movements such as Feldenkrais addresses these same issues. The practice of the art of Tai Chi, a meditative movement and Chi Kung, complements them both offering the ability to illuminate the awareness of ourselves. All three can work hand-in-hand and in each the opportunity for wellbeing is present. By this I mean getting to know ourselves and journeying with who are, opening ourselves up to understanding and honouring ourselves; indeed, a path to wellbeing.
To move and explore on different levels is along the same lines as writing for wellbeing and the two, these movement practices and writing, are, in my opinion from experience, working together in the same direction.
My knowledge of Feldenkrais has been acquired through the many books on Feldenkrais and my teacher Charlie Blowers at Moving Pieces https://www.movingpieces.co.uk/
My training of Tai Chi and Chi Kung was with the founder of Infinite Tai Chi, Jason Chan https://www.theinfinitearts.com/team/jason-chan/
Beringer, Elizabeth, (2010), Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrias, North Atlantic Books, California, USA.