News

January, 2017

It's that time of the year when many people are reflecting on the past year and making New Year’s resolutions. In the past, I have found that my resolutions didn't really fit the conditions in the New Year, and I felt vaguely dissatisfied with myself for not 'keeping' my New Year Resolutions.

In his little pamphlet, Learning to Learn, Feldenkrais writes that we have been wired-in by prevailing educational methods so that when we have a goal, we go all out to achieve it. If we have no idea how to mobilize our self for that task, we will bite our lips, hold our breath, and strain in order to achieve something. The result is excessive effort and harmful strain. We are often limited by not knowing how to chunk the goal into easy parts, to which we can pay attention.

Moshe always encourages reducing effort. As long as we hold the intention lightly, we may surpass the limit of our ignorance and reach a higher level of achievement.

Self-directed learning is our goal, using the activities you enjoy in your life as the way to track progress. How will we think and sense and act to come closer to our intention? Does our action inform and fit our intentions?

To my delight, recently I noticed that Feldenkrais student and writer, Ilona Fried has written elegantly about New Year's resolutions and goal setting - check it out.

This year we will again take activities we do everyday as the way we track progress. My walking holiday has once again shown me how it is the activities we do in our lives in which we reap the benefits of the work we do throughout the year.

2016 news
2015 news
2014 news
2013 news
2012 news
2011 news
Older news