Below is a testimonial from MBS Practitioner Jorga Hanesova…
I’ve been studying with MBS Academy for the last 4 years, and Feldenkrais the last 17. This approach to my own body, and nowadays also the classes with my clients, keeps bringing me back to the question “how small can you make that movement?” or less is more. Patiently, I will keep asking “Can you do less?” And eventually the meaning of this question will become clear to one person or another. The Feldenkrais approach means you take your own way at your own pace. This is what I love about Feldenkrais – it is your own journey that can’t be forced from within or without.
When we first start doing a movement in a class we tend to go all the way to our limits, testing them – will they let us go further? Will the limit finally move on its own? Our limit is that point of struggle and stubbornness – where we just want to do it. With no softness, elegance or joy. You actually don’t need to keep doing it, if it hasn’t brought you anywhere else throughout your life, except to your old familiar limits. Many trainers would approach a movement like so: “Lift your head, lift your chest, now five more times, now 20 more”, …and now you are huffing and puffing… “That’s great!” And since many of those movements are so very simple, many times people ask – WHY can’t I do such a simple movement?
And this is where that beautiful quest of discovery starts: what about asking the same question differently?
How far through your body does this movement go, when do you breathe in and out, what do you do with your ribs and many more simple questions which invite us to look at a movement differently.
It’s like a game in the darkness where you suddenly shine lights on different areas of your body and of your self and only then – with that light of awareness, do those areas start existing for you. You can incorporate them – or not – and this is where you start to see at least two, if not more, ways to go. Unlike before, you start having a choice. Before you only had one way, which was often walled, without a clear view or any idea what was going on all around your body.
Now you can go even further. You don’t need to repeat the same movement 10 or 20 times; instead do it each time differently, with a different perspective, in a different way, paying attention to your breathing, realizing where your pivot points are, or anything else that draws your attention. I absolutely love that place further on, where I actually do even less: a place of myriad possibilities, the more of which I try, the more appear in front of me. I explore them joyfully to my heart’s content.
And I roll back onto the floor, and feel so clearly how I have changed.
PS: In one of the courses there was a situation where I couldn’t do the proposed movement at all. We were supposed to work with each other and I suggested to my partner: “Let me think it!” with no frustration in mind. It was a movement with legs and as my partner’s hands reached my ribs, we both were so surprised how the movement went through my whole body. And that was when I realized I can do less even when I am “only” thinking of the movement. This quest never ends; you will keep learning more about yourself and others.
Finding our true potential 