Movement Made Easy: Feldenkrais for Flexibility and Strength #87

In this episode, Mary tackles a common question: "Can you really increase flexibility and strength without stretching or pushing your limits?"

Drawing from the Feldenkrais Method, Mary explains how improving body awareness and reducing unnecessary tension can lead to greater strength and flexibility.

Whether you're an athlete or simply looking to move more easily and comfortably, this episode will guide you on how to achieve sustainable, long-term improvement in your movement, strength, and flexibility.

Remember, you and your horse deserve to feel great. Together!

Key Takeaways:

1. Awareness is Key: Improving body awareness helps refine movement, leading to natural increases in flexibility and strength.
2. Healthy Effort vs. Strain: Pushing beyond limits with strain can cause unnecessary tension and hinder progress, while healthy effort is sustainable and efficient, leading to greater strength and flexibility.
3. Neuroplasticity: The Feldenkrais Method leverages the brain’s ability to create new neural pathways, allowing for better movement and adaptation.
4. Application Across Disciplines: Whether you're an equestrian, dancer, or other athlete, Feldenkrais concepts can enhance performance and reduce the risk of injury.
5. Integrating Feldenkrais into Daily Life: The benefits of Feldenkrais aren’t confined to the practice; they permeate all areas of life, leading to more ease and efficiency in everyday tasks.

Resources:

Chihuahua Recovers From a Stroke

💥Learn how the Feldenkrais Method can help improve your seat, position, and balance on your horse! Free rider videos masterclass: https://www.marydebono.com/rider 💥

Email [email protected]

All information is for general educational purposes ONLY and doesn't constitute medical or veterinary advice.  

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. Are you interested in improving your flexibility or your strength? Or maybe both? Maybe you're not sure how to approach it in a way that's going to be sustainable and healthy for you long term. Well, I'm so glad you're joining me today because I have an answer for you. So in case we're meeting for the first time, my name is Mary de Bono, and I got this great question from.

From Bartinka, and she's from the Netherlands. And it's such a good question. And I've actually been asked variations of this question before that I've answered for people privately, but I love how she puts it. So I wanted to do a podcast episode about it. So her question is this. I have a question about stretching and straining that you might answer. I understand that in Feldenkrais, you explore ease of movement, and better movement will generate more flexibility and strengthen.

But how do you proceed if you need much more flexibility or strength than you currently possess? Say you're a dancer and you need to do the splits in a performance, or you really need to increase your jumping power, can you really get there without stretching and pushing your limits? Yeah, that's a great question, isn't it? So thank you, Bertinka. I'm happy to answer it. First of all. So Bertinka is familiar with the Feldenkrais method.

Some of you may not be. So let me just give you a really brief intro to it in the Feldenkrais method. The Feldenkrais method, by the way, was originated by a man named Doctor Moshe Feldenkrais. And you can think of it as kind of a form of. It's movement education. Some people call it movement retraining. It's a way of kind of communicating with your nervous system so that you can learn to move in an easier, healthier, more comfortable way.

It harnesses the power of neuroplasticity, which allows your brain. Neuroplasticity allows your nervous system to adapt to changes in the environment. It's like, for example, this is like an extreme example, but if a person, or even a dog, has a stroke and affects a portion of the brain, for example, so, say with a person, I'm thinking of someone that I worked with, and it impacts a portion of the brain, and so they can no longer use one part of their body.

Well, a lot of times what can happen is the nervous system can kind of reroute the messages through different neural pathways so that that person can move again. And by the way, I have a few examples about this on my website for when I worked with dogs that had strokes where one side of the body was paralyzed. So let me know if you want to know more about that.

I could link. I'll link to them in the. In the description. Wherever you're listening or watching this, I'll give you a couple of examples. But. So. So that's neuroplasticity. But we do. We use neuroplasticity all the time. Like, you don't have to have such a traumatic event for your nervous system to be plastic, if you will, malleable. It's constantly adapting. Our brain is constantly changing. You read something or you listen to this podcast, for example, your brain changes.

It changes in response to our environment. So what we do is in the Feldenkrais method. And I've been a practitioner for more than three decades. I've been teaching this. You learn how to harness that to make the best use of it. Okay, so, from a Feldenkrais perspective, the way we improve flexibility and strength is from being more aware of how we're moving so we can refine our movement.

And that allows us to naturally be more flexible and stronger, because you get stronger when you coordinate the parts of your body in a. In an efficient way. And when you let go of unnecessary tension, that, number one, makes you stiffer, so you lose flexibility. And number two, you're, like, literally fighting yourself. So muscles that need to be engaged to, say, pick up a heavy weight, they're being.

Maybe you have co contraction that is fighting that. And this is all stuff that we do habitually, unconsciously. So the Feldenkrais method is genius. And I have to say all kudos to doctor Feldenkrais in helping you change those maladaptive movement habits that you may have. And we recognize that they came from a place where maybe you were solving a problem originally, but now you're holding on to it unnecessarily.

So it's a very gentle approach. It can be used with people of all ages, all levels of fitness, all kinds of conditions. And then I've taken a lot of the concepts of Doctor Feldenkrais in addition to my own approach that I was developing even before I knew about Feldenkrais. And I created an approach called Debono Moves, which is used with animals. So horses, dogs, cats, etcetera. So, but today, we'll focus on you.

But you can think of these same concepts can also apply to your animal companions. Okay, so this idea that you build more flexibility, better mobility, better strength through improving your awareness, your you can think of it as body awareness, like how you move, how you. You know, where your limbs are in space, your proprioceptive abilities, all of that good stuff. Okay? The other thing, in Feldenkrais, we move in many different directions.

It's not about just going straight, like, say, touching your toes or bending to the side. We're doing these really nuanced movements. And, number one, that gets the attention of your brain in a good way. Again, we're building on this idea that we can harness neuroplasticity, this ability to create new neural connections to change how we feel and how we move. And the other thing is, it's more like real life.

For example, you're doing something with your horse or your dog or whatever. You're reaching under your. Do whatever it is you're doing. Maybe you're reaching under your car to get something. You're moving in these really nuanced ways. So to be able to do that, it's like we learn how to do that really well in the Feldenkrais method. So that's really, really important for both flexibility and strength, for that matter.

So excuse me as I just move my notes here, because you know me, I've always got notes for you because I want you to get all the things right, all the goodness. The other thing in Feldenkrais, it's really big, is reducing your effort, because getting back to this idea that we have these habitual ways of moving that are no longer serving us, right. We tense areas where it's unnecessary.

And not only unnecessary, so that saps our energy, makes us feel fatigued and sore and cranky, right? But it actually gets in our way, gets in the way of flexibility, gets in the way of our strength. It reduces those things. So we become, you know, stiffer and weaker when we do that. So, in Feldenkrais, we really learn how to recognize where you're holding tension unnecessarily and how to let it go.

So. And here's a good time to talk to you about the difference between healthy effort and strain. Okay, so let's get back to Bartinka's question, where she's talking about, for example, a dancer that wants to push herself a little bit more, or maybe it's a basketball player and she wants to jump higher. Or maybe it's any one of us that wants to get stronger and wants to lift heavier weights.

We can do it. If we take our foundation of awareness that we're honing in the Feldenkrais method, if we take that with us into our dance routine on the basketball court or, you know, into. Into the weight room at the gym. Right. Then we can push ourselves in a healthy way. So if we have strain, that means we're using muscles unnecessarily, like I mentioned before, that unnecessary effort makes us stiffer and makes us weaker.

Healthy effort, on the other hand, is effort. You're using calories, right. You're using your muscles, but in a way that is efficient, that you have, again, more coordination of the parts, right. It's less wear and tear on your body. It's sustainable over your lifetime. That's healthy effort. So, yes, you can push yourself because you've taken your Feldenkrais knowledge, if you will, right. What you learn as you do the Feldenkrais method.

So whether maybe you're doing the Feldenkrais method with me, I offer online classes and things maybe you're doing with someone else, but it's not something that you set aside. Like, maybe you're doing it from five to 06:00 p.m. every evening. It's not like, okay, that's my Feldenkrais time. And the rest of the time, I go through life, you know, without sensing, without a lack of awareness. No, no, no.

You use your Feldenkrais practice to improve your entire life. Okay? And yes, you bring this with you to the gym, right? Or, you know, into wherever you're doing all your things, you bring it with you into your car, right. As you're driving. Do you need to hold the steering wheel so tight? Right. I can. You have a different level of awareness. Can you sit? You know, do you notice, oh, I'm sitting heavier on one side of my pelvis when I'm driving.

Right. I kind of slumped to one side. You bring your Feldenkrais awareness into everything you do. And it's not that it becomes this constant noise in your head. Not at all. It just becomes part of who you are. Maybe in the beginning, you. You have to think of it a little more consciously, but over time, it just becomes natural. And in the beginning, though, people. So a lot of my students and clients, they'll have a post it note, because one of my favorite questions is, how can this feel easier?

And this could be anything. This could be, again, working out. It could be cooking a meal. It could be deciding what to bring on a trip. It could be, you know, walking your dog, you know, dealing with a training challenge with your horse or whoever. How can it feel easier? How can this feel easier? So some people will do that, they'll write it on a post it note and put it up in different places so that they remind themselves of, like, wait a minute, can I do this easier?

So even if this, what we're calling this, happens to be lifting a very heavy weight, can you do it easier? That that gives you sort of the motivation to start to question, can I let go of unnecessary effort? Maybe I can breathe in a healthier way. Right? A way that helps that movement. Maybe I can, you know, again, maybe I'm gripping with my toes. Even though that's not necessary.

Not only is it unnecessary, right, it's sapping your energy. It's actually creating a chain effect of tension throughout your body that is reducing your strength and vitality and flexibility. So you definitely can bring this into your dance lessons, into your basketball playing. My husband was a big, big basketball player. He brought his feldenkrais. He's a Feldenkrais practitioner, too. He brought his Feldenkrais knowledge onto the court all the time.

You better believe it. It's not something he put aside. Right? So these are all things that we can do to improve our strength and flexibility. Okay? So, again, we're harnessing the power of our body. Like, our nervous system is so incredible. Our whole. We're incredible, right? I mean, all of us. And just recognizing that you. And this is true for your animals as well, right? Their nervous systems are incredible, and they can learn and improve, and they can become more flexible and stronger.

I have tons of stories about older animals I've worked with that have improved their ability to move. Right. That have gotten stronger and more flexible and regained that spark. Again, what we're doing is we're tapping into the power of the nervous system and your ability to learn that was so big with Doctor Feldenkrais, you're learning how to learn, is what he would say. It's not learning as if, like, I'm teaching you or someone else is teaching you.

You learn through yourself. Like, we use the vehicle of movement to help you learn. And then you take that with you everywhere. You can learn other things more easily because you're learning how to learn. You're really honing your nervous system. And again, I've seen this with the animals as well. People will tell me their horses or their dogs will be more responsive to them. Like, as far as their training, right after they've done some Felden, you know, some Feldenkrais inspired moves with their animals, which I call Debono moves.

So, you know, there's so many ways you can bring this into your everyday life. But, yes. So, again, to answer Baratinka, yeah, you can definitely bring this to the workout room. You can bring this to the, you know, to, to your dance lessons where you're learning to jump, you know, higher, right. You're learning to be, you know, to do the splits. If you think of the difference between focusing on, like, specific muscles to stretch specific muscles to do splits versus using your whole body in an easy, elegant way, I mean, there's so much difference.

It's. It's unbelievable. And by the way, I want to say a lot of dance programs at universities have Feldenkrais practitioners on their faculty because they recognize the dance community was one of the ones in the very beginning that they recognized the value of bringing the Feldenkrais method to their dance students, because then the dancers could improve in a way that was going to be healthy. And it even looks better.

It's more aesthetically pleasing because when movement is efficient and well coordinated, actually looks better. There's that sense of effortlessness. Yes, we know you're. You're using effort. You're using healthy effort, but there's that sense of ease in the movement. So when you do that split, when you jump really high, right. There's that sense of effortlessness. And that's what we like to look at, right? That is aesthetically pleasing to us.

And by the way, this is true with your animals as well. When they're moving more gracefully, it's like, that's so beautiful to watch that, you know, that dog, that horse trot across that field like that, right? Because there's something aesthetically pleasing about the sense of effortlessness. So. And also in, in sports, like in professional sports where ice hockey, for example, other sports, basketball, football, they have used Feldenkrais practitioners to help those athletes at the very top of their game.

And I'll say this. I have worked with equine and canine athletes and their human counterparts, by the way, who are at the top of their game. Right? Like I've, there, I have many examples of horses. I've helped get to very high levels of competition. I mean, I was one of the members of the team. I'm not going to take full credit or anything like that. You know, they had the right trainer and they had other things, good food and all the things.

But, you know, you can, you can help them, again, be more coordinated in their movements so they could use the power and that flexibility in a healthy way so it naturally improves their performance on the field, whatever that field of play is whether, you know, an agility dog, a fly ball dog. You know, there's so many canine sports, there's so many equine sports. I've worked with a lot of show jumpers, a lot of also high level dressage horses, reiners, etcetera.

So these are things that we can do, we can bring into our work and our play with our animals. This level of awareness, this level of, yes, we can push a little bit at a time, right? But we do it with a level of awareness that we didn't have before. Okay. So I hope this makes sense for you. Let me know if you have a question. I want to thank Bartinka again for her excellent question.

And I want to thank you for listening, subscribing and reviewing the podcast. And if you have any questions that you would like answered, whether about you or your animals, drop me an email. [email protected] so thank you again, and I look forward to talking to you real soon. Bye for now.