Self Image
Body Image ~ Body Schema
☯ "Mirror neurons are thought to play a role in the INTERPERSONAL characteristics of body schema." (emphasis added)
“It is thought that an individual’s body schema is used to represent both one’s own body and the bodies of others. Mirror neurons are thought to play a role in the INTERPERSONAL characteristics of body schema. INTERPERSONAL projection of one’s body schema plays an important role in successfully imitating motions such as hand gestures, especially while maintaining the handedness and location of the gesture, but not necessarily copying the exact motion itself” (emphasis added)
☯ Body image consists of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs concerning one’s body.
IMAGES difference between body image and body schema
A body image consists of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs concerning one’s body. In contrast, body schema consists of sensory-motor capacities that control movement and posture
☯ Body schema is a concept used in several disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, sports medicine, and robotics
Body schema is a concept used in several disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, sports medicine, and robotics. The neurologist Sir Henry Head originally defined it as a postural model of the body that actively organizes and modifies ‘the impressions produced by incoming sensory impulses in such a way that the final sensation of body position, or of locality, rises into consciousness charged with a relation to something that has happened before’.[1] As a postural model that keeps track of limb position, it plays an important role in control of action. It involves aspects of both central (brain processes) and peripheral (sensory, proprioceptive) systems. Thus, a body schema can be considered the collection of processes that registers the posture of one’s body parts in space. The schema is updated during body movement. This is typically a non-conscious process, and is used primarily for spatial organization of action. It is therefore a pragmatic representation of the body’s spatial properties, which includes the length of limbs and limb segments, their arrangement, the configuration of the segments in space, and the shape of the body surface.[2][3][4][5] Body schema also plays an important role in the integration and use of tools by humans.[6][7][8][9]
A clear differentiation of body schema from body image has developed gradually.
☯ Historically, body schema and body image were generally lumped together, used interchangeably, or ill-defined.
Historically, body schema and body image were generally lumped together, used interchangeably, or ill-defined. In science and elsewhere, the two terms are still commonly misattributed or confused. Efforts have been made to distinguish the two and define them in clear and differentiable ways.[25] A body image consists of perceptions, attitudes, and beliefs concerning one’s body. In contrast, body schema consists of sensory-motor capacities that control movement and posture.
Body image may involve a person’s conscious perception of his or her own physical appearance. It is how individuals see themselves when
☯ Body image (medicine)/ Peripheral neuropathy /Schema (psychology)
The Concept of ‘Body Schema’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodied Subjectivity
The Concept of ‘Body Schema’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodied Subjectivity
from https://philpapers.org/archive/HALTCO-38.pdf
The Concept of ‘Body Schema’ in Merleau-Ponty’s Account of Embodied Subjectivity
In Bernard Andrieu, Jim Parry, Alessandro Porrovecchio & Olivier Sirost (eds.), Body Ecology and Emersive Leisure. Londýn, Velká Británie: Routledge. pp. 37-50 (2018)
According to Merleau–Ponty, the body schema is a practical diagram of our relationships to the world, an action-based norm with reference to which things make sense.
In his 1953 lectures at the College de France, Merleau-Ponty dedicated much effort to further developing his idea of embodied subject and interpreted fresh sources that he did not use in Phenomenology of Perception. Notably, he studied more in depth the neurological notion of “body schema”. According to Merleau-Ponty, the body schema is a practical diagram of our relationships to the world, an action-based norm with reference to which things make sense. Merleau-Ponty more precisely tried to describe the fundamentally dynamic unity of the body, i.e. the fact there are various possibilities how the practical “diagram” of body schema could be de-differentiated (in pathology) or further refined (via cognitive and cultural superstructures, symbolic systems). This chapter summarises Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of the notion, while contrasting it to the more traditional understanding of the body in phenomenology and recent philosophical texts dealing with body schema.
Yacine Haffar — The Subject-Object “problem” reframed by Gene.
Yacine Haffar
The Subject-Object “problem” reframed by Gene.
I’d say that for Gendlin the The Subject/Object distinction isn’t the crux of the matter (so it’s not really a big problem and we can move beyond it and more importantly also speak from that “beyond”).
Gendlin shows here that INTERACTION and EXPERIENCING comes long before and are MORE IMPORTANT and more MEANINGFULL than what can merely be perceived and that we would gain a lot in focusing on (paying attention to) that felt experiencing as what really matters rather than thinking in terms of subject/object dichotomy.
The interaction and experiencing are FULL and THICK and a much more interesting source of MEANING than the subject or the object, which are DERIVED from the interaction/experiencing (for Gendlin interaction is FIRST, in all the sense of that word)
To illustrate these points please find an extract from Language Beyond Postmodernism: Saying and Thinking in Gendlin Philosophy (editor: David Levin) :
“We can recall that Husserl, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger rejected the “spectator view.” They thought they could do this because they were speaking from a place that is not a perspective, not an observation or view.
Wittgenstein spoke from what we do and say in our situations. This is not a perspective. But he said he could only “show” it, much as Heidegger said that one can only “point” beyond the schemes in the language. But where they stood so as to be able to do this has been lost.
To reestablish where they spoke from, we must go further
It is not just the conflicting (subjective or objective) perspectives we must question, but perspectives as such.
Perspectives (and views) come from perception. I think we have to recognize that the subject/object approach comes from perception.
***Philosophy must not begin with perception.*** !!!
(…)
Any starting point (in philosophy) is questioned today, but perception as the traditional starting point of philosophy has great implicit effects which still remain with us.
It is an old but false assumption that experience begins with perception.
Perception is never first, and never alone. It is not the main way we are in our situations. Perception divides your perception of me from mine of you. But interaction is more than two perceptions.
And interaction is not inherently divided. Between two people there is one interaction.
We will move beyond the subject/object distinction if webecome able to speak from how we interact bodily in our situations. Let me show that this is a bodily interaction, and not primarily perception.
Even the simplest situation (experience… ) cannot be reduced to colors, sounds, and smells. People and things exist in terms of living and interacting.
We are observable, yes, but we don’t begin as observations. We are never just things lying around, over there, waiting to be observed. Nor do we live just as observers. Our interactions involve long stories that do not consist chiefly of externalities that can be photographed.
Speaking is interaction; it is a change in a situation. It changes how the story will ensue.
We speak from being here … , from being bodily in our situations, not from something presented before someone, whether in our own perspective or the ideal observer’s. Both perspectives are with us, but we are always also here in that way in which “we” and “bodily” and “are” and “here” say more….
(…)
Now I will add that we do not only sense the physical, Euclidian space; we sense our situation there. We sense what might happen to us from there, and what we will and won’t do there.
In the apartment behind the wall in back of me are people whom I could now disturb, but I won’t, because… Of course I sense my situation also in front and all around me. It is much more than the space and the things around me. A situation is not a view of things over there. My (….) is my bodily sense of living (planning, feeling, being about to act… ) in my situation.”
body image body schema - Useful Google search phrases
body image and body schema a conceptual clarification
body image and body schema in a deafferented subject
gallagher body image and body schema
difference between body image and body schema
body image and body schema
The Brain’s Sense of Movement Alain Berthoz © 2000
With appreciation to Rachel for sending this reference:
The Brain’s Sense of Movement
Alain Berthoz
Translated by Giselle Weiss
Series: Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience
Copyright Date: 2000
Published by: Harvard University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1cc2mz2
July 2023 Discussion
Kinestethic and kinetic inteligence
Ataxia, Dizziness, Vertigo
Click one of the topics above
Discussion Topics July 2021
“Improving the Entire Personality” Al Wadlegh quoting Moshé from AY 267. Bending on one knee behind a chair.
I came across this quote when I was doing my morning Awareness Through Movement lesson the other day. It really resonated with me, so I wanted to share it.
Yesim on listening and self-image ~ I consider two listening processes. July 24, 2021
I consider two listening processes.
July 24, 2021
The first one comes from ONE ear to the other and goes out.
The other comes from TWO ears, goes to eyes, goes to the nose, goes to the throat, goes to the heart, and listening from all my sensory apparatus. Then I can listen while I am sensing the quality of ..?.., the quality of the emotions with empathy. Then listening really comes to the stage as some kind of material maybe. It is a living thing.
We are all living bodies and living life, so living life. From this point of view, listening is being in life. Listening is actually experiencing, but sometimes it is not.
If I pay attention to listening I think I really listened to you today. I think listening is not just about the sound because I can feel that sound in your eyes.
So what I feel, when some people speak, is just a concern for, as Moshé says, the safety… and also ..?., safety in the environment, safety in the nervous system. If you do not feel safe then nothing works in connection. Actually, the functions in the body, the anatomical muscles and fascia – and emotions, which are actually related to the muscles and fascia – and my being perhaps in my GROUNDEDNESS, as a whole if I am not in a safe place emotionally, physically, or mentally, they are all connected to each other so maybe today I can say in the first place while I am listening to you I am actually listening to myself rather than paying attention to you.
I also come across with myself, maybe pre-consciously. So LISTENING is making a CONNECTION with my OWN self, my own senses, because while I listen to you I can sense my anxiety ACCORDING to your CONTEXT, or your sound, or your face or your body. I can feel, sense, listen to myself, and can feel happiness or whatever.
For actors onstage, when two people are acting as, let us say, Ophelia and Hamlet if they do not listen to each other on stage, do not feel or are not aware of the inner connection to ..?..
It is wonderful. Today I discovered listening to you is ACTUALLY LISTENING to myself, on STAGE, on the PHONE, or on Zoom. Sometimes listening is not just making sense of the words …?… need words to speak or to listen.
Self-image also deals with listening, but the SCHEMA as the HABITS, also listens to my self-image and also deals with how I listen to you, because if my habit is, say, to ‘she does not like me, I feel ridiculous when I look at her’ then my mental habit puts stress on my self-image and then it expresses myself in listening and talking.
George Herbert Mead. "Organism, Community and Environment" and Eugene T. Gendlin A Process Model (1997) ~ relating to our discussion July 24, 2021
George Herbert Mead. “Organism, Community and Environment” and Eugene T. Gendlin A Process Model (1997) ~ relating to our discussion July 24, 2021
_________________________________
Of course the process involves a great deal more than the missing part which has now returned. The process which resumes is much more complex than one could guess just from the object. Yet when this object occurs, the whole complex process which was stopped, resumes.
“The animal recognizes the object”, says the spectator. It responds appropriately to the object.
We can now derive the old statement of G.H. Mead: “the environment is a function of the organism”. This is not so in every respect. The body and the en have their own reality connections, and this leads to a new sense of our term “en#2” in which we can speak of it separately.–– A Process Model (1997) page 13 CHAPTER I: BODY-ENVIRONMENT (B-EN) Eugene T. Gendlin University of Chicago
Empathy is often talked about as if I naturally somehow know what my own body looks like when I feel a certain way. Then, when I see someone else looking that way, I assume that they feel as I do, when I look that way. This view fails to wonder how I can know what my body looks like, considering that I rarely see my own body from the outside. Since G.H. Mead, many others have also reversed this order. First others respond to how I look, and only thereby does my body feeling come to imply a look.
Empathy comes first, that is to say: first there is a bodily shift made by how another body looks. My body thereby comes to imply another’s looks, and only then does my body imply its own looks A Process Model (1997) page 127. c) Representation CHAPTER VII: CULTURE, SYMBOL AND LANGUAGE CHAPTER VII-A: SYMBOLIC PROCESS (p. 122 –158) Eugene T. Gendlin University of Chicago
The gesture sequence forms between individual and object. The individual is carried forward thereby, and the others also. They are carried forward by the gestures themselves, not the whole bodylook, and they are carried forward by just watching, not by having their own body effect make a rendition on the other body in turn.
Something quite fundamental happens at the second step (in seen-formation). (In Section VII-B.e) the exact way seens form will become clear.) Patterns carry forward, that are only part of the body, and they carry forward not between two bodies but between body and pattern. Since bodylook as a whole is already a pattern, let me call these new ones “patterns themselves.”
It is therefore true, as G.H. Mead said, that our lone-carrying-forward develops in a prior context of interactional carrying-forward (of response to each other), but there is a third type of carrying-forward with each other, which is different and develops only after lone carrying-forward.34
I do not call these patterns as such because “such” means third universals. Also, it is not clear at what stage of the development of seens, the FLIP occurs. A Process Model (1997) page 170 CHAPTER VII: CULTURE, SYMBOL AND LANGUAGE CHAPTER VII-B: PROTOLANGUAGE (p.163-215)
_________________________________
A George H. Mead source page
Originally published as:
George Herbert Mead. “Organism, Community and Environment”, Section 32 in Mind Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (Edited by Charles W. Morris). Chicago: University of Chicago (1934): 245-252 .
Mind Self and Society
Section 32 Organism, Community and Environment
Table of Contents
TAE - Thinking at the Edge / "RESPECTING the DIFFERENCE " Nada Lou July 24, 2021 (emphasis added)
“RESPECTING the DIFFERENCE ” Nada Lou July 24, 2021 (emphasis added)
___________________________________
BEGINNING REFERENCES …
TAE – Thinking at the Edge – with subtitles
‘This video is about TAE – Thinking at the Edge introduction by Mary Hendricks Gendlin and Gene Gendlin’
‘Thinking at the Edge, (TAE) is a practice related to Focusing created by Dr. Gendlin. TAE is a way to think and speak about our world and ourselves by generating new language and concepts that emerge directly from experience. This DVD is following a teaching trail of one TAE teacher – Nada Lou. She traveled around the world to bring this practice to many people. Many beautiful scenes from around the globe are shown in film and photos and music accompanied by Goran Petrovic makes it an enjoyable viewing.’
___________________________________
QUOTING MARCO AND NADA LOU July 24, 2021
Leslie Ellis, Serge Prengel, Jan Winhall ~ moment-by-moment presence (July 17, 2021)
VIDEO CLIPS
Leslie Ellis, Serge Prengel, and Jan Winhall July 17, 2021
Leslie Ellis, Serge Prengel, Jan Winhall ~ 6 and 7 minutes video clips
~ Introducing their Integrative Focusing Therapy programme
during a presentation on July 17, 2021
How to develop moment-by-moment presence (6 minutes):
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/presence/
Difficult clients, difficult moments (7 minutes) :
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/difficult/
How do we know what is happening for the client? (6 minutes) :
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/client/
How to integrate mindfulness exercises (5 minutes) :
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/mindfulness-exercises/
Do we explicitly share with the client that we’re doing Focusing? (7 minutes):
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/explicitly/
Is Focusing for everybody? (7 minutes):
https://www.integrativefocusingtherapy.com/everybody/
The Experiencing Scale ~ References compiled by KH (July 17, 2021)
The Experiencing Scale ~ References compiled by KH (July 17, 2021)
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
“In this article, I will present brief therapy excerpts and show exactly what part of a client’s statement, if responded to, is likely to lead to therapeutic movement. Client-centered therapists respond to “feelings,” but what this means when one looks at a client’s statement is not always clear. The theory and research on Experiencing are useful for specifying what can be responded to that is not yet obvious.
The concept of Experiencing (EXP; Gendlin, 1962, 1981, 1984) refers to a client’s immediately sensed, but implicit, experience. One feels “something” but one does not yet know what. In a High EXP process, a client attends directly to this implicit sense and thereby allows its verbal expression. This is a step of therapeutic change. In a Lower EXP level process, a client may fail to discriminate this initially vague sense and get stuck in an intellectual or repetitively emotive process.”
Experiencing Level as a Therapeutic Variable by Marion N. Hendricks, Ph.D. May 1986
Article reprinted from:
PERSON-CENTERED REVIEW, Vol. I No. 2, May 1986 141-162
Copyright 1986 Sage Publications, Inc.
http://previous.focusing.org/experiencing.htm
Clinical Examples of Low, Middle and High Experiencing Levels
Excerpts:
Discussion:
- THERAPIST FAILURE TO RECOGNIZE CLIENT’S HIGH EXP LEVEL PROCESS
- THERAPIST FACILITATION OF CLIENT HIGH EXP PROCESS
- VAGUE IS NEVERTHELESS THERE
- RECOGNIZING INTERNAL ATTACKS ON THE PROCESS
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Awareness Through Movement® Lessons and Discussions Theme: Self Image (Moshé Feldenkrais) ~ Body Image ~ Body Schema ~ PolyVagal Theory
Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement® Lessons and Discussions.
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Potentiality / Creativity
(there will be an email or a reply at the bottom of the page each time new text is added)
Potentiality in Moshé Feldenkrais lesson 7 (Zenith) for the Peter Brook Theatre Ensemble
Potentiality in Moshé Feldenkrais lessons for the Peter Brook Theatre Ensemble
Peter Brook 1973 lesson 7
On the side, differentiation, twisting and zenith
[emphasis added below]
“23. Now stay there with your knees and heels separated and your left hand as it is. Now bring your right elbow in front to touch your left hand, your left wrist, just where it is, and point your fingers towards the sky. Now press your right hand [elbow], your right elbow on the floor ten times.
YOUR LEFT HAND IS NOT DUMB. It is not the palm that comes towards the floor, it’s the fingers, the fingertips. Press them into the floor with your right elbow, do some movements like that, ten small movements one after the other, and as you do so just observe what you do with the rest of your body. Be GENTLE. ” (emphasis added)
“31a. Now turn a little to your right so you change position. Just a little, not too much. Have your legs however you want. Now, with your left and right hands; no, let’s start with the left. Try lifting your left hand, but do not move it.
No! That’s no good. You raised your hand like someone who is most definitely not omnipotent. He who creates the zenith, the North, and the left would lift his arm in the way that can be seen in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. God above reaches his arm out to Man. It is painted in such a way that the entire world can see how the power of creation passes to Man. So don’t move your hand. Don’t move. Do not move your hand! But let it lift like that of the most powerful man in the world. Do it like Our Father above. No, don’t do it. You don’t know how God does it. Nor do I, but there is a way of lifting that conveys the belief that a person has lifted his arm in order to give life to others. There. Gently. ‘
“Try and see. Imagine that your left-hand lifts to point towards the North Pole. Gently. Don’t lift your arm because when you lift your arm with the elbow straight, … don’t lift. Do nothing. Listen first. We are going to learn how to lift. If you lift your arm now, as you lifted it yesterday whilst picking something up, it won’t resemble the arm we see on the ceiling of that room which we all know about. Good. Gently. Close your eyes. ”
________________________________
REFERENCE Martin Buber’s “Le Moi et le Toi” [Translator’s Note: “I and Thou”].
Martin Buber I and Thou / Ich und Du / Le Moi et le Toi
… published in 1923, and first translated from German to English in 1937.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou
_______________
REFERENCE: Zen in the Art of Archery
Wikipedia, “Zen in the Art of Archery (Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschießens) is a book by German philosophy professor Eugen Herrigel, published in 1948, about his experiences studying Kyūdō, a form of Japanese archery, when he lived in Japan in the 1920s. It is credited with introducing Zen to Western audiences in the late 1940s and 1950s.”
LINK TO PDF
http://www.ideologic.org/files/Eugen_Herrigel_-_Zen_in_the_Art_of_Archery.pdf
Included is a lovely Cover photo
_______________
REFERENCE: Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam – ItalianRenaissance.org
www.italianrenaissance.org/michelangelo-creation-of-adam/
Sep 14, 2012 – Michelangelo, Creation of Adam, from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel
http://www.italianrenaissance.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/michelangelo-creation-of-adam-590×474.jpg
____________
REFERENCE“Bento (in Hebrew, Baruch; in Latin, Benedictus)
Spinoza is one of the most important philosophers—and certainly the most radical—of the early modern period.”
~~ “His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions leading to virtue and happiness. They also lay the foundations for a strongly democratic political thought and a deep critique of the pretensions of Scripture and sectarian religion. Of all the philosophers of the seventeenth century, perhaps none have more relevance today than Spinoza.”
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
________________________________
REFERENCES MOSHE’S LECTURES/LESSONS ON OMNIPOTENCE
SF training (perhaps also Stanley Brown notes)
Esalen (Judith Stransky notes)
Amherst ~ many instances (notes to follow on this page)
David Bohm
____________
REFERENCE ‘Feldenkrais and David Bohm’s Dialogue Model’
– From Feldenkrais Now
https://www.feldenkraisnow.org/davidbohm’sdialo.html
“Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), an engineer with a Ph.D in physics and a martial arts expert, used to say “Our learning is the most important thing we have! ….. Of particular interest for me was that William was at an age when the struggle between “OMNIPOTENCE and insignificance”, which Moshe Feldenkrais talked about in …” (emphasis added)
~~ REFERENCES LISTED IN ARTICLE
‘Feldenkrais and David Bohm’s Dialogue Model’ :
Moshe Feldenkrais, Body and Mature Behaviour – A Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation & Learning, International University Press Inc., 1949
” ” Awareness Through Movement, Health Exercises for Personal Growth, Harper& Row,1972
” ” Body Awareness as Healing Therapy, The Case of Nora, Harper & Row, 1977
” ” The Elusive Obvious, Meta Publications, 1981
” ” The Potent Self; A Guide to Spontaneity, Harper & Row, 1985
Transcript of The Feldenkrais Professional Training Program, Amherst, Massachusetts, Week 1&2,1981
~~ NOTES CITED IN THE ARTICLE ‘Feldenkrais and David Bohm’s Dialogue Model’ : 4- feldenkrais zeit, Journal für somatisches Lernen, Ausgabe 3, Loeper Literatur Verlag, 2002
6 -The Forebrain: Sleep, Consciousness, Awareness & Learning, An Interview with Moshe Feldenkrais by Edward Rosenfeld, Interface Journal, Vol. 1,No.3-4,1973, p 47ff
7 – Moshe Feldenkrais, Awareness Through Movement, p. 11
12- Amherst Training Program, 8 June 81, p. 2
24- Awareness Through Movement, p. 19
29- Moshe Feldenkrais, Learning to Learn , p.13
~~ QUOTES FROM THE ARTICLE ‘Feldenkrais and David Bohm’s Dialogue Model’ :
“As pioneers of participatory research into human consciousness both Moshe Feldenkrais and David Bohm were way ahead of their time. Very occasionally parallels between their externally so very different approaches were pointed out, – for instance in the late fifties (when David Bohm was teaching in Israel) by Gideon Carmi, one of Bohm’s students and later collaborators, a man who excelled in physics, music, and art, and also studied with Moshe Feldenkrais. “Carmi explained to Bohm that he believed in a deep connection between physics, consciousness, and these subtle, minimal movements. (32)” NOTE 32- Infinite Potential, p. 170
“David Bohm’s focusing on constructive thinking and Moshe Feldenkrais’s aiming at constructive intentional action – ultimately involve the same intensive yet relaxed attention.”
• Moshe Feldenkrais: “Do not concentrate – rather attend well to the entire situation, your body and your surroundings, by scanning the whole sufficiently to become aware of any change or difference, concentrating just enough to perceive this.” (35)
• David Bohm: “There may be a limited kind of attention, such as concentration, as well as an unlimited kind – the fundamental kind. Through such attention, we could move into more and more levels of the implicate order – the more general levels of the whole process. At these general levels, consciousness in one person differs very little from consciousness in another.” (36)
• “all those who come to really understand the Feldenkrais Method – may supplant the childishly egocentric impulse of necessity that is responsible for much of our incoherent and dysfunctional thinking, feeling, and acting.”
• “The explicit permission or even invitation to make mistakes – quite intentionally – in the Feldenkrais Method similarly leads to much more creative learning than any anxious striving “to get it right”.”
• Moshe Feldenkrais was equally convinced that holding on to the notion of an all-important ‘I’ or ‘me’ is infantile and ultimately dysfunctional: “Unless a stage is reached at which self-regard ceases to be the main motivating force, any improvement achieved will never be sufficient to satisfy the individual. In fact, as a man grows and improves, his entire existence centres increasingly on what he does and how, while who does it becomes of ever decreasing importance.” (24) NOTE 24- Awareness Through Movement, p. 19
______________________________
REFERENCE The role of the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex
in the Moshé Feldenkrais lesson for the Peter Brook Theatre Ensemble
Peter Brook 1973 lesson 7
On the side, differentiation, twisting and zenith
~~ quotes below from “How the Fencing Reflex Connects Life and Death, Primitive reflexes shepherd us into this world, and out.” Amanda Darrach, April 5, 2018
~”By the seventh month of my pregnancy, I sometimes felt a stroking motion on the inside of my abdomen, a repeated arc of movement traced by a tiny limb.”
~”My daughter Lucy weighed 6 pounds when she was born two months later.”
~ “Her wrinkled arms and legs stayed drawn in to her chest, but then one arm and leg would extend, the arm reaching out in front of her and sweeping out to the side, taking in the expanse of the room until she lay twisted like an archer. The motion already was familiar to me: the asymmetrical tonic neck reflex.”
~~ Link to the article http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/how-the-fencing-reflex-connects-life-and-death?fbclid=IwAR3SI7GITz0tdBsyewDMPqw0xOZVW0D02e4FcKPI48txMDbWVi1z6cCxkbQ
NOTE: the article quoted above(regarding asymmetrical tonic neck reflex) was also posted by Tiffany Sankary Wilkinson on FPAW ~ here are Tiffany’s notes
“There’s a porous boundary between reflex and reaction. We sometimes think of our reactions to crises as reflexive, but they are behavioral, originating from the less ancient parts of our brains. Reflexes, too, can be colored by experience. The neurologist Karel Bobath wrote that he favored the word “reaction” to describe an infant’s step reflex, in order to express the “variability and potentiality of adaptation to the different demands of the environment.” Touwen wrote that neurologists are not always strict about the separation between the terms “reflex” and “reaction.” Reflexes, he argued, do not exist separately from the world. He preferred to view the nervous system as existing in a “dynamic state,” one that grew “because of a continuous influx of energy and information.” The rooting reflex, for example, begins with a rhythmic side-to-side motion before developing into a complex function, a gathering-in of the breast. Whether “reflex” or “reaction,” Touwen wrote, these responses must be an “age-specific display adapted to the infant’s needs.”
______________________________
Potentiality in Aristotle De Anima
_____________________________
From this sequence: De Anima Books II and III (With Passages From Book I)
Aristotle Translated with an Introduction and Notes by D. W. Hamlyn
(emphasis added)
402a23. First surely we must determine in which of the genera the soul is and what it is; I mean whether it is a particular thing and substance or quality or quantity or some other of the categories which have been distinguished. And secondly we must determine whether it is one of those things which are in POTENTIALITY or whether it is rather a kind of actuality; for this makes no small difference. And we must inquire also if it is divisible or indivisible and whether every soul is of like kind or not; and if not of like kind, whether differing in species or genus.
402b3. For as things are, people who speak and inquire about the soul seem to study the human soul only. But we must take care not to overlook the question whether there is one definition(L) of the soul, as of animal, or whether there is a different one for each, as of horse, dog, man, and god, the universal animal being either nothing or secondary; and it would be similar for any other common predicate.
402b9. Furthermore, if there are not many souls but only parts, should we inquire into the whole soul or its parts? It is difficult too to decide which of these are really different from each other, and whether we must inquire into the parts first or their functions, e.g. thinking or the intellect, and perceiving or that which can perceive (k); and similarly for the rest also. And if the functions come
2
I.1
TRANSLATION 403A.11
first, the question might be raised whether we should inquire into the corresponding objects before these, e.g. the object of perception before that which can perceive (k,) and the object of thought before the intellect.
402b16. It seems that not only is ascertaining what a thing is useful for a consideration of the reasons for the attributes which follow upon essences (as in mathematics ascertaining what straight and curved or line and surface are is useful for seeing to how many right angles the angles of a triangle are equal), but also conversely the attributes contribute a great part to the knowledge of what a thing is; for when we are able to give an account of either all or most of the attributes as they appear to us, then we shall be able to speak best about the essence too; for the starting-point of every demonstration is what a thing is, so that, for those definitions which do not enable us to ascertain the attributes nor even make it easy to guess about this, it is clear that they have all been stated dialectically and to no purpose.
403a3. There is also the problem whether the properties of the soul are all common also that which has it or whether any are peculiar to the soul itself; for it is necessary to deal with this, though it is not easy. It appears that in most cases the soul is not affected nor does it act apart from the body, e.g. in being angry, being confident, wanting, and perceiving in general; although thinking looks most like being peculiar to the soul. But if this too is a form of imagination or does not exist apart from imagination, it would not be possible even for this to exist apart from the body.
403a10. If then there is any of the functions of affections of the soul which is peculiar to it, it will be possible for
3
_______________________________________________________________
403a11 DE ANIMA I. 1
it to be separated from the body. But if there is nothing peculiar to it, it will not be separable, but it will be like the straight, to which, qua straight, many properties belong, e.g. it will touch a bronze sphere at a point, although the straight if separated will not so touch; for it is inseparable, if it is always found with some body.
403a16. It seems that all the affections of the soul involve the body – passion, gentleness, fear, pity, confidence, and, further, joy and both loving and hating; for at the same time as these the body is affected in a certain way. This is shown by the fact that sometimes when severe and manifest sufferings befall us we are not provoked to exasperation or fear, while at other time we are moved by small and imperceptible sufferings when the body is aroused and is as it is is when it is in anger. This is even further evident; for men may come to have the affections of the frightened although nothing frightening is taking place.
403a24. If this is so, it is clear that the affections {of the soul} are principles (L) involving matter. Hence their definitions are such as ‘Being angry is a particular movement of the body of such and such a kind, or a part or POTENTIALITY of it, as a result of this thing and for the sake of that’. And for these reasons an inquiry concerning the soul, either every soul or this kind of soul, is at once the province of the student of nature.
403a29. But the student of nature and the dialectician would define each of these different, e.g. what anger is. For the latter would define it as a desire for retaliation or something of the sort, the former as the boiling of the blood and hot stuff round the heart. Of these, the one gives the matter, the other the form and principle (L). For this is
4
_______________________________________________________________
I.1 TRANSLATION 403b19
the principle (L) of the thing, but it must be in a matter of such and such a kind if it is to be. Thus the principle (L) of a house is, say, that it is a covering to prevent destruction by winds, rain, and heat, but someone else will say that a house is stones, bricks, and timber, and another again that it is the form in them for the sake of these other things.
403b7. Which of these, then, is he student of nature? Is it the one who is concerned with the matter, but is ignorant of the principle (L, or the one who is concerned with the principle (L) only? Or is it rather the one who is concerned with the product of both? Who then is each of the others? Or is there no particular person who is concerned with the properties of matter which are not separable nor treated s separable, while the student of nature is concerned with everything which is a function or affection of such and such a body and such and such a matter? Anything not of this kind is the concern of someone else, and in some cases of a craftsman perhaps, e.g. a carpenter or doctor. The properties which are not separable, but which are not treated as properties of such and such a body but in abstraction, are the concern of the mathematician. Those which are treated as separable are the concern of the ‘first philosopher’.
_____________________________
TEXTS
Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. University of Chicago Copyright © 2012 by Eugene T. Gendlin Published by the Focusing Institute
Gene’s Introduction, Books I and II [PDF] http://previous.focusing.org/aristotle/Ae_Bk_1-2.pdf
Gene’s Book III [PDF] http://previous.focusing.org/aristotle/Ae_Bk_3.pdf
CHAPTER 1
PASSAGES FROM BOOK 1
RELEVANT TO THE ARGUMENT
IN BOOKS II AND III
De Anima Books II and III (With Passages From Book I)
Aristotle
Translated with an Introduction and Notes by D. W. Hamlyn and With a Report on Recent Work and a Revised Bibliography by Christopher Shields
A Clarendon Press Publication
Clarendon Aristotle Series
PDF Hamlyn’s translation of De Anima http://people.exeter.ac.uk/sp344/0198240848%20-%20De%20Anima%20Books%20II%20and%20III%20(With%20Passages%20From%20Book%20I)%20-%20Aristotle,%20Christopher%20Shields,%20D.%20W.%20Hamlyn.pdf
AY 24 The body image, a lecture. ~ references and Quoting Moshe Feldenkrais
☯ Quoting Moshe Feldenkrais from page 147
“If you want to read a scientific work that is accurate and interesting I refer you to Paul Schilder, a Viennese physiologist. In the beginning he was a psychoanalyst, but he wrote primarily about the physiology of the body image. He is the-man who introduced this concept. He showed that mentally ill people don’t have a body image that is reasonably normal. Their body image is distorted and not similar to a healthy person, for example some feel their arms much longer than they really are.
Schilder worked with the EMOTIONAL, PSYCHIC, and SPIRITUAL body images. There is the body. image from PHYSIOLOGY and the image THAT YOU SEE. All these images form through the personal experience of the person. They grow with the person. For-example, a child, whose hand was amputated at birth, has a brain with very few cells connected to the amputated hand. There won’t be any connections to feelings of heat, pain, pressure, or touch. Everything that person does uses only one hand so his physiological body image will be different from someone with two hands. When he learns to speak one language, American English, he will organize his tongue to say an “R” or a “W” like an American. His body image is different from someone who speak Arabic or Japanese. The differences between each occur according to personal experiences.
In a complete system that is balanced and developed, there is a realistic relationship among those THREE images – the image THAT YOU SEE, the EMOTIONAL image, and the image EXTERNALLY DEVELOPED from the FEELINGS IN the BODY. All three have a relationship. If someone walks without knowing the length of his arms or the distance from the arm to an object, he would get hit each time he walked through a door. He may burn his hand on a stove because he doesn’t know the distance between his hand and the hot stove. When I pass a door or a stove, I have a feeling for the distance. When I want to move from here to another point I have a feeling of the length of my arm. I feel where it is and what it is. I have a kinaesthetic feeling.” (emphasis added)
AY 24 The body image, a lecture. Awareness Through Movement® Lesson from Alexander Yanai @ Copyright May 1994. All rights reserved by and to the International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris France in cooperation with The Feldenkrais Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel
☯ Quoting Moshe Feldenkrais from page 148
“If you take a person who does not know his image in the water – if you put someone who cannot swim and put them in water not deep enough to elicit a fear of drowning – you can see through his movements what parts of his body he doesn’t use or know. Most of his movement it will seem as he wanted to catch or hold something in his hands. His
legs will move as if he wanted to push to be sure he is standing. He TRIES to do IN THE WATER what he PREVIOUSLY learned to do on LAND. These are the movements that DISRUPT swimming. When he is in the water, he can only use familiar images of himself.
If he wants TO IMPROVE that, if he wants to learn how to swim, he must know what arms and legs really do in water rather than what he thinks he does. That is the whole secret of swimming.
(End of lecture)” (emphasis added)
1 Schilder, Paul, Mind, Perception, and Thought, Columbia University Press, 1942 "
AY 24 The body image, a lecture. Awareness Through Movement® Lesson from Alexander Yanai @ Copyright May 1994. All rights reserved by and to the International Feldenkrais Federation, Paris France in cooperation with The Feldenkrais Institute, Tel Aviv, Israel
☯ Book referenced by Moshe in the lesson:
PAUL SCHILDER
Mind: perception and thought in their constructive aspects. P Schilder Columbia University Press, 1942
From psycnet.apa.org:
“In his earlier book on The image and appearance of the human body (see 9: 5693) the author clarified his general attitudes and principles concerning psychological problems. In this book the principles and results obtained in his investigation of the BODY IMAGE image are applied to the investigation of the principles of PERCEPTION and THOUGHT, and he extends the results and methods of modern psychology into a field not yet studied from this point of view.
The BOOK is DIVIDED into TWO PARTS, PERCEPTION and ACTION, and HIGHER MENTAL FUNCTIONS ”
(emphasis added)
__________________
PAUL SCHILDER ~ additional reference
The Image and Appearance of the Human Body: Studies in the Constructive Energies of the Psyche. Paul Schilder. Psychology Press, 1999 – Psychology – 362 pages. 0 Reviews. First Published in 1999. https://books.google.ca/books/about/ The_Image_and_Appearance_of_the_Human_Bo.html?id=L2CNWxKdWhMC
PAUL SCHILDER ~ additional reference
Psychosomatic Medicine: January 1944 – Volume 6 – Issue 1 – ppg 108-109
Book Reviews: PDF Only https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Citation/1944/01000/
PAUL_SCHILDER__Mind,_Perception_and_Thought_in.18.aspx __________________
PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
“The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of the nerves and ganglia outside the brain and spinal cord” https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_nervous_system
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!
The Brain’s Sense of Movement
Alain Berthoz
Translated by Giselle Weiss
Series: Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience
Copyright Date: 2000
Published by: Harvard University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1cc2mz2
With appreciation to Rachel for sending the reference
Thank you Rachel, you are so kind.
Potentiality / Creativity
Thank you Rachel, you are so kind.
The Brain’s Sense of Movement (Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience)
Alain Berthoz
https://ca1lib.org/book/5288300/03eb94?id=5288300&secret=03eb94
Transforming Body Image: Learning to Love the Body You Have Paperback – Sept. 1 1985
by Marcia Germaine Hutchinson
https://www.amazon.ca/Transforming-Body-Image-Learning-Love/dp/0895941724
https://bojodezyqo.pridepdf.icu/transforming-body-image-book-27317jw.php
With appreciation to Rachel for sending this reference:
The Brain’s Sense of Movement
Alain Berthoz
Translated by Giselle Weiss
Series: Perspectives in Cognitive Neuroscience
Copyright Date: 2000
Published by: Harvard University Press
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1cc2mz2
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Engaging Self and Other through Embodiment: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
https://youtu.be/OMT1vo9Fsx8
Free Your Spine through Changing How You Transfer Your Weight https://youtu.be/T9M3VHP1Q4A
Plus other videos of interest.
Much appreciation to Rachel for posting the link
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Engaging Self and Other through Embodiment: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
https://youtu.be/OMT1vo9Fsx8
Here is the text (and I plan to post a small response ..
“Because whatever else is happening, we are
the material. We are what we’re studying. We are
what this is about individually and as a community.
So what if sometimes I say
I don’t have any support. Nobody supports me.
But a key is that, do you remember the support that you did create
that’s underneath all support that you can receive?
Without remembering the support that you created, how are you going to recognize
the support that you’re given or the kind of support that actually you need?
At the same time, how do we support somebody that we want desperately to support
but they don’t feel it, because they don’t feel their own that they created.
The underlying theme of this workshop was for us to experience our own embodiment of
self and other and of self other.
Not just to learn about it but to jointly participate in the process.
My vision was for each person and the group as a whole to become more aware
of how we develop a sense of self and other as individuals,
as individuals within a community,
and as a community of individuals.
The foundation of our explorations was the experiencing of the multiple aspects of self
through remembering our embryological development.
The integration of self and other into a unified selfother rests on the clarity of
our mutual recognition of and respect for both a separate individuated self and a
separate individuated other.
In exploring this a sense of comfort and safety within the community
needs to be established.
To foster a safe open ground, we began each morning by creating
space for each person to experience this process within the context of the group.
During the classes, participants had the choice to explore the embryological material alone,
in partners, and/or in small groups.
Over the course of these four days,
we gradually built and shared our sense of self and other within community.
On Thursday, September 30, 2021, 05:53:28 p.m. PDT, Katarina Listens wrote:
and this too thank you
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Engaging Self and Other through Embodiment: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
https://youtu.be/OMT1vo9Fsx8
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Free Your Spine through Changing How You Transfer Your Weight https://youtu.be/T9M3VHP1Q4A
Plus other videos of interest.
Dear Rachel, Thank you for your scholarship and support of the Self Image Project.
Adding below the notes from the video you posted for us:
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Free Your Spine through Changing How You Transfer Your Weight https://youtu.be/T9M3VHP1Q4A Plus other videos of interest. Every skeleton that I’ve ever seen,
that I’ve ever seen,
always has it standing this way.
(laughter from the crowd)
Maybe because it doesn’t have the
psoas minor to bring it up.
(laughter)
(coughing)
But that’s the image that we end up having, where,
I just thought of something else.
I’m going to suggest that everybody,
in the next half of the day and tomorrow,
that you, you take this pelvis,
and you just hold it.
How does it feel?
And this is where the weight is, here.
Not here.
Did I do it?
Yeah, it’s this way.
This, this isn’t stable,
but here,
it’s very light.
It doesn’t have a lot of weight,
but it helps to feel that the pelvis is here.
And we’re not doing muscles now so much,
but if I put it in here, the psoas minor,
not the major, holds up the pubis to T12,
L1.
Alright.
Oh, I got it for a different reason,
is that you want to feel that –
not that you want to feel, I don’t care what you feel –
but if, language is challenging.
Words.
That this is created from the lateral column,
this is created from the other lateral column.
And they, they create then, this pubic disk.
And this is how they, they move.
Which is what you were saying,
that they connect to each other.
So the transfer of weight is here.
Not here.
(laughs)
Here.
Rather than here.
So that every time I moved my leg,
I’m tangentially doing something in the back.
Where here, no, I’m just moving my legs.
My spine can stay free.
In his investigation of the Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Maurice Merleau-Ponty defines phenomenology as the study of essences, including the essence of perception and of consciousness. … Perception is the background of experience which guides every conscious action
https://ia601000.us.archive.org/11/items/G.BachelardThePoeticsOfSpace/Phenomenology%20of%20Perception.pdf
“A Slinky is a pre-compressed helical spring toy invented by Richard James in the early 1940s. … These interesting characteristics have contributed to its success as a toy in its home country of the United States, resulting in many popular toys with slinky components in a wide range of countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2006-02-04_Metal_spiral.jpg
_________________
“The infinity symbol is a mathematical symbol representing the concept of infinity. The symbol resembles a geometric figure called a lemniscate” https://www.google.com/search?q=infinity+symbol&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA504CA507&sxsrf=ACYBGNTGdPnz8W_AAkedM6ra9aCX3jiB_w:1581009845850&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&fir=HS7WWhIjNqvu_M%253A%252Cy7TIi4UGiDgPAM%252C%252Fm%252F0pkzzt0&vet=1&usg=AI4_-kQibz4k52j7i-Koqlj1JFQuPnerdw&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr7v3RuL3nAhXQJTQIHfKDBpkQ_B0wH3oECAoQAw#imgrc=HS7WWhIjNqvu_M:
_________________
AY 82 A clock in front of the face
“Please lie quietly for a moment. Lengthen the legs. Extend the legs. Lie, for a moment, completely quietly. Lie without moving. Listen to the parts that are lying on the floor. [Notice] how are they lying for you to be able to notice differences if there will be such.
la. Now, please put the feet standing on the floor. With the head . . . turn the head on the floor so the nose will draw a circle. The nose will draw a circle in the air. The head lies on the floor. Pay attention. Think that there is a clock in front of you. A clock . . . to your eyes. A clock [is in front of] your eyes so the nose can move on the surface of the clock, pass through the hour twelve o’clock while the chin is far away from the chest, and then continue moving in the direction of the clock.
_________________
Amherst FI with Larry Lesson 9: Left foot and neck organizations. Moshé talks about allowing a person time to find his own way. (29 July 1980) https://feldenkrais-method.org/archive/collection/larry-lesson-9/
_________________
improving your breathing when wearing a mask ~ Fariya Doctor Feldenkrais® Niagra
https://www.feldenkrais.org.au/public-resources?utm_campaign=9b993a5b-0489-4766-9935-acbeac1f0e19&utm_source=so&utm_medium=mail&cid=3a81fed8-4e5d-4949-bc44-3a85f73d43fe
… ”
wearing these and how do we
breathe that breathing is like so
essential to our
human functioning and
yeah so i’m so looking forward to being
on the floor or the chair or however
you’re going to teach this
and absorbing your teaching and
yeah really looking forward to it well
thank you
and you know right now i don’t know
about you tiffany but um
some cities are mandating uh compulsory
masks in enclosed spaces like in stores
i don’t know have you
had that situation yeah i mean
yeah we’re needing to wear masks
wherever we go yeah
yeah and so my city has also done that
too
and so it’s sort of extending the need
and the challenge to learn how to
breathe
well behind a mask and one of the
reasons why i decided to do this
is at the beginning when people were
wearing masks they were really
struggling with it you could see how
stressed
people were having it on their faces
now that it’s a little bit more
normalized you know maybe they’re
breathing a little easier but
people are still struggling with it so
i’m here to help out with that so yeah
so i’ll just um i’ll leave the little
window here and give you the full space
and then come back in at the end and
okay thank you and so uh just a heads up
you’ll need your mask
everyone will need a mask handy if you
can be happy to have one yeah and
we can do the lessons seated or lying
down you know whatever
works for you and it’s going to be sort
of a uh
an abbreviated version of the lesson
that i have on my website
i have a full version but this one um
we’re going to be talking i’m going to
give you a little bit of background
first of all
so that you understand why it’s
important to do
certain a certain type of breathing um
so that the perception is that when we
wear a mask when we put something on our
face
that there’s less air so that does
that is a problem that there’s a
perception
that um there’s less air and that you
have to breathe
harder or faster or that there’s more
effort involved
and it doesn’t have to be that way you
can still
breathe light and you can still
be gentle with your breath and for those
who
have the tendency to hyperventilate to
breathe too fast
or too big this is where wearing a mask
is really challenging because if you’re
doing if you’re doing that
and you’re breathing through your mouth
it’s it gets really hot back there
it gets hot you’re blowing a lot of air
you might feel it coming out the sides
you might feel the heat coming up and
up your glasses it’s no fun it’s
annoying
and it’s frustrating so here’s the deal
we don’t have to breathe harder we don’t
have to breathe heavier
we can breathe light and be gentle with
our breath
so i’m going to be guiding you a little
bit through that that idea
so i’ve just got some notes i’m looking
down at
so the size of the breath doesn’t have
to be as big
the speed doesn’t have to be as fast and
we can still
breathe deeply without it being really
large
um so another key thing that
people tend to do when they put a mask
on
is they’ll default to a mouth breath
mouth breathing will actually
impede your oxygen supply
it’s much less efficient
than nose breathing the nose breathing
does there’s a lot of benefits to
breathing through the nose
and this is something that i’ve been
learning a lot about in physiology
in the pateko method i’ve been studying
the patako method
and um i just have a little handy
dandy image here of
my uh nose and the mouth
and that there’s so much space sorry i’m
reversed here so i’m getting all
confused
uh there’s so much space in through here
for the air to travel through the nose
to warm the air to filter the air
and then to draw it down into the
trachea so you look at the space it’s
really
much bigger than than you think
the nose is for breathing the mouth
is for eating and talking not for
breathing
so well if you look at the space in the
cavity here
big part of it is the tongue takes up a
lot of room
and then this part is where the mouth is
and again it travels down
joins with the the trachea and
the esophagus that’s just to give you a
visual of
how important it is to stick with them
with a nose breath when you’re behind
that mask
so that’s just just to give you that
visual so what i’m going to do is
is guide you a little bit on
first without the mask and then you can
put the mask on
so that you can feel how easy it can be
so i’m going to ask you to just if you
want to lie down you can lie down with
your knees bent
or long just wherever you’re comfortable
and then if you’re sitting
just make sure that when you’re sitting
your your
feet are flat on the floor um
and that you’re you feel long in your
spine you’re comfortable
you feel your head kind of over your
shoulders
your ears over your shoulders just so
that there isn’t anything in the front
impeding your breath
so just take a moment to feel what
that’s like
just get yourself oriented if you’re
sitting
you can feel your sit bones and your
feet on the floor
you can rest your hands someplace
comfortably for you
and if you’re lying down then have your
knees bent or long and make sure you
have something under your head
now if you’re doing a breathing lesson
you want to make sure that your head
is lined up fairly well over your body
so if your head is tipped too far back
or too far forward that’s going to
affect
airflow and so
be sure to have some support under your
head
so just take a moment to notice your
breath
just just what you’re what you’re doing
right now
you know where do you where do you feel
breath
do you feel it in the chest or the belly
and you can put your hand on your chest
and belly
just to get also some feedback from your
hands
just noticing
what’s moving
and then just notice what what’s the air
like going through your nose
yeah and so let’s let’s focus with the
air traveling through the nostrils
just feel how that breeze the air
traveling through the nostrils to the
back way back
into the sinuses and then of course
it travels to the back of the throat
so we just take that slow breath in
and out through the nostrils
tuning into the sensation of the air
traveling to the back of the throat
so you might notice a breeze you might
feel
something if you don’t feel anything
traveling back here
you might feel the breeze at the
nostrils
or air traveling over the upper lip
so you might also notice that as you
breathe in
the sensation of air is cool
and as you breathe out the sensation of
air is warm
just follow that that temperature see if
you can sense that temperature
and then see if you can follow it down
into the throat area now as you
had seen from that that model
a lot of people will sort of perceive
the air traveling quite far forward
in the face and in the throat and i want
you to think about the air actually
being
quite far back so that you’re feeling
a flow right at the back of the throat
see if you can sense that
in in fact the lungs
take up quite a bit of space in the
thoracic cavity
and there’s a lot of room for the lungs
in your back and and so
i want you to see if you can sense as
you’re feeling the air traveling through
the nostrils
to the back of the throat into the
trachea
could you imagine the lungs being in
your back
and as you do this as you’re doing this
sensing and feeling
make it make up a mental note that it
doesn’t have to be
big that it can be a light
small breath if you tend to
take a big big breath you might be
missing some sensations
so i’m going to ask you to slow down and
make it smaller than you normally would
and as you do that as you let the ear
flow to the back of your throat thinking
of the back lungs filling
and emptying so if you’re on your back
you might feel a change in pressure
against the floor
if you’re sitting you might feel your
back
moving or maybe widening a little bit
just see what what comes for you
as you’re breathing
in and out nice and light
and slow
and the reason why a slower
light breath is really useful
is that the body needs carbon dioxide
in order to release oxygen to the
muscles
so i’m going to say that again because a
lot of people don’t understand
that carbon dioxide is actually vital
to the functioning in their body for
maintaining our ph
for dilating blood vessels and for
allowing oxygen to release from the
hemoglobin
to our cells that’s where we want the
oxygen
we want oxygen to go to our cells
to our heart and to our brain
so as we slow the breath down
and you might have moments where you
you need to take a big breath because
you feel a sense of urgency
for oxygen so go ahead and go back to
that that’s okay
make this as comfortable as you can the
idea is to slowly ease yourself
into a slow light breath
as you slow the breath down
the body has enough time to improve as
carbon dioxide level and that carbon
dioxide level
will improve oxygen supply
you need one for the other
now the part of the reason if you’re
breathing slow and light
and if you have moments where you have a
sense of
oxygen hunger that has to do
with the receptors in the brain
monitoring carbon dioxide
and sometimes what ends up happening is
that if we are used to breathing
fast and shallow and
through the mouth rapidly then what ends
up happening is those receptors become
hypersensitive to carbon dioxide
and so even though you’ve got enough
oxygen in your system actually your
blood oxygen is almost always about 98
that’s a lot it’s fairly saturated so
the perception of oxygen hunger is
actually your body reacting
or overreacting to carbon dioxide
by regularly slowing the breath down
by keeping it light and efficient
then your body gets used to a more
normalized level of carbon dioxide
and this is where you will start
noticing
that your brain is clearer that you can
think clear
that your heart rate drops all this is
it’s so vital carbon dioxide is so
vital to our functioning so here’s this
idea
of our mask as we breathe slowly
and lightly and feel the lungs in our
back
then then there’s less less flow behind
the mass
the mass can become much more
comfortable
so just take a moment to just feel that
air
and just notice notice the speed see if
you’re
able to to reduce the speed
of your breath and the size
and as you’re doing that you might sense
again
back to the lungs and feeling could you
imagine
that as you inhale the lungs
kind of draw downward into the back
as the diaphragm descends
and pulls air through the nostrils
into the back of the throat and into
your lungs
that you feel this sort of oozing
expansion of the lungs
into your back almost down to your waist
and if you don’t exactly feel it you can
imagine
it the lungs actually
get extend further down
into our body in the back than the front
in the front we have the stomach and the
liver
that that that is more anterior
but the back lungs can slide fairly low
into the back so just take a moment to
feel that that expansion that you’re
drawing air down
and deep into the lungs
and then of course when you breathe out
you’ll feel
the dye from rising
and the lungs emptying
of course the lungs when they fill they
don’t just feel
downward they feel upward they expand
as a balloon might expand
and so just take that time to feel
where you might sense your lungs
so maybe behind the shoulder
blades or
into the armpits
or maybe somewhere mid back
and maybe maybe somewhere near the
floating ribs
just sense how how you feel it
into your sides maybe
into the front
and into the back
now as you slow the breath as you
breathe in
and out there’s a moment at
the end of the exhale where
the body kind of softens or relaxes
so as you finish the exhale think about
as you finish the exhale there’s a
moment where
there’s a release of tension maybe you
might find that
in the tummy or in the chest
in the sternum
or maybe somewhere in the sides
breathing is it can be a deeply
ingrained habit and so some people
never really completely
go into a rest phase in their exhale
there might be places that the ribs are
being held
wide or lifted
or or the belly
doesn’t completely relax and soften
at the end of the exhale
so look for where could you feel
that finishing of the exhale where maybe
the ribs soften and
move inward or maybe
the chest softens a bit
or the belly or the lower belly
or maybe somewhere in the pelvis or the
low back where
where might you feel that finishing of
the exhale
now when we finish our exit our exhale
is actually the passive
phase of our breathing
the inhale is the the active phase
the diaphragm muscles are active when
you inhale
and then they become quieter as you
exhale
and the ribs some of the rib muscles
become quieter and they narrow
and come inward so
something interesting happens at the
exhale and near the end of the exhale
where it’s almost like a releasing
pressure
in the system without releasing pressure
you get better oxygen supply
there’s less tension in the body in the
musculature
so that oxygen can be released better
into the tissues
so one of the interesting things about
carbon dioxide as well is that that it
dilates our carotid arteries
and that’s really important for blood
blood flow to the brain oxygen flow to
the brain if we over
breathe our our
blood vessels constrict and it reduces
flow so as we slow the breath
you might start feeling yourself feeling
calmer
or maybe warmer
in your limbs
just tune into your body temperature
[Music]
any places that you’re noticing
something softening
a little bit more relaxing a little bit
more
and also sensing that that end of the
exhale
is there a moment where you could
pause your breath before you breathe in
again
see breathing doesn’t doesn’t
necessarily have to be
constant when we’re resting or when
we’re
not as active uh
like not running or exercising
the rhythm of the breath involves a
pause
at the end of the exhale
and so see if there’s a there’s a place
for you
that you’re comfortable with that you
could pause
the breath at the end of the exhale and
not feel
not feel under tension when you breathe
back in
see if you can find that rhythm where
you breathe in
you breathe out and you sink into this
pause and then you breathe in
and out and sink into a pause
place to rest
and see if you can keep that rhythm and
anytime it gets disturbed anytime you
feel
you gotta take a big breath go ahead do
it
restore your feeling of comfort
and so that you don’t feel panicky or
anxious
when you’re when you’re training
yourself to get more and more
comfortable
with a higher carbon dioxide level in
your body which you need
you need that
so just feeling that pause and noticing
how long is that pause if you get to
that place where you can breathe out
and take a little pause in your breath
is that two seconds
is that five seconds what is it
what’s comfortable for you so that when
you breathe back in that it’s not
a panicked inhale that it’s soft in
and out and i liken this
too if you watch a baby sleeping it’s
quiet it’s there isn’t a lot to see
and it’s global so there’s this idea of
the
deep breath the deep mu not meaning big
but that that there’s the capacity for the
whole
lung in the front and the back and the” …
…”if you watch a baby sleeping it’s
quiet it’s there isn’t a lot to see
and it’s global so there’s this idea of
the
deep breath the deep mu not meaning big
but that that there’s capacity for the
whole
lung in the front and the back and the
sides
to to fill with air
and not to be restricted
so you notice that even if you were to
imagine someone who’s a meditator or
a monk meditating
you might notice that
it almost looks like they’re not
breathing
it’s so simple it’s almost like the
diaphragm is taking over
all of the activity and all the
additional work
that unfortunately we’ve gotten used to
because of different types of breathing
training
we seem to think that it has to be big
for it to be good
and it doesn’t it actually causes more
work
in the body we want to reduce
the effort we don’t want to be revving
our engines all the time when we’re
breathing
we wanted to make it a smooth light
breath
where you don’t hear it it’s quiet
and it’s a fairly steady calm
pace now if you
feel like you’re kind of getting to that
place
where it’s feeling like it’s moving in a
certain kind of rhythm
where you can really feel that exhale
and finish the exhale i’m going to ask
you
to put your mask on to grab hold of your
mask if you happen to have it handy you
don’t have to but
if you happen to have it handy and
you’re lying down you can stay lying
down
or you can sit to try it if you’re
seated just grab it
and secure it to your face make sure
that you if you’ve got a band there to
sort of clip it around your nose
and if you’ve got glasses you can tuck
it under
the glasses so that
it doesn’t kind of get in the way
and if you have if you have your mask on
i’m going to ask you to again come back
to that nose breath
and let’s slow in
and out and pause
in and out
and pause so now i’m
i’m describing a rhythm but you need to
find the rhythm that works for you right
now
and again i go into more detail with
the audio lesson i have on my on my
website but
but here you want to be able to
just take it to the pace that you’re
comfortable with
but know that it’s lighter
and slower than you normally would would
do
and that there’s some place at the end
of the exhale where
you can fall into a quiet
place almost like you’re
like almost as though we were drifting
off to sleep that kind of
easy soft breath
and when you have the mask just notice
what does that feel like you might feel
a bit of warmth
around your face
but notice that if you reduce the speed
and the volume you won’t feel
all that air blowing through the mask
you want to reduce the volume so it’s
not a
big fast like tunnel like experience but
a soft rhythm soft
light rhythm where you still feel the
air you’ll still you actually will feel
it more behind the mask you’ll feel the
warmth a little bit more behind the mask
but just notice the air going in
and out and
pausing and that you can be behind a
mask
and still have that calm light breath
go about your day with that calm light
breath
breathing through the nose
feeling the air traveling way back
in the throat feeling that
the lungs really opening
into the back and the sides and you have
all this capacity
that it doesn’t have to be fast you can
be slow you can
slowly fill that balloon
and slowly empty it
and then finding that pause right at the
end of the exhale
now you also want to be aware when you
have that mask on
that you make sure your head is still
where you think it is it’s still if
you’re sitting
it’s still above your shoulders
sometimes
when people put a mask on that they
change the position of their head
so see if you can find that comfortable
light kind of bobble head spot
so that you don’t impede any air flow
that’s traveling through the back
of the throat into the trachea and down
into the lungs
and just take your time to feel what
that’s like to behind
to be behind that mask and that you can
be calm
cool and collected and know
that you’re doing the right thing
wearing a mask when you go outside
when you go out into public spaces where
you cannot physically distance
and you go into inside spaces where
maybe the air flow isn’t as good or the
ventilation isn’t as good
you are doing yourself a favor
and other people a favor so
having the security of knowing that
and being able to stay with that calm
light breath
behind the mask is really doable
so thank you for joining me
for that lesson i hope you found it
useful
and helpful
how are you doing tiffany how’d you do
with that lesson
hey love your mask
yeah that was super lovely i
i was really illuminating in that i have
i think i’ve had this basic like
fear of breathing at all in wearing the
mask
i was noticing like oh i actually i
think i’ve just
unconsciously had this story like i
can’t breathe when i have the mask on so
i think that was part of my my um
wish in doing this with you but i i was
so lovely to
step into that slower calm
place and actually feel that i could
breathe
and have something in my system really
understand
that i can get the breath that i need
absolutely not i think i was just
already kind of like panicked i can’t
breathe on some kind of unconscious
level so
it’s actually um some of the taco method
some of the practitioners are finding
that the mask has been helping people
who are who are likely to hyperventilate
and breathe through their mouth it
recaptures some of the carbon dioxide so
they
don’t lose so much of it so um some
people in the pateka method are saying
it’s actually been helpful it’s calming
people down
wow interesting i used
when i first got interested i i got this
book by patrick
mcewen the oxygen advantage and she
talks a lot about
the chemistry physiology
and and how to recalibrate and normalize
breath one of the interesting things
about the nose breath
is that we have receptors in our nose
that capture
nitric oxide nitric
oxide dilates our bronchioles
so when we breathe through our nose our
bronchials open more
which again improves
oxygen oxygenation to the body
another important aspect of nose
breathing
nice nice someone was saying too that
um we could see their eyeglasses were
not getting fogged up
yes and that’s another like bonus i have
a lot of my
my students will say that that when they
re
reduce what they call the tidal volume
they reduce that flow it becomes a
instead of like a big tide of air
it becomes this gentle type
and when that happens it doesn’t get
your glasses don’t get all fogged up
and i’m also loving the just the
reminder of the awareness of
the breath and the back too so that
always just
the three-dimensionality of the
breathing you know not just being all
about like breath is happening right
here
yeah yeah yeah and of course as you know
as a feldenkrais practitioner it happens
in a lot other places it affects
palette it affects the pelvic floor it’s
it’s huge it’s so
vital to our sense of security and
feeling safe
and feeling comfortable and our overall
health yeah thank you
thank you i’d love to hear from any of
you who are
here anything about your experience if
you want to write it in the comments
and um faria website is
her name for riaddoctor.com if you want
to check out
her other lessons and connect with her
beyond today yeah
and that is my last name it is my last
name was born with that last name
[Music]
people say did you make that up
you got you were born you were born with
the credentials
yeah and also
if you’ve been following along with the
other nervous system care lessons
we also have a a sale 40 off of movement
and creativity courses
and i think the link should be somewhere
in the
comments somewhere and that’s through
friday
and if you’re watching this uh beyond
this week then you can just
go to movement and creativity.com and
check out what we have we also have a
movement and creativity library which is
a library of
over 200 different feldenkrais lessons
with over 20 different teachers
and farias this lesson will be in there
and
um she’s gonna include some more lessons
in the library soon so you can check
those out and the library is open
for visitors for free and new members
the last two or three days of every
month so you can um
go play a little bit and explore in
there and
join if you’d like so
thanks so much maria i hope everyone’s
nervous system
feels a little calmer today after that
lesson
yeah thank you for the invitation
tiffany to
be the first of more
cross-pollinating absolutely is cool ” …
Much appreciation to Rachel for posting the link
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Engaging Self and Other through Embodiment: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
https://youtu.be/OMT1vo9Fsx8
Here is the text (and I plan to post a small response ..
“Because whatever else is happening, we are
the material. We are what we’re studying. We are
what this is about individually and as a community.
So what if sometimes I say
I don’t have any support. Nobody supports me.
But a key is that, do you remember the support that you did create
that’s underneath all support that you can receive?
Without remembering the support that you created, how are you going to recognize
the support that you’re given or the kind of support that actually you need?
At the same time, how do we support somebody that we want desperately to support
but they don’t feel it, because they don’t feel their own that they created.
The underlying theme of this workshop was for us to experience our own embodiment of
self and other and of self other.
Not just to learn about it but to jointly participate in the process.
My vision was for each person and the group as a whole to become more aware
of how we develop a sense of self and other as individuals,
as individuals within a community,
and as a community of individuals.
The foundation of our explorations was the experiencing of the multiple aspects of self
through remembering our embryological development.
The integration of self and other into a unified selfother rests on the clarity of
our mutual recognition of and respect for both a separate individuated self and a
separate individuated other.
In exploring this a sense of comfort and safety within the community
needs to be established.
To foster a safe open ground, we began each morning by creating
space for each person to experience this process within the context of the group.
During the classes, participants had the choice to explore the embryological material alone,
in partners, and/or in small groups.
Over the course of these four days,
we gradually built and shared our sense of self and other within community.
On Thursday, September 30, 2021, 05:53:28 p.m. PDT, Katarina Listens wrote:
and this too thank you
Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Engaging Self and Other through Embodiment: A Body-Mind Centering® Approach
https://youtu.be/OMT1vo9Fsx8
// ” The body is an organism’s matter-formed-by the soul.”// Line by Line Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima Books I and II Eugene T. Gendlin, Ph.D. University of Chicago of http://previous.focusing.org/aristotle/Ae_Bk_1-2.pdf
Book I, Endnote 6. On Why There Are No Pathe Peculiar to the Soul As Such page 11-12 of endnotes
6. On Why There Are No Pathe Peculiar to the Soul As Such There are “pathe of the soul” but they are not peculiar to it (not idia pathe) because they are traits of body-and-soul. Of course the soul is affectable, but only by affecting the body. This becomes obvious if we grasp the basic notion of the soul that Aristotle is building here. The soul is the power for active functioning. Throughout his works, Aristotle defines “matter” as that, in anything, which can be affected or changed. So, of course, the matter-and-form organism can be affected only through its matter, i.e., that in it which is affectable. Affectability is what Aristotle means by “matter.” “Matter qua matter is the capacity of being affected (pathetikon)” (De Gen I-7, 324b18). The body is an organism’s matter-formed-by the soul. The functioning of the soul can be affected, for example in drunkenness or disease, but this happens by affecting the soul-and-body organism through the body. If the soul as such also had an affectability, it would have still another body. Its affectability is precisely the body. The soul is the capacity for the active functioning. So the pathe belong to the whole organism, the soul-and-body. Why can there be no pathe peculiar just to the active functioning as such? Take for example your radio. You need it to be “affected” by the incoming signal, but you need this not to affect what makes your radio work. So in one way the signal has to make a change in your radio; in another way (functionally) it must not change the radio. The radio’s functioning needs to continue unchanged. If your radio stopped working just when you were listening to a politician you despise, you might joke that he broke your radio. But you would know that its functioning is not something that can be affected as such. Only the function-matter combination
can be affected. Once we make a separate definition for the function (even though it doesn’t exist separately), we can say as Aristotle does, that the embodied functions of the soul do not die of themselves; they die only because the living body dies. Aristotle sometimes uses the word “pathe” more widely. In II-5 Aristotle discusses the broad and narrow usage of “affected.”
Sat, 2. Oct 2021 Discussion of AY#85 Bending the right ear to the right shoulder and the left ear to the left shoulder Paula Baratta reader and leading discussion relating to VESTIBULAR / BALANCE and aspects and Moshé’s lessons for Hazel, Guru, Sondra, notes to follow in replies to this poste. .
Dichter on self-image, during the 1960s.
The Century of the Self – Part 2: “The Engineering of Consent”
19:30 minutes Dichter notes…
“we don’t ask directly why you buy or not buy. What we try instead is to understand the total personality, the self image of the costumer, we use all resources and modern social sciences. It opens up to stimulating psychological techniques to sell any products”
And then something about the importance of being aware, alert to the “strategy of desire”:
“Modern man is internally ready to follow up his self-image by purchasing products which compliment it.”
Transcripts
http://moresketchynotes.blogspot.com/2009/08/century-of-self-part-2-engineering-of.html
The context of the “self-image” in the American Psychological Society of ’50s 60´s even 70´ context in which Moshé started his research
, MEMORY Kinaesthetic and Body Memory … discussion notes to be added … we continue keeping a look-out for a reference
Kinaesthetic and Body Memory and Multi-Sensory Association
…………………………………………………………………….
‘become increasingly sensitive to non-verbal expressions as beginning stirrings of
forward-moving energy that are implying change’ –– Glenn Fleisch (2009) Right in their hands:
How gestures imply the body’s next steps in Focusing-oriented therapy (Accepted for publication: Journal of experiential and person-centered psychotherapies) https://glennfleisch.com/wp-content/uploads/Right-in-Their-Hands-….pdf
……………………………………………………………………..
‘We saw that we understand many together. Each thing which we could separate is already affected by the others that are already affected by it. This is an odd pattern, more intricate than the usual kind of ‘many’. It is also more intricate than the usual kind of ‘one’. Let us allow this more intricate pattern to stand. I name it ‘a crossing’. RATHER THAN BEING SIDE BY SIDE, each is a modification of the already-modified others. They are one understanding (IU) because of the crossing. Implicit understanding is a crossing. That is how they are able to [page 338] imply one actual next event. BECAUSE THEY ARE A CROSSING, THEY CAN CHANGE ALL AT ONCE, and without forming separately.’ (emphasis added KH) –– Eugene Gendlin (2009) What First and Third Person Processes Really Are [page 332] https://focusing.org/gendlin/pdf/gendlin_what_first_and_third_person_processes_really_are.pdf
……………………………………………………………………..
‘TIME CAN BE VIEWED AS WITHIN HAPPENING AND GENERATED BY IT. Happening need not be within pre-given time locations. I will discuss this further below. For a full treatment see A Process Model, chap. I-B (Gendlin, 1981/1997).
Gallagher (2006) establishes a term (‘prenoetic’) that refers to the implicit. He writes: ‘THE PRENOETIC FUNCTION OF THE BODY SCHEMA . . . [is] ordered according to the intention of the actor rather than in terms of muscles or neuronal signals. . . (p. 38)’ (emphasis added KH) –– Eugene Gendlin (2009) What First and Third Person Processes Really Are [page 332] https://focusing.org/gendlin/pdf/gendlin_what_first_and_third_person_processes_really_are.pdf
……………………………………………………………………..
Gallagher, S. (2006), How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/246392739_How_the_Body_Shapes_the_Mind
‘This book helps to formulate this common vocabulary by developing a conceptual framework that avoids both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and the inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Through discussions of neonate imitation, the Molyneux problem, gesture, self-awareness, free will, social cognition and intersubjectivity’ …. ‘the book proposes to remap the conceptual landscape by revitalizing the concepts of body image and body schema, proprioception, ecological experience, intermodal perception, and enactive concepts of ownership and agency for action. Informed by both philosophical theory and scientific evidence, it addresses two basic sets of questions that concern the structure of embodied experience. First, questions about the phenomenal aspects of that structure, specifically the relatively regular and constant phenomenal features found in the content of experience. Second, questions about aspects of the structure of consciousness that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before one knows it, and do not normally enter into the phenomenal content of experience in an explicit way.;
……………………………………………………………………..
Margaret S.Warner, Ph.D. “Fragile Process” “New Directions in Client-Centered Therapy: Practice with Difficult Client Populations”, Ed. Lois Fusek, Monograph Series 1, Chicago Counseling and Psychotherapy Center. 1991 // A highlighted version to follow with a discussion page.
“In a recent article, Leonard Geller (1982) criticized the concept of self-actualization as developed by Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow on both theoretical and empirical grounds. His critique is based upon an assumption of a psychosocial understanding of self and a linear thinking approach to the human context. In this article, it is argued that the use of the term “self” in the human potential movement is fundamentally somatic and that linear thought, as it is usually understood is inappropriate to understanding concepts such as self and autonomy as well as any living system. The roots of such a somatic understanding are explored in systems biology and the formalizations of a logic of self-reference. A development notion of self-image is then sketched based on self-distinction as the central element.” –– Carl Ginsburg Toward a Somatic Understanding of Self: A Reply to Leonard Geller Journal of Humanistic Psychology Volume 24, Issue 2 (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022167884242004)