02/19/2024
Hi Feldenkrais friends,
I’m teaching a spinal workshop next weekend that has life changing potentials. Particularly for those who want to resolve chronic neck and back pain … and the joint pain that turns people to knee and hip replacements.
Neck and back pain, often attributed to “aging,” are usually not the result of aging at all.
They're the result of a culturally entrained loss of mobility, ingrained via our education system, and the chairs we sit in, and even the sport and exercise routines we are taught. And a medical system that offers short term relief that don’t address the cause of the dysfunction --usually pills, shots, and surgeries to “fix” parts that have gone “bad," as if the miracle of our infinite movement potentials, unique in the animal kingdom, were analogous to fixing broken parts on a car.
If we want to use the car analogy we could say that modern culture turns one into a walking instrument panels (head) with a dramatically incapacitated power center and drive train (pelvis and spine) and no suspension system (torso mobility). But it’s an inadequate analogy. The body is intelligent and infinite in movement potentials. It communicates its needs and restores health if we become better listeners.
In the Feldenkrais it is often said that “the problem is not where the pain is.” e.g.. If you have a stiff neck, the neck is not the problem. The problem is usually that “everything else" is stiff and your neck is trying to do more than its share of the work. Surgery and other short term interventions may be a temporary or inadequate solution because they do not change the movement habits that caused the problem
The remedy is re-learning to move once again in the ways nature endowed us as babies and children ... and continues to endow us, if we exit some of our cultural training.
One can even improve on childhood movement capacities. As I shared in an earlier email, I tripped on my floppy sandals at the top of a stairwell last year and fell headfirst 10 vertical feet, landing with the full weight of my 200 lbs. on my right shoulder and chest wall. After laying there a few moments to breath and feel my body, I got up and drove to the emergency room to find that nothing was broken (except the bottles I was carrying). I remember a childhood friend who broke a collarbone from a milder blow. I’m 67 according to my most recent calculations, and for many seniors such a fall could easily mean a broken pelvis, incapacitation, and end of life.
This workshop will give you a playful and experiential understanding of what causes back and neck pain and joint pain and the tools to improve your physical enjoyment and mobility as you age.
You can reacquaint yourself with your natural suspension system and the possibility to walk or run more like a Porsche and less like an worn out truck. Nourishing your natural suspension system can resolve most back and neck pain and prevent the need for a hip or knee replacement down the road. For some, a single workshop is enough to resolve nagging pain and that’s the end of their interest. For others Feldenkrais offers a pleasurable practice that can resolve pain over the long term and engender vitality, health and mobility for the rest of a lifetime.
YMCA, Lake Otis, is sponsoring the workshop. You can find out more and register at my website, kevincassity.com
