Willie and Moshe
One of my business school professors had been in charge of his company's large payroll, and he loved to tell stories about those days. This was in the precomputer era, before electronic transfers and the like. The company paid cash every two weeks, and my prof was the guy in charge of physically assembling and distributing that mountain of cash.
His biggest worry, of course, was security. And his biggest security concern was a guy named Willie Sutton. That name is rapidly fading into obscurity today. If we remember Sutton at all, it's mainly for his glib quote on why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is," said Sutton.
In his day, though, Sutton was a kind of Michael Jordan of high stakes robbery. That is, on his good nights, he was simply unstoppable. No petty thug or fear monger, Sutton used his brain to earn his nickname ð“ "The Actor." Willie the Actor Sutton excelled in his chosen field largely because of his talent for disguises, posing as a guard, messenger, policeman, diplomat or window cleaner to fool authorities.
So, on payday, my old professor sweated bullets on the possibility that Sutton would somehow manage to relieve the company of it's largest account payable, thereby limiting the future profð—s career choices. The company knew what Sutton looked like, but that wasn't enough to ease their fears. "The Actor" might manage to get close to the stash by posing as almost anybody, so my teacher simply couldn't rest until all the cash had been paid out. Then it was time to start worrying about the next payday.
What does Willie Sutton have to do with learning the Feldenkrais Method, or learning anything for that matter? The Method is about learning how to change human functioning of one sort or another. Though much is involved in change, at the root of it change involves freeing oneself from one pattern of behavior and only then choosing to substitute a more expedient pattern. But to free oneself from a pattern demands that we be able to recognize that pattern, or habit, as it's occurring.
The Feldenkrais Method provides a set of tools for accomplishing this. Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons, for example, change the context of a particular movement function so that "parasitic muscular actions" reveal themselves. That is, we sometimes discover those unnecessary habitual patterns if we're able to devote enough awareness in doing the lesson. Likewise, in Functional Integration (FI) we're able to sometimes provide others with information on their habitual muscular patterns, information they probably wouldn't discover on their own.
Notice the use of the word sometimes in the last paragraph. Habitual ways of doing things can be so deeply ingrained that we aren't even remotely aware of what we're actually doing. That is, like Willie Sutton, habits are masters of disguise. Habitual patterns are often able to fire off the nerves and muscles they need in order to execute before we know what's going on. Weð—re left waiting for our paycheck while Willie frolics with our money inside the bank vault. "Itð—s a rather pleasant experience to be alone in a bank at night," according to Sutton.
Like Willie The Actor Sutton, an unnecessary habitual pattern can seem unstoppable. But awareness can unmask those patterns and point toward other choices in how to perform some movement function. As Feldenkrais said, "if you don't know what you're doing, you can't do what you want."
Awareness is the key to learning and applying the Method. But I don't think it stops there. To me, it's more like the persistent application of awareness. Otherwise, in doing ATM or anything else, my habitual patterns may find it all too easy to don a disguise and spoil a function I want to perform differently. Like swinging a golf club, for example.
In learning the Feldenkrais Method, it's all too easy to focus exclusively on movements or muscular patterns. And those things are important. But without persistent application of awareness, change is very difficult indeed. After all, like my old professor, none of us wants to be defeated by a clever disguise, whether worn by a colorful criminal or an unwanted habitual pattern.
All this is easier said than done, of course. But without an ample supply of awareness, it's impossible.