Moving from the inside out: Seven principles for ease and mastery in movement, a Feldenkrais approach

As one can notice, the stress is not on Why, but on How. How we do move from our internal space to the external one, reachable with our extremities (kinesphere)? How does the internal space shape the external one while we carry out our daily actions, those we perform while working or while moving for fun, sport, leisure or passion? The global vision of the person, starting from one’s physical and mobile dimensions, is presented through the powerful narration of stories in the form of parables. We are led on the journey by a thread of stories. We are presented characters that come from very different places and contexts. Estelle, who lost her sight and gradually regained trust in her body and ability to deal with the possible obstacles in her daily life. The relevance of environment and culture on our wellness, is told by the story of the “two Graces: both teachers, same age, one from Australia and the other from Indonesia, with totally different body experience. Dianne, who showed up to be a talented dancer and grew up in a house with many mirrors. Lex who works on a construction site. Lauren a bright little girl born with a brain damage, and so on. As often happens in life, attention is awakened by a problem, a pain, a physical difficulty that forces us to stop what we usually do, such as sport, work, artistic activity, etc. Stories come from Leslie’s and Julie’s lives and professional practices, practices from their colleagues and from Moshe Feldenkrais’s recordings of his work. His revolutionary approach to movement is a fundamental element of the book. Especially as regards the concreteness of his concept to health: nobody can be guaranteed a perennial state of good health. Accidents and traumas inevitably affect us during our lives. Feldenkrais used to define health as the ability to heal from trauma by welcoming the new way of being that the trauma prompted us to discover. According to Feldenkrais, a new edition of ourselves is possible: the chance to live our deepest dreams, both the conscious and the unconscious ones. It is a matter of choice. BODY, MOVEMENT AND DANCE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY 2022, VOL. 17, NO. 3, 235–238