Learning to become more comfortable being uncomfortable with changes

Our natural tendency is to seek familiarity and what we know well because that's comforting and assuring.

This becomes obvious when our physical conditions change (injuries, illness, aging, etc). We look for our best physical state prior to the current state influenced by injuries, illness, and/or aging). We fixate on the past image of ourselves.

Truth is that we are changing every moment and so is the environment and our relationship to others and the environment. So there is no such thing as going back to the past state. This is very important to realize because if you don't, you will keep looking for the "ideal state" that doesn't exit forever, and you will continue to feel pain.

What we don't very often do is that we seek new connections, relationships from the current state. This sounds vague and abstract without tangible experience, so I will make it more concrete.

In Feldenkrais movement class, we pay attention to our bodies and movement in detail, probably things you have never paid attention to before. For example, we pay attention to a particular rib during movements and notice how that rib relates to sternum, the spine, and how the movement of the rib affects the sternum, and the spine. By noticing and sensing these new connections and relationships, you sense your body and movement in a very different way, often in a more pleasant and comfortable way. Now you have discovered a new relationship/connection with your body and yourself, and that is more pleasant and comfortable.

While you cannot go back to the past, or return to the "normal", you can create new connections that can bring more joy and excitement into you if you allow yourself to seek new and unfamiliar. This applies to all of us now in this pandemic because there is no such thing as returning to the "normal". We are always changing, and so is the environment and relationships.

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Creating new connections in the moment

We went hiking last weekend. Our son told us to stop walking as he continued walking. I asked him what he was doing. He said it sounds different when he was walking alone from when all three of us were walking. He was referring to the sound he was making as he was walking on the leaves.

This immediately reminded me of Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lesson as he was fully immersed in sensory motor experience and exploring and sensing and creating new connections through movement, all of which are simply driven by curiosity, but no specific goals attached. He is literally doing ATM all day. Discovery and learning always take place in the moment, not in the past or the future. Sensing yourself and your connections with others and the environment in the moment is something kids naturally do, but as we get older, we often disconnect ourselves from the moment, and stop sensing ourselves in the moment.

I am so grateful for this inspiration and being able to see the roots of this wonderful method close by everyday.

You can bring this quality to your life with mindful movement practice. Sign up for my newsletter and receive mindful movement videos in your inbox twice monthly!

Happy Mindful Movement!

Physical limitation is more than physical. It is a habitual pattern.

“Make the Impossible Possible, the Possible Easy, the Easy Elegant” is one of my favorite quotes of Moshe Feldenkrais (the creator of Feldenkrais Method).  

The moment you experience what you believed “impossible” became possible opens a door to your transformation.

Most students/clients come to me first with beliefs about their physical limitation. Do you believe that you can’t do certain physical movements and activities because of your physical limitation such as stiffness or weakness due to aging, vulnerabilities due to current or old injuries?

So much of what we believe physical limitation is created by our habitual patterns of moving, feeling, and thinking. We often think that our physical abilities naturally decline with aging, thus, we just have to keep fighting against aging process with physical training. It is true that physical activity is a key to our health and we need to stay active in order to stay healthy. However, there’s more to improving physical abilities. What’s rarely talked about is to learn a different way of moving. Learning different movement patterns other than your habitual patterns is a very secret to “make the impossible possible,” and to turn your limitation into a new possibility and greater freedom.

In my Feldenkrais movement class, people often experience that the first movement they do in the beginning of a class is very difficult or even impossible, but later in the class they find the very same movement somehow becomes possible and easy. This doesn’t happen because you magically become stronger and more flexible in 45-60 minutes. This happens because you learn different movement patterns, which allows you to “make the impossible possible.”

What’s really powerful about this is that in this moment you feel more empowered than ever and feel as if so many new possibilities are starting to open up within yourself. This is the transformational moment! This is the power of movement!

Join my Tuesday Mindful Movement Class (ONLINE) and "make the impossible possible, the possible easy, and the easy elegant!."

Happy Mindful Movement!

Movement is essential to our life. Improving movement quality is directly related to quality of our life. Teaching people to move well is my passion. Sign up for Trans4Move Newsletters that will teach you how to improve your movements, functions, and your life!

My name is Taro Iwamoto. I am a Feldenkrais practitioner and movement expert. I help people develop new and more efficient movement patterns and expand movement options in order to overcome injuries/pain and move beyond limits. Feel free to post in the comments section below and feel free to share this with your friends!

Four Elements of Awareness

Deepening your self awareness would mean that you will live and move through the world more mindfully.

You can deepen your awareness through all your actions that is to sense, feel, think, and move. This infographics created by my wife, also a fellow Feldenkrais practitioner, represents that relationship simply. Please feel free to print this out and use it as your mindful movement reminder! This principle is integrated in all my Feldenkrais movement classes. We practice how to pay attention to these 4 elements as we move and observe changes. It is very fascinating to realize how all these elements are intertwined and “move” and shift simultaneously, which deepens awareness.

Join my online Feldenkrais mindful movement class (Tuesdays 7:00pm-8:00pm PST) to deepen awareness through movement and find a new relationship with your body and mind.

Movement is essential to our life. Improving movement quality is directly related to quality of our life. Teaching people to move well is my passion. Sign up for Trans4Move Newsletters that will teach you how to improve your movements, functions, and your life!

My name is Taro Iwamoto. I am a Feldenkrais practitioner and movement expert. I help people develop new and more efficient movement patterns and expand movement options in order to overcome injuries/pain and move beyond limits. Feel free to post in the comments section below and feel free to share this with your friends!

Here is how you can be more yourself and authentic

How do you know you are truly being yourself and authentic?

You wouldn't think it’s so hard to be yourself, but I often find myself changing what I say, how I talk, what I wear, how I sit, stand, walk, etc, to “fit” in the norm and expectations of the society and culture.

Watching my 4 year old son and his friends at his daycare reminds me of what it’s is like to be authentic. Kids are free in many ways. Free in their thinking, free in their feelings, free in their imagination, free in their movement. Their mind and body are fully united.

How can you free yourself from all the norms and expectations you consciously or unconsciously try to meet and satisfy everyday?

As some of you may know, I am a Feldenkrais practitioner and practice and teach mindful movement to help you and others. This practice has a lot to do with what I’m writing here. When you practice movement on your own, or taking a movement class, do you ask someone if you are moving correctly? This is an example of how many of us are detached from our own body and experience and unconsciously trying to meet the norm and expectations. Kids would never ask if they are moving correctly.

You can start paying attention to your body and notice how you’re feeling. The moment you start asking yourself if you are moving correctly, you shift your attention to your body and sensation, and let your body experience guide your movements so you’re experiencing yourself from the inside out and expressing yourself freely through your body and movement. In this moment, your movement, thinking, feeling, and imagination become free, and you are being yourself and authentic! This is the state where your mind and body are fully united.

My job is really not about teaching you how to move better. My job as a Feldenkrais practitioner is to guide you through this process.

Please join my Tuesday Mindful Movement Class (ONLINE) to gain more freedom in your movement, thinking, feeling, and imagination! Email me if you want to join my class.

Movement is essential to our life. Improving movement quality is directly related to quality of our life. Teaching people to move well is my passion. Sign up for Trans4Move Newsletters that will teach you how to improve your movements, functions, and your life!

My name is Taro Iwamoto. I am a Feldenkrais practitioner and movement expert. I help people develop new and more efficient movement patterns and expand movement options in order to overcome injuries/pain and move beyond limits. Feel free to post in the comments section below and feel free to share this with your friends!

Movement is Life

"Life without movement is unthinkable." - Moshe Feldenkrais

What is movement? Is it just movement of the body? What about changes in thinking, feeling, and sensation? I think these are all movement. And these movements are happening simultaneously and influencing each other. Our thinking moves and emotions and body move at the same time. Our emotions change, and that movement/change move our thinking and body. In other words, we are constantly moving even at rest. Thus, improving movement means improving life. This is why I teach movement.

If you are feeling “stuck” in your life, try Awareness Through Movement class or Functional Integration session with me to “move” out of the state and start moving forward.

Emotional Security and Pain

If you have been dealing with pain for years, there’s a very good chance that you have seen several health care professionals and been given several diagnoses (e.g., spinal stenosis, arthritis, herniated discs, pinched nerves, scoliosis, SI dysfunctions, spondylolosis, etc).  And, perhaps, after years,  those “labels” (diagnoses) may be so ingrained that they became a part of your identity and they may even provide some sort of security for them.  If someone you never met tell you that you don’t have those labels/diagnoses, you may somehow feel offended and uncomfortable and may even argue with him/her that you have all those diagnoses because maybe you feel very insecure by the thought of detaching your diagnoses (which became your identity and emotionally attached) from you?  If you lost your identity, who would you be and how would you identify yourself?  A scary thought, isn’t it?  This may sound strange, but I think this happens more often than you realize.  Despite the fact pain is an unpleasant feeling and experience that no one wants in general, our nervous system always tries to stabilize and secure itself in this case by associating pain with you and your life.

Just remember you are not your diagnoses, you are not what someone else said.  You don’t have be the person others describe you as, but you can also be the person who you want to become.  Who do you want to become?

Enjoy the sunshine!

Why is movement important?

As my website's name and business (Trans4move) name imply, I consider movement to be vital and essential to our life.  Everything we do involves movement.  From the day we're brought to our life to the day we die, we are moving 24/7.  Movement allows us to develop all our senses so we can make sense of the world.  When we were born, we didn't even know what our own hands were.  It is through movements of our own bodies that we relate ourselves to the world and slowly start to make sense of the world.  Our ability to sense, feel, think, and move develops simultaneously from the day we are born.  These domains (feeling, sensing, thinking, and moving) are interconnected and they influence each other.  No wonder why we feel depressed when we get ill or injured, or no wonder why we cannot think well when we feel angry.

We can of course try to improve any of these domains to improve overall quality of our life, but I choose to work with movement because changes in movement quality is much easier to notice than changes in the other domains.  Thus, movement is a very powerful means to influence one's life.  

Let's join weekly Awareness Through Movement class to improve your life!

What is Awareness Through Movement class?

I'm a certified Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) teacher.  Whenever I tell people about ATM, I get asked what ATM is.  I've always struggled to explain it to people for several reasons.  ATM is kinesthetic learning, which means you learn by feeling/sensing/moving and you must experience to make sense out of ATM.  But, it also helps to put it into words so people can understand cognitively.  

Many ATM lessons are based on developmental movement especially first 2 years of our lives (learning to flex/extend our head/torso/limbs; learning to roll; crawl; sit; stand; walk, etc).  Reasons why we teach developmental movement patterns are that as we get older, we tend to lose the coordination of head-torso-limbs and become more compartmentalized.  As a result of poor coordination, certain parts get used much more and certain parts hardly get used.  Uneven distribution of stress to the body can become a problem.  Practicing developmental movement can restore the coordination of all body parts and re-distribute effort/stress more evenly.  Another reason is that babies learn by sensing/feeling/moving (kinesthetic learning) vs by thinking (cortical learning).  In ATM class, we (ATM teachers) guide movements only verbally.  We purposefully do not show movements to students because we try to direct their attention/awareness  into their body and movement so they can tap into their own kinesthetic sensation just like all babies do.  When you are tuned into your own kinesthetic sense, you start to become aware of your habitual patterns.  You not only become aware of your habitual patterns, but you also discover new options.  Do you remember the first time you rode a bicycle?  It probably didn't go so smooth, did it?  You probably fell a few times and got a few scratches on your arms or legs, right?  So, how did you learn to ride a bicycle?  Probably not by reading a manual.  Probably by lots of trials and errors.  This is an example of kinesthetic learning.  ATM class creates a similar experience where you focus on feeling and sensing your body while exploring movements and start to move towards more efficient movement patterns.  The emphasis on ATM is to improve "Awareness" through Movement; thus the name ATM.  

Come join my ATM classes to have kinesthetic learning experience!

Are You Growing or Aging?

One day my wife was jokingly telling her fiends how fast our 17 month old son was "aging," and they all laughed.  This conversation made me think something I never thought about.  We often say or hear someone say "I can't believe how fast kids grow."  But we don't typically use this phrase to adults.  Instead, we hear or say something like "Days go by so fast when you age."  

The word "growing" is often used for babies and kids and usually has a positive connotation while the word "aging" is used for adults and often has a negative connotation.  When do we start aging and stop growing??  What makes "aging" "growing?"  These are just the words, but clearly reflect our perception and mindset about age.    So, the key to growing as we get older is to shift our mindset and perception about age.  It's not so much the number that makes us feel old, is it?  We stop growing and start feeling old when we get stuck with our habits.  When we get stuck with our habits, we stop trying new things maybe because we are afraid of making mistakes, or perhaps we lose curiosity and interest, or maybe because we get more resistant to new ideas.  

The Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class brings back child-like curiosity and playfulness to our life where we are curiously exploring every movement at every moment without any judgement.  In the end, we'll stop feeling old and start growing again!  Please check out my weekly Awareness Through Movement class in downtown Everett, WA.

Inflexible Bodies or Inflexible Brains?

My clients often tell me that their bodies are so stiff that they can't do certain activities well.

What is really stiff?  What is really limiting your abilities?  "Stiff" bodies?  Or  maybe "stiff" brains?  

Imagine that you believe that there is only one road to your home.  You drive the same road everyday to go to some places.  The road obviously gets used a lot as it's the only choice and starts to get worn out.  At some point, the road requires new paving or fix.  Once it's fixed,  you start driving the same road.  The road condition is improved, but wear and tear is a matter of time as it's the only road that you believe is available.  In this situation, you're stuck with this road and you don't have alternatives.  

Imagine that now several new roads added.  You now have several options.  You're no longer stuck with the the same old road to your home.  

How does this story apply to bodies and brains?  As we develop, we form habits. Habits allow us to do things automatically without thinking, which is a very good thing.  Without habits, it'd take a very long time to do even very simple daily tasks such as brushing teeth or getting dressed.  However, the fact habits "hide" from our consciousness eliminates different ways of acting (thinking, sensing, moving, and sensing).  In other words, habits can limit ourselves to narrow range of possibilities.  If there's only one road to your home, you won't have to think much to get home.  It's efficient, but very limiting.  When it comes to movement, we similarly create movement habits for the same reason.  We tend to use the same pathway or movements repeatedly because of our movement habits.  In a way, we (our brains) only see one road or a habitual movement path).

What really limits our abilities is "stiff" brains.  When our brains become "stiff", we limit ourselves/our abilities to only a small portion of our full potential or our habits, which in turn influences how we use our bodies so our bodies become "stiff".  Fixing bodies/structures is like paving the old road so we can get back on the same road again (the same old habitual pathway).  We still have only one choice.  We're still limited to what we already know or habits.  We can't truly overcome difficulties whether they are physical, intellectual, or psychological until we learn to make our brains more flexible, which would mean that we learn to expand our choices and act more freely without compulsion.

The Feldenkrais Method focuses on improving our awareness through movement to expand our options (thinking, sensing, moving, and feeling) and move beyond our habits, which means that our brains become more flexible.

"What I'm after isn't flexible bodies, but flexible brains."  - Moshe Feldenkrais

Posture and Emotional State

In my previous blog "What is Good Posture?" I mentioned that posture is action, not a static position.  It constantly changes.  Posture is dynamic not only in a physical sense but also in an emotional sense.  Just as breathing reflects emotional state of individuals, posture also reflects emotional state of individuals. 

It's not that hard to tell whether people are happy, sad, or angry by their appearance without asking them how they are feeling, is it?  Our posture changes without any conscious effort from one moment to another moment.  Would your posture be the same when you are at a job interview versus when you are chatting with your friend?  How about when you are driving along the ocean on a sunny day on your vacation versus when you are driving in terrible traffic on a rainy day on your way to work?  Do you think your posture would look the same?  

With this point in your mind, what does it mean to "correct" posture?  If you were chronically stressed and anxious, how effective "correcting" your posture physically would be?  Suppose you "corrected" your posture physically.  The moment you encounter a stressful situation your posture reverts back to your usual posture often tied with stress.  If your idea about "correct posture" were to sit/stand erect, imagine you were at a job interview for all day, then you would subconsciously try to maintain erect posture all day.  Would that "correct posture" feel good??

Moshe Feldenkrais said "Correct posture is a matter of emotional growth and learning.  It is not acquired by simple exercising or by repetition of the desired act or attitude."  

Thus, posture is very dynamic, and to improve posture requires more than changing physical position of your body.  It requires dynamic relationships between emotional state and physical state.  Practicing Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons and Aikido is a way to improving such relationships for me.  Taking what I learn from Feldenkrais Method and Aikido further and applying to my daily life is my ultimate goal, and this is what I always try to share with my clients.  

Changing Habits

In the previous post, I talked about our habits as obstacles for improving our abilities (physical, emotional, and intellectual). If we want to improve our movement abilities, we’ll need to expand our motor habits. We all know that it’s not as simple as it sounds. Let me share my thoughts on this.

In order to change our habits we need to recognize our habits first. What makes it difficult is that habits are for the most part unconscious, so they are invisible. We somehow need to make invisible habits become visible or make them become conscious.

Awareness/proprioceptive-kinesthetic sense is our sixth sense. It allows us to sense and feel our bodies and movements accurately. Without sharp sixth sense we’ll not be able to perceive what we’re doing. This allows our habits to come to the surface and allows us to “see” our habits. This opens the door to new motor habits.

Mindfulness and paying attention to how we’re moving and relationships between body parts, sensations in our bodies and with movements, are ways to sharpen our sixth sense. As we pay close attention to our body and movements, we will start to notice how we use our bodies habitually with each movement. There’s many tricks to improve our awareness, which I will discuss in another blog.
Unfortunately there’s no shortcut to improving our abilities. But, if we can acknowledge this idea and become more aware and mindful of how we move, I’m very confident that we will continue to improve the quality of movement and the quality of life.

© Taro Iwamoto 2015. Please do not reproduce without the express written consent of Taro Iwamoto.