Chronic Pain and Following the Line of Pleasure

A great moment of learning happened between a client with EDS (Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder) and me. He was on his back on the Feldenkrais table and I was raising and lowering his bent leg and nattering to him about the Feldenkrais principle: we aren't looking for what hurts/is broken so we can fix it, but rather searching for what feels good and expanding on it. But he wasn't very good at identifying what feels good. It was a total flip from the near-constant vigilance that EDS calls for—looking for the possible hurt. But he found the line of pleasure. He could tell which of my moves he liked, and he could sense how the texture of him would thicken or become more supple depending on what he liked. And I counseled him to find that, to look for that, to cultivate that. To expand on it. He lit up.