Some Questions Don't Need an Answer

Your super-power as a human being is your ability to direct your attention. THAT is where the magic happens between your so-called voluntary and so-called autonomous functions. Humans don't have power to command-and-control, not even in themselves. (We don't even know what we've decided until we are already in the process of doing it!) To the extent we do have a smidge of control, it is because of our power to shift attention—to invite a reset. The same thing goes for the other end of the 20th century's ridiculous binary—we are not automatic robots with no influence over our mood, tempo or action. And the reason we are not is that we can change the gain on information flow. We can choose to pay attention.

When you ask a question of yourself, the process of asking/answering—or maybe better yet of asking/almost-answering— directs your attention. That redirection has the power to move data from the opaque, up through the middle-muddle, even into the forefront of your consciousness.

Dart your eyes to the right, and your ears recruit themselves around the noise coming from the right. Have your Feldenkrais teacher say 'what do you feel in your neck?' and your proprioceptive—and other!—systems train themselves on the neck. They favor the neck data. They wake up to the neck data processing. The shift in attention changes you-in-the-world.

This is particularly interesting, and particularly Feldenkraisian, when your shift in attention changes your internal awareness. A perhaps-profound change in how you move can arise, or a change in how you manage your moods, or a change in how you believe you can influence your own dynamics, just from the attention.

Your role? Just hang with the question. It is actually more powerful than any answer.