Awareness Arising from Movement

In a recent interview, Mia Segal, an early collaborator in the development of the Feldenkrais method, referred to 'awareness through movement' as brilliant nomenclature. First, I thought 'holy @#!, NO, it is such meaningless jargon.' But I was wrong. It took me a long while to get that Moshé and Mia named it 'awareness through movement', not 'movement through awareness.' Or as another great teacher, Marilupe Campero, said in one of her lessons: 'don't pay attention in such a way that you can move better, move in such a way that you can pay attention better.' Sure, Moshé was interested in his clients' knee or hip pain or freedom of movement in the shoulder girdle. But he was a lot more interested in their mind – in their awareness. And if the awareness is a way to get to the hip joint organization, it isn't so much because the big, bossy, late-to-the-party consciousness has focused better, but rather because the student has relaxed into a zone of mental plasticity, the middle muddle, where almost anything is possible. The student moves in such a way that she can notice how she moves, and everything flows from the noticing.