About

This blog is about learning better movement.

Movement means everything we do physically with our bodies – breathing, sitting, standing, walking, reaching, running, playing sports. And, not so obviously, thinking and feeling, because we use the parts of our brain that control movement for these functions as well.

Better means with more efficiency. That means with less effort, less energy, less discomfort, less pain, and more power, force, precision, coordination, elegance, grace, ease, effectiveness, accuracy. People with great movement include athletes, dancers, actors, martial artists, and young children.

Learning means this is an educational process directed at the brain, as opposed to an exercise process directed at the body.  Exercise means that you stress the body in a way that causes the body to make certain adaptations, like making a muscle bigger, longer or more capable of generating energy. Learning means you provide the brain with experiences that it can use to understand what is going on in the body and how to move it with more skill.  To put the distinction between learning and exercise in different terms, the approach I advocate here is directed at function not structure, the ectoderm not the mesoderm, the software not the hardware, the brain not the body.

Of course, I think that structure, hardware, the mesoderm and the body are all crucially important determinants of how you feel and perform, and that these factors should be optimized by intelligent exercise. However, I also think that most conventional training and therapeutic methods focus too much on hardware at the expense of the software.

For example, it is frequently assumed that weakness, pain, and poor flexibility are defects of the body. However, the central nervous system has far more control over these qualities than most people would imagine.  Training the central nervous system can bring fast and powerful results. I think that for most people, most of their potential for positive change resides in the brain, not their body.

Some methods of teaching movement align very well with this philosophy and these are: the Feldenkrais Method, Z-Health, tai chi, Alexander Technique, and Ideokinesis. I am currently a third year student in the Feldenkrais Method and I have a special focus on this modality. You can find a free twenty five minute audio lesson designed to improve your rotation here.

I am a rolfer in Seattle. I used to be a lawyer. Twenty years ago, I experienced some back pain and a strong desire to win squash matches, so I began studying how to move better and with less pain. Now I’m trying to share what I learned. Enjoy!