Imagination

In this weekend’s Globe and Mail, poet Eva Joseph wrote a compelling essay about her experience and life after having a stroke, at the age of 60. It is an article well worth reading.

One of the things she found hardest in her recovery was the block she faced in being unable to write poetry, which was previously a large part of her life. She presented and discussed research about how the brain functions and the changes in it that occur as a result of a stroke; changes that vary with each person and type of stroke. A stroke results from the loss of functioning of some brains celleither as a result of a loss of blood flow or from a hemorrhagic bleed into the brain.

Regaining function involves neuroplasticity or the brain putting down new pathways, or secondary roads you can take to your destination, as the late neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita  described it. Recent research is discovering that music is one such road. Joseph reported on a study at Harvard Medical School that had volunteers in one group practice five finger piano exercises while those in another group held their fingers in position as if they were playing and imagined playing. In follow up testing, the brain cells of members of both groups had spread out “like dandelions on a suburban lawn” suggesting that simply imagining actions can result in the development of new neural pathways.

In Feldenrkais® classes and sessions, we use imagination as a teaching tool. When we cannot perform an action easily and simply we imagine the movements, as if we were doing them gently, easily and without effort. Sometimes we do some movements and then imagine doing them on the other side, in a different position or with different constraints. We are transferring the learning from one area to another simply by feeling as if we were doing the movement.

Do you want to learn how to expand your available movements and actions? Interested in developing new ways of doing things? Try an Awareness Through Movement® class; winter classes begins this week. Or schedule a private session to explore your particular issues in depth.