A recent report suggests what many of us already know: people that are educated and continue to learn are happier and report greater overall well-being.
Generally people with more education have higher incomes. In the report, the authors discuss whether this greater earning power is responsible for the reported higher levels of happiness. They also discuss the impact of being engaged in and liking what you are doing as a predictor of being fulfilled.
In Feldenkrais classes our focus is on engaging our brains to learn new ways of acting and to do what we know how to do in different ways so we can make them easier to do and we can have choices for action. We know that varying components of a task helps the brain to learn. In each class we introduce several combinations and permutations for each movement so that our brain can experiment and ultimately come up with the most elegant way to do every action where we use our body, and brain, to its fullest.
As Moshe Feldenkrais said, “Learning is the gift of life. Learning that is not conducted through a new way of action is not learning.”
- Sit on a chair that allows you to place your feet, uncrossed, on the floor.
- Push your feet into the floor and lift your pelvis off the chair but only as high as needed to slide a piece of paper out from under your pelvis.
- Return your pelvis.
- Repeat this movement several times.
- Every so often change the placement of your feet on the floor to try to make the movement easier and lighter.
- Lift your pelvis and bounce it forward toward your feet and then bounce it backward toward the back of your chair.
- Each time you bounce try to make it lighter.
- Have fun.
- Stop when you have finished bouncing and get up from the chair. Notice how you do so now. Does it feel different from your usual way of getting up from a chair?
