Gardening That Feels Easy
Every time I tend to my garden, I think about how gardening can be made easier, and how the principles of the Feldenkrais Method® can be applied to this. So, I thought I’d share.
“Pain doesn’t have to be as inevitable as weeds.”
Creating variation
As moving beings, we are not made to stay in the same position for too long. Change activity often.
For example, when I am about to start weeding, I take a smaller bucket to put the weeds in. It means that after about 10-15 min of weeding I will have to get up and bring this bucket to my heap of weeds on the other side of the garden. Yes, I am “losing” time, but I am saving myself from a long and repetitive movement.
Every time I come back I will change my position: from squatting to half-kneeling and even to bending over or sitting. Even then, I will not plan to weed for several hours: I will move on to other jobs and will come back to the weeds next time.
Another piece of advice is coming from Miriam Levenson’s “Effortless Gardening”:
“Find a minimum of three different positions for every gardening task, and use each only for a few minutes”.
Connecting to the ground
Use the support of the ground as much as possible: making sure your feet provide you with a good base of support when you are standing, finding more points of support ...
When you are standing, are your feet positioned wide enough to give you stability AND allow you to move your pelvis easily? When you are weeding, can you have three points of support instead of two?
Moving from the centre
You can do the same task, like weeding or pruning, from your hands and wrists, or from your shoulders – or from your pelvis. In a similar fashion, where is your engine when you are moving the wheelbarrow?
Your pelvis is your powerhouse, and movement created from the centre is always more powerful. Use smaller muscles for finer work and let them ride on the power of your centre for a bigger movement.
Reducing effort
First, your effort, then you strain, then you notice pain.
Remember, pain is there to protect you and tell you to stop doing what you’ve been doing so that you don’t hurt yourself. So, pain is there not to make you afraid or suffer, but to give you a signal to change the way you’ve been doing things.
When you reduce effort, you are able to pay more attention to what your body is telling you: you will make a finer difference between degrees of comfort and discomfort, and respond earlier.
Knowing your hip joints
If you put your hands in your pants’ front pockets and lift one knee up, you can sense the place where your leg is connected to your pelvis.
Being able to feel this place is awesome as when you bend down, you can do it as if “folding” in your hip joints instead of using your lower back (harder way).
The biomechanist Katy Bowman teaches it in other words: when in doubt, shift your butt out!
Lengthening
In our feldenkrasian world, we believe that most of the good action comes with a feeling of lengthening in the spine. Thus, whatever you do, look for this sensation and try avoiding compression.
No pain more gain!
You’re doing it well when it feels good: as with running or any other activity, it’s most efficient when it feels easy.
Remember: when it hurts – it’s not necessarily because you are weak or getting older. It hurts when you load your muscles and joints in a way that is not efficient.
When you can distribute the load in such a way that the big muscles can do the big work, and the smaller muscles can do finer work; when your skeleton is organised to give you the best support within; when you pay attention to what your body is telling you and adjust your activity accordingly, you can continue doing what you love for as long as you want.