"I Look At It As My Maintenance - It’s How I Prevent Myself From Being Injured"

Helen is a young woman who has a sedentary job and loves horse riding. Years ago, her riding instructor recommended Helen come to a Feldenkrais® class because it complements and informs the horse-riding practice so well.

But it was not until Helen had a serious knee injury (torn cartilage that ultimately required surgery) that she started working with a Feldenkrais® practitioner individually and in a class.

“It was the injury that started me going. I didn’t go before because it’s very easy not to do something when there is no problem. Seeing a Feldenkrais® practitioner and going to classes helped with my knee problem, but ultimately the injury led to surgery.”

Before the surgery, Helen has already seen the benefits of this work as it helped her to regain the functionality of her knee joint: “Certainly, the functionality of my body in terms of being more even and being able to move correctly, I think that helped, and that meant that I didn’t go straight to the surgical solution, or a more drastic solution”.

“I felt like a number”

“I actually went to another physio when I first hurt my knee, because it was next to the medical centre: I came in with a knee problem, they gave me four exercises to do that were related to my knee and they sent me away, and it was like 15 minutes. How do you solve it by moving your knee up and down, up and down? It doesn’t help the fact that you had an injury from something –at that point, I didn’t know what it was. And in hindsight, repeating some exercise was not going to solve the issue, because it was a cartilage tear. That’s why I changed - because I felt like a number and I didn’t feel it was helpful to my rehab. And my Feldenkrais® practitioner didn’t just go “it’s your knee, it’s this problem, we are going to deal with this area”, she went “there is so much stuff going on where we can support it”, and that’s the concept … you might move your little finger – and it might be something over here that affects other places. And that was quite powerful. I am pretty sure I saw improvement instantly”.

Helen delayed the surgery as the last resort, but as her knee cartilage was torn repeatedly, she accepted that the arthroscopy was needed. She was surprised that once the surgery was done, she was sent home without any support, advice or recommendation on rehab: “Go and use your knee, it’s fine!”

“After that, I was very much reliant on finding the function again and finding the ability not to be completely crooked, not be one-sided and not rely on one side of my body so much. By that point, I think I’ve done 2.5 years of Feldenkrais®, private and classes … my body was kind of seeking it.”

“There is always another layer …”

Why continue now, years later?

“Because there is always another layer. There is always another perspective. I look at it as my maintenance, my prevention – not my cure. It’s how I prevent myself from being injured, from getting to the point where I need to go to be “fixed”, more than I have a problem that needs fixing specifically. You always have injuries for things, you always do stuff to yourself that is long sitting. Some injuries don’t go away if you don’t work actively towards it, and doing classes is a nice easy way, it’s gentle and a nice maintenance thing.

I know that I hurt my ankle in 2001 and by 2002 I had a sticky shoulder because I didn’t deal with the ankle – I thought I did something, but obviously, it’s rebounded, and my shoulder has been sticky ever since. Never quite goes away, always a little bit funny. But I attribute it to the ankle thing and my knee problem – it’s funny how it bounces.”

 The benefits of online classes

Helen was doing classes with different people in different places (Hamilton, Tauranga, Auckland, even USA for a while) until she came to the class that I offered online during the lockdown. “Which meant it didn’t matter where I was, it was a little bit easier.”

“Online works well because I can do it from home or if I am not at home. It makes it accessible whatever the world is doing at the moment – I haven’t had to go without just because we were not able to interact in person. It’s really convenient.

Online it’s when I want to do it, not when I have an appointment in town. There were times when I literally had to leave work and go straight to class – I couldn’t necessarily go home, eat dinner or have a snack, I just had to get there and have to think about traffic. Now I don’t have all that complication, which is really nice.

Also, it can be hard in winter when the room is cold and it’s not nice to be cold when you are lying still or not moving as much – but you always know what the temperature is at home, you can dress however you dress, you can just be comfortable, that’s always a benefit.

Whether it’s in person or online, I need that commitment in my calendar or in my mind, because if I just sign up for one of the free online events, I don’t sign in to them – it can be 48 hours of classes, all free, but I don’t go because I haven’t got it as “this is the time that I do my one hour, this is the time for me”. Scheduling it is really important.

And every time I go off the floor, I see: “Oh, I can look behind me” or “Oh, my horizon has changed”, or I feel grounded, or something that was annoying me doesn’t annoy me anymore. It’s always pretty instant. It’s good feedback, and it’s valuable. It’s not just “wasting time”, it’s not like “I do it because I should”, I actually do it because it’s good.

I think we don’t think about looking after ourselves until we’re “broken”. I always was the youngest person in the room by decades when I started. The flip side is that people say “I wish I knew about this when I was younger”.

 Who are these classes for?

I asked Helen who she thought these classes were for:

“Apart from everyone? [laughing]

For people who want to actually understand their body and how they can help themselves because a lot of the skills that we learn here are about how not to force something to happen. It’s how to explore something or “how to do something in three ways” … do you have three ways that you can get out of your chair? Or three ways to get off the floor? It could be three or five, or more … more than one option, because that particular option might be prevented for some reason, by injury or whatever. Thinking about exploring is something that the Feldenkrais Method® brings and anybody who is interested in knowing more about themselves, looking after themselves and how they can help themselves rather than need somebody else helping them.

For anyone who’s got injuries or who’s got physical challenges. I’ve seen people who are completely crooked with scoliosis and what-have-you, and they can still do it. It doesn’t matter if you can’t lie down, if you can’t sit, if you can’t whatever … if you can’t stand to do a standing lesson, you can do it in sitting. If you can’t do the lesson physically, you can imagine it.

And for anybody who wants to know more about mindfulness, it can be a bit of a buzzword these days. A lot of companies share information about how to be mindful and how to take time for yourself and how to look after your own wellness, but does anybody actually understand what it means, or do they think that meditation is being in a quiet room doing nothing? It’s active, it’s like an intro to meditation in some ways. The mindfulness piece is huge, and it’s a side benefit.

For people who do a lot of sitting or a lot of repetitive tasks. I sit at the desk the whole day. I am not active during my workday necessarily. There are a lot of things that you end up doing: sitting like this [crooked] because you are leaning on your arm, you don’t know you’re doing it, you’re busy doing your work.

The other thing, I’ve never been interested in yoga or Pilates, because a lot of it is goal-oriented: the point is to do a thing or to do a pose, to do something repetitively, and that is not necessarily what I am looking for, I am looking for the function rather than the end goal. We used to joke: “Feldenkrais® is an exercise for lazy people” – it's not really an exercise, not really for lazy people, but my riding instructor would say: “this is one hour a week when I can lie down on the floor and go to sleep”. This is just a joke, to say “this is one hour for myself and this is my time for me”.

I would also add that people have to commit to a few sessions, a few classes or a series so that they can get used to it. When it’s new, one class can be meaningful and another just as weird, nearly by chance, and you can’t know in advance which one will make a difference for you to come back, so stick with it for a while”.

 How do these classes complement horse-riding?

Of course, I was curious to know a little bit more about the way Helen was using what she learned in classes with the horses:

“It gels really well with it because with the horses, we also a lot of non-habitual things to create better function, better biomechanics, a better quality of movement. And I think it also helps me to be in a better alignment and not impose my own crookedness on my horse so much.

Depending on your alignment, you can give the horse a completely different sensation - all you do is a teeny tiny change: too hard, too soft, or something that feels quite nice for them once you are in the right place. Before I started this, I didn’t know that I was giving the wrong type of signal: it’s like you telling someone to be quiet, but you yell at them in a loud voice to be quiet. Whereas if you could have a nice quiet conversation, the message might be clearer. It’s that clarity.

 Awareness through daily life

And I always wonder whether people use the awareness and concepts they learn in classes in their daily life …

“Definitely. Because I think about how I can do things differently, I pay attention to the way I sit, and if I have something going on or some pain, “how actually can I work through that?”

I also take into my daily life the concept of "practicing without attachment to outcome" that comes from the lessons and Moshe Feldenkrais. It's the idea of doing something without being driven or solely focused on the end goal I have in mind. It applies everywhere, from work to with the horses to personal relationships.

Whilst the cliche statement is "practice makes perfect", the better way to think about it is "perfect practice makes perfect". That is, if you practice poorly, you won't achieve a good quality result. So, "practice", even "without attachment to outcome", means performing to a good standard/good quality, to move me towards a good quality result in the end. Even if the result isn't what I dreamed up in the first place.”

If you are curious to give it a go, visit the Events page to find a class or book your initial consultation via the Booking page.

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