Body & Brain

I’ve always been very movement-oriented and since I started studying with Anat Baniel my previously conceived notions about movement have changed dramatically.  They continue to change all the time.

I recently spoke to a community of runners in San Francisco about the brain and mobility.  I combined a mini-lecture on the pedagogy of motor learning with a short demonstration of a different way to gain mobility.  In 5 minutes the participants  gained significant flexibility in a simple “bend down, touch your toes” exercise.  Over the hour that followed a lot of runners came to me and asked about the “magic trick” or about how they had changed so rapidly!  It was great fun!

I was taught by my running coaches in high school to stretch before and after exercise.  My coaches, well intentioned and compassionate as they were, taught us a lot of what they themselves had been taught over the course of their running careers.  I took those lessons to heart and always warmed up and cooled down with stretching.  When my physical career took a turn toward circus and dance I learned even more the importance of stretching to increase mobility and protect against injury.

Over the last few years my physical training has been somewhat spontaneous and very eclectic.  I don’t regularly go for 6-10 mile runs anymore; I don’t follow any discipline in a regimented way.  I also haven’t been sore in years.  There is a deep, bone wear and contented sore that I used to experience after a good race in high school and after a circus performance in college.  I associated it with “working good.” Over the last few years I’ve condemned that feeling of sore to “damage.”  It is a fact that soreness in muscles is caused by damage.  (There is a wide range of research that shows that DOMS or Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness equals damage to musculature.)  There is contention among the scientific communities that study such issues whether that damage is also beneficial.  (The argument goes that through the course of building the muscles back up they become stronger, bigger, more mobile, more integrated, etc.)

After my talk at Sports Basement I went for 7.5 mile run.  This in itself isn’t entirely unusual for me in recent years.  However, when I run solo I stop and walk, I chat with passers by, I admire the view, and I always stop, even just briefly, when I feel my body aching.  On the Sports Basement FunRun I pushed myself harder than I usually do, in part because I was enjoying the community and conversation of the other runners.  (The other part, of course, was my own competitive streak!)  As a result, I was sore at the end of the run.  Very sore!  For two days after I felt a lot of tension in my calves everywhere I went – running and walking.  What surprised me in this was how much I enjoyed being sore.  The endorphin release the day of and the day after the run were really really pleasant, but I already know how much I like my endorphins!  What I didn’t expect was that same feeling of ease and quiet and comfort through the course of my own soreness.  Wherever I walked – for days after the FunRun – I ached and I enjoyed it!  How could it be that I’ve damaged my muscles, they are day-after-a-race kind of sore, and I loved it?

I don’t have a satisfactory explanation to this question. I enjoy not aching  more than I enjoy being sore.  I don’t believe that an aching muscle is well organized and I am dedicated to increasing efficient organization (my own and others).  And I enjoyed the ache!  I’ve entering a new layer of the conversation and really quite excited to see where it leads!

I went skiing in February 2011 for the first time in many years. I’ve made several trips to the mountains since and expect to continue playing in the snow even as the weather in San Francisco shifts rapidly towards Summer. Quite apart from my tendency to fixate on whatever novel movements I happen across (over the last year my enthusiasm has encompassed a range including foosball, the manual dexterity necessary for cadaver dissection, and rock-climbing), in skiing I have enjoyed the opportunity to explore the topics of movement with attention and enthusiasm.

I began skiing shortly after I could walk, plummeting down hills without consideration for danger or parallel turns. While my family did not live within convenient proximity to the snow, we made it a point to get out to the mountains several times each year. In high school I realized how expensive skiing could be and decided to explore more accessible means of expressing my zeal. This year I have re-discovered an activity I had thought lost to childhood memory.

I did some small amount of mental preparation prior to that first ski trip – imaging what it would be like to wear skis again, visualizing parallel turns on a downhill slope – but I had no idea whether I would be starting from scratch. From the fact that I write enthusiastically of returning to the mountains it is easy to guess that I hadn’t lost my old habits. But since then I have been pestered by the question: Why?

When I stepped off the lift at the top of the mountain (Kirkwood, for the record) I truly did not know whether I would head down a black diamond slope or back down the chairlift. What I did was take my time; not timidly but with attention and enthusiasm. I raise these last two points because they are – in my experience – essential to any learning process. If I had stepped off the lift full of judgement I wouldn’t have lasted an hour. I thought back to what skiing had felt like as a kid. I recalled the feeling of ease that accompanies memories of my early days of skiing, of fearlessness, and the capacity for fixation that is necessary for any young child’s development. I indulged in my experience, both current and historic, and took my first slope without expectation.

These “Essentials” are by no means my own invention. Anat Baniel teaches that Movement with Attention, Enthusiasm, and others are essential for learning. But I began to apply these without planning to and gained some insight on how I might recreate positive experiences in the future.

Since that first trip I’ve given some thought to how best to prepare myself for a day of skiing. I’ve created a short YouTube video to depict some of the activities that I now use to get ready for a day of skiing. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone “warming” themselves up to ski so I thought I would do something small to encourage “warming up” on the slopes. I hope you enjoy this video as much I enjoyed rolling around in the snow to create it!

What have I taken home with me besides a renewed appreciation for skiing? I found myself applying some basic precepts in unexpected ways. Instead of trying to control my first experience of skiing, I entered into the experience wondering “What is this going to be like?”. I re-created the feelings of ease that I experienced as a child. I was passionately enthusiastic. I put these thoughts forward as tools to consider going forward into any new activity and learning to move the way you want.

I began my running career early, alternatively tagging along to and getting carried along to family running events.  I have fond memories of being the target of flying tortillas at many Bay to Breakers.  On my Dad’s shoulder before the start of the run I became known as “the Kid” and the running was entirely secondary to the preceding tortilla warfare.  My memories of the half and full marathons to which I was “encouraged” to attend are less fond.  Generally, my Dad ran the full, my mother and sister ran the half, and at 10 years old I keep up as best as I could.

My strength on the high school cross-country team was as a hill climber.  I was not at the top of the team, though I did run varsity though junior and senior years.  My best 3 mile race was at an average 5.30 minute/mile.  I disappointed my coaches and my parents when I walked off the team midway through the Fall of my senior year.  I left because I was bored with the limits of running.  I had had just about enough of “run faster.”

That ending was the beginning of a very exciting and eclectic movement education.  I studied fencing, rock-climbing, a couple of martial forms, a variety of dance forms, and numerous circus apparatus.  I have since performed in dance and in circus.

Years later, I’ve been drawn back to running.  Leaps on a ballet dance floor leave me anxious to get out and take up even more space leaping on mountain trails.  My answer to the ubiquitous smoking breaks outside every dance studio I’ve experienced is to go for a run.  The difference is how I think about running.  I still like moving fast and I’m still an endorphin junkie but I don’t run for the sake of running anymore.

I purchased my first pair of Vibram 5-finger 12 months ago after reading this article from the New York Times magazine.  I have always been an advocate of barefootedness.  Early in high school I studied abroad in Costa Rica and walked and ran barefoot after discovering that my performance running shoes offered no traction in the mud.

I had no trouble adapting to my new Vibram Five-Fingers probably because I’ve always enjoyed using my toes.  A traditional Anat Baniel Method/Feldenkrais Method exercise consists of gently interlacing toes with the fingers of the opposite hand.  (Go really slowly, don’t insert fingers in a way that causes pain!)  The mobility of my feet were dramatically altered as a result of an hour spend doing variations on this theme.  An interesting fact: young children often have the dexterity to interlace the toes of their feet just as we interlace our fingers.  It is something I aspire to.

The Vibrams were great for walking down San Francisco streets.  This was just before the shoes hit mainstream shops and I got into all sorts of interesting conversations with people who wondered what in the world I had on my feet.  The downside I’ve discovered to Vibram Five-Fingers is the same that I encounter with running shoes.  I still can’t feel the floor.  Especially during winter months when trails are wet and muddy there just isn’t enough sensation, my toes can’t dig it.  I still tend to take my Vibrams off halfway though a run and continue barefoot.

I’ve recently learned of a new shoe-less product that may enter the market.  Nike has come up with what they are calling “Foot stickers,” rubber/plastic patches that fit on parts of the bottom of the foot and act as second skin.  I haven’t (yet) managed to find a pair to try but I like the idea in principle.  There are a couple of varieties depending on activity: yoga, dance, cardio.  More samples and the article here.

I haven’t seen many shoe-less alternatives available.  A simple, though pessimistic, explanation: running shoe manufactures have a market cornered and don’t want to let it go.  There is more money in telling customers that a new shoe will solve the problem than in telling them to take off those shoes and walk/run barefoot.

My own shift away from regular shoes has resulted in an increase in my awareness of my feet throughout my daily life.  By increasing the demand on my nervous system during a run I feel as if I’m actually increasing the use of my feet throughout my life.

I attended Anat Baniel’s Move Into Life workshop in July 2009.  Michael Merzenich, PhD and noted neuroscientist was in attendance and gave a short talk.

To summarize Merzenich says that walking around barefoot increases demand on the brain, which in turn improves performance.  I have mulled his discussion over since July of 2009 and taken my running to a new, logical level in recent months.  I’ve found running barefoot on a university track to be painful and it isn’t always possible to find trails.  The city streets of San Francisco pose a threat to the barefoot runner.  I resort to running barefoot on a treadmill.  Now that I’ve thought of it, this seems completely logical.  Running shoes we built to keep our feet safe.  The gait-path of a treadmill doesn’t pose significant threat of rock or used needle; in other words we would be hard pressed to find a safer environment on which to run.  Thus far I haven’t been ordered off a treadmill as a result of my barefoot running. I do get strange looks.

Another new discovery resulting from my own barefoot exploration is related directions in research.  It turns out that Harvard has a lab dedicated to the topic of barefoot running.  (http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/)

This skeletal biology lab asks “how and why humans can and did run comfortably without modern shoes”.  They compare native peoples from various parts of the world who have never worn shoes with long-time barefoot runners and gym-going shoe-wearing runners.  The most informative piece of this website for me was that of children running in African whose feet seem to slap the ground.  The muscular tonus of their feet is pretty minimal and they seem very light and easy on their feet as they run.

Try an experiment: Choose your dominant hand. Bend your arm at the elbow, leaving the elbow on the ground.  Relax your wrist so your hand hangs limp.  Raise your hand and forearm like this six inches or a foot off the ground and let it fall.  Don’t throw it at the ground, just let it fall.  Do this several times.  After: do you notice a difference between your dominant hand, the one you let fall, and your non-dominant hand?  I’ve been trying to run using my feet like this.  Literally letting my feet falls towards the ground as I run.  It takes some practice but if the Harvard Skeletal lab is to be delivered, running barefoot requires on average 7% less energy than running in shoes, and is significantly less likely to cause long-term damage to the runner.

Something to consider…

Anat is leaving shortly to give a number of presentations and demonstrations to the Half the Sky Foundation, which oversees fifty thousand orphans throughout China. Here are a couple of teasers from her presentations.

I spent the weekend at Anat Baniel’s “New Fitness” workshop. My new conceptualization of enthusiasm, vitality, and fitness: A baby learning to crawl.  I, for one, have never seen anyone in a gym look so eager nor move so well.

I just watched Aditi Shankardass discuss neurological diagnostic techniques for learning disorders on TED talks. This seven minute clip is worth seeing.

Finally, I’m continuing to enjoy the writings of Jonah Lehrer. Specifically, in September he summarized a paper about the importance of practice.  Here’s the link and here is the conclusion of the paper:

On a practical level, the present results suggest a means by which perceptual training regimens might be made markedly more efficient and less effortful. The current data indicate that it may be possible to reduce the effort required by participants by at least half, with no deleterious effect, simply by combining periods of task performance with periods of additional stimulus exposure. If this proves to be a general rule of nondeclarative learning, it could help to explain how potent instances of learning can arise when sensory stimulation is not always coupled with attention.

On Tuesday night I went to the Herbst theatre in San Francisco to hear neuro-scientist and writer Jonah Lehrer in conversation with Roy Eisenhardt.  While I grew up listening to City Arts and Lecturs, this was my first live discussion and a much needed return to academic discourse (not to be confused with discussion, debate, or dialogue).  As an alumnus of Columbia and Oxford Universities, Lehrer is now a contributor to Scientific American,  National Public Radio, and Wired Magazine, among others.  He has published articles in The New Yorker, Nature, Seed, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe and maintains the blog The Frontal Cortex.

Lehrer’s talk was especially interesting personally because of his combination of academic affiliations and real-world application.  As a scientific correspondent Lehrer straddles disciplines with which I myself struggle: the balance of academic research and real-world application.  Lehrer speaks and writes with the ease of a well-read academic.  In discussing one of his two books – Proust Was a Neuroscientist – Lehrer cited Plato to confirm his thesis that some fundamental ideas currently espoused by popular neuroscience were conceptualized by the Greeks.   (I grow bored with the use of the classics merely for the edification of ones argument though this trend is by no means exclusive to Lehrer.  In my opinion, references should be accessible to the audience to which they are cited.)  However, I heartily concur with Lehrer’s argument that the humanities use different methods to answer fundamentally human questions about thought, cognition, existence, humanity… .  What artist, writer, poet, dancer – who?! – does not seek to answer such questions through whatever medium their profession employs?

Jonah Lehrer’s most recent book, How We Decide, encompasses decision making throughout the development of research psychology all the way to recent publications in neuroscience.  I have a pretty thorough grounding in classic Behaviorism (B. F. Skinner, etc.) and Cognitive Psychology.   It was interesting, then, to hear studies with which I am very familiar (the classic example of Pavlov’s dogs trained to salivate at the sound of a bell which ques food) in the context of neuroscience.  Lehrer discussed Chimpanzees being fed squirts of apple juice and conditioned to respond to a bell just as Skinner’s dogs were, with the important difference that these Chimps were also undergoing brain scanners.  The brain scans showed anticipation of food as clearly as did Skinner’s dog’s saliva.  My cognitive psychology profession Dan Reisberg used to argue that neuroscience would not replace cognitive psychology but merely confirm what we (as cognitive psychologists) had already learned.  I saw echos of this throughout Lehrer’s discussion.

In all, I very much enjoyed Lehrer for his wit, humor, and melding of neuroscience with the news.  I am critical of academic’s trend to use lofty references to establish credibility but I see this everywhere that academics publish.  And truly, Plato had some interesting things to say.   I will be adding The Frontal Cortex to my blogroll and will certainly be posting about Lehrer in the future.

As an aside I am also amused by Lehrer’s public image:

This rumpled look is awfully reminiscent of the graduate students I know in the sciences at UCSF.

My friend’s holistic MD, quoted in “How much evidence do you need,”  is named Dr. Thomas Cowan and is the author of the Fourfold Path to Healing. His website is http://fourfoldhealing.com/ and I’ve just begun to read some of his previous monthly articles.  I’ll post more as I learn more.  You can also find a link to his website on my Blogroll.

Cowan’s four precepts:

1. Movement
2. Therapeutics
3. Nutrition
4. Meditation

One day some months ago, in the middle of a very intense segment, Anat asked my class: “How much evidence do you need to know that something is so?”  Today, a number of events have conspired to encourage me to consider these words.

This afternoon I posted a New York Times article @robinpzander on the effects of tai chi on fibromyalgia.  The research article discussed in the Times was published in the New England Journal of Medicine – a rather prestigious journal – and the Times enthusiastically discussed the findings.  I have only dabbled in tai chi (specifically tai chi chuan) but have enormous respect for the form(s) and it comes as no surprise to me that medical professionals found positive effects on the little-understood neurological degenerative condition or conditions that we call fibromyalgia.  Tai chi consists of a series of interconnected movements executed slowly with attention.  Sound familiar?  That’s two basic precepts of human motor learning:

1. Movement with attention
2. Slow

While there may well be aspects specific to tai chi that improve nervous system functioning, I need no further proof than these underlying precepts to satisfy my personal search for knowledge.

Later today I shared the Times article with my mother.  My mother’s is the voice in my head that asks, when I’m confronting a difficult decision, how does it feel?  (Good?  Go for it!  Bad!  Leave.)  She was a bit dismayed that so much time, energy, and money was put in to creating a scientific article that says something that is (for her) self-evident.  Of course moving gently with attention improves functioning.  What of it?

That said, she has been repeatedly surprised by the impact of her current favorite form of movement: a very specific restorative yoga class.  Her recent report was that she slept very deeply for a full night for the first time in several months.  When I asked what happened in class I heard an increasingly familiar set of words: gentle, slow, attention, movement.

A dear friend recently had a routine check-up with her physician.  One of her major on-going projects has been eating foods that are gentle on her system.  In stressful times she always falls back on broths, soups, and easily digested ingredients.  I have not known many people so dedicated to their slow road to recovery as my friend, but as she says – she must, therefore she does.  In this case, she was discussing her status with her doctor and feeling a little overwhelmed by the current stumbling blocks.  His response (reproduced to the best of my ability) was: “There is no method or organization, person or process that can tell you what to do.  You have to feel what is right for you and do that.”  He elaborated by saying that there is no such thing as trying.  “Don’t ask ‘how can I eat better?’ Ask ‘what am I going to eat today?’”

First, I’m in awe of any Medical Doctor with such comprehensive and holistic knowledge.  I know they exist but I certainly haven’t encountered many in my own experience at Kaiser Permanente.  After I got over that initial response, I heard the underlying message: How does it feel?  This medically trained professional is well-published and (as I understand such things) well-respected within nutritional medicine but he is not asking my friend to follow a specific regime.  Instead, she has been given the power and responsibility to follow her own intuition or thinking or common sense or whatever we want to call it.

I foresee a hosts of arguments again the question of How Much Evidence Do You Need.  I have studied enough Cognitive Psychology to know that humans are often very poor decision makers (Thank You, Dan Reisberg.) On the other hand, I’ve had enough experiences of not stopping to think before acting to see some strong correlations between how something feels during or afterward.  (Those 4 donuts at a friend’s 14th birthday party…? I haven’t eaten a donut since, I felt so ill.  Hiked up the mountain as it was getting dark…?  Covered in poison oak, cold, and lost on the mountain.)

This is my first approximation putting down in words what for me is just a feeling or an idea.  But consider: How do you decide whether to take a shortcut through a dark ally?  How do you feel?  If you feel unsafe, that’s all the evidence you’ll ever need to not go down that ally.  I’m not interested in dismissing hard scientific proof.  I’m just curious what would happen if we were to ask ourselves the question:

How much evidence do you need to know that something is so?

(And how do you feel about it?)

I’ve just finished another fantastic book…

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon is a mystery told from the perspective of the protagonist Christopher, a fifteen-year-old who falls on the autistic spectrum (likely Asperger syndrome). The story ostensibly revolves around Christopher’s discover of a murdered dog and subsequent decision that this death deserves investigation. In truth, though, The Curious Incident is a touching look into the mind of a very intelligent boy whose worldview is just different from the norm.  Described  from Christopher’s perspective, “abnormal” behaviors are reinterpreted as logical copping mechanisms.  The murder mystery takes Christopher (and the reader) into the hither-to unexplored realms of interpersonal relationship, complex mathematics (one the realms in which Christopher truly thrives), and conceptualization of social norms.  In Christopher we find an endearing character who has constructed a mental framework within which he is safe, with Christopher are dramatically forced outside of this comfort zone, and grow through the experience.  The story provides a novel look into the mind of a very special child who will remain with the reader long after the last page.  Regardless of a reader’s personal interaction with special needs children, The Curious Incident encourages thinking about other’s perspectives in a way that is touchingly, profoundly human.

What I am interested in hearing is what you have done and are doing in terms of your Feldenkrais training, what you intend to do with that training and how that would translate to a dancer’s education on an ongoing basis.

Is that all?  I’m glad you are starting small.  If you were to ask all of the hard questions all at once I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Anat Baniel was one of Moshe Feldenkrais’ pupils and studied under him from the early ’70s until his death in ’84.  Since then she as founded the Anat Baniel Method, continuing the evolution of the Feldenkrais Method under her own name.  Anat is widely regarded in the Feldenkrais community and is also the mother of a close friend.  In my life I have encountered a small handful of instructors (in a diverse set of fields) whose process of instruction – quite apart from the material itself – is truly exceptional.  (While we are on the topic, you are one of those few.) Anat is one. At its essence her topic is learning and thus how she teaches is, of course, exemplary.

This material is taught through Movement Lessons to a group who usually begin lying on the floor and very slowly move through a sequence of interconnected patterns which together form a single functional movement.  (Augusta teaches such lessons at ODC.)  The functional movements are taken from a host of backgrounds: human motor development (infants, children; crawling, sitting, walking), Judo kata, methods of rising from the floor to standing.  Moshe developed over 1000 movement lessons, each with a functional element that addresses a different aspect of human movement.

Through an in-depth understanding of these lessons, Anat has developed tools (slow, variation, movement with awareness, etc.) which access how humans learn.  By attempting the lessons slowly, for example, while not attempting to complete the end-movement before the necessary motor development has occurred, acquisition and retention far exceed more traditional methods of training.  The methods employed in Feldenkrais more directly access where/how movement is processed in the central nervous system.  One of Anat’s advances of the form has been to bring vocabulary – pulling on neuroscience research – to describe these processes.

For me this work is life changing.  It sits at the intersection of a number of my passions: my own movement training, academic study of movement, helping people to facilitate change in their own bodies.  My undergraduate research was in psychology under a Behaviorist who has spent his career studying learning in animal models.  I spent my senior year conducting research on motor acquisition in humans.  I plan to continue on in research in graduate school in PT.  Since graduating I have found a passion for teaching people about their bodies.  As a personal trainer, and now primarily in rehab I am working with individuals to find new, healthier ways of using their bodies.  One of the aspects that fascinates me about this work is that it applies anywhere along the spectrum from children with special needs and people with strokes all the way to high-performance athletes and musicians.  Anyone can (be taught to) improve their technique.  My regular set of clients is a mix of chronic-pain and surgery-recuperation, fitness, and athletes.  I had my first experience last week of working with children with cerebral palsy and autism at Cesar Chavez Elementary.  I would be glad to put you in touch with my classmate Cathy Down who plays violin with the SF Symphony.  I have taught group class once a week this fall at a studio called Kiki-Yo and will be teaching twice each week in the New Year.  I hope also to begin teaching groups at my old gyms Crunch and World.

The ABM training consists of 10 9-day segments for the basic certification.  I have completed 4.  Per ~100 hour segment I gain more knowledge of my own body’s capabilities and more mobility that in 6 months or a year of moderate training outside of the segment.  The movement growth I have experienced encompasses gross skills like rolling and walking and has changed how I listen to everything that I do.  This new-found awareness has allowed more rapid and I believe more healthy learning (of movement, of many other things) than I was capable of before.

I am not looking for a full-time dancing career.  That said, I would like to have a part time career in dance in the future.  (I have an audition with Capacitor in January!)  For me, the Feldenkrais training is appropriate because it spans the interconnections of my interests.  For pre-professional dancers who may be going on to full-time career I think that regular lessons could also be invaluable.  Weekly classes allow participants to begin to develop their own tool sets for furthering their movement education.  This furtherance can be in the form of listening to their bodies in cases of injury or in seeking to improve technique.  Group Feldenkrais classes provide a codified curriculum around which any aspect of a mover’s repertoire may be amplified.

I hope this email/essay has addressed some aspects of your questions.  Please feel free to ask again or narrow your focus.  I will do my best to provide coherent explanations.  Thanks again for your interest and I will speak with you soon!

Warmly,
Robin