Good Disagreements

The opposite of bad disagreement need not be agreement but it can be good disagreement.

The quote above is by world debate champion Bo Seo. You can hear more from him in this excellent podcast by Intelligence Squared. Debate may seem like an odd topic to discuss in a somatic context, but in reading Seo’s book, Good Arguments: How Debate Teaches Us to Listen and be Heard, I was struck by the parallels between competitive debate and the Feldenkrais Method. Both are effective processes for engaging with conflict.

Most of us either disagree badly by talking “past one another” or we avoid conflict in pursuit agreement, which “saps one’s relationships of their most worthwhile qualities—among them candor, challenge, vulnerability.” Seo believes “competitive debate can teach us how to disagree better in our everyday lives” so that we can “disagree in such a way that the outcome of having the disagreement is better than not having it at all.”

When you’re in pain (acute or chronic), your body is having a bad disagreement with itself. How can you learn to disagree better with yourself? The Feldenkrais Method teaches you how to engage (in Seo’s words) “in a fair and productive conversation” with yourself. You work with your challenges in small, consistent, gentle ways so that the outcome is better than having avoided or overpowered them.

Good disagreement with ourselves and others leads to richer, fuller lives. Evidence of this can be seen in this comment by a participant after class recently:

It’s surprising to me that within an hour such a big shift can occur. I’m fighting physical pain the whole day. I got into thinking my body is a problem that I can’t solve. During the day, the pain feels so permanent, like, “I’ll never get the shoulder to change.” If my shoulder is blocked, it limits how much I can create; that’s why the pain upsets me so much. When I create, I feel fulfilled.

But just putting in the time and being gentle, it can be easier than I think. It went from being a very closed, stuck struggle to softening and changing, and it was very willing to change. —M.P.