Life is Being Lived

Regarding a recent post-class comment about one’s “messy” internal experience during the lesson, here's a bit from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, which I had read just the day before.

From the chapter fittingly titled, Perfectionism:

Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force...Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived. Clutter is wonderfully fertile ground—you can still discover new treasures under all those piles, clean things up, edit things out, fix things, get a grip. Tidiness suggests that something is as good as it's doing to get. Tidiness makes me think of held breath, of suspended animation, while writing needs to breathe and move.

The Feldenkrais equivalent of perfectionism and tidiness is that desire to do the movement the “right” way and right away! One of my teachers, Jeff Haller, says that "right movement" is a limit. But if we can look instead for "better movement,” there is no end to the refinement you can develop. I invite you to join me to look for those small shifts that lead to better movement and a more comfortable internal experience.