As I ran, I noticed small changes in the landscape, differences between this version of the park and the one I had last seen: which trees had finally lost their leaves, and which were still showing color; the vibrant green of the fuzzy lambs ears in the pale November light; the earthy browns and yellows of the fallen leaves and hollowed-out stalks of the reeds; the angle of the sun behind the elm trees, and so on. These details made it easier to forget, at least for a little while, the overwhelming cognitive dissonance of the holiday season, made more extreme this year by the fact that thousands are dying while the rest of us are exhorted to shop, as if these are the two primary modes of existence.
For the past year or so, I've had a few nagging injuries that haven't stopped me from running but are what I consider 'a presence -- or specter -- of pain,' a 1 or 2 on my 10-point scale, with 0 (zero) being the ideal. At times I've resigned myself to these injuries -- after all, I'm no longer young and the mileage is not trivial -- but at the recommendation of my mother, I decided to pursue a more holistic approach: I started a 48-session course in the Feldenkrais Method with a plan to do one 40-minute session per day.
So far, I've done five. And while I wouldn't (yet) say I've healed my injuries, I'm optimistic. I've noticed several things not only about my running form, but also about how I tend to hold my body when looking down at my laptop or my phone (i.e., 97 percent of my waking hours). In this position, my chest is collapsed and my stomach muscles clenched, which in turn puts unnecessary pressure on my lower back and hips. As the instructor of my course noted, if you keep muscles needlessly clenched for long enough, they become metal rods in your body, painful and inflexible.
The Feldenkrais exercises -- or sequences -- are not 'difficult.' They do not require strength or stamina or flexibility. They are more 'mental' than physical to the extent that, by moving our bodies in unexpected ways, we understand how we hold ourselves. (Hence the 'Awareness Through Movement' mantra of Feldenkrais.) (That said, I often feel 'buzzed' and a little dizzy -- in a good endorphin-y way -- at the end of a sequence.) Students learn that posture is a choice, which means that as we become aware of one choice, we can also make a different one. It's pretty simple in theory. Miraculously, it's not that complicated in practice, either. (Although breaking bad habits is never easy.)
I've been thinking a lot about the parallels between our bodies and our political economy. There are so many facets of our lives that we take for granted because it's what we've always done, or we 'never thought about it' or because conditions seem to be 'dictated by the market,' when in reality these policies -- whether they relate to the environment or voting or labor or factory farming or so many other issues -- are choices or bad habits waiting to be broken so that we can make different and better choices.
The course I'm taking is by Bruce Holmes, who was one of the original students of Moshe Feldenkrais, the Israeli engineer who created the method. The sessions were originally recorded on cassette tapes but have been transferred to mp3s, which you can buy here (the best $48 you'll ever spend). I'm particularly enjoying these lessons because Holmes is also a distance runner and has a lot to say about form. For anyone seeking an introduction to Feldenkrais, here's a good NYT article from a few years ago. Or here's a free lesson from the Feldenkrais Project on 'dynamic sitting' that I found useful.
As I ran, I tried to note the movement in my body and, where necessary, to make adjustments: the tilt of the pelvis, the swing of the arms, the angle of the ankles. Was I clomping or gliding? When I did some wind-sprints at the end of the run, I noticed that my recovery was much faster if I kept my head up, which makes sense if you think about how the chest and body need to expand to take in the air.