Why Movement? Movement is a Window into Your Nervous System

We are going back to the Awareness Through Movement book for another look at Why Movement? Why movement as a way toward personal development and transformation? 

Moshe Feldenkrais offers 9 reasons why movement. We explore reason number 6: Through movement, you can understand what's going on in the nervous system.

Awareness Through Movement is brain work. It's nervous system work. We're not interested in building muscles, we're interested in creating new connections in the brain that lead to better quality movement, and more choice in what we do.

Working with the brain changes the body. You could say we're working with the mind to move the body to change the brain to change the body... 🤣

Or we can drop the the distinction. We're working with ourselves in away that gets down into the deep fabric of who we are, where we can add a little bit more space and a little bit more grace.

The quote from the book:
Movements Reflect the State of the Nervous System

The muscles contract as a result of an unending series of impulses from the nervous system; for this reason the muscular pattern of the upright position, facial expression, and voice reflect the condition of the nervous system. 

Obviously, neither position, expression, nor voice can be changed with out a change in the nervous system that mobilizes the outward as visible changes.
Them, when we refer to muscular movement, we mean, in fact the impulses of the nervous system that activate the muscles, which cannot function without the impulses to direct them.
Thought the heart muscles of the embryo begins to contract even before the nerves that will control it have developed, it does not work in the way familiar to us until ts own nervous system can regulate its action.
From this we may derive a conclusion that seems paradoxical at first sight: improvement in action and movement will appear only after a prior change in the brain and the nervous system has occured.

That is, an improvement in body action reflects the change in the central control, which is the exclusive authority. The change in the center control is a change in the nervous system.
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Hi, I'm Jeffrey. As a Feldenkrais and somatic movement practitioner I help you get in touch with your body so you can unravel old sticky patterns and make way for greater creativity, power and joyful play.

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