Q & A
Tell me more about how this might help care partners?
Well, this is why having the kind of team we’re building for the class is so exciting—I don’t know the complete answer, I only have some hunches. But together, we will have a good handle on this:
(a) Enjoyment of the class itself. Yes, this class has some serious aspects, but Feldenkrais lessons are relaxing and innately pleasurable—in a way they are all about finding pleasure for yourself.
(b) Everyone—everyone—can benefit from more time in the perif head- and heart-space. What this series aims to teach, if nothing else, is how to be aware of the transition from foveal to peripheral awareness—not just in vision, but in how it affects your heart rate variability, your endocrine balance, your nervous system, your mood and thinking. And knowing that, to be able to be more in choice about which state to linger in. For most people this is a very learnable skill.
(c) Being heard and respected - Care partners live with knowledge that researchers and clinicians don't always have. In the before/after class discussions, there is space for their insights = appreciating their expertise, not just "teaching" them.
(d) The depth of impact - "Of course a person who has lot peripheral vision will be startled" is important insight. This class could take the compassion and understanding deeper—”oh, when my partner is jammed into a foveal attitude, these are all the ways she loses her emotional resilience.”
(e) The counterbalance - Care partner stress often involves hyper-focus (vigilance, managing, problem-solving) - exactly the foveal narrowing their partner is experiencing involuntarily. Learning to drop into peripheral awareness as self-care AND as a way to model/support a calmer organismic system could benefit the care partner and the care partnership.
(f) Picking up on a suggestion from a gerontologist, perhaps there are some parts of these lessons that the care partners could do together.
(g) Perhaps adaptations? There might be ways to reclaim or slow some of the peripheral vision loss or, more realistically, to adapt to some of the consequences to the loss. For instance, balance—and the coordination between vision and the inner ear—suffers. These lessons will test different ways of mitigating for balance, for changes in breathing that come with a foveal shift, and so on. These are practical things the care partner might support. (I put Ruth Asawa’s tree sculpture on this entry because looking at fractal, nature-ish images leans into the peripheral state.)
‘Health Clowns’?
This question came from an expert in memory care. There is a whole cadre of clowning that relates to health—children in hospitals, cancer care, and elder health clowning being three major categories. It doesn’t seem to be as well known in the US as it is in Canada, Australia and Europe. There are some very good interviews of clowns on Barnaby King’s clownversations, but they are more oriented towards clowns who want to learn more about clowning. If you are a memory care expert / dementia navigator/ gerontologist—or care partner!—you may find one of these videos to be of interest:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STcyPJEcA40
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qgAHihCfOQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g3b26qqxb0
If you are wondering why I am so keen to include Elder Clowns in this class series = collaboration, it is partly for their insight on their play with people living with dementia, and partly because, frankly, we could be at risk of taking ourselves too seriously. The topic is serious! The outcome may be really important. And. We can do it with a (usually) light heart. (I’ll confess that Feldenkrais, if not gerontology, tends to be pretty earnest. But play is part of periphery and it is certainly part of learning.)
I referenced this article on the benefits of Elder Clowning in the research section. This is off topic, really! I’m not trying to embrace Clown skills in this series. Just trying to explain why I think having a Clown involved would be nifty. And, of course, from the Elder Clown’s perspective I think that understanding movement and the peripheral/foveal issues would be essential. (I’m guessing that successful Elder Clowns do this intuitively.)