Hypotheses about Why Differentiation Works
But before hypothesizing why it works, we have to define ‘works’….
Differentiation improves awareness and movement in that it:
Allows one to identify separate, distinct processes (not necessarily individual muscles) within a single movement. See the discussion on ‘differentiation', calculus and Moshé’s training as a physicist, below. End result: so that you know what you are doing.
note that ‘identify’ and ‘become aware’ and other such terminology are odd because there is a non-intellectual awareness that lies somewhere between the conscious and unconscious, and this is where habits reside, grow, diminish… Body Wisdom isn’t really about intellectual knowing, though that can be a support (or impediment) to Body Wisdom
Differentiation, almost by definition, is about non-habitual movement, and non-habitual movement wakes the brain from its bored slumber. As you will hear me say many times, Body Wisdom is a seduction of the brain—seduce it to wake up, first of all! And novelty is a waker-upper.
Yes, there needs to be a whole section about the woken brain
Unsticks the fascia? Here are two pictures I stole from a video about raising the shoulder. See how many muscles overlay one another? What’s missing in this picture is the fascia around each muscle. It would look something like translucent or even opaque saran wrap enveloping each muscle. This is so that the muscles, while they move in unison and go in the same general direction, still need to be able to glide against one another. To slither along. To ‘move in unison’ is not the same thing as ‘glued stuck.’ The variations you do in Body Wisdom that differentiate commonly-grouped muscles help unstick the fascia. (Mind you, when I say ‘hypothesis’ in this case I mean I am totally making this up. But it seems likely to me. It feels right. What do you think?)
My thanks to Iréne for the great fascia video in the link above.
Differentiation
Eventually you will make up your own differentiations.
One of my hopes in this learning is that it starts to come automatically for you to create your own differentiations.
move groups of things (you can think ‘muscles’ but there are more choices than that) together in their habitual way
move one thing differently/cattywompus/the opposite from the rest and keep going softly, slowly, gently until the weirdness melts a bit or more than a bit
go back to the habitual way and see whether it has gotten smoother.
MOST of the time, after differentiating, you’ll still move the muscles (or whatever) in a group together as you did before, but there is an almost inexplicable improvement. (I will propose some hypotheses at some point!) Sometimes, though, you actually find that parts of you are involved that would be better off taking a vacation. So at the end of the differentiation you don’t put it all back. Trying to lift you leg with your diaphragm is an example of something that might want to stay differentiated. You explored that in the very first class.
Moshé Feldenkrais as a Physicist and his use of the term ‘differentiation’
Feldenkrais studied at the Sorbonne and had a degree in Applied Physics (which gets translated in various ways…). He uses physics terms in a playful but ultimately intriguing way. Remember Calculus? Remember the giant who could always get halfway there but never meet the wall? Yeah, that’s differentiation. And it isn’t a crazy term to apply to the way Body Wisdom classes build from variation to variation (as is true, of course, of his original ‘Awareness Through Movement’ system.) I asked Chat to address the connections and put them in a table, which you can see below. And if this kind of thing interests you, I recommend this video—by half-way through you’ll get the idea!
I promise, the rest of this section on differentiation won’t be about calculus.
