Feldenkrais on “Waking Sleep Walking”
We Sleep In Accordance With Our Self-Image
In the Awareness Through Movement
book, which Moshe Feldenkrais wrote to demonstrate his ideas to the public, he distinguished among three states of human functioning: waking, sleeping and awareness:
“Two states of existence are commonly distinguished: waking and sleeping. We shall define a third state: awareness. In this state the individual knows exactly what he is doing while awake, just as we sometimes know when awake what we dreamed while asleep. For instance, at forty a man may become aware that one of his legs is shorter than the other, only after having suffered backaches, having had X rays taken and the trouble diagnosed by a doctor. This is possible because the waking state in general more resembles sleep than awareness.”
On the surface, those ideas could seem relatively banal. People are comfortable using and describing all three terms and most have an understanding of the experiences behind the terms. But Moshe was asserting something deeper; that a person can be awake but not aware. A state which he explains below as being closer to sleep:
“I have heard it said that the waking state of most people is sleep while they walk — they still sleep; they are not aware; their awareness is not woken up. They can make some mental, intellectual efforts but their bodies are still asleep while they walk and therefore their thinking has the same quality as dreaming because in dreaming there is no connection between space and time; they are not directed by gravity or events ‘need not take place in sequence; there is just a notion of time separated from gravity. Events that happened first can come second; time does not have a direction.”
So it is that in the waking state that if the awareness is not really developed and evoked in someone, you will find that they act very similarly as in dreaming, and hence the very great importance of waking up to, that, and to making the scope of thinking wider and better and more differentiated.” (From the Esalen Workshop, Session #15, Foot/Hip Discrimination)
I have often wondered what ideas like that might mean to an average person on the street. Would they seem like so much nonsense? And if you are awake and yet asleep on some level, how would you know? How could you respond to the ideas? How could you understand them? I once had someone get quite agitated with me and state that, “I cannot recall even one time that I have done something for reasons that I was not aware!!!”
Hmm. Think about that one for a moment.
I suppose, we would also have to touch upon the idea of who the “you” may be who is awake, as we are constantly understanding and processing and acting in the world through both conscious and non-conscious channels. Since Moshe’s time there has been an ungodly amount of research into the idea that conscious behavior can be “primed” or evoked through nonconscious channels. In fact, in the book Social Psychology and the Unconscious: The Automaticity of Higher Mental Processes
the Social Psychologist John Bargh, has gone so far as to say that no behavior has a conscious origin. He can be quite convincing. Even so, I think that the “conscious behavior” the social psychologists study is not necessarily “awake behavior” in the way that Moshe described it.
But again, how do you even have the conversation without sounding nuts? How could the ideas be understood, studied and operationalized? I will leave that for now.
On a more practical and personal level, enacting the states of being aware while being awake can be important. Though it’s an ever evolving process, I’ve certainly found it to be non-trivial in my own life. How about you? How do you not only experience it, but share it?
Great post as always, Ryan. As you probably know, I’m not a Feldenkrais practitioner, just an ATM enthusiast, and I integrate what I learn from FM with my other somatic disciplines.
Over recent years I’ve simplified my taijiquan formal practices down to a set of very short routines which I vary from session to session, sometimes with eyes closed, on rough ground, with a cup of water balanced on my head etc.
Moreover I redistribute my practice intent so that I’m integrating somatic attention into as many mundane movement activities as I can manage, eg. walking, climbing, food preparation, driving, sitting down, standing up, maintaining ‘static’ positions seated or standing and so on.
I keep reviewing what I’m trying to do at frequent intervals. Moshe’s thinking is deceptively simple and actually points toward areas of attention normally reserved for advanced meditative activity. He continues to amaze me with what he appeared to discover in one lifetime.
RIchard – Good to see your message. The difference between who is prac and who is not gets muddied for me – in a good way.
I’m fascinated by what you wrote as it mirrors something that I deleted from my post at the last minute. Namely, doing Feldenkrais in a non-habitual manner. That is, bringing my practicing into times and areas in which I had not been doing so – doing an ATM on the public library lawn, doing early morning sessions, late night sessions. Even looking for certain physical/emotional responses (tired, sad, annoyed) etc and then interrupting them by lying down and doing and ATM (or just a part of one).
It’s been quite instructive.
Thanks for commenting! – Ryan
One practice that has helped me wake up somewhat comes from Avatar: State out loud each intention of will prior to taking any action – this exercise rapidly demonstrates exactly how much we’re living on purpose, as opposed to sleep-walking.
Good one, Ross! Simple but profound. Management of intent is so simple and yet so difficult that most of the time, most of us don’t even attempt it.
As (I think) Ella Fitzgerald sang it, “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it”…
I started to reread “The Elusive Obvious” last night, and Moshe spends some time in there talking about awareness – and that the kind of awareness he is talking about is more related to the “how” than the “what”.
In my own experience, and apparently in the experience of folks I work with, I can be quite conscious of WHAT I am doing, without having much awareness of HOW I am doing it. I just do it. When I start to explore the HOW, any action becomes very interesting – because that is where the options and choices and learning and discoveries lie waiting to be uncovered. And most people are surprised and intrigued once they notice and experience that the “how” is wide open with lots of variables for them to mess around with and check out.
My sense of the “awareness” Moshe was so interested in is an awareness that engages a person in meeting the world in creative and adaptable ways that generate real choices in how we do something. This to me is an awake engagement, different from just performing an action. (And so, even “basics” like walking, standing and sitting have become endlessly entertaining for me… who knew!)
Ryan, in that Esalen citation, did he mention Gurdjieff? His idea that ‘mankind is asleep’ made a profound impression on Moshe. As did Coue and is akin to the idea that we hypnotize ourselves most of our waking moments– so that standing in the check-out line we are in a trance…both Gurdjeiff and Moshe used ‘unusual movement’ as a way to wake people out of their trance…if you are paying attention to a movement ‘in the moment’, every moment, than you are training yourself to bring that kind of awareness(or as Anat is calling it ‘attention to movement’, which I like) into more of your waking moments. Sometimes we need to ‘trance out’ just to get through the check out line; but we do need to have a choice about it…Richard’s ideas of doing things ‘non-habitually’ is another way to wake oneself up! and then there is the ‘geographical solution’ –’why we travel’…
I am trying to track down and article by Ed Rosenfeld, in which Moshe makes a distinciont between ‘awareness’ and ‘consciousness’, but I’m just not aware where I can find it!
Ask and ye shall receive. Knock and the door shall be opened. Or something like that. Thanks for provocation.
Moshe at the San Francisco training,
June 16, 1975; Monday Afternoon (begin tape 1A)
(Teaching ATM) “Somebody put his foot on the floor there, it’s not the same movement. Would you please look at that gentleman there. He has his knee bent, he doesn’t realize that foot stops participating in the movement of the hand. And I’m talking to him, you can hear — don’t bend your knee. Aha! Now, can you see what you need in order to wake somebody up when he’s consciously asleep.”
“That’s what Gurdjieff used to teach. You say they are in a waking state, but they are asleep, and that’s what it means. It’s not only that you tell it — you say five times, and until everybody stops and you make it clear to him, it’s only then that he realizes that his leg was acting by itself. He had no say in it. And that’s — what do you call it in psychology — alienation, schizophrenia? A person is not whole in himself. He’s divided in bits and one bit doesn’t know the other. Give it a name, and then you will never get rid of it! All right.”
Wonderful thread,this. Thanks to everyone for timely inspiration.
Thanks so much Ryan! NOW, can you help me find Ed Rosenfeld’s article? It was in OMNI magazine a fancy glossy aimed at folks like us back in early ’70′s –around science, consciousness, beginnings of neuroscience, used to be in the FGNA collection of articles way way back, but I have not been able to source is, nor find my dog-eared copy.
It was a remarkable interview with Moshe in that Ed asked the right questions and Moshe appreciated an intelligent interviewer that he couldn’t intimidate or tear to shreds or turn off by his somewhat defensive attitude which came across like ‘nobody is going to understand me anyway, why should I bother’…
I’m glad the word consciousness was there above in what you quoted, it is an important distinction, I think Ed’s question (he was also very familiar with Gurdjieff) “What is the difference between being awake and being consciouss”?
Deborah – I am not seeing the Rosenfeld article. I will keep it in the back of my mind. Would like to grab it. – Ryan
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Change Your Age, Feldenkrais Podcasts. Feldenkrais Podcasts said: Feldenkrais on “Waking Sleep Walking” http://goo.gl/fb/fSRDl [...]
[WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (208.74.66.43) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (74.112.128.10) and so is spam.
Try the new book out by/on Moshe! Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais. Edited by Elizabeth Beringer and Foreward by David Zemach-Bersin. 2010.
See Chapter 13. “The Forebrain: Sleep, Consciousness, Awareness, and Listening. Interview with Edward Rosenfeld. From 17 Sept., 1973. This may be it.
This book is fantastic! The best and seemingly newest explanations of M Feldenkrais’ ideas that I ‘ve read. Finally, a follow-on to Body & Mature Behavior and Awareness thru Movement.
Book on Amazon
http://amzn.to/cjn9QT
Thanks Mi! I will take a look. – Ryan
Yay! Thank you Mi Shi! ordering today! I had these collected papers as repros. of the articles, but lost the Ed Rosenfeld one. I was of course going to get the book, but taking my time, now i will act with alacrity!
Seek and ye shall find…as Ryan says…
All the zest,
Deborah
p.s., I just got the new book: Experiencing your Potential: Following Feldenkrais’ Work , The Elusive Border between Learning, Psychology, and Art by Abraham Z Shoshani, Dekel Publishin House off of Ebay, it seems wonderful, the more spiritual side of our wonderful work!