Barret Dorko on Pain: Painful Problems Are Not Concrete
From “Dorko’s Diamonds”
I have to admit that I am not as familiar with Barrett Dorko’s work as I would like to be. But over the years I have found his essays and thoughts quite provocative. I first heard of Barret when Feldenkrais “Trainer” Reuven Ofir (Robbie Ofir)¹ made a post about him on the FeldyForum.²
One of the reasons that I like Dorko so much is his willingness to engage in a quest for more useful solutions when dissatisfied with the current answers in his field. In my view, he is doing what Feldenkrais did. He is using his scientific knowledge and his curiosity to engage in his own process of learning and development – irrespective of the ideology and dogma of a particular professional organization.
In the short video below, Barrett begins explaining how painful problems are not concrete and do not necessarily have a linear, apriori “cause” to which one can point – even though therapists and scientists of many sorts would love to think they can…
The video will not provide an “answer” for getting out of pain, but it is the beginning of some useful questions about how to think about the issues involved.
There is a discussion of the video on a forum that Barret moderates on SomaSimple.
I also recommend taking a look a demonstration of Barret’s “hands” on work on YouTube: Simple Contact.
Notes:
1. Reuven call himself a “Feldenkrais Trainer” but I like him anyway.
2. Proof that even the FeldyForum can be useful on occasion.
Feldenkrais and TMJ: The Mayo Clinic Gets It Wrong.
About 30 minutes ago, I read a statement on the Mayo Clinic website that noted:
“Severe TMJ disorders may need to be treated with dental or surgical interventions.” (From: Mayo Clinic)
That’s a simple statement that few would take issue with. And it seems to meet the unconscious expectations that many of us have, such as “Long term pain in body means surgery may be necessary.” As I have written previously on this blog, there is a great deal of research to suggest that pain symptoms do not always have a structural cause and it has been demonstrated that many people with defined “causes” do not necessarily have pain symptoms (See: Think Your Pain Symptoms Are Caused By a Structural Problem?)
However, the Mayo Clinic’s assertions are somewhat shocking because in the case of TMJ problems, there isn’t any reliable evidence that surgery or dental implants work for TMJ pain. Research organizations such as the NIH have repeatedly stressed that there is little evidence supporting surgery. For example,
“There have been no long-term clinical trials to study the safety and effectiveness of surgical treatments for TMJ disorders. Nor are there standards to identify people who would most likely benefit from surgery.” (From: NIH)
If you want more detail, I did a post about TMJ and Dental devices on my blog that promotes my Feldenkrais TMJ program. For those of you who do Feldenkrais-related work or are interested in doing so, using Feldenkrais for TMJ meets all of the suggested requirements put out by the NIH and NIDCR. Namely, that treatments should be
1) Conservative and reversible
2) Customized to a client’s special needs.
And treatments that can cause permanent changes in the bite or jaw should be avoided.
Even more to the point: “Simple self-care practices such as relaxation techniques, stress reduction, and biofeedback are often effective in easing TMJ symptoms.”
Feldenkrais Conference
Feldenkrais and Running
I am very happy to announce the first of several online conferences related solely to the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and the wide variety of practitioners who use his ideas worldwide.
This first conference is on Feldenkrais and Running and is jam-packed with useful ideas on evolving yourself as a person, a runner and as a practitioner. The conference covers a wide variety of topics from philosophy to motivation, barefoot running, pain-free running and how to structure Feldenkrais sessions – just to name a few.
Unlike traditional conferences which require you to spend money on airfare and lodging, this Feldenkrais conference is 100% online and downloadable and you can attend from anywhere in the world.
The conference gives you an opportunity to hear from four expert Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners® with a panel discussion moderated by myself and many free bonuses generously provide by the presenters. The details of the conferences are too numerous to list here. If you want more details take a look at: Feldenkrais and Running.
I hope to “see” you there – Ryan
Feldenkrais and Einstein On Process Without Language
I was reading a passage from the book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less
Both quotes are below.
Einstein: When Language Interferes
“The words of the language as they are written or spoken do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements of thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which . . . are in my case of visual and some of muscular type. [These elements take part in] a rather vague play… in which they can be voluntarily reproduced and combined… This combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought, before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of sign which can be communicated to others . . . In a stage where words intervene at all, they are, in my case, purely auditive, but they interfere only in a secondary stage.” Hare Brain, p. 56.
Feldenkrais: I make a special effort not to think in words.
“When I am presented with a trouble in function, I make a special effort not to think in words. I try not to think logically and in correctly formed sentences. It has become a habit with me to imagine the relevant nervous structures by seeing them with my mind’s eye. I imagine a part which produces a flow of fluid. Part of the travel of the fluid is electrical, then becomes chemical, and again electrical. After many transformations the flow will end in a muscular contraction, and the muscular play will result in some apparent outside action involving the body, or parts of it, that will affect or transform the immediate environment. Sometimes I am stuck at a point where I cannot imagine the pattern of the flow, nor the possible obstacles in its way. Then I ask, is the obstacle a diffusion, damping, deviation, loss of impetus, break of continuity, or an impossibility of one of the transformations.
I have found this way of imagining so fruitful that I cannot do without it. It often shows me where my knowledge is insufficient so that I know exactly what I am after and therefore in which books I am likely to find the information. I form a working theory and change it in the light of new observations I must add to make the theory work. This mode of thinking is often successful in situations where specialists with greater knowledge than mine have failed. Nobody is omniscient enough to think mechanically.” Body Awareness, p. 16
I could write about the ideas but I think a walk would be more useful. For now – Ryan
Martin Weiner, 1943 – 2011
Marty Weiner, 1943 - 2011
By nearly all accounts Marty was a highly skilled feldenkrais practitioner and over the years developed a tremendous number of fans and supporters. A former Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, Marty left his position at the university after meeting Moshe and deciding to take his San Francisco training in 1975. He subsequently finished the training (while supporting himself with work as a bartender!) and became one of the early Guild Presidents.
Marty was the first person that I interviewed on my podcast series over four years ago in January 2007: A conversation with Martin Weiner and again in February of the same year: Further Down The Rabbit Hole With Martin Weiner. He was a great person to quote and I often found myself writing down or reposting some of his thoughts, such as this: The Limitations of the Medical Model.
Looking back on how and why I started my podcast series with Marty, I think it all boils down to a 20-second conversation that I had with him at the 2007 FGNA conference in New York. I had never met the man before and he simply had a presence and a way of being that was fully magnetizing and hypnotic. I felt like I was encountering an incredibly unique and individuated person and I wanted to know more about him. I asked him to be interviewed and he graciously accepted.
Marty Weiner and Jack Heggie
On Monday of last week, when I heard about Marty’s death, my mind raced back to the time that I heard about Jack Heggie’s death, which was also reported to be a suicide. His death was very disturbing to me. Jack Heggie was the person who introduced me to the Feldenkrais Method while I was attending an NLP conference in Boulder, Colorado in the early 1990′s. By some strange coincidence Jack also maintained a Feldenkrais Practice in Dallas, Texas where I was living at the time. I was a waiter, working in a Mexican restaurant and my first lesson with Jack was so powerful that I decided to use part of my rent money to get another session, paying my rent 5 days late and getting a fine. It was worth it.
My feelings about Jack’s death and Marty’s death are somewhat similar. Though I am mourning two men who touched my life and helped move me into new and exciting directions, I cannot say that I knew either man very well. So what I am mainly mourning is experiences with them that I will never have. I will never have a chance to see and feel the next creations that each man had in him. None of us will.
They were both inspiring and unique in their own ways. Jack Heggie wrote and published several books on applications of the Feldenkrais Method and I have often wondered what other new books and creations he still had to write had he chosen to live.
Marty seemed to be developing a new way of being and getting his work into the world. Many times in the last several years, I read some of Martin Weiner’s posts on online forums and wondered where he was going to go next and what he was going to develop. My sense was that he had a process and a method of communicating and being in the world that transcended any particular ideology and that he was getting ready to give birth to it in a new way. I would get slightly confused when I saw him spending so much time communicating about his ideas on the FeldyForum. It seemed to me that he needed a bigger space and a bigger platform and would do better to reach out directly to his fans via a book, his own website or some other avenue. Just last week, I learned that Marty was developing a center called The Center for Explorations in Consciousness. The website has some videos and writings from him that you may want to view.
Historicism
When someone commits suicide it is very common to want to make sense of the situation by inserting a story or narrative that explains things. We often hear that someone is being “selfish” or “hurtful” by killing themselves. We want to blame a medication or change in life events. We try to find and point to warning signs. That is the danger of historicism and causal thinking in general. Knowing the end state we can always look back and find a “cause.” After all, their MUST be one, right? Otherwise how can we make sense of things? We might all do well to realize that we can never truly know what is in a person’s mind and what his or her life circumstances might have been. Even with the most complete information, we are always operating with partial information. And the information that we have and perceive is filtered through our personal life history and biases.
That being said, for those of you who encountered Marty and knew him personally, I would like to add one small piece of information that might help your process. There was a post in 2009 on the FeldyForum in which he wrote to another person:
“I don’t know what you are actually feeling, but I have been seriously depressed and, at times, suicidal (probably as a result of those obsessive thought chains.) It is a state I have described as a place from which no light can escape or enter. Existence itself feels like an act rather than a given and it feels just too impossible to put in the minimal energy required to sustain it. As you said and demonstrate with your life, it takes courage and unbelievable strength just to stay here. In my worst moments, when people were telling me some version of “snap out of it” or “try harder”, I would try to let them know that they had no idea of how strong I was to deal with what I was dealing with without killing myself.”
It may be that what drove Marty to take his actions was something he had been dealing with for many years. But then again maybe it was not. Many people, myself included, have had suicidal and depressive thoughts and are still with us today.
Whatever the case, and whatever narrative one chooses to create, Marty will be missed. He was an amazing man with a sharp mind, a soft touch and presence that could not be denied. He had much more to do in this life, and we had so much more to experience of him and his work. I am sorry that we cannot do so.
Goodbye Marty. Thank you for your immense presence and probing insights – at least while you were willing to be here and give them to us.
For those of you who want to know more about Martin Weiner there is a video of him and thoughts on his life and death on the website of his friend Nate Klemp: Life Beyond Logic and again, on the website that I mentioned above: The Center for Explorations in Consciousness. Several friends have posted remembrances of him: Celebrating My Friend Marty Weiner and A Sole For Marty. If you know of others do let me know.
