Persistent Growth
Your Moving Mind
Podcast
Hosted by Michael Landau
YouTube Music (former Google Podcasts):
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLInQizWDXdTkqKVtOQyegN2dXXOFT-qB5&si=kAggwogeug1PUTp9
# 27
How We Deal with Pain (With co-host Christine Germain)
Pain is a message. It signals that we must change something.
Our work with mindful movement and the Feldenkrais Method ® offers us some unique and effective ways to respond to this message.
My conversation with my co-host, Christine Germain (who had more than her fair share of pain) sheds some light on the ways we can move out of pain by creating a learning space, changing habitual patterns and finding more efficient and potent ways to be in the world.
Check out Michael’s daily three-minute Mindful Movement practice:
https://www.persistent-growth.com/
Follow Christine:
# 26
The Feldenkrais® Festival
Special guest: Frederick Schjang
In this episode we talk about Feldenkrais®, and especially how the method helps to create an inclusive environment in Frederick’s upcoming grand event: The Feldenkrais® Festival. The festival is the epitome of Frederick’s broader social and cultural world view. It makes a point of including and welcoming all sexual preferences, genders, races and other distinctions that too often create separation and distance.
A native of Harlem with roots in the Caribbean, Frederick Schjang is a nationally recognized fitness educator and innovator who specializes in the Feldenkrais® Method, Pilates, and Flexibility Training. His semi-annual LGBTQA Feldenkrais Festival has become a must-attend event for fitness and wellness enthusiasts and, since moving to Zoom in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, attracts thousands globally.
His current projects include his own online Feldenkrais Method membership program that features classes and workshops taught by top Feldenkrais Method® teachers around the world.
The next Feldenkrais® Festival is around the corner (November 11-17, 2024).
You’re just in time to sign in and join us:
https://www.feldenkraisfestivals.com/
And you can follow Frederick’s activities on his home page:
# 25
Special guest: Christine Germain
Today’s episode is the first long-form conversation in this podcast. I’m welcoming a very special guest, my dear friend and colleague Christine Germain. She shares with us her own journey of healing with the Feldenkrais method, her trials and tribulations as a dancer and choreographer, overcoming pain and injury, and how all this shaped her thinking and her ways of working with her clients and students today.
Christine is a movement explorer, choreographer, Pilates instructor and Feldenkrais practitioner.
Follow Christine:
Instagram: @motionexploration
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MotionExploration
Home Page: https://www.facebook.com/MotionExploration
# 24 Your Weekly Quote
You deserve a pause.
It's not just that you can take a rest after working hard. You don't just pause to rest. You pause to learn.
Taking frequent pauses enhances learning. The pauses are where you integrate what you've been learning. Your brain doesn't pause.
We have been trained to push through, make more effort and never stop. On top of being very unkind to ourselves, it is not efficient way to move forward.
Treat yourself kindly. Take a pause.
# 23 Your Weekly Quote
Why is it so hard to stick with a habit evem when we really want it in our lives?
Why is it so hard to get rid of a habit even if we know it's bad for us?
Our habits are grooved into our brain. it takes time to create one, and once it's created, it is quite resistant to change. It helps to know what makes a habit tick, how it works and what it is made of.
This episode goes into the 3 main components of every habit and how you can tweak them to become the master of your habits.
# 22 Your Weekly Quote
"Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we perform our best and feel our best."
Steven Kotler
The flow state has been researched quite a bit in the last few decades. You can actually see it in a brain scan. How does this relate to the exploration of movement?
Sometimes, when engaging in Mindful Movement, we can find ourselves in a state of Flow. We are completely absorbed by the present moment, we are focused and calm. The mental noise disappears. We are one with the movement and the sensation it evokes.
# 21 Your Weekly Quote
"What if we looked at movement as an exploration, an art form, poetry in motion? What if we didn't look at it as something we had to do and instead as something we were blessed to be able to do?
Karin Dimitrovova
How do we learn? We’ve been tamed into a certain way of learning: There’s an authority that knows the right answers and knows what we should be learning at any moment. We follow and obey.
This is not how we learned as babies, when we went through the hugest learning process we’ll ever experience. It was a completely different learning process.
In this episode we’re looking into that forgotten way of learning through exploration.
#20 Your Weekly Quote
"It's often said that exercise is good for the mind and body, but did you know it can also be good for the soul?"
selfimagery.org
My short explorations in movement seem like simple and straightforward body-work. But at the back of my mind I’m always aware of the deeper foundation to everything we do: We are on a spiritual journey, a journey of learning and growth. Moving mindfully is an essential tool that makes the journey possible.
#19 Your Weekly Quote
"If you change your mindset, things to start to change in the material world around you."
Dr. Tara Swatt
This is a common distinction in the coaching world: Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset. This distinction is quite relevant to my work with Mindful Movement, which implies the ability of the brain to change, learn and grow at any age. To keep our mind-body young and active we must cultivate a Growth Mindset, and take regular steps to keep growing.
#18 Your Weekly Quote
"Close your eyes, and then touch your right forefinger to your left elbow tip. Easy? How did you do it? Somehow you knew where the end of your finger was and you also knew the position of your left elbow. This sense is known as proprioception and it’s the awareness we have of where each of our body parts is located in space. "
Christian Jarrett (BBC.com)
We have five senses, right?
Of course not. And today I want to highlight a forgotten and ignored sense that is at the foundation of our ability to move around and do things with grace and precision: Proprioception.
It’s the sense (or a group of senses, depending on which expert you ask) we explore thoroughly in the first years of our lives. Without it, the whole process of child development would be impossible.
In Feldenkrais® classes and in my Persistent Growth® sessions we use this sense to explore ourselves in movement. You can close your eyes and still know where your body parts are and what they’re doing. How do you know that? Proprioception.
#17 Your Weekly Quote
"When you take a short moment to create a learning space every day, you are in a process of change. You are improving.
The steps are small but constant."
Michael Landau
Some people go through extreme endurance competitions, cross snowy mountains on foot, swim in freezing ocean waves, run, cycle, climb and overcome horrendous challenges, and are transformed by the experience.
I can appreciate this type of journey, even admire it. But most of us ordinary humans try to avoid suffering and won't go for that kind of challenge. Does this mean we're lazy or mediocre and that we have no interest in improvement, transformation and growth? I don't think so.
There are other ways, and the path I follow and teach is an option. It won't make headlines, it won't win you trophies, but it will keep you on the journey nonetheless. In this episode I'm taking a closer look at the MAGIC OF SMALL STEPS.
#16 Your Weekly Quote
"If you do not deliberately form good habits, then unconsciously you will form bad ones."
Albert Gray
Habits are necessary and we all have them. You want to improve, learn, grow, move better, be more efficient and powerful in your actions and interactions? Check your habits.
In this short episode I describe the small and powerful 3-step habit I’m trying to implement in my own life and teach my students: A habit that only takes a few seconds each time, but can revolutionise your life if you stick with it.
#15 Your Weekly Quote
"All behavior is driven by belief, so before we address how to learn, we must first address the underlying belifes we hold about what is possible."
Jim Kwik in his book Limitless
Season two starts with the inspiring work of this brilliant author. He had to overcome serious learning difficulties to become a great teacher.
I'm making a bold claim in this episode: Our perception of limitations is a choice. We are fundamentally limitless.
#14 Your Weekly Quote
Spirituality
"...All elements of life have a spiritual aspect and a material one. When we remember this, all manner of miracles and manifestations are possible."
From the Mystical Shaman Oracle Deck by Alberto Villoldo, Colette Baron Reid, and Marcela Lobos
Are you a spiritual person?
Does your spirituality include your body? If not, you’re missing something…
#13 Your Weekly Quote
Intuition
"You don't come up with E=mc2 if you don't know anything about physics. But neither by studying physics."
Michael Landau
Is intuition some kind of magic that pops up out of nowhere? Intuition is knowledge you come up with in your area of expertise. It is how a creative mind functions.
#12 Your Weekly Quote
Slow Down
"Slowing down to attend to the details of your sensory experience gives you tools to explore the space between intention and action."
Moshe Feldenkrais
The space between intention and action is where learning, change and growth can happen. But first we must be able to perceive that space. It can be very small.
There is only one way to open that gap to be able to maneuver in it: SLOW DOWN. Slow down and pay attention.
#11 Your Weekly Quote
Change Within
"All change, as you know to be true, comes from within, and it starts from you first."
James Wedmore
If we’re still on time to save the world, the change will come from within. This is the work I, you, we, can do and must do to make this a better world.
#10 Your Weekly Quote
Introvert
"Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything."
Robert Rubin
It’s pretty obvious: I’m an introvert. It has a cost. The world around me tends to ignore me; it’s just too loud and moves too fast. I guess I’d have to raise my voice.
#9 Your Weekly Quote
Attention
"Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life."
Nadia Boulanger
Boulanger taught her brilliant students (some of the most prominent composers of the 20th century) to pay attention. She thought of it as the most valuable part of her teachings.
I believe it applies to you and me, not just to world-famous composers.
I teach my students to pay attention to themselves in movement. It’s a major tool in being present and able to learn and improve.
Take a few moments to do this exercise in attention with me.
#8 Your Weekly Quote
Clear Intention
"Be sure your intention is clearly present in your movement.
The movement organises itself when your intention is clear."
Moshe Feldenkrais
A little about what it means to have a clear intention, with a short Mindful Movement exploration, Feldenkrais style, to demonstrate it.
#7 Your Weekly Quote
Do Your Best
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."
Maya Angelou
The deep meaning I’m getting from today’s quote is this:
What I’m doing today is good enough. Tomorrow I’ll do better, which doesn’t mean that what I did today was too little.
#6 Your Weekly Quote
Do What You Want
"If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want."
Moshe Feldenkrais
Do you really know what you're doing? What does this even mean? I think I have some kind of a Felden-answer here.
#5 Your Weekly Quote
Stay Young
"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."
Henry Ford
You must keep learning to maintain a young mind, but also, what you learn must be meaningful for you. It must serve a purpose.
#4 Your Weekly Quote
Monkey Mind
"What we pay attention to is actually a choice."
Jeff Warren
How I found out ‒the hard way‒ that I must be able to calm my mind before I can make that choice.
#3 Your Weekly Quote
Un-Qualified
"Anything new is accomplished by unqualified people".
James Clear
When you're doing something you've never done before, you're not qualified. Not yet. That's how great new things come to life. Always by unqualified people.
#2 Your Weekly Quote
Response-Ability
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."
Viktor E Frankl
First notice that space. Then make it a little wider, so you can find the choices in it. That's how we become freer.
#1 Your Weekly Quote
Start with Yourself
"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there."
Robert Pirsig
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
