Unlocking Human Potential Through The Feldenkrais Method with Jeff Haller
In this episode I sit down with Dr. Jeff Haller to discuss The Feldenkrais Method.
Jeff shows us how it's more than a remedy for stiff hips and back pain. It's fundamentally a way to harness the creative potential of the human organism and restore our emotional dignity.
This is a powerful conversation you don't want to miss.
Listen on SoundCloud
Or iTunes:
Selected Links:
Show Notes:
Jeff’s brief summary of what the Feldenkrais method is and what it entails starting from who Moshé Feldenkrais is [00:56]
Jeff explains the difference between how an animal and a human come to know itself through an observation of a baby deer [13:40]
Jeff dives deeper into his statement “the way that we come to know ourselves” [15:30]
Difference between a structural view and a functional view of organisms and its relation with each other [18:00]
On having a quiet organism and knowing yourself by being with yourself and not through muscular habit [22:17]
Using the Feldenkrais method to understand what it’s like to have choice within ourselves beyond our definition of ourselves gained from doing things [26:44]
The purpose of awareness through movement and looking beyond the physical aspect of the Feldenkrais method [36:46]
A practice should be everchanging based on how a person learn and grow [58:24]
Jeff talks about his experience on his neurosis when he was younger [1:08:00]
Learning to be kind to yourself [1:12:00]
Jeff elaborates on the Feldenkrais training academy that he’s putting together [1:16:15]
Select Nuggets:
“The Feldenkrais movement in that sense is a process by which a person begins to investigate how they function in the world.” - Jeff
“We act accordance with our self image and that self image in turn governs our every activity.” - Jeff
“Without gravity, there’s no reason to function, therefore no reason to have a structure.” - Jeff
“Joy is not found by what you do, joy is uncovered within yourself.” - Jeff
“It cannot be meditation if there’s a goal in it.” - Jeff
“The very nature of trying to produce something out of the meditation is in and of itself completely countered to the very nature of meditation.” - Jeff
“It’s our nature to learn, it’s inherent within us. The question is how do we live in an environment to that learning is available to us, rather than being a human doing, doing something to acquire behavior so that you can use that to have a sense of being, as supposed to enjoying the process of the self and watching it when it spontaneously begin to merge if the creativity begins to flow.” - Jeff
“Being triggered is like when someone pull the trigger of a gun, you can’t un-pull it. A bullet that has been shot can’t be unshot. A neurological system that reacts to the environment in a compulsive way is not a healthy nervous system.” - Jeff
“It’s not choice until you have three different ways to do something, it’s primitive if all you have is right and wrong, left and right, or good and bad.” - Jeff
“If you only have one way of doing things, that’s complete compulsion, that’s neurosis.” - Jeff