Part 2: Awareness Through Movement an extract from Awakening Your Inner Healer by Arnie Lade a forthcoming eBook

We naturally have different abilities and requirements for movement in our lives. The way we move reflects our physical structure, culture, environment, education and personal history. Indeed, movement is an essential part of our individuality. It’s our silent signature, revealing who we are – in every move we make. We may move with pain or comfortably, with effort or effortlessly, with agility or stiffly, with elegance or awkwardly. But one thing is certain: move we must.

This section includes lessons that explore a variety of simple movement patterns designed to facilitate awareness of, and change within, your present movement abilities. My intention is not to prescribe what is correct movement. Rather, I wish to help you awaken your ability to move freely. As you explore (or learn), you will discover satisfying new ways of functioning that will enrich your life.

All of the following movement lessons are based upon the principles and methods of Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), an Israeli pioneer in the application of movement in learning. Dr. Feldenkrais was a distinguished scientist in the fields of physics and engineering, as well as a recognized master in Judo. Using his knowledge of Eastern martial arts and his Western scientific understanding, he developed a unique form of movement-based learning, in a field now known as Somatic Education.

Feldenkrais’s own body was his principal laboratory, while his own injuries were the catalyst in his search for well-being. He also studied the knowledge then available in medicine, psychology, martial arts, yoga and the movement arts. Over time, Feldenkrais developed a hands-on method, using movement to help others lead improved lives. In the 1950s, after years of research, self‑inquiry, and working with others, he started to teach verbally directed movement classes in Tel Aviv. Feldenkrais eventually referred to these classes as Awareness Through Movement lessons to emphasize their learning and transformative nature.

The Feldenkrais method essentially uses movement to increase awareness and facilitate learning. The method helps free us from our compulsion to follow established patterns of action in the world. Those habituated patterns are reflected in our movement and behavior. Through this work you can learn to move more comfortably and in a more satisfying way, and to change behavioral patterns that are no longer needed. You can learn to improve everyday activities, such as walking, sitting, playing a sport, writing or working at a computer. You can also use this approach to enhance already refined abilities, such as dancing, singing or playing an instrument.

This is the unique beauty of the Feldenkrais method.

If you wish to read more please click here.

Like I said just a few moments ago acupuncture not only stimulates the nervous system, but it stimulates other mechanisms and structures. Scientists have done research on rabbits, for example, needling the poor rabbit's leg and finding that you can create a vaso-dilation or vaso-constriction of the blood vessels simply by changing the quality and amount of stimulus. These changes were measured in the rabbit's ears by enhanced optic magnification. Thus the same point manipulated in differing ways can produce opposite effects, vaso-constriction, a closing down of the blood vessels in the ear or vaso-dilation, an opening up of the blood vessels. Marvellous, isn't it?

This brings me back to what the ancient Chinese discovered. Before the Yellow Emperor's Classic was written the ancient sages and healers had melded together two fundamental ideas; that there exist individual points that can be stimulated by needle or pressure, and there is a system of energy lines or meridians which connect one part of the body with another. These lines are not nerves or blood vessels or any other structure. Rather, they referred to a biological energy, called Qi, that utilizes certain tissues for conduction just as electricity uses wires. Thus long ago in ancient China two separate methods of healing were brought together and made into one. They spoke of precise points with unique therapeutic applications that are found on lines of energy flow which connects the surface with the inside. These meridians also act like antennas to connect us with our environment. They link us inside and outside, a kind of interface. I think this is the brilliance of Chinese acupuncture. No other people developed such a sophisticated system and through its written language developed such a rich body of knowledge and recorded experience.

No doubt acupuncture is evolving for it is no longer tied to its primary culture, China, and modern science and medicine will invariably add new dimensions to the way we understand and use it in healing. Nevertheless, I believe that the meridian theory is an important and vital legacy in humanity's search for health and treatment of disease, a legacy that we need to explore in the years to come.

From a talk presented at the 1999 Healthy Living Expo ~ Victoria, BC

In the spring of 1982 I went to China to study acupuncture through a program sponsored by the World Health Organization. Unfortunately, en route I developed conjunctivitis, an inflammation of the eyes. I felt very sick. On the train through the seemingly endless countryside of rural China I was given some drugs to temporarily ease my pain and fever. Upon arrival in Beijing I received acupuncture for my conjunctivitis. Almost immediately the fever and pain subsided, and by the next morning my eyes started to clear up. I was already impressed by this ancient healing art when my course of study began at the Guananmen Hospital.

With each passing day, I experienced first-hand the therapeutic effectiveness of acupuncture. People come to our out patient department suffering from visual and hearing problems, headaches, hepatitis, depression, insomnia, gallstones, backache, sciatica, menstrual difficulty, sprains and strains, diabetes, epilepsy, asthma and a myriad of other complaints.

We treated infants just weeks old to elderly people brought in on stretchers. We treated chronic and acute illnesses. There was always a flow of people through the clinic, and usually we saw about sixty people a morning. Most people got better after a short course of treatments. The number and frequency of treatments would vary according to the patient’s constitution and nature of the disease with ten to fifteen treatments over six to eight weeks being the average. But sometimes acupuncture was not so successful by itself, and the patient would be referred to other departments in the hospital, such as the massage, herbal medicine or western medicine clinics. The doctors had no problem using whatever treatment was necessary to get the patient better.

Without doubt, Chinese doctors considered acupuncture to be an important component in their health care system. To them the art of acupuncture is based upon knowledge of subtle energy flows or Qi (pronounced ‘chee’) that circulate along minute channels or meridians within us. There are numerous points along the meridians where the flow of energy can be manipulated by the use of fine needles, finger pressure or the application of heat. I learned that patients often sense for themselves this flow of energy, a pleasant and reassuring feeling. Usually acupuncture is painless but a number of sensations accompany the arrival of Qi at the site of the needle; these include warmth, tingling, heaviness, and floating for example. Besides alleviating whatever symptom brought them in, patients report that acupuncture leaves them feeling more balanced and vital. This Qi is understood to exist in all living things, as acupuncture has always been as effective in treating animals as humans.

To properly understand acupuncture we were taught all the essential aspects of Chinese Medicine, which were first codified more then 2,500 years ago. We learned the traditional view of how diseases emerge and change, how to recognize the uniqueness of each person’s illness, diagnostic techniques to determine the quality and movement of Qi within the body, the subtleties of selecting points, the methods of applying needles and so forth. The kindness, insight and caring of my teachers was a real gift and how could I ever forget all those trusting and generous patients who happily let a novice needle them. I learnt well the meaning of that traditional Chinese saying “one small needle cures a thousand diseases.”

Today, many governments around the world are actively promoting acupuncture. Here in British Columbia, the provincial government has recognized acupuncture as a health profession. Locally, numerous acupuncture practitioners offer their services and three schools are open to teach this profession. This is a far cry from when I started practicing in Victoria when there were only a few traditionally trained practitioners working on the Island. No doubt about it, acupuncture is here to stay.

First Published in Insight Health Magazine Vol. 2, No. 6, 1997