Introduction
I’ve been falling all my life. As a child, I often found myself lying face down in the mud, grass or street without realizing how I got there. One memorable fall pitched me head first down the stairs. Before I could cry, my parents grabbed me, sat me at the kitchen table and served me a bowl of ice cream; a rare treat that perhaps made me forever think that falling down was a good thing.
When I was a young actor, one of my wise teachers told me that we are successful when we turn our liabilities into assets. I became a mime and physical comedienne with a specialty in dive rolls, prat falls and kicks in the pants. It was nice to get paid for falling down.
Offstage I still fell downstairs, on hiking paths, and sidewalks. Sometimes my theater skills helped. Once after a rain, I slipped on some mud while jogging. I tucked, rolled and kept running. A woman came panting up next to me. “Is that some new kind of aerobic exercise?” she asked.
Sometimes nothing helped and I had to nurse bruises, sprained ankles and a couple of bloody noses. Then I discovered the Feldenkrais Method®. Developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, it is a cutting edge movement technology that uses small, slow movements combined with awareness to improve the function of the nervous system, and therefore of the entire human. I had no idea it would affect my falling. I just wanted to stop the aches and pains that seemed to be part of my career. What I discovered was an avenue towards better posture, greater relaxation and more efficient movement. And I learned that falling is both an art and a science. If I can be comfortable with “a sudden change in my relationship to gravity,” life itself changes.
The exercises in this book are based on Feldenkrais’ teaching. He called his movement sequences Awareness Through Movement® lessons. While it’s true that we are often hyper-aware while walking on ice, or crossing a stream, that awareness is often laced with tension. Awareness Through Movement lessons teach people how to sense their movement, environment, and contact with the ground without stress.
The experience of falling is so powerful that we use the word for countless emotional experiences: falling in love, into debt, out of favor, from grace. Oxford’s Dictionary has two pages dedicated to definitions of falling. In both literal and metaphoric falls, the experience is one of irreversibility: “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Over the last twenty years, I’ve worked with thousands of people. Many had injuries from falling or were afraid of falling. Sometimes it wasn’t so much about falling as it was about getting up. Many times, after studying the movements of the Feldenkrais Method for a while, people come up to me with big grins and said, “Hey Lavinia, guess what, I fell on the ice yesterday,” or “I was working in the garden, pulling weeds and went down!” These announcements ended with, “…and amazingly, I didn’t hurt a thing!”
Falling happens so quickly, there’s no time for the thinking brain to make a choice. You have to rely on your kinesthetic intelligence. While you can’t “train yourself to fall”, you can develop a more intelligent body that can help you. Join me on a journey into a system that is so elegant, so deceptively simple, you will feel like you’re doing nothing. By exploring the movements in this book, you will discover a new way to prepare yourself for the inevitable. Because all of us are subject to gravity. Why not make it your friend?
How to Use This Book
I’ve organized this book as a user friendly introduction to aspects of falling and getting up; from the biomechanical to the psychological and metaphoric. There are many materials available that encourage a healthy lifestyle as a tool for fall prevention. This book aims to help you become more flexible, less fearful and therefore more able to recover.
When you get to the exercises, do them slowly, in a relaxed fashion. The motto of the Feldenkrais Method® is “less pain, more gain.” Each person does the movements according to his own ability, understanding and interest. If you find something is too difficult to understand or to do, then you are right, your nervous system is not ready. That doesn’t mean you should strain, and it doesn’t mean that won’t be able to do it later. Work with the movements that feel pleasurable to do, and eventually, all the movements in this book will be accessible. The sequences in this book are written in a condensed, abbreviated style so you don’t have to follow a lot of detail as you move. However, if you want to study this in more depth, I have recorded expanded versions of all these lessons, which are available for purchase as an MP3 download.
There are video clips included with some of the movement lessons. These clips are just for reference, there is no need to imitate them. You have your own way of moving, your own way of responding to instructions. The video is just a moving illustration of the instructions in case the words themselves are not enough.
“Fall down eight times, get up nine.” Japanese Proverb
Contents:
Fear of Falling/Failing
The Gravity of the Situation
The Dance Between Stability and Mobility
Sweet Surrender: The Art of Letting Go
Stepping Up, Over and Around
You Make Me Dizzy – That Old Vestibular System and How to Stay Upright
I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again
The Downward (and Upward) Spiral
Chapter 1: Fear of Falling/Failing
Marjorie came to one of my Falling Workshops. She was an athlete and a trainer with a passion for tennis. Marjorie informed me that she had recently lost her balance on the tennis court and had so severely sprained her ankle that she hadn’t been able to return to playing or even to doing all her work. A few months after the workshop, she stopped by the studio. “I just had to share with you in person, “ she said excitedly, “that I fell!”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
“Yes!” She exclaimed. “When I sprained my ankle,” Marjorie continued, “I had felt myself losing my balance. But I was so afraid of looking incompetent, or that my students would judge me if I landed on the ground, that I forced myself to stay upright. To onlookers, it merely looked like I stumbled a bit, but because I was tense, I completely twisted my ankle. Then I jogged off the court trying to look good, which made my ankle even worse. This time, as I ran up to the net, my shoe got caught and I went off balance. Instead of trying to “hold it together,” I let the racket fly from my hand, softened my knees and rolled in the dirt. I was immediately surrounded by a dozen worried people.
‘Are you OK?’ they all asked.
I rolled to my side, and spiraled up to standing, shook myself off, and thought about it. ‘Yes, I’m totally fine,’ I replied. And I was! I forgot about looking ridiculous because I had landed softly and injury free.”
There are three main reasons to fear falling. The first two: fear of injury, and the fear that you will be unable to get up are physiological fears based in our instinct for self-preservation. Who needs a cut lip, a broken arm or hip? As we age, and our bones become more brittle, this possibility becomes more threatening. If you don’t think you can get back up after landing, the idea of falling makes you more nervous. Later in this book, you will learn strategies for softer landings, ways of coming back to standing, and increasing your confidence in your own abilities.
The third reason people fear falling is psychological: a fear of “looking stupid.” Like Marjorie, many people feel that falling is a humiliation. The inability to stay upright implies some failure, like falling down on the job.
What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? Vincent van Gogh
Studies show that fear of falling actually increases the chances of falling. If you are afraid, you are tense. Being tense while walking limits your vision, range of motion, and ability to recover balance in a dangerous situation. There is hesitancy, tension, inability to focus on what’s necessary. Failure, like falling, is like a date with destiny. It’s a learning experience that’s bound to happen at some time. Marjorie’s connection between fear of falling and failing was literal. Some people so utterly fear failure, they never even attempt the dream they have in their hearts.
We have many sayings relating success/failure to falling. “He fell flat on his face.” “She landed on her feet.” “The higher you climb, the harder you fall.” When we fall in public, we remind everyone of our vulnerability. You failed to “stay on your feet.” Slapstick comedy capitalizes on this. Everyone laughs at the clown who slips on the banana peel. So even if the fall is painful, and no one around you is laughing, you feel as silly as the clown who just catapulted into a vegetable bin or mud puddle. It implies you made a wrong move. You weren’t paying attention. You are obviously, in front of the entire world, less than perfect. That fear of embarrassment can paralyze you. In some cultures, even up till modern times, embarrassment, or “losing face” could even lead to suicide.
Can developing physical skills that improve balance and flexibility help people “take the plunge” metaphorically as well: in a new relationship, career move, or venture? Science has not yet figured out an effective measurement for something like this. However, common sense can tell you that if you are relaxed, you are more balanced, more ready to respond to whatever situations may arise.
Feldenkrais often said, “It’s not flexible bodies I’m after, it’s flexible brains.” He was one of the first people to state that there is not just a mind/body connection, but that the mind and the body are one and the same. To call it a connection would be like saying the mind lives in one part and the body lives someplace else, communicating by some corporeal telephone. If the body is better organized, then the mind also functions better. If you know you have strategies for recovery, you won’t be paralyzed by fear.
Falling from the Floor
In order to overcome the fear of falling, it’s best to begin close to the ground. That way you don’t have far to go and can easily recognize when fear inhibits movement. I often work privately with people who have a lot of pain. We work on a low table, where I use gentle movement to help them discover new options for better function. Sometimes students while lying on their side, are very stiff, as if holding themselves in place. As I encourage a little rolling action to the back, they will suddenly pull back to the original position. When I ask them what happened, they often say, “I was about to fall!”
“You felt you were going to fall off the table?” I ask.
“Noooo,” you can already hear the shock. “I was afraid I would fall from my side onto my back…onto the table….” At which point, they usually start laughing.
So before we begin to learn “how to fall” we want to address the fear in a safe environment, by practicing the feeling of falling “from the floor.”
You will need some space for this exercise, at least an arm’s width to each side of yourself while lying on your back. If you can’t find a floor space like this in your home or office, you can do it lying crossways across your bed.
Bend your knees and bring them up over your chest. Hold your right knee with your right hand, your left knee with your left hand. Begin to gently rock left and right. Notice how you do this movement. Do both of your legs go together, or does one lead? What does your head do? As you roll, do you inhale, exhale, or hold your breath? What do you feel in your head? In your neck? Let go of your legs and take a rest. Give yourself a moment to check in.
How do you feel? Relaxed? Stressed? Tired? All of this is information. If you feel stressed or tired, give yourself permission to rest longer, or even give it up for today, returning to it later to try again.
Take the same position as before. This time, as you begin the movement, can you let one of your legs lead to the side? When you roll to your right, let your right leg separate from your left leg, and then the left leg follows, and vice versa.
Now what happens? What do you feel happening between your legs? Are you rolling more or rolling less? Pay attention to your head. Is it rolling or staying still?
For a few movements, keep your head still. How far can you roll while holding your head in place?
Now roll your head along with your leading leg. Can you roll further? Can you roll all the way to one side? How does that feel? And now what are you going to do? How do you roll back to your back? How do you roll to the other side? Or are you stuck?
Many people get stuck on the side, feeling that their only option is to hurl themselves up and over.
From lying on your side try this: Lift your top leg only. Start going over towards the other side. Before you move your lower leg, allow your pelvis to roll. Roll your head along with your leg. Your other leg comes up last, after everything else has rolled as far as you can go. (View the mini-video here).
Rest again. Notice if this sequence has been fun, scary, painful, interesting. Maybe you have some other adjective to describe it. If you felt anxiety, fear or tension as you did this, try the exercise again at another time, giving yourself permission to stop whenever you choose. Feel free to go on to the other exercises in the book. In fact, doing other lessons and then returning to the beginning is a great way to increase your learning.
