The basic thesis that I am going to make over the coming months here is that you need to constantly act on your own behalf and create a narrative that empowers you to have the life that you want.
That means you need to be very careful of the narratives that professional organizations try to push on you.
Case in Point: I used to be a part of a professional organization called, The Feldenkrais Guild. There are certain benefits to being a part of the organization such as having liability insurance and the ability to have a professional status in the world.
But the Guild philosophy is almost entirely based on the ideas of one man: Moshe Feldenkrais. And any profession that is based on the personality and work of one man or one woman will eventually (and often rather quickly) turn into an ideology-based system.
What I mean by "ideology-based system" is that many of the unique experiences of individual practitioners and students are suppressed by the needs of the organization. And the trainings, workshops, and interactions, in general, will increasingly have a rigid and preprogrammed characteristic to them.
One of the primary ways that this happens is that followers of the teacher focus on his or her written words and spoken statements as a way of teaching.
Words are labels.
Labels pointing to experiences, yes, but they are not the experiences themselves. They are ways of attempting to share experiences. Except in cases of talking about physical objects, there is rarely a direct match between words and experiences. There is little room for a mismatch when you say, “Please hand me the pencil,” and there is a pencil in front of you. But when someone says, “Feldenkrais is about maturity", there are nearly as many ways to experience and understand that as there are human beings. Maturity has different scientific meanings, biological meanings, cultural meanings, and different meanings based on the lived experience of unique human beings.
And also neither the teachers nor the students have the exact same experiences as the founder. And even when they have similar experiences, it is only natural to express those experiences using one’s unique wording, phrasing, and understanding.
Are you seeing the conflicts?
So we have people using words that do not end up translating to the direct experience of others. And people use words that are not the same words that others would use to point to a similar experience. And each person has a different embodied categorization and experience of the words.
The people in these organizations end up creating words and rules and beliefs as an ideology.
And they often lose their own underlying, unique experiences because they are rejected by the ideology of the organization.
I want to help you avoid that so that you can expand upon and develop your experience and ideas and create the events and life that you want to have.
Power And Organizational Dynamics
Conflicts between an organization and its members.
As focusing on the founder’s words continue, diverse views are shunned and the public actions and words of members tend towards repeating the ideas of the founder. If you would like to see this in action get online and see how people talk about the work or profession that you are interested in. Try to spend a day with a person affiliated with the Feldenkrais Guild and not hear someone say, “If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want!”
Members and Organization Conflicts
The next step in creating your life of freedom is to not only see this conflict between words and experience but to also see the conflicts between an organization and its members.
For example, see the conflicts between:
1) personal status in an organization.
2) freedom and the ability to speak out publicly as you choose.
Moshe Feldenkrais did not have this conflict because he stood outside of any professional organization. And he was willing to speak out in any way and on any topic that he chose (sometimes to negative effect).
His direct students have drastically limited their ability to be seen in public "as they are" by the organizational rules they created after his death. You could argue that Anat Baniel, Mia Segal, and several others avoided this trap personally. That is, they speak their own mind as they see fit and are willing. Though, I do not think their students do. Many students of Anat and Mia are as limited in their freedom as the students of Moshe Feldenkrais. An essay on the topic is forthcoming.
If this interests you, I invite you to join as a paid subscriber and to take a look below at my first approximation of the topics we will cover so that you can create a life of freedom.
But it is not for the faint of heart!
I go deep into topics that can make some people uncomfortable.
That can be a good thing if you can tough it out. As Joseph Campbell wrote in many different forms and phrases:
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.
Even so, if you do not know something about me via my emails, Facebook group, website, or Feldenkrais-based downloads, then I recommend that you do not join me here. This is not the place to start.
And there is nothing here for “organization man” looking for salvation and the '“right” way and the “truth.”
But if you want to know the untold stories and the secret dynamics that limit awareness, independence, and emergence in the somatics communities and beyond, this is the place to be.
I hold nothing back.
Here’s a small sample of what I will cover and what you will learn over the coming weeks and months if you choose to join me:
The conflict between professional status and awareness.
How professional organizations actively work to limit individual freedom and responsibility.
Why these dynamics are so strong in the Feldenkrais Guild and other somatics organizations.
The difference between sovereignty and freedom and why the certified trainers of any method can never be free.
The Certification Trap and How to Avoid it.
Certifications can be useful in certain contexts. But they can also be deadly to personal development. I will show you how to use them to get what you want.
What founders such as Feldenkrais, Rolf, Alexander, M.H. Erickson, and others had that virtually none of their students have. And how you can get what the founders had.
(I am not saying that you should do it. It is hard as hell and not many are willing to do the work, but it can be done).
The Forbidden Keys To Awareness
How to avoid the problems and traps created by the dead guru’s students and how to see, hear, and read between the lines.
What Feldenkrais got right and what he got wrong.
Why Moshe’s students do not talk about his errors and why you need to know them to be free of their often confusing ideology.
How To Create A Life Of Freedom
There is a huge difference between reactive problem-solving and creating. Creating is better in every way. I will teach you the basics of my process.
How to create and keep an independent practice. Independent practice is an independent life.
And much, much more.
That is all for now. The post you are reading now is public. Feel free to share it if you would like. The next post - Feldenkrais Was Not A Certified Trainer - is behind a paywall and can be accessed at a very reasonable price.
News posts are sent on average once per week until I decide to end the series and use the content in another form, most likely in a YouTube channel, ebook, or an online course.
Click the subscribe button to see your options:
*By the way, I have thousands of pages of typed notes and references that I am pulling together for this series. It is sometimes overwhelming as this type of writing and publishing is a bit new to me. So there may be some minor glitches and gaps in my writing from time to time. But if you are willing to give it a go and stick with me, I promise you that you will encounter ideas here that you have never experienced before. And they will be liberating.
There is a comment section for paid subscribers to ask questions and get me to clarify the ideas.
Peace!
This is great! I was taught as a child to think for myself (thank you Mama) and it took growing up to realize how rare that is. Most (well, I will be generous and say many) people want to be to told what to think, what to believe and what to do. This seems easier but the results are the mechanical, destructive, fear based living that we see all around us. No Thank you. Now to live authentically as an individual is no small matter To do so and not be in simple reactivity or rebellion against established order hierarchy organization etc. is in my experience the key to true creativity and freedom in life and living. To cooperate with existing structures can be super useful and often simply necessary, but to do so consciously and with life supporting intent is truly radical and frankly quite unusual, but then I find myself in both categories: truly radical and quite unusual. LOL ;-) So Happy to Be here :-)
Interesting….new to Substack myself, like today. I’ve purchased from you in the past and have found it helpful. Curious as to where this platform will lead. Your content sounds rich…