Page 175 - Total War on PTSD

means figuring out which aspects of dynamics to attend to, that is, learning a new movement means learning what to notice.”
This concept of learning what to notice can be very important for Veterans with Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who often have difficulties being present in the moment and with enjoying their experiences. With their hyper-alertness, they can notice too much in their environment. Feldenkrais lessons can channel that alertness into a beneficial attention to the details of movement and to the kinesthetic sensations experienced during a lesson. The act of noticing, in and of itself, can create new patterns of movement and new patterns of thinking. As Dr. Feldenkrais said, “When you know what you're doing, you can do what you want.”
Less is more. For many people, trying to change something about themselves means trying harder and then finding that this strategy does not work. Dr. Feldenkrais proposed that compulsive effort leads to movement that is carried out on automatic pilot and uses more effort and physical energy than necessary. Compulsive effort increases muscular tightness in parts of the body not even associated with the movement, and risks pain and injury. That non-functional effort becomes shearing force in joints and muscles. The resulting impact, friction, and heat damages our soft tissue in the short term, and our bones in the long term. In addition, the more force we use, the less sensitivity we have to how we are doing any movement — inhibiting our ability to sense ourselves more accurately in action.
Dr. Feldenkrais believed that learning does not occur when we try as hard as we can. He postulated that the smaller the stimulus, the easier it is to sense differences, and that the lighter the effort we make, the faster we learn a new skill. Students are asked to reduce effort where possible. Muscle tension can be reduced by using awareness to notice how we unintentionally contract muscles that are not necessary for a movement. Sensing these differences creates potent and lasting neuromuscular change. The Feldenkrais Method focuses on the quality of our movements (light, easy, soft, slow, smooth) over quantity (we don’t do many rote repetitions and rarely use big ranges of
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