Apropos of spring and all the transitions therein, here's an excerpt from Natalie Goldberg’s chapter “Composting,” from Writing Down the Bones. "Our bodies are garbage heaps" is a bit strong, but, overall, I find composting a useful metaphor to draw on in your approach to Awareness Through Movement.

This passage from Clarice Lispector’s A Breath of Life seems so fitting for the discoveries you’re making in class. Some of you have found that it takes much more effort to move when you freeze different parts of yourself, or when you clench your jaw to move your leg, for example. This is what Feldenkrais calls parasitic effort.

Regarding a recent post-class comment about one’s “messy” internal experience during the lesson, here's a bit from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, which I had read just the day before.

From the chapter fittingly titled, Perfectionism:

Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking inventiveness and playfulness and life force...Perfectionism means that you try desperately not to leave so much mess to clean up. But clutter and mess show us that life is being lived.

I found this note tucked inside Writing to Learn by William Zinsser, a book that I recently checked out from the library. The reader so beautifully synthesized the chapter in a way that has remarkable parallels to our work with the Feldenkrais Method:

When you begin to make connections
the subject—anything you’re learning becomes part of your world—
About you-connected to you