#18 How To Open To Pleasure — Daniel Gelblum
Being with yourself can be confronting.
As this digital times keeps us virtually connected to everyone everywhere often at the price of disconnecting from your own senses—including pleasure.
Daniel Gelblum, Feldenkrais Method Practitioner and Hatha Yoga Teacher, shares on The Sensual Sessions #18 how to turn inwards opening for pleasure.
WATCH How To Open To Pleasure
How Is The Awareness Through Movement Experience
[Moshe Feldenkrais created his eponymous Method to teach] awareness, the movement lessons are lying down and you got to really be quiet, patient and learn to really listen to ourselves and to confront ourselves.
This Will Take You To Be Confronted With Yourself
So I was teaching this holiday and there was lots of lovely people coming and one lady said that she felt a little bit dizzy. She was telling me I´m a lawyer, and I'm a total control freak.
And I discovered that in the last two years, she said in the class, that I was not in control, and as I was beginning to explore I knew intuitively that I was listening more.
Feeling Yourself Can Be A Shock
Then I explained the the Feldenkrais method we finally give ourselves an opportunity to really feel ourselves and to confront ourselves.
And this can sometimes be a shock to the system, which could be part of what causes this mess.
She got much better.
Being Scared To Open Up And Be Authentic
But sometimes we hold ourselves and our muscles in a certain way, because we want to control us well, we not always but sometimes we be scared to open up and let go and to just be to really be able to special authentic selves.
So she was doing that for the first time and it was such a shock that they made her a little bit dizzy, and there's also a head was in a better place.
The Pleasure In Sensing Yourself As You Are
She was standing better, moving better, and she simply wasn't used to it.
With beginners to my classes, sometimes not always by can be like that, that they suddenly like, oh my god, I'm really slowing down and the brains thinking at a million miles an hour still, and it's not easy to get into your own quiet special, slow rhythm of being but it's achievable.
And once we get there, we can learn to move faster in life without the stress as well, as well as learning to cope with the problems that life can flow. Being expansive is how you move faster in life, but without the stress.
Discovering Yourself In Pleasure
I can only give give little tips and we have to discover for ourselves.
It's really interesting. We are really shaped according to society and habits and to things that go on around us and so many things and they can often cause it can be useful and we need habits to survive, but it can also be self destructive.
And I think when you realize that, just being yourself, and what is the self as well, we should ask as well.
You Are The Observer Of Yourself
So according to yoga, as I mentioned, as you mentioned, my father was a teacher of yoga philosophy and specializes in sensitive fields used to tell me that according to the self, it's the observer of the observer of the observer of yourself.
How To Tune Into Your Senses
So with Feldenkrais, what's really nice is the efforts we put into movements. Which can look like exercise, but it's not we're doing things gently and with the physical efforts really minimal, and this maximizes the quality of the movements that we are we're doing and then we can tune into our senses.
More and begin to discover all sorts of connections, interconnections relationships with our entire self.
Pleasure Opening Into The World
I think the positivity and the good vibes and the pleasure into the world.
When we can experience opening up it helps us to enjoy the pleasures outside much more, helping us to have better relationships with people whether it's with pure love or not.
It doesn't matter what kind of relationships, can be with nature, as well we improve the relationship with our inner nature, nature outside and whether you do the Feldenkrais Method or not, please do some good today and every day, if you can offer the world.
About Daniel Gelblum In His Own Words
I can’t stress enough how useful Feldenkrais is for anybody seeking to improve mobility – from athletes to people experiencing mobility difficulties, from Yoga practitioners to Yoga teachers.
Let me tell you about myself and my special journey with Yoga and Feldenkrais methods.
My father Dr Tuvia Gelblum was a lecturer of Yoga philosophy and Sanskrit at SOAS University. He developed Parkinson’s disease, so I set about to explore what could help him. I learnt special Ayurvedic massage techniques in India and other practices in the UK including shiatsu. I also became a Yoga teacher as well as a practitioner of martial art styles from China and Russia.
My father also told me about classes he used to go to back in Israel in the 1950’s with a man called Moshe Feldenkrais. He demonstrated some movements I was surprised he could do so well when frozen with Parkinson’s.
So, from Israel I got material on the method which I started to read up and practice with my father who benefited so much from it, more so than other techniques we had tried so far. I also began to use it with other clients with Parkinson’s, MS and impaired mobility.
One lesson I sometimes used is the following (do the most gentle possible movements for it to work, repeat each step several times and rest between steps). Tip: think of any movement as energy.
1) Sit up in a chair with feet flat on the floor, hands in your lap. Comfortably and as easily as possible, turn right without feeling any strain (make a mental note of how far you turn). Then turn left and also make a mental note of how far you turn. Tip: is one side different for the other in terms of flexibility and/or quality of movement?
2) Focus eyes on something straight ahead, keep eyes still, while turning head and your upper body right, sliding hands on legs (right hand slides down right leg and left hand slides up left leg while turning right). Tip: when resting between steps with eyes open or closed, try and observe any sensations as if meditating.
3) Keep head and eyes still focusing eyes ahead, while slowly turning shoulders and upper body right, sliding hands on legs as above. Tip: every time when repeating a movement, make it easier, gentler with less effort — a bit like tai chi.
4) Turn whole body right noticing how it’s becoming easier. Feel movement going though bones and left knee moving forwards whole turning. Tip: also feel how you return paying good attention to the process of the movement.
5) Just slide left knee forwards and right knee back, repeating gently and follow mini twist up through body.
6) Turn whole body right, feeling knees, legs, ribs, shoulders and the whole of yourself including your attention turning with you and returning. Tip: notice how the movement of the left knee helps you turn.
7) Repeat all steps on the other side.
8) Alternate going right and left.
9) Alternate turning right and left whole fixing eyes and head looking ahead.
10) Alternate turning as above but turn head and eyes in opposite direction. Tip: try to feel what twists with the head and what twists with the rest of the body.
11) Alternate turning leg and right and how does it compare to the beginning? If one side seemed more flexible before, does it feel different?
Twisting is really important for improving how we walk and reach, use our arms and legs, our alignment and even breathe — this lesson amongst others helped so many people who were extremely stiff.
I also found I could use elements of Feldenkrais to improve my massage techniques. I learnt that with my increasing awareness of bones and how force travels through them with Feldenkrais lessons, I could give a much deeper deep tissue massage which was both more effective and so much more pleasant to me and my clients.
For example, instead of pressing harder into a shoulder to undo muscle tension, I could gently lean into the sole of a foot and follow the transmission of force softly through the leg, the hip, pelvis, vertebrae into the ribs and someone’s shoulder and work my way through different parts of the shoulder blade or joint, gently using the clients bones to extremely effectively go through the most stubborn tense shoulders and not only reduce muscle tension and stiffness, but improve how the shoulder works.
I also noticed how Feldenkrais practice took daily Yoga to amazing new levels of awareness of myself and my body.
I found I could do postures that were normally difficult with extreme ease as if something awoke in me, whether it was Yoga enlightenment or just removing the rust in my joints in a practical way.
From here the fun began — I started to introduce some of the techniques into my Yoga classes and was surprised to see how my students shared similar experiences to me and were suddenly more able not just in achieving Yoga postures, but overall improvements of better organisation, posture, mobility, flexibility, coordination and overall well being.
As a result of introducing Feldenkrais method to my classes, Yoga students reported great improvements in other Yoga classes they attended, dance classes, martial arts classes, running, swimming, climbing, coping with stress, improved sleep and the list goes on.
More and more Yoga teachers began attending my classes and told me how they were “stealing” my moves for other classes. I was and still am just so happy to spread something so wonderfully beneficial.
As I trained in the Feldenkrais method, I went onto do advanced training and made further self-discoveries in the infinite ways Feldenkrais can be a perfect accompaniment to Yoga and more.
The Feldenkrais method, named after its originator Dr Moshe Feldenkrais, is a scientific way of learning movement. He developed over 1,000 lessons with 12 or more movements, mapping out all areas of voluntary movement in the body.
With yoga we can sometimes work our way deep into postures, discovering how far we can go. Sometimes we use great skills in stretching and muscle control to align ourselves. In Feldenkrais we take advantage of the body’s amazing abilities to improve itself through gentle often meditative movements, allowing the brain to detect, reduce and sometimes remove unnecessary, counterproductive, muscular effort in your the body. This means we can discover gentle movements that can take us into asanas with much less effort and this also gives us more possibilities within the asana.
All yoga postures can be improved with the Feldenkrais method — some very dramatically. It’s common for me to hear students (new students and very, very experienced yogis) comment on how they’ve never been able to do a certain asana until doing a class or workshop with me, or feel how they can go further into asanas and with much more ease and pleasure.
With all my classes and workshops I want to really share how this method marrying Yoga and Feldenkrais and my other experiences can work wonders for anyone.
My father once commented that Feldenkrais is more Yoga than Yoga. This I leave for my students to decide as I just like the lessons to do the talking.
Contact Daniel at https://hathadan.wordpress.com/
What´s Next
Go To The Sensual Sessions #19: Full Body Orgasms And Habits To Avoid Pleasure
Learn More With The Resources On: Bodymind Philosophy
Discover: Ecstatic Breathing
