Can You Get Up From the Floor? Your Life May Depend on It.

Over the last few years, I’ve had two occasions to witness a person who fell and could not get back up to their feet. 

My family was able to assist one of those people. He was hunting and had fallen in a cornfield (Vermont – need I say more?). He had dragged himself up to the side of the road because he could not get back on his feet. I’m not sure what might have happened to him, lying in the hot sun, had we not noticed him as we were driving past. 

He was a formidable human being. I’m betting he had plenty of muscle. 

What he did not have was the ability to bend in the right places and find his connection and support from the ground in order to get to his feet. I’m thinking there are a lot of people I pass every day in the supermarket who also cannot bend in the right places and find their support and connection to the ground. And were they to find themselves suddenly on the floor, they would likely be unable to draw on their own resources to save themselves. 

It could be any of us. It only takes a moment for things to go south. 

Maintaining muscle mass and strength are vitally important. But they are only part of the long-term puzzle of youthful aging. It’s equally important to coordinate our movement. This is different from repetition, strength regimens and stretching. It’s different from yoga.  It’s complex and delightful. We need the ability to problem solve, to be able to bend where we need to and lengthen on the other side. 

Re-learning to get up from the floor on your own involves curiosity and exploration.  The movement involves curves and spirals, rather than planes and hinges. They are your birthright. And you can recover them. This is neuroplasticity at its finest.  

Is it time for you to reclaim your ageless ability to move freely, utilize your strength, flex your attention muscle? i

Feldenkrais does those things specifically better than anything else out there. Dr. Feldenkrais anticipated neuroplasticity before it had a name.

 A Feldenkrais practice doesn’t replace your strength regimen, but it does make your strength regimen serve you very well for as long as you inhabit your earthly body. 

Wishing you the very best. May you be the youngest oldest person on the dance floor!

~Linda

Want to find out more? Click here to read my article, “What Does a Feldenkrais Practitioner Do?

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