Awareness: What Is It, and why Is It Essential to Healing and Well-being?
Before You Read On, Try This:
Close your eyes, take a breath, and ask yourself the following questions:
What will my next thought be?
What is my emotional state right now?
Can I name one physical sensation in my body right now?
What part of my body is moving right now?
Welcome back. What did you notice? Could you sense your heartbeat? The passage of air in your nostrils or the rising and falling of your chest? Were you thinking about feeding the cat? A feeling of contentment or anxiety? However you answered—congratulations! You took the first step in understanding awareness. You don’t have to be good at it, and the more often you do it, the clearer and more detailed your answers will become.
In a Feldenkrais lesson, it’s from this place of listening and attending to our thoughts, feelings and sensations that we add movement instructions.
I believe that understanding awareness is fundamental—not only to grasping the Feldenkrais Method® but also to living a happy, balanced life with ease, comfort, and joy.
A bold statement, I know. Hopefully, in this writing, I’ll make my case, and you’ll understand why I am such an avid fan of training our awareness skills.
How Increased Awareness Has Helped Me
For me, increased awareness has:
Healed injuries
Helped me move pain-free
Given me clarity of thought and confidence
Taught me self discipline
Taught me what joy and pleasure feel like
Given me the ability to sense, adapt, and respond to my environment
More about my personal journey with the power of awareness coming up.
Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais would be the first to say that the movements in his method are secondary to the process of awareness.
He named the group classes Awareness Through Movement®. He is directly telling us that movement is the tool we use to learn how to be more aware!
So, what IS Awareness, and Why Does It Matter More Than the Movement?
In the Feldenkrais context, I would define awareness as:
A process by which we attend to ourselves and our surroundings by noticing movements, thoughts, feelings, and sensations—without judgment.
Let’s unpack this a bit more…
The Power of Attention and Awareness
Have you ever watched Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino? Okay, it’s a bit gory, but I recommend checking out the scene Wiggle Your Big Toe—it’s quite safe.
In this scene, Uma Thurman repeats the phrase wiggle your big toe as she wills herself back to movement from paralysis. I love this scene because she demonstrates, without strain or force, a level of focus and concentration that is sometimes necessary when solving a completely new and unfamiliar problem.
I’m not suggesting that during a Feldenkrais lesson, we are willing ourselves from paralysis. However, our attention is guided to learn how different parts of ourselves move in relation to others, which for many of us might be quite unfamiliar, yet we do it everyday with every movement we make. Anyone familiar with the method will tell you that wiggle your big toe is one of the easiest instructions you’ll get. Some of the instructions are complex and can feel quite confusing if its new—and that’s exactly the point! I sometimes affectionally call it movement Sudoku with my clients.
For example - sit comfortably in a chair (rest your back against the back rest if you can) and think about / draw your attention to the part of your spine that lives in-between your shoulder blades - can you sense that place? the length, width or shape. Take a moment to find it. Now imagine moving that part of yourself backwards toward the back of the chair or the wall behind you? As you do it, can you find out what might change in the shape of your shoulder blades? or the length of your neck. Can you do it in a way that feels comfortable, easy, and pleasurable.
Dr. Feldenkrais has deliberately designed lessons to challenge our ability to think, sense, move, and feel in multiple ways simultaneously. This helps train our brains to be more adaptable and able to cope in more complex movement or thinking tasks that we might face day to day like playing sports, climbing stairs, cleaning the house, playing board games and even managing emotions around an upsetting situation. (I’ll discuss the neuroscience behind this another time)
These movement explorations aren’t just about articulating the body—they also refine the way we think and sense and feel about ourselves in the world. If we can train parts of ourselves to move in ways that feel good, where we are calm, focused and controlled, perhaps we can be more calm, focussed and controlled in the way we are at home or with friends or work colleagues.
Like any skill, awareness requires us to hold multiple things in our attention at once. As a result and after some training you might:
Multitask easier
Experience improved focus
Feel calmer and more capable in emotionally complex situations.
Move easier with less pain.
This is what makes the Feldenkrais method® so unique. It really includes all of ourselves not just our movement.
My Personal Journey: Healing Through Awareness
For some people, reading is therapy. For others, it’s talking therapy, art, or drama. For me, it’s movement. Taking time to lie or sit comfortably, guiding my attention to gentle movements, and noticing my thoughts, feelings, and sensations is the best way to focus and calm myself. My nick-name was GO-GO as a child, so to work in this way seems to fit my fidgety nature very well. Maybe you or someone you know can relate.
To illustrate why I find awareness so valuable, I’d like to share a personal story of injury and recovery.
In 2015, I was working as a dancer when I tore the major cartilage in my right knee. At the same time, I was going through a breakup and had lost my job. I was homeless, jobless, injured, and alone—I had hit rock bottom. The surgeon said I definitely needed surgery. This terrified me, and I was desperate to explore alternatives before going under the knife.
Desperate times called for desperate measures and Long story short, I decided to take off to Thailand for healing—enter the amazing Mandy Kealy and the Feldenkrais Method®.
Initially, all I could sense was discomfort—swelling, muscle stiffness, and spasms throughout my leg and back. I was in pain and miserable.
Through gentle movements, Mandy guided my attention to the differences between my right and left sides. I was astonished! My right side barely moved, while my left was free and easy. She helped me sense my spine and neck, and I realised that a section of my back felt completely absent—I simply couldn’t feel how it moved or if it moved.
With this awareness, Mandy demonstrated why my injury had occurred and, in the kindest way, made me see that it had been inevitable as I had no awareness of my limitations and how I was moving. I had no idea how differently I used my right and left sides, nor how my spinal alignment contributed to the issue.
At first, I was stunned that I had let myself reach such a dire state. What started as a knee injury now felt like a mountain of issues. Ego in check, Mandy reassured me: Now you have the information—you can start to nudge these parts of yourself into participation (think Uma Thurman).
With kindness and time, we persevered. The lessons were gentle, painless, and often deeply moving. I honestly shed a few tears under a towel, though Mandy never judged. After each lesson, I could feel the floor more clearly, my balance improved, and I stood taller. Eventually, I regained confidence in my body, returning to exercise and building a sustainable rehab program.
I became empowered with awareness—recognizing my habitual imbalance of righty tighty / lefty loosey. While some asymmetry will always remain, I now know when to move, when to rest, and how to use myself effectively. I no longer fear re-injury.
Today, my awareness is one of pleasure, ease, joy, and freedom. I can do everything I want—and even try new things.
This experience was life-changing. Slowing down and calming my emotions helped me regain confidence—not just in my body but in my work and relationships. I got a job in Thailand teaching Pilates in a hotel and began my Feldenkrais teacher training. I was back on track - earning some money, living on a tropical island, travelling and building the skills to help others the way Mandy helped me.
After six months, I returned to my surgeon. He was blown away and said that if he hadn’t seen my MRI scans, he wouldn’t have believed I had a knee injury. Thank you Mandy. Ten years on and as a qualified practitioner I feel it’s time to share my story and see if others can benefit from the work without having to go to the lengths that I did.
Final Thoughts
I highly recommend making time in your day to practice awareness. Maybe you already have a meditation or faith-based practice. Perhaps just take moments to check in with yourself: How do I feel? What am I sensing, thinking, and how am I moving? Like Uma, find a quiet space—and get those toes wiggling!
Better yet, join a Feldenkrais lesson or integrate these awareness skills into your Pilates, yoga, or Tai Chi practice. Like me you might be surprised by the results!
My biggest learning from all of this is that movement alone sadly isn’t enough to improve ourselves, awareness of our movement is the key to improvement, learning and happiness.
Move Well,
James