Live show Episode 2: Feldenkrais and Every Day Stress -Jill Wigmore-Welsh

Well-Aware Podcast with Jill Wigmore-Welsh MSc Feldenkrais

This is the second show episode that went out today and I talk Feldenkrais & everyday stress and tensioning:

Here is the link to the lesson: Warning sound is a little muffled, recording issues!!

Feldenkrais BSMA and Stress Management Lesson

Here is the text:

Hello this is Jill Wigmore-Welsh here from Reading in Berkshire just introducing you to another installment of this wonderful Legacy Project centering on the Feldenkrais method and the applications in terms of your everyday practice.

So I'm really going to be talking today about the brain and central nervous system and the emerging science, neuroscience. So when you're listening into this recording today I don't know who you are I don't know what your background is I don't know what knowledge and experience you have of your body of your brain of science so it can be a challenge to know who I can pitch this talk too

However, let's imagine that I am just talking to my next door neighbor or the average person who comes to see me in my clinical practice my treatment room. The room I have in my home, that’s the place where people come to see me because they have problems.

Most all of the people who come to see me don't know anything about the structure of their body they don't know anything much about physiology biology bones joints muscles , ligaments . They don't know much about the science behind how their body works.

They come to see me when they have a problem and that problem may be a pain, it may be a problem with movement, it may be a problem sleeping, it may be a problem with overthinking, worrying, procrastinating. Whatever it is, it’s something that's happening in their life and they're not happy and they want a solution.

Most always during the course of time that I work with people I introduce some of the principles and theories that I've learned from the Feldenkrais method. It has it’s roots in neuroscience. He studied neuroscience, but not MRI scans because they didn’t exist back then. He learned from scientists.

As you probably know I've been studying the Feldenkrais method since 1992. I completed my Feldenkrais Method practitioner training back in 1999 and I've completed many advanced trainings since..

So today we're going to be talking about using the Feldenkrais work and it's application to your everyday stress. That's right the everyday stress that you have as you go about your day-to-day activities.

A little bit of stress is good for us if you don't have any stressful activities or anything at all a really our system doesn't work particularly well so a little bit of stress is okay episodes of quite a bit of stress is also something that most of us can handle but when you have stress and on going stress that lasts and lasts and lingers and that may be being caused by money relationships your health there are many many reasons that you could have underlying ongoing low grade stress that is just grinding and grinding and grinding away.

When we react and respond to things that we find are stressful we automatically go into that fight flight or freeze response and that is well recognized we used to just say fight or flight but now we know that there is freeze as well

When you experience ongoing stress you may not notice that your physiology your body is actually responding to that ongoing stress you may not notice it because it becomes so normal for your system to be responding that you just don't realize there's any other way to be

One of the most powerful effects of stress is on the way that we contract our muscles in response. We contract our muscles as a form of protection

If you're getting ready to fight imagine what you would do you'd be tensing your muscles you possibly be making a fist you'd be bending your arms you be tightening your shoulders you be focused on what it is that you're going to do

Imagine that you're driving down the motorway and as you drive down the motorway you've had a stressful day at work and you're driving through the traffic

As you drive through the traffic you've got more and more people pushing in front of you pulling in moving over. What you start to notice is that the hazard signs are showing that says the whole of that big motorway freeway I suppose if we were talking about America is going to shut. Lanes are going to close, “ah no!” even more stress begins to start to kick in.

You start to think “I'm going to be late I'm going to be delayed I need use the bathroom oh no!” and that stress that tension starts to magnify as it starts to magnify you begin to contract your muscles even more

If you've been contracting your muscles without realizing it for a long time there comes a point where you just don't notice.

You don't notice that you're gripping the steering wheel you don't notice that your elbows are bent and tight you don't notice that your shoulders are contracted you don't notice that you are holding your breath that you're tensing your legs that you're furrowing your brow that you’re clenching your jaw.

You don't notice because it's so habitual for you

But what you may notice is that you begin to start to get pain or you begin to start to feel as if you've got discomfort in your belly or your back.

It might even be that you begin to start to feel as if you want to shout or scream.

It may be that you do find yourself shouting at other drivers in cars or banging the steering wheel because you're getting so annoyed

Every day stress that builds up over a period of time is not good for your health.

The tension that you can't feel, that you’re not aware of, is going on all the time, and its stopping the blood from flowing through your tissues.

As you contract your muscles the blood vessels within the muscles become compressed and squashed making it more difficult for the blood to flow through

Our combination of moving so that the muscles alternately contract and relax as you swing and flow your arms helps to keep that blood flow moving smoothly through all of your tissues.

Without good oxygenated blood traveling through your system going to every part of your system, cells are going to start to be low on oxygen they're going to become unhealthy

One of the best ways that you can help yourself to become very much more aware of your muscle tensioning of your physiology of your biology of your body and the messages that you're feeling in your body is to actually practice some of the work that the Feldenkrais Method.

Today I'm going to record a short lesson to help you discover how you can start to break that pattern of tensioning your muscles and how you can change your biology.

Come along and do the lesson

I look forward to talking to you again next week when I'll be online and I look forward to bringing you more installments of ways in which you can think of using this work to help your health

For now from me to you, this is Jill here in Reading in Berkshire have a lovely day and look after yourself