I had a conversation this week with our financial planner. We hadn’t spoken to each other for a little while. Her first question was "How’s your back?’

I know I made a funny face. I was surprised, and I had to think. Then I said, "It’s great. It’s not a problem."

As I was saying that, the memories were flooding back. A year ago, a year and a half ago, I was in pain. I could still do things, but the pain was with me all the time. In my shoulder, and in my neck, especially on the left side, and in my low back and my right knee. It was a constant, nagging part of my life.

But now I could truthfully say, "My back is not a problem. I have ways to manage it. I am doing Feldenkrais."

Then she wanted to know what that was, so I said it’s a learning process. It’s a way of learning about your own body. I told her, too, that if a person has a problem, but doesn’t want to learn about the body, then I don’t believe that he would get the same benefits that I have had.

I picked up one of the trays, and it was heavy. As I walked to the car, my neck hurt, my arms hurt, I’m getting hot, and I’m thinking, "How much further?" Midway, I stopped. Still holding the tray, I checked out my posture. I was bent forward. So I made a little shift. I brought my weight a little backwards so the load was on the skeleton. This brought me upright. Now the tray wasn’t so heavy, my neck felt fine, and the walk to the car was fun. I like being active.

For the past five years, my low back has been locked in spasms of pain. None of the doctors I have seen has given any organic reason for the pain--just a slew of interpretations more or less alarming and riddled with hopelessness as for a cure. The first doctor I saw told me that the cause was simply age; I had just turned 37. Since that visit, I have passed through the hands of some wonderful and caring therapists—and it has been a joy to meet them!--but the pain has always returned. I have hiked less and less, and quit swimming, skiing, gardening, and even yoga.

Still somehow I remained sure that a solution existed "out there." When I read Maureen McHugh's brochure that explained the Feldenkrais Method in terms of working with the body and its limitations, rather than fighting the pain and winning at any cost, I decided to give it a try.

From the first session, I sensed a change. I thought, "maybe I want it so much to work that it has a placebo effect on my body." But, no, the enormous difference with this technique is that I am no longer passive, but participating in my own healing. And the process cannot be called overwhelming or forbidding since all Maureen asks me to do is to let my jaw be sloppy, and just let go. How hard is that? Indeed, very, very hard for someone like me who must always be in control of myself and my environment and yet who will try to bend backwards to please others and fit into the image they seem to have me. I see that expectations, needs, and fears have knotted my muscles into rigidity.

We begin each session with some conversation. I appreciate these talks because I come to feel that I am understood—even though I have some quirky ideas! When it comes time to move to the table, or the floor, I feel already lighter, sometimes even buoyant. I take a few minutes to calm down, quiet my thoughts, and listen to the rhythm of my breath. Then Maureen lightly touches my toes, draws invisible lines down my calves, gently twists my ankle, and my whole body begins to shift. My muscles accept her lead, surrender, and relax. A wonderfully heavy lightness floods my body. It is an amazing sensation. When I get up to go, the sharp knots of pain are but shadows. I leave the studio with a fullness of being. Mind and body are reconnected, and on speaking, almost peaceful, terms.