You Can’t Have Someone Else’s Epiphanies For Them, Which Certainly Applies To Body Awareness

Hi folks! Thanks for stopping by!

Deb in the Vatican, in a beam of sunlight cutting through the darkness. What does this image mean for you? The need for body-awareness training was an epiphany for me, cutting through my ignorance and improving my skills as an older athlete.

We recently held a body awareness workshop (‘Run Smarter’), in which I got to witness people saying, “Oh! Yes! That feels completely different.” The one-day class was designed to help people move more easily and efficiently through improved understanding of how their bodies move and feel. There was some stress on running, which is very injury prone if you have poor biomechanics (don’t move effectively), but the class really applied to anyone wanting to get around more easily. In fact, several people attended the workshop specifically for their running problems, plantar fasciitis and Achilles tendonitis. The three teachers, Karen, Rebecca, and Tara, each focused on one discipline or method, these being Feldenkrais (the source of my own body movement epiphany), Continuum and Gyrokinesis, respectively. I have been studying these approaches for my Ironman training for a number of years, to good effect. However, I get little or no traction when I tell people about their true value to athletes, or for people dealing with aging or recovering from surgery. Even if they come to me with an injury question, when I recommend a Feldenkrais session, to assist the diagnostic process, they seem to go deaf!

This goes to show, it doesn’t matter how great these approaches might be, it is a hard sell. How they sold the craziness of low-fat diets to millions I have no idea, but I wish those people would let it go and concentrate on something that is actually good for you, such as improved body awareness.

-k @FitOldDog