Working in Movement

In Scaredy Rats Die Young I mused about using body awareness to recognize and hopefully reduce some of the effects of overly stressful situations. I didn't think of it at the time, but one such approach, one anchored in athletics, is The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, originally published in the 1970's and since republished. But it's long from forgotten. Tip of the Week: Bounce-Hit to Stay Sharp was on the Tennis magazine site a couple of days ago. The basic idea is to use observational skills for times you feel your tennis has gotten "rusty," say after not playing for a while. Instead of trying to hit the ball with better rhythm, the approach has you saying out loud "bounce" when the ball bounces, and "hit" at the exact instance your racket makes contact with the ball. The premise is the observation, if done with enough precision and lack of intent to control the ball, will itself organize the movements of the tennis player. In this approach, it is observation and organization, not effort, that produces the results.

How does this work?

One of the premises of the inner game approach is more semi-conscious parts of the nervous system are much, much better at fine motor skills like movement rhythm, or almost anything you could think of. There is little or no thinking involved. In fact, too much thinking, conceptualizing, etc. interferes with these semi-conscious parts, sometimes grossly so.

A human nervous system is a wonderful thing, but even it has a limit on the amount of attention that can be paid. By deepening observation skills, this part of the nervous system becomes "too busy" to interfere with the areas better suited to governing movement and coordination. The better sensory information provided often improves the movement, sometimes dramatically.

It is easy to get off track here and confuse results with the process. The value of observation or awareness in "bounce-hit" or Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons is not so much the effects they produce but the observational skills they teach. It's nice to hit a good return or enjoy the feeling of lightness and ease after an ATM. But those are temporary experiences. What is lasting, though, are the skills of observation and awareness learned by the nervous system. You can't count on graceful movement in all situations, but you can learn to pay attention in such a way that those temporary experiences emerge more and more frequently.