Helga Bost at Feldenkrais Forum 111

Helga Bost’s fabulous work book “Discovering the Unexpected” now already in its second, expanded edition

Preliminary note:

In February 2012, Roger Russell and the non-profit association Förderverein für Feldenkrais und somatisches Lernene.V. invited interested colleagues to the Uferstudios Berlin to present and discuss their projects in the making. I met Helga Bost in my role as moderator of the preparatory meetings to the symposium. Her presentation addressed one of the central methodological questions, namely “(How) Does a person’s attitude toward their own body change through Feldenkrais?” and examined the results of her year-long work with a client. At the time, I was not yet aware of how fundamental her insights would later become for Feldenkrais practice at large. Seven years later, in May 2019, she presented “Discovering the Unexpected”, a momentous workbook compiled with unbelievable care. Reflecting its importance, the present issue of the Feldenkraisforum is devoted extensively to this work.

In October 2020, the revised edition of her book will be released and includes a supplementary fifth case report as well as an excellent English translation. And that’s not all! Both books are currently being prepared for online publication featuring video documentation of each case report. This will be available via a password-protected area on Helga’s website. Helga Bost is also making the new material contained in the expanded edition available to all those who purchased the book previously. Everything else can be found at www.helgabost.de. Until then, have fun delving into the focus topic of this Feldenkraisforum issue.

Cornelia Berens

Our colleague Helga Bost has written a fascinating book entitled “Die Entdeckung des Unerwarteten”. In it, she documents her work with people who came to her with paralyses resulting from spinal cord injuries. Through Feldenkrais, her patients learned to sense themselves and regain movement below their site of injury. In doing so, she provides insights into her rich experience gained from more than 30 years of working as a Feldenkrais practitioner. Following its first edition in 2019, the book is now being re-released in 2020 in an updated and expanded edition, concurrently with its translation into English by Conrad Heckmann and Helen McKinnon, entitled “Discovering the Unexpected”. Both editions include password-protected access to more than 70 video clips of Feldenkrais lessons totaling more than 4 hours of video material.

In the introduction, the author describes her own path to the Feldenkrais Method and how her personal experiences during that time later enabled her to better understand her “clients’ process of regaining and reorganizing sensory function (p. 11)”. Having previously given up sports activities due to a severe pain condition, she underwent several hip operations but was nevertheless forced to quit her job as a school teacher at the age of only 32. During a Feldenkrais workshop with Gaby Yaron, she found “for the first time what you might call a ‘user manual’” for dealing with the changes in her body. She was then able to leave the room without walking sticks, an experience that set her pondering what Feldenkrais was ultimately about and how it could be that changes were sometimes felt immediately and sometimes only after months of “maturation” (p. 11). These introductory passages reveal the author’s interest and capacity to sensitively listen for connections behind phenomena.

The heart of the book

The heart of the book consists of case studies, numbering five in the new edition. Helga Bost’s way of describing the process of working together with her clients provides us with perceptive portraits. We are introduced to five individuals: four adults, each of whom was torn out of the flow of their life by an accident, and a young girl.

Michael was the first client with a spinal cord injury whom Helga worked with. With him, she made her first “discoveries of the unexpected”. He has been coming for Feldenkrais lessons since 1991, when he suffered an incomplete spinal cord injury at the thoracolumbar junction (T12-L1) in a motorbike accident. Even now, in 2020, he is still learning something new every time.

Andrea worked together with Helga for four years starting in 1992. She was paralyzed on her left side from the neck downward in a traffic accident when another vehicle struck the driver’s side of her car.

Werner started coming for Feldenkrais lessons in 2009, nine months after sustaining a complete spinal cord injury from the fourth thoracic vertebra downward as a result of falling from a ladder.

Lilly was born with an open back (L1-L5). When she first came to Helga in 2017, aged 18 months, she could not yet use her legs.

Micha came to Helga in early 2020, one and a half years after sustaining an incomplete spinal cord injury (L1) in a motorbike accident.

Helga Bost introduces each case report with an in-depth interview. We learn about the circumstances of the accident, the client’s progress and the doctors’ prognoses. She asks: How did you cope with your difficult situation mentally and physically? Did you have job alternatives? How did you sense your body? How did you find out about Feldenkrais? And what made you stick with it?

I was captivated by the book from the start. I had already felt drawn to the title and the cover design (see Figure 1) and when I then held it in my hands it was clear to me that I had acquired a workbook. Its sturdy double metal spiral and large format make it easy to open, leaf through, and flip this way and that despite the volume. And that’s no luxury, as the book will also serve as a travel companion and have to tolerate movement. The book invites you to jump back and forth, look up cross-references while reading, and to try out suggested FI and ATM sequences in one’s own practice or in quiet for oneself.

How everything began

After a session in side-lying, Helga wanted to prepare Michael, her first client with a spinal cord injury, for integrating the many movement experiences he had just had. At the end of the session, he was again lying on his back. In her own words: “But Michael had no sensation in his feet. On that day, I decided to present him with this suggestion of standing from the top downward, as in a shoulder or head stand. I placed my hands on either side of his seventh cervical vertebra, where I was in good contact with his skeleton and felt confident. From here I pushed lightly downward towards his feet. Something very unexpected happened right before my eyes. Michael responded to my suggestion with a large movement below the site of his spinal cord injury, initially without any sensation of his own movement. I had never before witnessed such a reaction in healthy persons. This initiation of movement can be clearly seen in the film recording. His legs turn inward, his feet pointing forward toward the ceiling. There is an increase in muscle tone from his legs through his pelvis all the way up to his chest. I could clearly see how Michael’s whole body was preparing itself for standing. […] Michael’s system was converting the impulse […] into visible movement.” (p. 29)

She had never seen anything of the like. She bought herself a camera and began documenting, enabling her from then on to catch on video the unexpected in the moment of its becoming experience, preparing the ground for yet more things unexpected. Time and again her open curiosity and beginner’s mindset were rewarded. We repeatedly get to feel the inviting style that Helga Bost adopts in her work and how it emanates a sense of safety. Beginning to work with anew client consists of first becoming familiar with herself, with her client’s current possibilities of sensing and moving, as well as the client becoming familiar with both her and themselves. Then the dance between two nervous systems begins. “Michael seemed able to sense my compressive touch on his left thigh: ‘That feels tingly’. That told him where my hands were. From his knee downwards he could sense some kind of touch, but couldn’t tell where. When  I moved his foot into flexion he had no sensation of this” (p.28).

What fascinates me most is the space and significance that Helga Bost allots to her clients’ sensations. The core of the Feldenkrais Method consists of guiding a person in learning to sense themselves; residing in the subjective realm, however, it often remains hidden. Again and again, Helga Bost encourages her clients to sense themselves. It is her own interest and her constant drive to explain herself that enable her clients to appreciate their own sensations and to recognize them for what they are – a part of themselves. It is touching to read how her clients put into words what they feel, how they discover their own language in assigning meaning to even the smallest impulses, and to witness their joy in all this. And so the work becomes infused with movement and liveliness. For example, since 2015, Werner has nurtured the process of developing his body image through new sensations by engaging in artistic reflections, where he uses different drawing colors to represent different qualities of sensation on the picture of a wooden doll. In the book itself, passages describing new sensations are also highlighted in color.

Every session follows a similar pattern of questions, movement experiments and reflection. But no two sessions are exactly alike. Each builds on the experiences of the preceding ones. Over the years, this results in a “spiral of experience and sensation”, a concept developed and rendered in visual form by Helga Bost in cooperation with Michael while preparing the film “Michael” in 2000 (Figure 2). It is important for the clients to hear again and again that every sensation causes the brain’s body image to be rewritten. As philosopher Alva Noë says, “To perceive is not merely to have sensation, or to receive sensory impressions, it is to have sensations that one understands.”[1]

It becomes clearly apparent in all clients how their self-image expands, creating new possibilities, including in their everyday lives. The measure of success is not in being able to walk (again like they used to) but in finding differences that make a difference as well as the way by which such differences are found. In some cases, it is also the ability to sense pain again.

For example, in the interview Michael says: “I realized that I had a body again” (p. 27). Werner, after learning over time to sit freely without needing his hands to stay upright, takes up painting and returns to his job on a part-time scheme. And Lilly we see in 2020 proudly riding her pink tricycle. Helga Bost’s in-depth knowledge of the treasure chest of the Alexander Yanai lessons, acquired during her time as co-editor of the German version alongside translator Uta Ruge, has proven to be a stroke of good fortune. Among the lessons she returns to repeatedly are, for example, “AY # 256 “Lines crossing”, AY # 303 “Self-image, the line of a ball that rolls”, and AY# 524 “Head and anus backwards”. Beyond this she refers to lessons in which Moshé Feldenkrais has his students explore movement patterns from evolution, such as AY #501 ff. (“Introduction to walking”, “Walking and crawling”, “Reptiles”, “On the stomach, face to the knee”, and “Supporting the head”).

How do sensation and movement come about?

In her reflections on the sessions Helga Bost successively develops working hypotheses on the question of how sensation and movement come about. In Michael and Andrea, large movement patterns can be visibly initiated even through touch below the site of injury, while Werner learns to sense the associated inner lines of force. Feldenkrais referred to these movements from evolution that work according to the “all or nothing principle” as “primordial movements”. These are genetically encoded central patterns such as rotation, crawling, creeping, standing and walking. Although visible to her, her clients are initially unable to sense the movements they are performing. By focusing their attention and engaging in movement experiments they then learn to sense them as well. Another thing to be learnt is movement inhibition. Michael needed five years before being able for the first time to inhibit a movement at will; later he recovered the ability of spontaneous inhibition.

In 2009, on her 20-year practice anniversary party, Helga Bost’s colleagues presented her with Thomas Myers’ book entitled “Anatomy Trains”, which describes the fascial network as our “largest sensory organ as well as a finely-tuned communication system” (p. 15), where communication happens below our level of awareness for the most part” (pp. 16/35). Here she finds explanations for phenomena that no one has been able before to account for satisfactorily. Working from AY # 303 – 307, in which “Feldenkrais instructs his students to imagine a ball rolling along their ventral and dorsal lines of effort” (pp. 51 ff.), she describes in detail how these lines of force evidently match Myers’ myofascial meridians (Superficial Front Line (SFL), Superficial Back Line (SBL), Deep Front Line DFL) etc.).

It is very intriguing to read her description of how organically this additional information influences her thinking and doing, prompting her to explore movement directions and relationships between “bony stations” (e.g. AY # 526, AY # 124, AY # 303 ff.). The sensations emerging in the process trace the myofascial meridians closely and faithfully, as can also be seen in Werner’s artistic reflections (Figure 3).

When she compares the processes of her clients Michael, Andrea and Werner in detail in a synopsis, Helga Bost is surprised to find a wealth of commonalities. She subtitles her synopsis “Stages of learning through sensation” (p. 169). It lists 23 stages (Figure 4), a work in progress.

The book shows how we work

The book’s language and makeup allow the reader to create an experience of their own: Helga Bost succeeds in bringing Feldenkrais one-on-one sessions to life in her descriptions. She is an extremely attentive observer with a talent for verbally expressing her thoughts, actions and sensations in a way that gives the reader a feeling of being right there, immersed in the situation – a feeling of simultaneity of acting, feeling, sensing and thinking that we normally only experience in situations where intention, acting and sensing all come together. This book makes for easy reading. Helga Bost creates a lively narrative that puts her readers into a flow state, using small details to guide their focus of attention and vivid metaphors that invite them to navigate their own experience. The verbal interaction between client and practitioner is rendered in direct speech, making their experience and the contact between them during the process tangible and relivable. The narrative takes on a physical quality.

This in itself makes the book exciting to read. At the same time, it can serve as a form of reference book that is accessible not only to insiders such as Feldenkrais practitioners but also to anyone else interested in the topic, including clients. “It shows how we work!” (2)[2]

The way the text has been structured with unobtrusive highlighting makes it agreeable to read and provides a good navigation aid. Direct quotes from the film clips are rendered in blue font and significant new gains in sensation or movement capacity in brown. This gives texture to the text without impeding the reading flow, structuring the reader’s experience much in the way that a change in a storyteller’s tone of voice does in a listener. While I initially ignored it, I later found the color formatting to be a great help as I searched the text for specific highlights or sensory experiences. Reflections, insights and strains of reasoning are set apart from the text body in boxes with gray background and quotes in boxes with light brown background. The film clips are referenced in the margin along with a still picture next to the relevant text passage. I would here like to reiterate an extensive quote by Feldenkrais from “Embodied wisdom” that introduces the book, as it describes so well what Helga Bost’s book stands for:

“The way I teach my students to work is to bring them into conditions where they can learn to think. They have to learn to think without words, with images, patterns, and connections. That sort of thinking always leads to a new way of action. […] You are thinking in the elements of thinking. […] Maybe whatever you do has already been invented by somebody, but you have invented it yourself. You have created it. You […] begin to think for the first time in your life, originally, creatively. You will be surprised what you can do. I was surprised.” (M.F., Embodied wisdom, 2010, p. 88)

[1]Noë, A (2004) Action in perception. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, p. 33

[2]Carl Ginsburg commented on Helga Bost’s film“Michael” in 2000 as follows: “With these video recordings we have the possibility to show what we do. We can present this research in a way that people can see it and understand it…”

Please compare the figures with the PDF from the magazine on the right side.

Figure 1: Helga Bost presenting her book and her film on “Michael”.

Figure 2: The spiral of experience and sensation

Figure 3: Werner’s artistic reflections

Figure 4: The 23 stages of learning through sensation

1. First undifferentiated sensation – the start of an exciting year-long process
2. Movement is experienced from within and/or visibly performed with the involvement of myofascial meridians
3. Reactions below the threshold of awareness
4. Internal timing – internal rhythm
5. No active, conscious inhibition of initiated movements
6. Spontaneous inhibition though guided attention
7. Voluntary inhibition of initiated movement
8. “Reverberation”
9. Active planning and control of movement
10. Sensation and unassisted further development and practice of lessons
11. Sensing oneself after a session
12. Steps of integration
13. Self-sensation before the start of a lesson – a new body image begins to emerge
14. Spasticity changes through sensing oneself
15. Pain
16. No warning pain –no sensation of external temperature
17. Three-dimensional perception of the inner space
18. Plantar fascia
19. Artistic reflections project
20. Overwhelming night – experiences of the past years have matured to a whole new level
21. “Bony stations” (Myers)
22. “As if a sticky mass was loosening bit by bit”
23. A new, different body image develops and establishes itself.

The author: Bettina Falk
Feldenkrais training from 2016 through 2019 with Larry Goldfarb
(AIFTT5 – Amsterdam International Teacher Training).
Since 2018, attendee of the Feldenkrais Training Academy led by Jeff Haller
email: post@eptinger.de