It is not just our thinking and our bodily functions that become habitual, but also our resulting behavior. We are engaged in actions, to use the title of one of Feldenkrais’s books, that are elusively obvious. We know these behaviors are occurring but fail to acknowledge their prevalence. One of Feldenkrais’s acolytes, Alfons Grabher (2010, p. 55), puts it this way:
For very common tasks we do many hundred times per day, like turning the head to the left and back to centre again, everyone has their way of doing so. It’s far more difficult to look at the details of this move because they are hidden by habits. To look beyond these habits and be come aware of the actual movement, is a key learning requisite in the Feldenkrais Method. Being able to learn to focus on movement itself (in stead of focusing on a goal) is an intrinsic part of every lesson.
We can turn specifically to Feldenkrais’s (1981 p. xxix) own words:
Many troubled relationships come from inadvertently carrying over seemingly good habits of thought to where they do not apply. Somehow we behave as if good habits are always good. We think or rather feel that we need not bother about behaving otherwise. It is not so obvious that good habits can make us unhappy. It is an elusive truth. Yet habitual lack of free choice is often, nay, usually, disastrous.
This final point made by Feldenkrais is a real dilly. He goes beyond the Behavior Economists in their suggestion that habitual (heuristic-based) thinking and decision-making is easy to do and is likely to be the fallback when we are tired, distracted or under stress. Feldenkrais suggests that we somehow assign a positive value to these habits and that we are not motivated to seek out alternatives to our habits.
Leon Festinger (1957) and his colleagues in the field of social cognitive psychology might propose that we are likely to experience very uncomfortable cognitive dissonance when considering new habits (and declaring our old habits to by less than great). Feldenkrais offers a simpler explanation: we are often happy with our current habits and see no reason to change them. Truth about the actual destructive impact of many habits apparently is quite “elusive.”
I would offer a third option. Our habits and the way we move and portray ourselves (in clothes, mannerism and modes of speech) are reinforced by the deeply embedded social norms and expectations of the society in which we live and operate. The truths about our habits are elusive precisely because they are supported and encouraged by the social system in which we life. Like fish that swarm in our seas, we are not only unaware that there is an alternative to the swarm but are also unaware that we are swimming in water. I illustrate this point by turning to an analysis offered by Richard Sennett—a highly insightful critic of social behavior.
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