The riddle of my transformation

At the gates of the city, the sphinx asked Oedipus, “What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet in midday, and three feet in the evening?”

Oedipus thought about it and answered.

“A human—who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age.”

With the riddle solved, the sphinx threw herself off a cliff, or some say she ate herself.

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I used to write a newsletter called Feldencast, back when I was releasing Awareness Through Movement lessons in podcast form.

Since then I’ve tried making Feldenkrais for YouTube.

I’ve posted images of myself doing Feldenkrais lessons on Instagram.

Now, I am starting to write.

I’m not sure what I want to write about, but I know a few things:

1. I want to experiment with not using the Feldenkrais name as much because

2. I feel I am coming into my own

3. In addition to Feldenkrais’ work, I have been pursuing dream work/analysis to explore the riddle of my life/transformation

4. I’m calling this new iteration of writing “Skeleton School”

5. I’m starting to work more, doing Feldenkrais with kids with disabilities, and I would like to document that process in writing

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Feldenkrais said that one half of health is the ability to recover from trauma, the other half is the ability to live one’s dreams.

It’s an ongoing question, how are Trauma and Dreams two halves of a whole?
To live dreams, you have to heal traumas.
To heal traumas, you have to live dreams.

Trauma and dreams are two edges of the same sword.
Two sides of the same story.
Two sides of the same river.

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Here is one of the skeleton school dreams:

A Teacher and a woman walk down a hall with a little Girl.
The Girl walks very strangely.
She walks normally for a moment.
Then she walks strangely.
She has a subtle disability.

The Teacher says, “This is great! This disability is a brain thing. We can work with this.”

The woman is so relieved.
The Teacher knows how to work with this.

Then the adults are gone, but the Girl already walks a little better.
It's amazing.
Just the adults knowing what’s going on seems to help.

Now the little girl does something interesting.
She takes her skeleton out of herself,
She starts to take care of her skeleton separate from herself.

A male Doctor in the hall sees her doing this.
He is excited.
To him the Split explains her strange walk.
He tells the Teacher and the woman.
The adults put together the pieces of the puzzle.

One says, “She moved here with her parents from the war zone.”

By splitting herself from her skeleton and walking strangely, the girl manages her own trauma.
But now the adults are getting involved to help her.

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In my private practice, I am starting to work more with children with disabilities.
That’s been a dream of mine for a long time, ever since I first started working as a childcare provider back in 2013.
I called myself a “manny.”
I worked with nondisabled kids.
And I could see that working with children made a lot of sense somewhere deep inside me.
Plus I knew that Feldenkrais worked with kids with disabilities.

Now, I’m starting to work with kids with disabilities.
And it’s super satisfying.
It’s dance, to me.
It’s play.
And it makes a difference.

At the same time I’m starting to write this series of missives called “Skeleton School.”

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I’ve always had questions about what I should be doing for work.
As some answers are starting to present themselves, I realize how much the riddles of my own life have been tied up with my work.

As I start to do more work that feels meaningful to me, I have the sense of a riddle being solved, not really by “me,” but in good time.

I don’t currently identify as the hero in my story.
I’m not Oedipus with the clever answer.

I feel more like the sphinx, asking the riddle.
And life comes along to solve it,
and all of a sudden I’m flying into thin air.