#201- Alan Questel: What is Kindness Anyways? | Liking Yourself More

Self-image and the Feldenkrais path to liking yourself more

Alan Questel explains how the Feldenkrais Method connects movement improvement to self-image, describing his realization that helping people like themselves more is the core purpose of his work.

"Welcome to Not in a Huff with Jackson Huff where we interview newsmakers, storytellers, and all-around interesting people. Sit back, relax, unless you're driving, and enjoy the show. Here's Jackson. Hello, hello, hello. I am Jackson Huff. This is Not in a Huff. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, really appreciate it. This week I'm speaking with Alan Questel. Now, Alan is somebody who is going to teach us about kindness. Seems simple enough. Seems like something we know a lot about, but I think you're going to learn in this conversation that we don't know as much as we should. We don't know how to truly be kind to others, and then maybe, just maybe, more importantly, how to be kind to yourself. And that kind of leads us into another topic of how to like yourself more. How to be comfortable in your own skin. How to, you know, feel like you, you know, value yourself and you have that self-worth. You have that self-image. We're going to talk about the difference between self-worth and self-image. We're going to talk about his books that he's written on the topic of kindness and and liking yourself more. We're also going to talk about the Feldenkrais method. That's something that he also is a practitioner of. These two things kind of go hand-in-hand when it comes to Feldenkrais and it comes to to kindness. I don't want to go in a huge long explanation of exactly what we're going to talk about other than to say, you know, you're going to learn things about kindness that I don't think that you've ever even thought about. Trying to summarize it is just, I'm not going to do it justice. So I do think that you're really, really going to enjoy this conversation. Alan had so much to teach me. I will be completely candid about this. You know, before I interviewed him, I was thinking, I don't know what exactly we're going to talk about. I don't know how we're going to, you know, fill an hour talking about kindness. And then at the end you'll hear me say, I think we could talk another hour. So it was just an absolute pleasure to speak with Alan. He is just an amazing guy and if I do say so myself, just a extremely kind guy as well, which I think is a great trait given what he teaches us all about. You're going to enjoy this one. If you haven't already, go follow, go subscribe to this podcast. I really, really appreciate that. Go like us on Facebook. Go to our Instagram, not enough podcast. Go give us a follow there. Helps us out a lot. But let's get to the episode. Here is Alan Questel. Mr. Questel, how are you? I'm good. How are you today? Good. Hardest question of the whole evening. A lot of people kind of give these big long introductions of people. I kind of take the easy route. Introduce yourself if you would. I'd be happy to. So my main work for over 40 years has been teaching the Feldenkrais method, which is a movement technique based on learning theories. And I work with people with orthopedic and neurological problems, professional actors, dancers, athletes, people with issues around self-image. And that work actually led me to part of the emphasis that I have on my book, which is about liking ourselves more. And that actually came out of a workshop I was creating around self-image. And I started to think our self-image is a reflection of how much we like ourselves or how much we don't like ourselves. And after a while, I started to think that this is my job to help people like themselves more. And there's two modalities in the Feldenkrais method. One is a group class that people are led through very gentle movement sequences. And I started asking people to see if they could move in a way that they like the way it feels. And it was kind of like entering into the back door of their self-image. It was interesting because if I asked a group of people, oh I always ask, is there anyone here who doesn't want to like themselves more? They all kind of smile. Yeah, sure. And no one ever says no. Sometimes someone says, I already like myself. And I say, well would you like to like yourself more? Sure, of course. Now the funny thing about liking ourselves is the way we generally go about it is through things. Acquiring things, accomplishing things. It could be a job, a relationship, a car, a haircut, clothes, which are all really worthwhile, but they don't really last. And I found that this idea of entering in kind of through the back door of ourselves, just through how we move every day, asking that question, can I move in a way that I like the way it feels, it really grows and develops in us. And it's really how children navigate the world. Their whole world is based on their sense of ease and comfort. And of course that's extreme because then they don't tolerate being told what to do, blah blah blah, all those things. But as adults we've learned too much to ignore that. And so that was really the background of my life for many years. And then one day I did an act of kindness. I don't even remember, something small. And in the next moments I thought, I like myself more for doing that. And I'm not suggesting that we pat ourselves, you know, we do things so we can pat ourselves on the back and do that. But I found that moving in a way that we like the way it feels is interpersonal and doing acts of kindness made it interpersonal and they loop around each other. So that's kind of how I got here today. And I'm happy I'm here. I'm happy you're here too. We're gonna unpack a lot of that. But I would be remiss not to welcome the other guests in the room. You've got a skeleton behind you. I assume that's because of, you know, kind of the Felton Christ method that you're talking about. Does your skeleton friend, does he have a name? No, he doesn't. I have a few skeletons in different trainings where I teach in different places. And I let the students name them. This guy, I think he's had a few names already I can't remember. And it's interesting because in the Felton Christ method there are many basic ideas and one of them is that we look to evoke a more skeletal use of ourself. The skeleton and movement is the part that bears weight, transmits force, and we underuse that and overuse our musculature. So there's a quieting down of our muscular habits that allows us to be more skeletal and which has a big neurological effect as well. And all of that influences our self-image and how we feel about ourselves. Insert some jokes about you having the rest of the skeletons in your closet still, right? Don't get me going on that. I use humor a lot. I've got a whole article on humor I could send you. I like it. I want to, you know, normally I kind of talk about people's books at the end, but I kind of want to talk about yours in the beginning because I think it kind of impacts a lot of, you know, what we're going to talk about. It's called Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness and You Like and Like Yourself More. We've already kind of talked about why that's so important, but I like, you know, the cover of the book has the word intentional, but it's over, across, out, random because so many people know, you know, this perform random acts of kindness, perform random acts of kindness. You're saying perform intentional acts of kindness. So what's, why is that different? I know that you're showing that it's a difference or you wouldn't have, you know, created that mark out like you did. So talk about that. Oh, there's a big difference. First of all, the idea of practicing random acts of kindness, I think is great. I had that as a bumper sticker on a car for many, many years and I really loved that idea. And, but when you think about it, it's random. It happens once in a while if it happens and then we forget about it and then maybe it happens again. But intentional acts of kindness is something that we can generate ourselves on a regular basis. And I think that's something, the acts of kindness are something that we need to practice. And people think kindness comes easily, but actually real kindness, many aspects of it take some work. It can be quite a challenge, whether it's being kind to someone else or actually more challenging, being kind to ourselves. That's really a challenge for most people. So I'm very interested in the intentional part of it and the practical part of it. Like people ask me, is my book about compassion and empathy? And I said, of course it is. I mean, how could you talk about kindness without including that? But it's about concrete things we can do on a daily basis that can grow this aspect of ourselves that actually needs development for all of us. For me too, still, definitely. That's powerful. And I don't think I would ask this question if it wasn't for somebody I just recently talked to on this podcast and they were talking about how we need to do things for each other. We need to do kind things because it's the right thing to do. If we're doing them just to make ourselves feel better, then you're probably not going to get very much out of it in the long run. You were talking about earlier though that you did something kind for somebody and you said, I feel a little bit better about myself. So do you agree with that or are you kind of prescribed a little bit different theory there? Oh no, what that person said makes perfect sense to me because I think people do use an act of kindness in a way that's self-serving and I'm not interested in that. I think generosity is a real interesting place where that happens a lot. And actually if you look up the word kindness in the dictionary, they equated with generosity. He's so kind, he's so generous. And it's not that that's not true. The question is what do we mean by generosity? When we give something, what's behind that? We have to investigate. I needed to investigate that in myself to understand it to realize sometimes I would give to get. And I don't think, now that's not bad because you're still giving something, right? So you can't fault that. But at the same time, if that's the real motivation for my action, I think it's a little misplaced. I think that's different than having a genuine sense of wanting to give to someone, some place, some service, ourselves as well. So yeah, it can be that and hopefully the things I suggest to practice don't lead us down that path but lead us down the path of, yeah, the world around me is feeling better. Yeah, no, I think that's kind of a perfect segue into the next question because you've already kind of answered it. But I've, you know, at the most basic level, it's a very nuanced question but it's also a pretty basic question but I feel like I got to ask it from somebody who their whole life's work deals with kindness. What to you, what does kindness mean? Well, the first thing, and I said it before, which is I think kindness is an action, okay? And kindness is something that it can be recognized in so many different ways. It can be recognized through some kind of generosity, through giving, right? It can be recognized through our attention, right? So listening to someone can be an act of kindness, right? It can be, and when I talk about listening to someone or doing something, I'm also including in that the tough things that we say to people, right? That it's not just about always making everything nice and easy, it's about saying no, about drawing a boundary around something to help ourselves, to be kind to ourselves, but also to be kind to others. If someone has issues around alcohol or drugs, it's not kind to give them more money when you know where it's going to go, right? It's kinder to say, no, I can't support you in this, right? That's a better act of kindness. And so kindness represents itself in listening, in giving attention to someone, in generosity. I think that, you know, the Dalai Lama talks about, he says, kindness is my religion, right? Which I always love that statement, you know? And it resonated with me in a way because the whole idea of spirituality actually eluded me for a long time, for a large part of my life. And then one day, I thought, because I'd meet many spiritual people who could breathe deeply and smile, have wide open eyes, and then they'd get really impatient when they were online in the supermarket if someone was taking too long. And I thought, that doesn't seem to fit in with it so well. So I think, and I thought one day, I guess spirituality is just being kind to myself and others. And it was later that I read about what the Dalai Lama said and I thought, oh, well, I thought I had a new idea, but that's okay. I thought of it so it counts still. So kindness is, you know, it's like, one story I like is a friend of mine is a psychologist and she was at someone's house for dinner and they had a, the people had a three-year-old girl and the little girl came in and said, I want M&Ms, I want them. She was crying, I want M&Ms. And the mother said, we're gonna have dinner soon, you can't have M&Ms. And the kid started to lose it and the mother was pretty smart and she said, okay, look, you can have three M&Ms. And she gave him the three M&Ms and then my friend said to her, I can't believe you let her manipulate you like that. And she looked at my friend and said, listen, she has to learn there are some battles that she can win. What she doesn't know yet is I'm gonna choose which ones she's gonna win. And so that was kind to the child, that was kind to the mother, she avoided a tantrum, she avoided not eating dinner, all of that stuff. So that's just one example of way that we can demonstrate kindness. And you know, when you ask me what kindness is, and I talk about this a lot in the book, that I look at the definition of kindness, I've researched it quite a bit. Most of the time, the definition, and if you actually look at definitions, they're from the observer's point of view. They're describing something. So like to sit in the dictionary, to sit is to rest upon one's buttocks or thighs. It makes sense. But you tell a child with cerebral palsy to rest upon your buttocks and thighs, they fall over. It doesn't mean anything. So the question is, can we generate definitions that are evident of the actual actions that we do? And so that's why kindness has a much broader definition than just being generous, just listening. It's all these actions so we could represent it in dozens and dozens of different ways that I think gives us a full of feeling and understanding of what we mean when we talk about kindness. I like that. I like that a lot. And you know, that's that's kind of what I've thought about too when I knew I was going to be speaking with you is, you know, when we talk about kindness, it is towards other people and it kind of really resonated to me how much you talk about kind of liking yourself and making sure you do things for yourself. So what, when that intersection happens where being kind to others is at the expense of maybe your own mental health, your own, you know, self-worth, what does that look like? Well, that doesn't look so good, does it? Right? Because, and that's what I'll find is that many people are more skilled at being kind to others than being kind to themselves. As a matter of fact, when I was writing the book, when I got to the part about being kind to myself, I got blocked for about five years. I was surprised. I realized I had a lot more to learn about being kind to myself. And I was talking to someone recently about the golden rule, do unto others, as you would do unto yourself. And my, one of my teachers, Dr. Feldman cries, he flipped it around. He said, can you do unto yourself as you do unto others? And that's a shock for most people. Of course, then when that happens, people say, oh, you're being too narcissistic, too self-centered, right? It's not good to do that. And of course, it's all in the how of how you do it. But I think all of us can benefit more from doing that more. And it's a big learning curve because at first it can feel inauthentic or tough. Why am I doing this? Or what are people going to think about me? And we can't really let ourselves be pulled off track by those thoughts. We have to say, I'm just doing the best I can and seeing if I can feel a little better. Like I said in the beginning, I've never met someone who doesn't want to like themselves more. And I've never met someone who doesn't want more kindness in their life. So I think these are fundamental to us as human beings. And you know, again, the place where we can almost biologically see this happening is in children, right? You see children sharing things, not sharing things too at some point, but sometimes they just spontaneously give you something, right? And they feel good about themselves. When does that change? Right? Somewhere around the time when, because their self-image forms very early. I believe it forms even as infants and how they're held will change someone's self-image. But it's only through peer pressure and seeing what others have that I don't have or what I want that I'm not getting that all of a sudden I don't feel as good about myself, right? And so that's a lifelong challenge for all of us. And you know, I have to be honest, I'm still learning to like myself more. And one of the things, one of the outcomes of the book, which, boy, honestly I feel it's quite disturbing when I realized it, is that you know, everything I write about in the book, I feel fairly skillful at that I can do that. I can act that way in the world genuinely and feel, but now the next step for me being kinder, liking myself more, is huge. It's a big step. It feels so far away that I wonder if in my lifetime if I'll get there. And when I talk about getting there, I don't mean as a kind of final destination that, oh, now I like myself. Because I imagine if I achieve that next big step, there'll be another one after that that's even bigger, even further away. And the way I've learned to think about it in terms of being kind, liking ourselves more, liking myself more, is that I don't spend, it's not that I finish, like now I like myself more, it's that I spend less time not liking myself. So I don't linger in the more negative aspects of myself, or I catch myself in it, but I move on, right? So instead of a whole day of beating myself up, maybe it's only an hour or 10 minutes, right? And the same thing when I'm looking at others, that I don't beat them up for a long time, that I can go, wait, they're doing the best they can too. Let me step back a little bit. I think that's a big act of kindness to be able to see someone more clearly like that. Yeah, and when you talk about liking yourself more, you know, I've listened to you in other interviews and almost everyone, when that topic of liking yourself more comes up, they kind of mention, you know, narcissism and that kind of thing. When that's not at all, I feel like what you're talking about. So when it comes to liking yourself more, talk about how that is worlds away from, you know, what we think of as a narcissist person, which is, you know, is very different. It's a kind of a psychological type thing. Yeah, of course a narcissist is quite extreme, but we can talk about someone just being self-centered, right? But if you think about it, what makes someone self-centered, right? There's a sense of lack in their life, right? It's not that they're trying to be mean to the world, it's that there's a deeper sense of dissatisfaction that hasn't been fulfilled yet. And unfortunately, I believe that that sense of dissatisfaction, most people look to resolve it outside of themselves as a post-sync. Can I do something within myself to feel better about myself, to like myself more? I'll give you an example. So it's actually one of those exercises I recommend in the book. So when I was 19, I moved out of my parents house and I realized at 19 that I wasn't good at anything. I was a complete failure. Now I was 19 and most people at 19 aren't old enough to be successful in anything. So it was almost a silly thought and I had the idea that I'm gonna see if I can teach myself to do one thing well. And I was kind of fortunate of what I chose. I chose to brush my teeth better. I wasn't good at brushing my teeth. I mean, who knew if I didn't brush my teeth? My dentist, that was it. And so I started. Now the great thing about it was when I started doing it, I had to practice it twice a day. So it wasn't something that I did once a week, once a month. It was like every day it was in my face, literally in my mouth, right? And I found that, well first of all, I did finally get good at brushing my teeth. And that sense of satisfaction was self-generated and rewarding and it was the building block, the foundation for realizing that I could be successful. If I can be successful at that, I can be successful at other things. But again, the part that I didn't expect was all the sabotage strategies, all the ways I interfered with brushing my teeth well, all the ways I would beat myself up when I didn't do it well. And that was really painful because, you know, I could have beaten myself up enough to go, oh the hell with that. I'm not even gonna brush my teeth anymore, right? And so that sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something like that, I don't think that's narcissistic or self-centered. In the same way, when a child makes a drawing, they're not doing it, well they can, it depends on the parents and how they're raised, but most kids aren't doing the drawing for the phrase that they're gonna get. They did something that they feel that it completes them more, that they're happier about themselves as a result of that. And look, this is something also we have to keep, or I have to keep my antenna out for something like that because that's an easy thing to fall into, right? To feel good about myself. So you know, like one of the things that I've become aware of, there are times where I've made pretty significant donations to places, right? And here's the thing, there was always a part of me that wanted to tell people that I did it, right? And if I'm going out of my way to tell people, then I'm praising myself, right? But if I don't tell anyone, it's just within me. I think that's a clear act of doing something like that. You know, could I read your letter I wrote? Yeah, absolutely. So when I was just about finished with the book, my friend who did all the illustrations and formatted everything for me, he said to me one day, he said, you don't have a forward in your book. And I said, I know, I have a lot of great testimonials and stuff from doctors, writers. I said, you know, I just haven't had time and I don't know who to get. And he said, what about the Dalai Lama? I cracked up. I said, are you serious? The Dalai Lama? Well, about three months later, I was talking with another friend, Dalai Lama came up and I thought, what have I got to lose? And there, his email address, his address, his phone number, everything's online. So I wrote this letter. So if you bear with me for a moment to his holiness, the Dalai Lama, I write to you with the utmost respect and admiration, with a request. If it's something you think would be of value in bringing more kindness to the world. I just published a book called Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness and Like Yourself More. Many ask me if it's about compassion and empathy. And I say, of course. I tell them it's also about concrete ways to generate more kindness towards others and ourselves, things we can do every day to create a kinder world. You are part of the final chapter, kindness and spirituality. I've included a copy of this book along with this letter. Back to my request, asking with as much courage and humility as I can muster, but the understanding that it's likely too unrealistic, too large a request, realizing that before I even ask that it's not possible for you to fulfill it as you must receive many requests like this, and also knowing that it's only in asking that there's a small chance that you could fulfill it. My book has no forward. Could you possibly write a forward for my book? I'm a little shocked at my own request. You do not know me. How do I have the nerve to ask such a thing from someone who represents so much to the world? Yet here I am humbly asking you for the benefit of others. Of course, reading the book is with the intention that it is for the benefit of others, but I'm not so naive to not acknowledge that it would also be a benefit to me. So if you even gave me a few words that I could add as a forward to this book, I would commit to giving half of all the profits from my book to any causes or charities that you think would most benefit from a financial contribution. I thank you in advance just for reading this letter. Any response at all from you would be a great gift for me, and if you were so inclined to write something, well, I really have no words to express my thanks other than if it helped even in a little way to bring more kindness in the world that would bring me joy and great satisfaction. With deep appreciation and recognition for all you do to make our world a kinder and more peaceful place, sending you light, peace, and love, Alan Questel. So I sent that with the book. I didn't hear anything. I waited some months, and the mail in India, who knows what happened to it, I waited a few months. I emailed the letter with the PDF. I didn't hear anything, and I was telling someone this story, and he said to me, this is the part I want to get to, they said to me, so have you donated the money someplace else? And I went, what? And he said, well, you were going to donate it to one of his causes. Why not donate it to another cause? And I sat there. I felt busted. And so there's a good example of me offering something to get something, right? So since then, half the profits every year I donate, and I feel like, oh, that I'm standing behind what I'm talking about, you know? So that's a good example of the courage it takes to act differently and to change our self-image in a way that we feel, oh, that resonates more as the right thing in myself, in myself, when I do that. Yeah, well, it's a very different story. It's not necessarily too late there. I had a gentleman on who talked all about, you know, his move here from Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and it was very, very important to him. You know, Gloria Estevan's music really spoke to him, and he desperately wanted her to write a forward. He wrote the book. It took four years of kind of sending it to her, but guess what? He finally has that forward from Gloria Estevan. So potentially, you know, that you may still get that forward. So you never can't tell. I'm going to keep doing it, but just the story I told you just now, that's enough satisfaction for me, you know? Yeah, and I want to kind of go back to what you were saying a minute ago, just because I think your listeners would hear the story about, you know, brushing your teeth well and think, you know, that sounds kind of basic, that sounds kind of silly, but that resonates with me because I, and this is kind of silly too, but when you were saying it, that exact same thing about brushing your teeth. Back in for Christmas this past December, you know, I got this fancy new electric toothbrush that measures, you know, that makes sure every quadrant you brush for 30 seconds, makes sure you don't brush too hard, and once I had to do it correctly, I'm like, have I ever brushed my teeth correctly? I don't spend enough time in here. I do it too hard. I almost had an existential crisis that I don't think I've ever brushed my teeth correctly, so I was like, wow, I like when you were saying that for sure. I'll tell you something, when I got that kind of toothbrush, I kept thinking this thing must be broken because it has to be at least 30 seconds already, right? And you know, it's funny, so I've been using those toothbrushes for a long time, but the dental hygienist I go to keeps correcting me in the technique of how I use that, so it's a long thing, but it doesn't have to be brushing our teeth. Maybe it's just picking up our clothes at night or doing the dishes. It needs to be something done daily, a small thing that if it didn't get done, it's not the end of the world, right? But it's something that we can use to monitor ourselves over a long period of time, a year, maybe two years, not just a week. You're doing great, by the way. Oh, I appreciate it. I do want to go back to when we're talking about self-worth as well, and you talked earlier about how self-worth is developed at a very young age, sometimes in infancy. Actually, I'm gonna interrupt you. I said self-image. Self-image, yeah. It's a little different than self-worth. Okay, well, we can kind of talk about why those are different, too, but I've talked to people who, in the psychology world and then also people who have ran adoptions agencies and ran foster care systems, and the thing that they've talked about before, too, is there's a lot of people that take in foster children that say, you know, these kids, they came from such a poor background, they came from such a bad background, but then they come here and they have everything, and I feel like they're just so self-consumed. They think that everyone owes them something, and that's not the case at all. That goes back to exactly what you're saying. When you are young and you're not being provided very much, you have a very poor self-image. You have poor self-worth as well, and that turns into what looks like somebody being self-consumed. It turns into somebody looking like they're very selfish, and that's not the case. They just don't feel like anyone values them, so of course they have to just look at themselves. I want to talk a little bit about that, because I think there's a lot of people that look maybe self-centered that is really because of their own self-image and their poor self-image. By the way, your camera went off. I don't know if you know that. I don't know why I did that. I'll get it back. If you talk about someone who's being adopted or foster cared, I can't think of any greater rejection than a parent not wanting to keep their child. It doesn't mean that the parent did wrong, because maybe the circumstances of the parent's life was such that they really knew that they couldn't take care of this child and wanted to give this child a better life, but I don't think a child, even a young adult, has a hard time coming to terms with that and understanding that. So the feeling is that the primary person in my life who was supposed to love me and take care of me left me, gave me away, and there's no coming back from that. And of course, it's something in the past that can't change, so the only thing possible at that point, and it needs to happen at some point in the child, the adult's life, where they finally can start looking forward as opposed to looking backward. I know people who've been adopted and some of them suffer greatly. I've watched it. Even though their adopted parents are great and do everything for them, right, it still doesn't fix that broken heart inside. But then I've seen adopted children want to have children so they can give back to a child the thing that they didn't get, right? So that can turn into a really positive thing, because most of us, you know, most of our family histories, things get repeated over and over again, all the negative patterns and stuff like that, but we can break those patterns. They're habits, you know, they're not, we're not bound intrinsically in that way in our lives like that. And I think that, and then of course there are many people who weren't adopted, they live with their family, but they still have low self-worth, right? So where does that come from? So, and again, it's kind of interesting from a psychological point of view, I think that there's a great worth to understanding where we've come from, but the understanding of where we come from doesn't necessitate an understanding of who I can become now. It doesn't resolve it. You know, I spent many years of my life working with therapists, and I think I gained a great deal working with them, but sometimes I was clever enough to pick a therapist who would collude with me, right, who would just kind of keep me complaining about what happened in my life and what went wrong and what it should have been like, and there were a few really good ones who kind of smacked me on the head and said, who do you want to be now? Let's look at that. It's like, you know, when someone comes to me with a problem in a Feldenkrais session, they'll tell me what they want to work with, and many times it's some kind of pain, let's say, or something, and I'll ask them a question, I'll say, what would you like to be better at? And they say, well, I'd like to not have pain in my neck, and I said, that's good, but that's something you want to get away from. What do you want to go towards? So this is a perceptual thing, and I write about this too, that my uncle was a dentist, and when I started my practice in New York, I was very fortunate. I had a waiting list, and he used to come to me for lessons because he had back pain because he was a dentist, twisted to one side all the time, and, you know, I didn't charge him anything. He thought he was doing me a favor, but I had many people waiting. It wasn't a favor at all, and his pain would go away, and then he'd come back the next week with the pain, and this cycle happened a number of times, and finally I said to him one day, I said, you like golf, right? And he went, oh yeah. I said, what do you want to improve in your golf? And we started looking at that, and then I worked with him on how to do that, and his back pain went away. So there's a good example, because if I try to get away from something, like that skeleton, I have to know where it is all the time, so I'm always checking on it. If I think of, well, I want to take a walk, and I don't know where I'm gonna go, well, let's see what I find today. That's the unknown. That's an opening for something, right? Or a dream. Like, who do I want to become, right? So if I want to be a musician, and I'm 65 years old, and you think you can't be a musician, why not learn an instrument? That satisfies something. That's the same thing as brushing your teeth, you know. So I think that distinction between getting away from something and going towards something is part of what can help someone in those more dire circumstances, and I don't want to make it casual, you know. It's like, we're talking about a serious thing here, being adopted or something like that. You mentioned, you know, that you were talking more on self-worth or self-image. One of the two is the one that you meant, so talk about the differences there. Okay, so self-worth is a feeling that we have about ourselves, how much we value ourselves, right? And unfortunately, a lot of our self-worth is based on how others think of us. Our self-image is a little different. Our self-image is the result of all that, of our interactions in the world and how people view us, but it's the result of how I think about myself. It's not only about worth, right? It's not only am I worthy of something, it's that I'm good in this area but not good in this area. I'm good at languages but not at math, so that's something that's not measuring my worth in the same way, but it's an image of what I'm capable of doing or not capable of doing, right? And Dr. Feldenkrais had a really interesting idea about self-image, that it was comprised of four things that are continually going on, our thinking, our feeling in an emotional sense, our sensing, how we take in and process information, and our movement, our actions in the world. And he chose movement as the doorway to influence the self-image. Why? Because it's immediate. When you move differently, you know it at that moment. To change our thinking, it's possible, but sometimes I think I'm thinking differently and I'm just kidding myself. To change our feelings, that's more complex. There's thousands of books written about that, trying to understand our emotions, right? But a change in any one of these aspects potentiates the change in the other aspects. So if I want to change my self-image, at least my focus, and it was what I was talking about before, I think the most effective and probably the quickest way is through changing our actions. Doesn't mean it's easy. Doesn't mean it's comfortable, you know? But in fact, if I do that, you know, they say, when you have to pretend to be something at the beginning, like the last place you want to be is in the coffee break room of new doctors. Because they're all like, oh my god, I almost killed the guy, I can't believe it. I said, thank god, you know? But all of us feel like we're in Charlottesville at the beginning of what we do. But if we keep doing it, I can't remember, there was some great musician, really old, like in his 80s, and someone said, why do you still practice? And he said, because I think I'm finally getting good at this, you know? And I love something like that, because we're never going to arrive there, we want to keep doing it. One more question in the world of kindness, and that is, well, first, you know, through some of your answers, I had to plug in my computer, I had to fix this camera, I've written taken a few notes. Here's the question, because I know you talk a lot about kindness and listening, what's that mean? And I hope I've exuded kindness in my listening to you. You have, you definitely have. And I think that the quality of your questions demonstrate that, that shows that you were listening to me. I think one of the things about listening, and it's not so easy, is that can we listen without responding internally? Can I really just, and that's hard, I still find myself when someone's talking, I start thinking, oh, I want to tell that story, I want to tell that, or talk about that, or I want to ask another question before they're even finished, you know, as opposed to waiting. So really, to listen well, I think it takes a kind of patience, you know, and observing the other, you know. When I teach, one of the things I've learned in teaching, and I've seen this, honestly, as a fault in other teachers, other people teaching, is that they teach, but they're not listening to their audience. They're just throwing things out at people, right? Which, okay, there's a certain success in that, you know, no harm, great harm in that. But when I teach, I'm always watching to see, do I really have people's interests?"

The Feldenkrais Method as a doorway to presence and comfort

Alan describes how the Feldenkrais Method uses movement as a doorway to influence well-being by teaching people more choice in how they move and think, connecting physical comfort to emotional presence and self-kindness.

"Welcome to Not in a Huff with Jackson Huff where we interview newsmakers, storytellers, and all-around interesting people. Sit back, relax, unless you're driving, and enjoy the show. Here's Jackson. Hello, hello, hello. I am Jackson Huff. This is Not in a Huff. Thanks so much for joining me. As always, really appreciate it. This week I'm speaking with Alan Questel. Now, Alan is somebody who is going to teach us about kindness. Seems simple enough. Seems like something we know a lot about, but I think you're going to learn in this conversation that we don't know as much as we should. We don't know how to truly be kind to others, and then maybe, just maybe, more importantly, how to be kind to yourself. And that kind of leads us into another topic of how to like yourself more. How to be comfortable in your own skin. How to, you know, feel like you, you know, value yourself and you have that self-worth. You have that self-image. We're going to talk about the difference between self-worth and self-image. We're going to talk about his books that he's written on the topic of kindness and and liking yourself more. We're also going to talk about the Feldenkrais method. That's something that he also is a practitioner of. These two things kind of go hand-in-hand when it comes to Feldenkrais and it comes to to kindness. I don't want to go in a huge long explanation of exactly what we're going to talk about other than to say, you know, you're going to learn things about kindness that I don't think that you've ever even thought about. Trying to summarize it is just, I'm not going to do it justice. So I do think that you're really, really going to enjoy this conversation. Alan had so much to teach me. I will be completely candid about this. You know, before I interviewed him, I was thinking, I don't know what exactly we're going to talk about. I don't know how we're going to, you know, fill an hour talking about kindness. And then at the end you'll hear me say, I think we could talk another hour. So it was just an absolute pleasure to speak with Alan. He is just an amazing guy and if I do say so myself, just a extremely kind guy as well, which I think is a great trait given what he teaches us all about. You're going to enjoy this one. If you haven't already, go follow, go subscribe to this podcast. I really, really appreciate that. Go like us on Facebook. Go to our Instagram, not enough podcast. Go give us a follow there. Helps us out a lot. But let's get to the episode. Here is Alan Questel. Mr. Questel, how are you? I'm good. How are you today? Good. Hardest question of the whole evening. A lot of people kind of give these big long introductions of people. I kind of take the easy route. Introduce yourself if you would. I'd be happy to. So my main work for over 40 years has been teaching the Feldenkrais method, which is a movement technique based on learning theories. And I work with people with orthopedic and neurological problems, professional actors, dancers, athletes, people with issues around self-image. And that work actually led me to part of the emphasis that I have on my book, which is about liking ourselves more. And that actually came out of a workshop I was creating around self-image. And I started to think our self-image is a reflection of how much we like ourselves or how much we don't like ourselves. And after a while, I started to think that this is my job to help people like themselves more. And there's two modalities in the Feldenkrais method. One is a group class that people are led through very gentle movement sequences. And I started asking people to see if they could move in a way that they like the way it feels. And it was kind of like entering into the back door of their self-image. It was interesting because if I asked a group of people, oh I always ask, is there anyone here who doesn't want to like themselves more? They all kind of smile. Yeah, sure. And no one ever says no. Sometimes someone says, I already like myself. And I say, well would you like to like yourself more? Sure, of course. Now the funny thing about liking ourselves is the way we generally go about it is through things. Acquiring things, accomplishing things. It could be a job, a relationship, a car, a haircut, clothes, which are all really worthwhile, but they don't really last. And I found that this idea of entering in kind of through the back door of ourselves, just through how we move every day, asking that question, can I move in a way that I like the way it feels, it really grows and develops in us. And it's really how children navigate the world. Their whole world is based on their sense of ease and comfort. And of course that's extreme because then they don't tolerate being told what to do, blah blah blah, all those things. But as adults we've learned too much to ignore that. And so that was really the background of my life for many years. And then one day I did an act of kindness. I don't even remember, something small. And in the next moments I thought, I like myself more for doing that. And I'm not suggesting that we pat ourselves, you know, we do things so we can pat ourselves on the back and do that. But I found that moving in a way that we like the way it feels is interpersonal and doing acts of kindness made it interpersonal and they loop around each other. So that's kind of how I got here today. And I'm happy I'm here. I'm happy you're here too. We're gonna unpack a lot of that. But I would be remiss not to welcome the other guests in the room. You've got a skeleton behind you. I assume that's because of, you know, kind of the Felton Christ method that you're talking about. Does your skeleton friend, does he have a name? No, he doesn't. I have a few skeletons in different trainings where I teach in different places. And I let the students name them. This guy, I think he's had a few names already I can't remember. And it's interesting because in the Felton Christ method there are many basic ideas and one of them is that we look to evoke a more skeletal use of ourself. The skeleton and movement is the part that bears weight, transmits force, and we underuse that and overuse our musculature. So there's a quieting down of our muscular habits that allows us to be more skeletal and which has a big neurological effect as well. And all of that influences our self-image and how we feel about ourselves. Insert some jokes about you having the rest of the skeletons in your closet still, right? Don't get me going on that. I use humor a lot. I've got a whole article on humor I could send you. I like it. I want to, you know, normally I kind of talk about people's books at the end, but I kind of want to talk about yours in the beginning because I think it kind of impacts a lot of, you know, what we're going to talk about. It's called Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness and You Like and Like Yourself More. We've already kind of talked about why that's so important, but I like, you know, the cover of the book has the word intentional, but it's over, across, out, random because so many people know, you know, this perform random acts of kindness, perform random acts of kindness. You're saying perform intentional acts of kindness. So what's, why is that different? I know that you're showing that it's a difference or you wouldn't have, you know, created that mark out like you did. So talk about that. Oh, there's a big difference. First of all, the idea of practicing random acts of kindness, I think is great. I had that as a bumper sticker on a car for many, many years and I really loved that idea. And, but when you think about it, it's random. It happens once in a while if it happens and then we forget about it and then maybe it happens again. But intentional acts of kindness is something that we can generate ourselves on a regular basis. And I think that's something, the acts of kindness are something that we need to practice. And people think kindness comes easily, but actually real kindness, many aspects of it take some work. It can be quite a challenge, whether it's being kind to someone else or actually more challenging, being kind to ourselves. That's really a challenge for most people. So I'm very interested in the intentional part of it and the practical part of it. Like people ask me, is my book about compassion and empathy? And I said, of course it is. I mean, how could you talk about kindness without including that? But it's about concrete things we can do on a daily basis that can grow this aspect of ourselves that actually needs development for all of us. For me too, still, definitely. That's powerful. And I don't think I would ask this question if it wasn't for somebody I just recently talked to on this podcast and they were talking about how we need to do things for each other. We need to do kind things because it's the right thing to do. If we're doing them just to make ourselves feel better, then you're probably not going to get very much out of it in the long run. You were talking about earlier though that you did something kind for somebody and you said, I feel a little bit better about myself. So do you agree with that or are you kind of prescribed a little bit different theory there? Oh no, what that person said makes perfect sense to me because I think people do use an act of kindness in a way that's self-serving and I'm not interested in that. I think generosity is a real interesting place where that happens a lot. And actually if you look up the word kindness in the dictionary, they equated with generosity. He's so kind, he's so generous. And it's not that that's not true. The question is what do we mean by generosity? When we give something, what's behind that? We have to investigate. I needed to investigate that in myself to understand it to realize sometimes I would give to get. And I don't think, now that's not bad because you're still giving something, right? So you can't fault that. But at the same time, if that's the real motivation for my action, I think it's a little misplaced. I think that's different than having a genuine sense of wanting to give to someone, some place, some service, ourselves as well. So yeah, it can be that and hopefully the things I suggest to practice don't lead us down that path but lead us down the path of, yeah, the world around me is feeling better. Yeah, no, I think that's kind of a perfect segue into the next question because you've already kind of answered it. But I've, you know, at the most basic level, it's a very nuanced question but it's also a pretty basic question but I feel like I got to ask it from somebody who their whole life's work deals with kindness. What to you, what does kindness mean? Well, the first thing, and I said it before, which is I think kindness is an action, okay? And kindness is something that it can be recognized in so many different ways. It can be recognized through some kind of generosity, through giving, right? It can be recognized through our attention, right? So listening to someone can be an act of kindness, right? It can be, and when I talk about listening to someone or doing something, I'm also including in that the tough things that we say to people, right? That it's not just about always making everything nice and easy, it's about saying no, about drawing a boundary around something to help ourselves, to be kind to ourselves, but also to be kind to others. If someone has issues around alcohol or drugs, it's not kind to give them more money when you know where it's going to go, right? It's kinder to say, no, I can't support you in this, right? That's a better act of kindness. And so kindness represents itself in listening, in giving attention to someone, in generosity. I think that, you know, the Dalai Lama talks about, he says, kindness is my religion, right? Which I always love that statement, you know? And it resonated with me in a way because the whole idea of spirituality actually eluded me for a long time, for a large part of my life. And then one day, I thought, because I'd meet many spiritual people who could breathe deeply and smile, have wide open eyes, and then they'd get really impatient when they were online in the supermarket if someone was taking too long. And I thought, that doesn't seem to fit in with it so well. So I think, and I thought one day, I guess spirituality is just being kind to myself and others. And it was later that I read about what the Dalai Lama said and I thought, oh, well, I thought I had a new idea, but that's okay. I thought of it so it counts still. So kindness is, you know, it's like, one story I like is a friend of mine is a psychologist and she was at someone's house for dinner and they had a, the people had a three-year-old girl and the little girl came in and said, I want M&Ms, I want them. She was crying, I want M&Ms. And the mother said, we're gonna have dinner soon, you can't have M&Ms. And the kid started to lose it and the mother was pretty smart and she said, okay, look, you can have three M&Ms. And she gave him the three M&Ms and then my friend said to her, I can't believe you let her manipulate you like that. And she looked at my friend and said, listen, she has to learn there are some battles that she can win. What she doesn't know yet is I'm gonna choose which ones she's gonna win. And so that was kind to the child, that was kind to the mother, she avoided a tantrum, she avoided not eating dinner, all of that stuff. So that's just one example of way that we can demonstrate kindness. And you know, when you ask me what kindness is, and I talk about this a lot in the book, that I look at the definition of kindness, I've researched it quite a bit. Most of the time, the definition, and if you actually look at definitions, they're from the observer's point of view. They're describing something. So like to sit in the dictionary, to sit is to rest upon one's buttocks or thighs. It makes sense. But you tell a child with cerebral palsy to rest upon your buttocks and thighs, they fall over. It doesn't mean anything. So the question is, can we generate definitions that are evident of the actual actions that we do? And so that's why kindness has a much broader definition than just being generous, just listening. It's all these actions so we could represent it in dozens and dozens of different ways that I think gives us a full of feeling and understanding of what we mean when we talk about kindness. I like that. I like that a lot. And you know, that's that's kind of what I've thought about too when I knew I was going to be speaking with you is, you know, when we talk about kindness, it is towards other people and it kind of really resonated to me how much you talk about kind of liking yourself and making sure you do things for yourself. So what, when that intersection happens where being kind to others is at the expense of maybe your own mental health, your own, you know, self-worth, what does that look like? Well, that doesn't look so good, does it? Right? Because, and that's what I'll find is that many people are more skilled at being kind to others than being kind to themselves. As a matter of fact, when I was writing the book, when I got to the part about being kind to myself, I got blocked for about five years. I was surprised. I realized I had a lot more to learn about being kind to myself. And I was talking to someone recently about the golden rule, do unto others, as you would do unto yourself. And my, one of my teachers, Dr. Feldman cries, he flipped it around. He said, can you do unto yourself as you do unto others? And that's a shock for most people. Of course, then when that happens, people say, oh, you're being too narcissistic, too self-centered, right? It's not good to do that. And of course, it's all in the how of how you do it. But I think all of us can benefit more from doing that more. And it's a big learning curve because at first it can feel inauthentic or tough. Why am I doing this? Or what are people going to think about me? And we can't really let ourselves be pulled off track by those thoughts. We have to say, I'm just doing the best I can and seeing if I can feel a little better. Like I said in the beginning, I've never met someone who doesn't want to like themselves more. And I've never met someone who doesn't want more kindness in their life. So I think these are fundamental to us as human beings. And you know, again, the place where we can almost biologically see this happening is in children, right? You see children sharing things, not sharing things too at some point, but sometimes they just spontaneously give you something, right? And they feel good about themselves. When does that change? Right? Somewhere around the time when, because their self-image forms very early. I believe it forms even as infants and how they're held will change someone's self-image. But it's only through peer pressure and seeing what others have that I don't have or what I want that I'm not getting that all of a sudden I don't feel as good about myself, right? And so that's a lifelong challenge for all of us. And you know, I have to be honest, I'm still learning to like myself more. And one of the things, one of the outcomes of the book, which, boy, honestly I feel it's quite disturbing when I realized it, is that you know, everything I write about in the book, I feel fairly skillful at that I can do that. I can act that way in the world genuinely and feel, but now the next step for me being kinder, liking myself more, is huge. It's a big step. It feels so far away that I wonder if in my lifetime if I'll get there. And when I talk about getting there, I don't mean as a kind of final destination that, oh, now I like myself. Because I imagine if I achieve that next big step, there'll be another one after that that's even bigger, even further away. And the way I've learned to think about it in terms of being kind, liking ourselves more, liking myself more, is that I don't spend, it's not that I finish, like now I like myself more, it's that I spend less time not liking myself. So I don't linger in the more negative aspects of myself, or I catch myself in it, but I move on, right? So instead of a whole day of beating myself up, maybe it's only an hour or 10 minutes, right? And the same thing when I'm looking at others, that I don't beat them up for a long time, that I can go, wait, they're doing the best they can too. Let me step back a little bit. I think that's a big act of kindness to be able to see someone more clearly like that. Yeah, and when you talk about liking yourself more, you know, I've listened to you in other interviews and almost everyone, when that topic of liking yourself more comes up, they kind of mention, you know, narcissism and that kind of thing. When that's not at all, I feel like what you're talking about. So when it comes to liking yourself more, talk about how that is worlds away from, you know, what we think of as a narcissist person, which is, you know, is very different. It's a kind of a psychological type thing. Yeah, of course a narcissist is quite extreme, but we can talk about someone just being self-centered, right? But if you think about it, what makes someone self-centered, right? There's a sense of lack in their life, right? It's not that they're trying to be mean to the world, it's that there's a deeper sense of dissatisfaction that hasn't been fulfilled yet. And unfortunately, I believe that that sense of dissatisfaction, most people look to resolve it outside of themselves as a post-sync. Can I do something within myself to feel better about myself, to like myself more? I'll give you an example. So it's actually one of those exercises I recommend in the book. So when I was 19, I moved out of my parents house and I realized at 19 that I wasn't good at anything. I was a complete failure. Now I was 19 and most people at 19 aren't old enough to be successful in anything. So it was almost a silly thought and I had the idea that I'm gonna see if I can teach myself to do one thing well. And I was kind of fortunate of what I chose. I chose to brush my teeth better. I wasn't good at brushing my teeth. I mean, who knew if I didn't brush my teeth? My dentist, that was it. And so I started. Now the great thing about it was when I started doing it, I had to practice it twice a day. So it wasn't something that I did once a week, once a month. It was like every day it was in my face, literally in my mouth, right? And I found that, well first of all, I did finally get good at brushing my teeth. And that sense of satisfaction was self-generated and rewarding and it was the building block, the foundation for realizing that I could be successful. If I can be successful at that, I can be successful at other things. But again, the part that I didn't expect was all the sabotage strategies, all the ways I interfered with brushing my teeth well, all the ways I would beat myself up when I didn't do it well. And that was really painful because, you know, I could have beaten myself up enough to go, oh the hell with that. I'm not even gonna brush my teeth anymore, right? And so that sense of satisfaction of accomplishing something like that, I don't think that's narcissistic or self-centered. In the same way, when a child makes a drawing, they're not doing it, well they can, it depends on the parents and how they're raised, but most kids aren't doing the drawing for the phrase that they're gonna get. They did something that they feel that it completes them more, that they're happier about themselves as a result of that. And look, this is something also we have to keep, or I have to keep my antenna out for something like that because that's an easy thing to fall into, right? To feel good about myself. So you know, like one of the things that I've become aware of, there are times where I've made pretty significant donations to places, right? And here's the thing, there was always a part of me that wanted to tell people that I did it, right? And if I'm going out of my way to tell people, then I'm praising myself, right? But if I don't tell anyone, it's just within me. I think that's a clear act of doing something like that. You know, could I read your letter I wrote? Yeah, absolutely. So when I was just about finished with the book, my friend who did all the illustrations and formatted everything for me, he said to me one day, he said, you don't have a forward in your book. And I said, I know, I have a lot of great testimonials and stuff from doctors, writers. I said, you know, I just haven't had time and I don't know who to get. And he said, what about the Dalai Lama? I cracked up. I said, are you serious? The Dalai Lama? Well, about three months later, I was talking with another friend, Dalai Lama came up and I thought, what have I got to lose? And there, his email address, his address, his phone number, everything's online. So I wrote this letter. So if you bear with me for a moment to his holiness, the Dalai Lama, I write to you with the utmost respect and admiration, with a request. If it's something you think would be of value in bringing more kindness to the world. I just published a book called Practice Intentional Acts of Kindness and Like Yourself More. Many ask me if it's about compassion and empathy. And I say, of course. I tell them it's also about concrete ways to generate more kindness towards others and ourselves, things we can do every day to create a kinder world. You are part of the final chapter, kindness and spirituality. I've included a copy of this book along with this letter. Back to my request, asking with as much courage and humility as I can muster, but the understanding that it's likely too unrealistic, too large a request, realizing that before I even ask that it's not possible for you to fulfill it as you must receive many requests like this, and also knowing that it's only in asking that there's a small chance that you could fulfill it. My book has no forward. Could you possibly write a forward for my book? I'm a little shocked at my own request. You do not know me. How do I have the nerve to ask such a thing from someone who represents so much to the world? Yet here I am humbly asking you for the benefit of others. Of course, reading the book is with the intention that it is for the benefit of others, but I'm not so naive to not acknowledge that it would also be a benefit to me. So if you even gave me a few words that I could add as a forward to this book, I would commit to giving half of all the profits from my book to any causes or charities that you think would most benefit from a financial contribution. I thank you in advance just for reading this letter. Any response at all from you would be a great gift for me, and if you were so inclined to write something, well, I really have no words to express my thanks other than if it helped even in a little way to bring more kindness in the world that would bring me joy and great satisfaction. With deep appreciation and recognition for all you do to make our world a kinder and more peaceful place, sending you light, peace, and love, Alan Questel. So I sent that with the book. I didn't hear anything. I waited some months, and the mail in India, who knows what happened to it, I waited a few months. I emailed the letter with the PDF. I didn't hear anything, and I was telling someone this story, and he said to me, this is the part I want to get to, they said to me, so have you donated the money someplace else? And I went, what? And he said, well, you were going to donate it to one of his causes. Why not donate it to another cause? And I sat there. I felt busted. And so there's a good example of me offering something to get something, right? So since then, half the profits every year I donate, and I feel like, oh, that I'm standing behind what I'm talking about, you know? So that's a good example of the courage it takes to act differently and to change our self-image in a way that we feel, oh, that resonates more as the right thing in myself, in myself, when I do that. Yeah, well, it's a very different story. It's not necessarily too late there. I had a gentleman on who talked all about, you know, his move here from Cuba during the Cuban Revolution, and it was very, very important to him. You know, Gloria Estevan's music really spoke to him, and he desperately wanted her to write a forward. He wrote the book. It took four years of kind of sending it to her, but guess what? He finally has that forward from Gloria Estevan. So potentially, you know, that you may still get that forward. So you never can't tell. I'm going to keep doing it, but just the story I told you just now, that's enough satisfaction for me, you know? Yeah, and I want to kind of go back to what you were saying a minute ago, just because I think your listeners would hear the story about, you know, brushing your teeth well and think, you know, that sounds kind of basic, that sounds kind of silly, but that resonates with me because I, and this is kind of silly too, but when you were saying it, that exact same thing about brushing your teeth. Back in for Christmas this past December, you know, I got this fancy new electric toothbrush that measures, you know, that makes sure every quadrant you brush for 30 seconds, makes sure you don't brush too hard, and once I had to do it correctly, I'm like, have I ever brushed my teeth correctly? I don't spend enough time in here. I do it too hard. I almost had an existential crisis that I don't think I've ever brushed my teeth correctly, so I was like, wow, I like when you were saying that for sure. I'll tell you something, when I got that kind of toothbrush, I kept thinking this thing must be broken because it has to be at least 30 seconds already, right? And you know, it's funny, so I've been using those toothbrushes for a long time, but the dental hygienist I go to keeps correcting me in the technique of how I use that, so it's a long thing, but it doesn't have to be brushing our teeth. Maybe it's just picking up our clothes at night or doing the dishes. It needs to be something done daily, a small thing that if it didn't get done, it's not the end of the world, right? But it's something that we can use to monitor ourselves over a long period of time, a year, maybe two years, not just a week. You're doing great, by the way. Oh, I appreciate it. I do want to go back to when we're talking about self-worth as well, and you talked earlier about how self-worth is developed at a very young age, sometimes in infancy. Actually, I'm gonna interrupt you. I said self-image. Self-image, yeah. It's a little different than self-worth. Okay, well, we can kind of talk about why those are different, too, but I've talked to people who, in the psychology world and then also people who have ran adoptions agencies and ran foster care systems, and the thing that they've talked about before, too, is there's a lot of people that take in foster children that say, you know, these kids, they came from such a poor background, they came from such a bad background, but then they come here and they have everything, and I feel like they're just so self-consumed. They think that everyone owes them something, and that's not the case at all. That goes back to exactly what you're saying. When you are young and you're not being provided very much, you have a very poor self-image. You have poor self-worth as well, and that turns into what looks like somebody being self-consumed. It turns into somebody looking like they're very selfish, and that's not the case. They just don't feel like anyone values them, so of course they have to just look at themselves. I want to talk a little bit about that, because I think there's a lot of people that look maybe self-centered that is really because of their own self-image and their poor self-image. By the way, your camera went off. I don't know if you know that. I don't know why I did that. I'll get it back. If you talk about someone who's being adopted or foster cared, I can't think of any greater rejection than a parent not wanting to keep their child. It doesn't mean that the parent did wrong, because maybe the circumstances of the parent's life was such that they really knew that they couldn't take care of this child and wanted to give this child a better life, but I don't think a child, even a young adult, has a hard time coming to terms with that and understanding that. So the feeling is that the primary person in my life who was supposed to love me and take care of me left me, gave me away, and there's no coming back from that. And of course, it's something in the past that can't change, so the only thing possible at that point, and it needs to happen at some point in the child, the adult's life, where they finally can start looking forward as opposed to looking backward. I know people who've been adopted and some of them suffer greatly. I've watched it. Even though their adopted parents are great and do everything for them, right, it still doesn't fix that broken heart inside. But then I've seen adopted children want to have children so they can give back to a child the thing that they didn't get, right? So that can turn into a really positive thing, because most of us, you know, most of our family histories, things get repeated over and over again, all the negative patterns and stuff like that, but we can break those patterns. They're habits, you know, they're not, we're not bound intrinsically in that way in our lives like that. And I think that, and then of course there are many people who weren't adopted, they live with their family, but they still have low self-worth, right? So where does that come from? So, and again, it's kind of interesting from a psychological point of view, I think that there's a great worth to understanding where we've come from, but the understanding of where we come from doesn't necessitate an understanding of who I can become now. It doesn't resolve it. You know, I spent many years of my life working with therapists, and I think I gained a great deal working with them, but sometimes I was clever enough to pick a therapist who would collude with me, right, who would just kind of keep me complaining about what happened in my life and what went wrong and what it should have been like, and there were a few really good ones who kind of smacked me on the head and said, who do you want to be now? Let's look at that. It's like, you know, when someone comes to me with a problem in a Feldenkrais session, they'll tell me what they want to work with, and many times it's some kind of pain, let's say, or something, and I'll ask them a question, I'll say, what would you like to be better at? And they say, well, I'd like to not have pain in my neck, and I said, that's good, but that's something you want to get away from. What do you want to go towards? So this is a perceptual thing, and I write about this too, that my uncle was a dentist, and when I started my practice in New York, I was very fortunate. I had a waiting list, and he used to come to me for lessons because he had back pain because he was a dentist, twisted to one side all the time, and, you know, I didn't charge him anything. He thought he was doing me a favor, but I had many people waiting. It wasn't a favor at all, and his pain would go away, and then he'd come back the next week with the pain, and this cycle happened a number of times, and finally I said to him one day, I said, you like golf, right? And he went, oh yeah. I said, what do you want to improve in your golf? And we started looking at that, and then I worked with him on how to do that, and his back pain went away. So there's a good example, because if I try to get away from something, like that skeleton, I have to know where it is all the time, so I'm always checking on it. If I think of, well, I want to take a walk, and I don't know where I'm gonna go, well, let's see what I find today. That's the unknown. That's an opening for something, right? Or a dream. Like, who do I want to become, right? So if I want to be a musician, and I'm 65 years old, and you think you can't be a musician, why not learn an instrument? That satisfies something. That's the same thing as brushing your teeth, you know. So I think that distinction between getting away from something and going towards something is part of what can help someone in those more dire circumstances, and I don't want to make it casual, you know. It's like, we're talking about a serious thing here, being adopted or something like that. You mentioned, you know, that you were talking more on self-worth or self-image. One of the two is the one that you meant, so talk about the differences there. Okay, so self-worth is a feeling that we have about ourselves, how much we value ourselves, right? And unfortunately, a lot of our self-worth is based on how others think of us. Our self-image is a little different. Our self-image is the result of all that, of our interactions in the world and how people view us, but it's the result of how I think about myself. It's not only about worth, right? It's not only am I worthy of something, it's that I'm good in this area but not good in this area. I'm good at languages but not at math, so that's something that's not measuring my worth in the same way, but it's an image of what I'm capable of doing or not capable of doing, right? And Dr. Feldenkrais had a really interesting idea about self-image, that it was comprised of four things that are continually going on, our thinking, our feeling in an emotional sense, our sensing, how we take in and process information, and our movement, our actions in the world. And he chose movement as the doorway to influence the self-image. Why? Because it's immediate. When you move differently, you know it at that moment. To change our thinking, it's possible, but sometimes I think I'm thinking differently and I'm just kidding myself. To change our feelings, that's more complex. There's thousands of books written about that, trying to understand our emotions, right? But a change in any one of these aspects potentiates the change in the other aspects. So if I want to change my self-image, at least my focus, and it was what I was talking about before, I think the most effective and probably the quickest way is through changing our actions. Doesn't mean it's easy. Doesn't mean it's comfortable, you know? But in fact, if I do that, you know, they say, when you have to pretend to be something at the beginning, like the last place you want to be is in the coffee break room of new doctors. Because they're all like, oh my god, I almost killed the guy, I can't believe it. I said, thank god, you know? But all of us feel like we're in Charlottesville at the beginning of what we do. But if we keep doing it, I can't remember, there was some great musician, really old, like in his 80s, and someone said, why do you still practice? And he said, because I think I'm finally getting good at this, you know? And I love something like that, because we're never going to arrive there, we want to keep doing it. One more question in the world of kindness, and that is, well, first, you know, through some of your answers, I had to plug in my computer, I had to fix this camera, I've written taken a few notes. Here's the question, because I know you talk a lot about kindness and listening, what's that mean? And I hope I've exuded kindness in my listening to you. You have, you definitely have. And I think that the quality of your questions demonstrate that, that shows that you were listening to me. I think one of the things about listening, and it's not so easy, is that can we listen without responding internally? Can I really just, and that's hard, I still find myself when someone's talking, I start thinking, oh, I want to tell that story, I want to tell that, or talk about that, or I want to ask another question before they're even finished, you know, as opposed to waiting. So really, to listen well, I think it takes a kind of patience, you know, and observing the other, you know. When I teach, one of the things I've learned in teaching, and I've seen this, honestly, as a fault in other teachers, other people teaching, is that they teach, but they're not listening to their audience. They're just throwing things out at people, right? Which, okay, there's a certain success in that, you know, no harm, great harm in that. But when I teach, I'm always watching to see, do I really have people's interests?"

Using a simple question to interrupt anxiety loops

Alan shares his personal tool for managing overwhelm: asking himself "Is this a good time to be thinking about this?" which reliably interrupts worry cycles, even if the relief only lasts an hour before needing to be repeated.

"Maybe it means pausing more, maybe it means checking in with them. Is this useful for you? You know, when I give supervision feedback to practitioners, or to people in that kind of context, I'm constantly, every 10 minutes or so, going, is this useful for you? Is this what you want? Right? So it's always reflecting back to the other to see if their needs are being met in some way, and so that it can be of value to them, other than just, I know a lot, and I have a lot of good ideas, and you just listen to me. That's how all of us were taught in school. You know, the teachers, most of us, the teachers really didn't care about our learning. They just taught, right? And those are different things. Yeah, no, and I think that's really important. I work in higher education, mostly in the administrative side, but I do teach a few classes, and that's the thing, you know, there's a few classes that it's mainly just student experience type classes, where it's really all their input. You know, I have a few things that I need to make sure that they get out of it, but most of it is just making sure we have that, you know, that community within the university. So, you know, I always think it's really funny when people are like, he did such a great job teaching. He taught us so much about such things. I'm like, I really didn't do much of this. You guys did most of the talking, but it's funny that when you're the one allowed to do the talking, you think I did such a great job teaching. Well, in a sense, you did, because you created the container for that to happen, right? And that's really the idea. It's like, you know, when someone comes up and praises me, I say, so that's nice. Okay, you can praise me. Good. It doesn't really make a difference for me, right? If you tell me what happened that made a difference for you, that helps me a lot more. That puts me in a place of, oh, maybe that's something I can watch for in others too. I like that. And you've mentioned, you know, the Feldenkrais method, the teaching or the teachings you've gotten from this gentleman, other than just having an interesting name that people maybe struggle to say. I want you to tell us a little bit more about what that is exactly, because I know it sounds like it's something that kind of, it sounds like a physical thing a little bit you're talking about skeletons, but also you're talking a lot about some of his teachings that are a lot more mental. So talk about that. Well, that's what I was talking about before in terms of self-image being constructed of our thinking, feeling, sensing, and moving. And that movement is like the doorway in. And Feldenkrais, what he was really interested in, well, his first book was called Body and Mature Behavior, a Study in Gravity, Anxiety, Sex, and Learning. That covers a lot right there, right? And he was interested, what does it mean to become a fuller human being? And that means not just from someone's observation about someone, but to feel internally that we're able to feel like I'm a better person because of the things we've done. And so like I said, it's done through movement, right? So there's a hands-on technique and that someone with more severe issues like a stroke or cerebral palsy or more chronic pain, they'd probably benefit more from the hands-on work because it's personalized for them."