Self-Actualization and Movement

Awareness Through Movement by Moshe Feldenkrais (pp. 38-39)

9. Hinges of Habit 

Finally, and most important of all, there is one more reason why we should choose the action-system as the point of attack for the improvement of man. All behavior, as noted before, is a complex of mobilized muscles, sensing, feeling, and thought. Each of these components of action could, in theory, be used instead, but the part played by the muscles is so large in the alternatives that if it were omitted from the patterns in the motor cortex the rest of the components of the pattern would disintegrate.
The motor cortex of the brain, where patterns activating the muscles are established, lies only a few millimeters above the brain strata dealing with association processes. All the feeling and sensing that a man has experienced were at one time linked with the association processes.
The nervous system has a fundamental characteristic: We cannot carry out an action and its opposite at the same time. At any single moment the whole system achieves a kind of general integration that the body will express at that moment. Position, sensing, feeling, thought, as well as chemical and hormonal processes, combine to form a whole that cannot be separated out into its various parts. This whole may be highly complex and complicated but it is the integrated whole of the system at that given moment.
Within every such integration we become aware of only those elements that involve the muscles and the envelope. We have already seen that the muscles play the main role in awareness. It is not possible for change to take place in the muscle system without a prior corresponding change in the motor cortex. If we can succeed in some way in bringing about a change in the motor cortex, and through this a change in the coordination of or in the patterns themselves, the basis of awareness in each elementary integration will disintegrate.
Owing to the close proximity to the motor cortex of the brain structures dealing with thought and feeling, and the tendency of the processes in brain tissue to diffuse and spread to neighboring tissues, a drastic change in the motor cortex will have parallel effects on thinking and feeling. 

If we wait until we are feeling good to start moving, we might have failed before we've even begun. It is very often through movement that we can get the ball rolling, so to speak, on the road to greater self-actualization. I've seen this happen so often - the kid with zero self-esteem who turns things around just through the confidence that comes from increased competence in one area of his life, often in the weight room, or on the practice grounds and playing field.

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