“Make the impossible possible, the hard easy, and the easy elegant.” — Moshe Feldenkrais “Strength that has effort in it is not what you need; you need the strength that is the result of ease.” — Ida Rolf

Stability is also necessary to optimize the channeling of force into a target. You may have heard the phrase, “You can’t shoot a cannon out of a canoe.” If the canoe is not stabilized, the force of the cannon will be wasted on moving the canoe backward instead of the cannonball forward. The same thing happens when the joint on one end of a moving

just because you feel better after massage or acupuncture or stretching doesn’t mean that what you did corrected any damage in the tissues.

the purpose of pain is not to measure tissue damage, but to encourage protective behaviors. The need for protection depends on more than just the state of the tissues. Second, pain protects against “perceived” threat, not actual threat, and the brain’s perceptions in this regard can simply be incorrect.

If you push a heavy object such as a door, or punch a heavy bag, proper alignment of the wrist, elbow, shoulder joint, scapula, spine and hips, all the way down to the feet will ensure a clean transfer of force from the hand to the ground. The force passes through you. There are no energy leaks in the transmission which will create friction,

play presents a bit of a paradox. Why is it so effective in achieving educational outcomes, when its very nature is to ignore the outcome and focus on the process? How does it help us arrive at a destination quickly when it encourages detours? Why does play foster learning?

Stabilizer muscles need to fire before prime movers. Multisegmental movements require proper sequencing. Most movements require that muscles lengthen before shortening to take advantage of elastic recoil, the passive properties of the soft tissues, and reflexive muscle activation.

what Moshe Feldenkrais called parasitic tension — unwanted and unnecessary muscle contractions in many other areas (e.g. the shoulders, neck, or jaw). We could make similar observations about other activities we do all day long such as reaching, breathing, walking, sitting or standing. Excess tension in these activities is unlikely to cause any

With this in mind, it is interesting to consider the many stretching techniques that incorporate neurological “tricks,” such as PNF, contract/relax, post isometric relaxation, reciprocal inhibition, etc. Looking at these techniques through the lens of the central governor, we can see them as ways to convince the nervous system that the movement is