BACK INTO ACTION: The story behind the e-book

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BACK INTO ACTION: The story behind the e-book

By Larry Goldfarb, CFT, Ph.D.

I wasn’t exactly in a prize mood. My friend Joah had gone home to visit his family for Christmas a few weeks earlier, and he never returned. He developed pneumonia when he was back in Texas; he was dead in ten days. I ran away to Santa Cruz, to walk on the beach and to visit Bruce, to let him know how glad I was that he was alive.

Bruce had survived a crash off a 300-foot cliff on Route 1 south of Big Sur in Northern California; he had been thrown out of his car at 175 feet. The impact crushed one vertebra, bruised a few ribs, broke his leg, injured his knee, and conferred assorted bumps and scrapes. That was months before.

Now he is lying in his bed recovering from spinal surgery while I’m giving him a gentle hands-on Feldenkrais^® lesson. Bruce is wondering whether to have an operation to remove the Harrington rods that were inserted in his back to keep it rigid while the surgical fusion took hold. These rods are attached internally to his spine.

He says, “I’m not excited about having another operation; on the other hand, I don’t like the idea of carrying two metals rods in my back the rest of my life.”

“What’s the doctor’s advice?” I ask.

“He says the rods will provide extra stability.”

“Is the fusion taking?”

“Yes.”

“Well, a fusion is very strong. Once it’s successful, I don’t think you'll need the rods for stability any longer. They’ll only keep you rigid and interfere with the flexibility you have in adjacent regions. You’ll need to move in those places to make up for the motion you lost at the site of the fusion.”

When I finish the lesson, Bruce sighs and says he feels more flexible than he has in a long time. He rolls onto his back to slowly explore the increased mobility in his back. I look at his desk and see what looks like a page from a comic book. It doesn’t look like a comic you’d buy in the store, though—it’s printed on computer paper. I reach over and pick up the page. It is a comic of two skeletons.

“Bruce, these skeletons are darn good. I didn’t know you could see into the body so well.”

“Well, my parents are X-ray technicians. I’ve seen X-rays of people ever since I was a kid. I remember going to work with them and listening to the sound of the old machine whirring like one of those big devices in Frankenstein’s laboratory. That training was a lot more helpful than any class in anatomical drawing.”

“Hey, would you want to help me out with a project?”

“Are you kidding? I’d love something to do. I’ve been drawing these comics to keep from going crazy. You know, recuperation is pretty unexciting. What do you have in mind?”

“I’ve been working on a new course for physical therapists based on the classes I teach back-pain patients at the clinic. It would be helpful to have some handouts for the workshop participants. I don’t want them taking notes during the movement lessons, because that interrupts the flow of their experience and inhibits their own learning process. And it’s so hard to remember the lessons, especially if they’ve never done Feldenkrais before. So, I’ve been thinking about having some kind of summary for each lesson.”

“And you thought illustrations might help.”

“Exactly.”

“What kind of drawings do you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Why not use photographs or sketches done from photographs? What about that?”

“I don’t want photographs or drawings of actual people. I wouldn’t want patients to look at the pictures and think they couldn’t do the movement because the person demonstrated is younger or skinnier or more athletic or something.”

We are both silent for a few moments.

“In his book Awareness Through Movement, Moshe Feldenkrais used one of those articulated wooden artist’s models to illustrate movement sequences. The problem was the figure didn’t always give a clear idea of the movements. I remember when I first tried the movement lessons on my own many years ago. I was so frustrated I threw the book across the room and put a hole in the wall!”

“How about a more abstract figure?”

“Well, when I teach in the clinic, I sometimes make these rough drawings to help illustrate the movements. They’re pretty simple sketches of a little character with a rectangle for a body and a circle for a head. It kind of looks like this”:

flexi1

“When I want to illustrate it arching its back, I draw this”:

flexi2

“When I want to illustrate turning, I draw this”:

flexi3

“What do you think of Flexi?”

“Flexi?”

“Yeah, its name is Flexi—short for flexible.”

“I think we could improve on him a bit. Your drawings get the meaning across. I just think that Flexi can improve graphically. For instance, I think it would help to see the movement if he were three-dimension, like this”:

flexi4

“That’s great. Flexi looks much better as a 3D creature, more human and easier to relate to.”

Thus began the collaboration from which this e-book evolved. I would get on the floor and Bruce would prop himself up where he could watch me move. I would demonstrate each segment of a lesson and Bruce would have me repeat each movement slowly as he sketched it on a pad. He asked me to show him the same movement from various angles so that he made sure he was portraying it correctly and clearly. We discussed what was important to highlight in each drawing, and I pointed out any problems I saw.

As we proceeded methodically through each lesson, the book began to take form. I wrote out the manuscript and, while Bruce was drawing each lesson, I refined the text. We would go back and forth working, making the lessons clearer, and easier, to understand. I would make suggestions about improving on the illustrations and Bruce would comment on the text. It soon became obvious that my estimate of a few drawings for each lesson was inadequate.

Eventually, we were satisfied with the artwork and the wording. Bruce refined the final sketches on the computer, combined the descriptions with the illustrations, and laid out the first version of the handbook. We revised the handbook three times before beginning work on this final version. The process of writing and editing, drawing and refining would end up taking six years. Along the way, the handbook evolved from a patchwork of text, sketches, and hand-drawn images to the form you see here.

The original impetus for the BACK INTO ACTION workshop came from a suggestion from Gregg Johnson, RPT that I teach a Feldenkrais Method^®course for physical and occupational therapists. He thought that my experience working in clinical rehabilitation combined with my scientific training and educational background were excellent preparation for teaching. Ideas slowly took form over the next few months and I decided to put together a workshop based on the series of Feldenkrais lessons that I had constructed for the chronic back-pain patients.

Over the past twenty five years, I have taught these lessons to hundreds of people: patients with back pain, both physical and occupational therapists, and members of the general public. I am grateful to each of the students who generously contributed suggestions and observations. Thanks to the encouragement of the participants from these and other courses, I also created a set of professionally recorded and edited audio tapes of the BACK INTO ACTION program. To keep up with the latest technology, this book, along with the BACK INTO ACTION recordings have now been digitized and are available as both MP3 and PDF downloads, as well as in a physical CD set.

BACK INTO ACTION is available for purchase in the following formats:

The BACK INTO ACTION e-book is available here.

The full BACK INTO ACTION Series of Feldenkrais lessons: MP3 Downloads are available here.

The full BACK INTO ACTION CD Set is also available for purchase at CD Baby by clicking here.