What does curiosity feel like?
Hi Everyone
The other day, I was participating in an online Feldenkrais Summer School, and the teacher Jeff Haller asked us all “What does curiosity feel like?” In an instant, his question changed the way I was experiencing myself and it’s a question I now just can’t shake off. It keeps popping into my head and body whatever I’m doing, whether that’s immersed in a Yoga practice or queuing at the supermarket checkout. It’s a question that affects how I feel physically, emotionally, and how I experience relationships with other people and with the landscape.
What I find sometimes, when I ask the question, is that my body immediately knows the answer as felt sensation, as detail, as a quality of feeling, and yet the words to describe all of this take a while to find me – and then, they’re often not quite right.
What does curiosity feel like?
Why don’t you try asking yourself the question and see what happens. Let me know if you like - send me words that describe your experience. Some that have come up in recent classes have been alert, open, calm, interested.
I also realised, as I came to write this, that it’s already interesting to ask things like, What does my spine feel like when I roll like this? Or what do I sense behind my breastbone? But the question What does curiosity feel like? introduces a whole other level of noticing, of listening inwardly & outwardly.
A recent article in The Guardian talks about proprioception - The body’s sense of where it is in space – and how important this is to cultivate for our balance, our awareness of ourselves, our coordination.
I’m interested in proprioception and know that Yoga and Feldenkrais are practices, amongst others, that help us with our self-awareness in relation to the space around us, as ways of enhancing our physical and emotional quality of life. But I reckon that asking the question What does curiosity feel like? taps into a different potential for enjoying the exquisiteness of sensorial detail, for feeling spacious, calm and connected. At the very least, tuning into sensory detail, shows us that Yoga and Feldenkrais are so much more than achievement-based forms of exercise – we can come into a fuller way of experiencing life and all it has to offer.
It’s funny with teaching Yoga - I find I have a clear idea for months, maybe years, of how I want the classes to be, and then all that can change. Sometimes, I feel it’s important, for example, to share the older philosophical underpinnings of a Yoga practice, and then other times – like how I’m feeling now – I want to come back to noticing the tiny details of sensation as a way into a deeper practice.
So, all classes and courses this Autumn will have this question about curiosity at their core. I will remind you of the question in weekly classes. And, the 6-week Courses – Yoga in the Midst of Life + Sensing the Body, Sensing the Breath in Meditation, Relaxation & Yoga Nidra, will take more time to enquire into the same question. Please see more details below and on my website.
Thanks so much to all of you for continuing to come to my classes and for reading these words!
Have a beautiful summer break.
With love
Rebecca X