For many years—decades, actually, ever since I hurt my back and arms about 25 years ago—I’ve done a series of exercises before I go to sleep.

Perhaps “exercises” is too strong a word, because they’re not strenuous. They’re more like yoga—mild stretches of various kinds, plus some crunches. Some of them involve a series of head positions I perform lying down, designed to stretch the neck but also to just relax the head and neck.

I’ve noticed two things I find odd about this practice of mine. On the occasions when I skip the exercises, I’m more inclined to wake up in the morning with—of all things—a slightly upset GI system (you can fill in the details yourself). One might think this has something to do with the absence of the crunches, since those involve that area of the body. But that brings us to the second thing I’ve noticed, which is that invariably when I come to the head/neck position part of the exercises, I feel my entire GI tract relaxing, and any discomfort I might have felt (from eating too much at dinner, for example, or eating foods that ordinarily cause me problems in that arena) is almost immediately relieved or eased.

It’s not my imagination, either. Nor is it some sort of expectation, because it’s counter-intuitive, and I was very surprised when I first noticed it happening. But it’s been very consistent. The phenomenon has led me to some new-agey conclusions about holistic approaches to health. And it makes a certain amount of sense, because nothing in the body exists in isolation.

When I hurt my back and my arms (see this), I was a relatively young woman and had been used to being very active. Not only was I in wretched pain for many many years, but the pain naturally changed the way I walked, sat, and stood, and even the way I slept (maybe especially the way I slept; some day I’ll write about that). For at least a decade I spent an enormous amount of money, time, and effort chasing around the country after either a cure or at least an improvement, and 95% of what I did was futile or even made things worse. I used to joke that I was single-handedly (although both arms were affected) supporting both medicine and alternative medicine—to the tune of many many thousands of dollars, because I’d tried so many things; well over a hundred.

One of those things was the Feldenkrais approach. I went to some practitioner for about eight or so sessions, and it didn’t really seem to do anything for me except that I liked the head/neck exercises, which I incorporated into my routine. Those are the ones I do to this day.

It occurred to me just now that there must be some demonstrations of these exercises on YouTube, but I couldn’t find them, even though there are a lot of Feldenkrais videos there. The exercises I do are so simple—just a way to turn the head slowly from side to side—that I suppose perhaps the people who make the videos don’t even feel the need to show them. But for me, they’ve been great.

One unique part of the exercises I do is that you are supposed to use your eyes in a certain way when you perform them. That was novel when I first heard it, and I thought it might be sort of stupid and worthless, but I’ve come to think that’s one of the most important aspects of these movements. In the first set of exercises, your eyes work against the head motion: that is, you look in the opposite direction of the way your head is turning. In the second set, you look in the direction your head is moving—in fact, the eye movement leads the head movement rather than following it. It sounds both simple and meaningless, but I’ve become convinced that it enables you to have more freedom in your eyes and head and neck rather than to use your eyes and head and neck in a more rigid way, everything marching in lockstep together.

What this has to do with digestion I can’t quite imagine. But it really seems to affect it and improve it.

[NOTE: Here’s an article about Feldenkrais’ use of eye movements in his exercises:

As [Feldenkrais] explained it, “The head habitually moves with the eyes”¦because the eyes and the ears necessitate the movement of the head in order to direct themselves to the source of information… The movement of the head will come by itself if you stop holding the breath”“”“that means if you do nothing, just let yourself be as you are. And with the movement of the eyes, the neck muscles will change, involving the rest of yourself.” When Feldenkrais had us move our eyes in different configurations in relation to the head, we became better able to move everything else.

What is so powerful about the Awareness Through Movement lessons he developed around eye movements is that we are led to consciously connect them with movements in all other parts of ourselves. This makes possible much greater improvement in our difficulties”“”“improvement that lasts and lasts.

Here is a way we might understand how the Feldenkrais® work with the eyes can be so powerfully helpful throughout our whole self. Think of it as learning a conscious, intentional shift in how we focus our attention. Ordinarily, in connection with our eyes, our attention is focused on what we are seeing”“”“ on something external to ourselves. In Awareness Through Movement lessons we may be asked to look at a point on the ceiling, or look slowly around in a circle, all the time noticing what we have to do with our neck or legs in order to do that smoothly. This is a focus of attention that none of us would normally ever think of doing spontaneously. Our human nature is such that we need someone to guide and lead us into such awareness. With this kind of instruction we have great potential to change and integrate how we organize ourselves for whatever we choose to do.

This may sound like gobbledygook to you. It sort of sounds like gobbledygook to me, too. But experience has told me there is definitely something to it.

Hey, shouldn’t I plug something on Amazon now, so I at least get something out of this deal? I’ve not read any of these books on Feldenkrais method, and maybe I should. Take a look; this one seems to be most popular; it’s by Feldenkrais himself.]