Self Reflections

I'm fascinated by the asymmetry of our faces. When I look at people in photographs or ads, I sometimes cover one half of their face, and then the other - it's extraordinary how the left side has a certain personality, attitude, feeling about it that is quite different to the right side.

I had an interesting experience at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle recently. I visited a booth where your asymmetry is revealed. First you sit in front of the mirror and line up your reflection so that a dotted line goes through your nose, hopefully down the center of your face. Well, my nose isn't straight. It curves right, and actually my head is turned slightly left, and I should also mention that my right ear is closer to my right shoulder than my left ear is to my left shoulder...However, once the dotted line ran down the approximate midline of my face, I pressed a big yellow button. My image stared back at me in a familiar way. There were 4 smaller buttons to press:

#1 showed me my mirror image. Yes, that's who I see every morning. I don't even notice the crookedness of my nose anymore.

#2 showed me as others see me. This was confusing. I look like that? It's somehow opposite to what I expected. My mirror image is what I believe to be true. Because I see me facing myself that way, it's peculiar to see myself, life size, in what looks like a mirror, but isn't. In the mirror my nose is turning right, but actually it's turning left. Oh no - it's just a different perspective! If it were truly me I was seeing facing me (which #2 indeed was), then my right side would be on MY left.

#3 put my face together so that the right side matched the left side. In other words, it made my face symmetrical to the left side. Not only was this weird in that Leftie had a narrow face, pinched nose, turned down mouth and a scary wide-eyed direct gaze, but, because I'm used to seeing my mirror image, I assumed that the side of my face which was the 'true' left, was on my left opposite me in the image. Get it? Actually, my true left was on the right from my perspective.

#4 made my face symmetrical to the right side. I looked like my KhoiKhoi ancestors: wide, high cheekbones, broad nose, mouth uplifted in a soft smile, eyes dreamy and inward looking, (need to go into the dark, cool shade - too much sun in the Kalahari desert). Actually, I wouldn't have survived looking like this. I need my left eye to see clearly, focus, direct me.

#5 put all four images next to each other on the same screen. The same person and yet so different. Four different images out of the same moment in time, when I was looking in one direction, thinking the same thought ('that dotted line is NOT straight'), and feeling the same sense of myself. It's all a question of perspective.

And how does it relate to my brain and the right and left hemispheres? Ok - that's just too complicated. But there is something profound and astounding about knowing my own mirror image so well, and yet being deceived in it.

When I think about it, I would say that the left side of my face is much more open, (not 'true'), my left eye dominant and wide ('true' according to #2). But on a subliminal level, I think my left side is on my right - because when I look at you the left side of your face is on my right. Because my head turns slightly left, that dotted line going down the 'middle' of my face is actually much closer to my left ear than my right. My midline is not equidistant from my ears. Therefore the image of me symmetrical to my left side is narrow and piercing, pinched and down-turned. But that doesn't mean it's True. It's just a perspective.

So what is true? If I were symmetrical there'd be no choice. I would be one thing or the other. Leftie would burn herself out, squeeze herself dry, be bitter and twisted, shrivel and die in a matter of months. Righteous would dream her life away, never drawn into her surroundings outside her skin. Because the space inside is so vast, she'd lose her way, wander the globe, unseeing, unresponsive, unexpressed. She'd be eaten alive in a few days.
Symmetry (perfection) is non-functional. We need asymmetry to survive - it's that fundamental. Poetry, beauty, deliciousness, sensuousness, curiosity, creativity, all overlay survival, like an inverse onion. And of course there would be other aspects to both Leftie and RIghteous. Leftie would also see clearly, have intention, be creative and receptive, imaginative and concerned. (This is me we're talking about after all). And Righteous would dream great dreams - but what use would they be without Leftie's impetus and drive? The fact is they need each other. They can't live without each other and though different from each other, they've lived so long together that they've merged and blurred their boundaries, re-shaped themselves into a whole that I call myself. They even swapped names - or is it sides? -so now I can't tell my right from my left. I can look at myself from many different perspectives, not just right and left. Think mirror balls, curved mirrors, fractals and holograms.

When you look at yourself from different perspectives, you learn about yourself in relationship to others and the environment. This is what working in the Feldenkrais Method® is about. More and more of yourself is seen, felt, and sensed, and your experience changes. Your self-image is filled out, clarified and richly colored. Your perspective changes, reality can be many different things. Your survival is less of an issue, and you have the opportunity to expand your consciousness and become fully human.

Integration, or searching for yourself

Integration is a fancy word but what does it actually mean? Primarily integration provides a sense of connection within and without; connection to self, other, the world and God. We all yearn for connection – to recapture what we once had and believe that we have lost. Integration is the jewel revealed when we peel away the layers of misunderstanding, mistreatment, misalignment, judgment, denial, tension, expectation and perspective - layers inflicted on us by parents, siblings, teachers and ourselves.


Integration means that I experience a spreading sense of harmony throughout myself. Each part of me sings its part in relationship. I am well-orchestrated. This provides me the opportunity to drop my preoccupations, obsessions and fixations. I am now able to respond from my whole self, my heart if you like, because I am not spending all my time and energy maintaining my balance, or uprightness, or holding in my outbursts, or suppressing my grief. Being integrated doesn’t mean that I will always be happy, or move like a superb athlete. It means that I become more myself, understanding what it means to be free, being in a state of listening and anticipation with the ability to respond to whatever comes my way. I am ready but not wary and watchful – except when I need to be. It is an open awareness that is comfortable and easy. My life is graceful. When there is stagnation, I recognize it and find a way to move through it. My periods of being stuck last minutes rather than years. I have more and more experiences of congruence, connection, harmony, effective thought and action. I am free to think, act, sense and feel, to express my humanity.

m'illumino (www.m-illumino.com) provides an ideal environment where you can find ease, grace, freedom, and the conditions and opportunities that naturally direct you to discover yourself. Where you can let go of the relentless holding on that is exhausting and weakening. Where you can practice the discipline needed to focus inwardly, reach for yourself, expand into yourself. Discover connections within yourself, with others and in the world. That's integration.

'You cannot transcend what you do not know. To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself.'
Sri Nisargadatta Mahahraj

Relaxing your eyes and seeing more

This morning I woke up with the remnants of a dream flitting through my mind. My waking was slow and gentle. I felt good – rested and content.

But I wanted to remember the elusive details of my dream which were flitting and fluttering away. I was aware of frowning a little and tightening my mouth. My eyes felt dry and tired, and then, the familiar tension in my shoulder started up again. I could feel myself becoming more and more anxious and on the verge of irritability. What was the matter with me? I tossed over onto my side and curled up to keep warm for the last few seconds before dragging myself out of bed. What was the dream though? It certainly hadn’t done me any good – at least trying to remember it hadn’t done me any good! I found myself clutching my hands together and clenching my teeth.

Later on when I was at my studio, I still felt out of sorts. My client has pain on her right side as if a rib is poking into her; she feels contracted on her left side and her left leg feels longer than her right. She lay on her back on the table and we began to work. I was drawn to her head and face and began to gently touch her skull and neck. As I turned her head one way and then the other I talked about the 14 bones in her skull. I began with the hyoid bone, horseshoe shaped and non-articulating, resting on the thyroid cartilage, fairly deep in her throat but accessible. I talked about her tongue resting on the hyoid. Her jaw relaxed and then I noticed that mine did too. The discomfort in my shoulder was lessening, my breathing becoming freer.

I put my hand on her forehead and began to roll her head gently. I felt her smooth skin, and bone underneath it. An image of the sphenoid bone flashed into my mind and then I could see it under my hand: the beautiful and mysterious mask-like bone that sits above the cheekbones, behind the eyes and underneath the temporal bones. Beautiful because it’s shaped like a butterfly and mysterious because of the two slits in the front where nerves and channels and sinews pass through to the brain. My attention was open; I was observing myself as much as I was observing my client. My eyes softened and I was aware of seeing forward, what I was looking at, and also all around the periphery of my eye sockets. I could also sense myself filling out the space behind me. I could feel myself in three dimensions. As I suggested to my client to imagine her eyes like deep lakes, expanding up into her eyebrows, down into her cheekbones, out to her temples and in towards her nose, I did the same. We imagined the lakes of our eyes deepening backwards to the sea bed of our skull, and then forwards, as if taking in the sky.

We completed our session. My client sat on the edge of the table. Her eyes were clear and wide and her face soft and glowing. When she stood she felt stable and evenly balanced on both her feet. There was no compression on her left side and the pain on her right had gone. She commented that she felt more alive and was looking forward to her walk around Green Lake. ‘I feel light and free,’ she said, ‘I feel I could float out of here like a bubble…or a butterfly leaving streams of light behind me.’

After she left I walked out into the courtyard. It was a murky morning, fairly cold and wet, but I noticed sprinkles of light on the plants and sparkles playing on the water in the fountain. The colors were bright and deep at the same time and the range of shades and hues seemed infinite. I couldn’t stop seeing and looking for more. I sat down on the little stone wall in the front of the plant bed. Again the image of my sphenoid bone flashed through my mind. It turned into a gorgeous butterfly hovering behind my eyes.

And then I remembered my dream. It had been a brief shimmer of a moth gliding through the midnight dark, flashes of color on its wings in the faint moonlight, and a long sinuous tail floating behind it.


Bridget Thompson is a Feldenkrais Practitioner and director of M’illumino, Movement Arts and Education which is dedicated to your learning and your transformation. http://www.m-illumino.com/