A story from Frank

         An anthropoligist from Mars comes to Earth and his final exam was to recreate the entire animal from a fragment of a bone.  S/he could determine the animal's diet, habitat, size, and social behaviour.  Upon examining the human skeleton s/he could conclude that this animal was extremely vulnerable.  This animal walked upright and had it's viscera exposed while other animals were on all fours covering up their vital organs.

However, this animal is invincible as a pack, a group.  They are

social.  With their arms held out in front of them with their fingers at a close distance, they had enough room to embrace another human being.  They are highly expressive and communicative creatures.  



I struggled to find meaning in my work as a dancer and as an artist, and the word expression had become so tired and cliché.  The discussion of "function" is abundant in a Feldenkrais training.  Swallowing, coughing, sneezing, vomiting, rolling, are all functions because these actions could be a matter of life or death.  However, I have realized that expression is so much a part of being human, of being animal, and it has played a major role in our survival as a species.


We may think that expression is an ability reserved for artists, yet we all are expressing and communicating every day.  It is a function since we "speak" so much with the way we move, drawing people towards us or keeping them away from us.  We can understand someone's thoughts and feelings from their body language and we determine our interactions with them from those subliminal cues. 


We speak through our organization.  We are a piece of living art, and we compose and reshape ourselves consciously, or subconsciously, which conveys something. What messages are you giving off when you approach people or sit alone in a place with other people?  How do you compose yourself?   


What is your expressive potential?  


*Frank Wildman was my Educational Director of my training program





Paul Pui Wo Lee 

Certified Feldenkrais® teacher

Movement/self-use consultant

   -based in Malmö, Sweden


paulpwlee@gmail.com | +46 707647376