"Feldy" Sports ...
A 2024 global survey of 25,000 runners showed that 92% of runners do not enjoy running. 50% reported hating running or barely tolerating it. Only 8% reported truly loving running.
Why do the 92% that don’t love it run?
Maybe because we read somewhere that exercise is “good" for us? Or because running is an easily available exercise? Or because we feels good after we run? Or to feel and look “athletic?”
But how "good" is running for us if we're in a struggle with a part of us that hates running? How much better would it be for us if we enjoyed it?
For many years I began my regular 4 mile runs feeling dread in my stomach. On a typical run I would push my body past what felt good for most of the run, my jaw would be tight, my mind would be trying to take attention off the physical discomfort by dissociating into thoughts about future or past, regrets, worries, problems ... or focusing on how close I was the end of the run ....
There was so much internal pushback that for most of the run I would hardly notice the beauty of the day and the world around me.
The reward for running was the flush of dopamine and other neurotransmitters that came on after I stopped running, but going through all this unpleasantness just for a hit of feel-good chemicals, I began to feel a little like a drug addict.
Eventually the dissonance of how little I enjoyed running became so loud that I began to explore ways to de-condition my athletic training to "push push push." I explored ways to run that would allow me enjoy my body and the beauty of the world as I ran. With trial and error and Feldenkrais, I have gradually become a part of the 8% who truly love running.
Feldy Sports is my name for an iteration of sports that prioritizes real childlike pleasure in physical activity, and social fun, and awareness, and exploration rather than the cultural training to to fixate on measurement and comparison, or to engage repetitive, robotic, unconscious workout routines, or to associate our self-worth with how we perform, or to push, strain and numb out to the point the we injure ourselves, or to focus on performance or winning so much that we injure ourselves.
If you asked a bunch of grade school children how much they like to run, it seems likely that the adult number would be reversed, with 90% of children saying they love to run. The difference being that most grade school children haven't yet been sold the no-pain, no-gain athletic model or learned to measure and push themselves. Children exercise (play) for the feeling of pleasure in their bodies. They run when it feels good. They stop when if feels good. And that makes them want to exercise (play) more!
A recent meta-study on exercise done by Dr. James Hansen shows that it is moderate exercise -- the kind that leaves us a little breathless but still able to talk (picture kids on a playground) -- that is healthiest for our bodies, not the "no pain, no gain" model of traditional sports culture. The study showed that some high intensity exercise programs are worse for us than if we did nothing at all.
Play is fundamental to good health ... throughout life
Play is a natural biological impulse which begins at birth and helps us develop the foundational physical skills that will carry us through life. Play also helps us develop mentally, emotionally and relationally. Play develops our sense of safety and human connection and our whole "social engagement system", according to Dr. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory.
Many scientists now think that the complexity of the human brain derives primarily from the complexity of human movement, i.e. that it is the complexity of human movement that builds the complexity of neural pathways in the brain.
While other animals can walk about 15 minutes after birth, it takes the human animal a year to learn the intricacies of simply reaching, rolling over, sitting up, crawling, and finally standing and balancing on two legs, like an upside down pendulum. To walk, run, crouch, jump, spin, somersault ... from two feet is unique in the animal kingdom.
And a child learns all this foundational complexity on its own, without any external instruction. A child learns from an inborn, inner-referenced impulse to feel and explore its own body and to be in physical relationship with its caregivers and the world around it.
The innocent, open-minded, playful exploration and discovery of one's own body and the world is what makes children that quickest learners on the planet. Many or most of us get trained out of this orientation when we start school. We are trained to shut down our natural impulses for play as and sit quietly in desks and reference external sources and cultural ideas and dogmas as the primary source of our learning.
Fortunately as we gain some independence from the forces that shaped our early development, we may be able to reclaim the profound benefits of play and inner-referenced learning. The physical pleasure of play, the exploration and discovery of our own bodies and the world and human relationship, and the learning that comes with this -- can feed and enrich us throughout life.
The difference between Exercise and Play
Play precedes all cultural ideas about exercise and gives us things that mere exercise often can't -- spontenaity, surprise, innovation, quick decisions, fast running spurts, laughter ....
In true relational play, no one loses.
Play is not for domination but for mutual pleasure. The game actually ceases to be fun when there is domination, and children quickly discover how to tinker with the rules of the game until the odds are even and the outcome is unknown. That's what make it fun.
Play is social. It is a flow of interconnection and discovery.
As we are conditioned into the values of our culture and particularly sports culture, this original impulse to play tends to get trained away from pleasure, exploration and discovery and towards performance, domination, status ...
We learn to attach our value as a person to how we perform. We come to measure ourselves against others. We value domination and being "the best". We think of ourselves as "good" or "bad" at sports. We shy away from things we are "bad" at.
Feeling clumsy or unskilled - an innocent pleasure and fun challenge for improvement in early childhood - can become a badge of shame and derision when we reach school age. If our development is slow or awkward compared with others and sports is our only cultural option for play, we may give up play altogether, or resign ourselves to watching professional athletes play.
If we win approval for being "good" at sports we are often willing to injure ourselves to win, to numb and abuse our bodies and to keep winning that approval. We feel good about ourselves when our body performs "well" and bad when it doesn't. This can become unconscious programmming of inner violence.
One of the greatest needs of our time and culture is for adults to re-claim the human birthright to live in a healthy active body and in play and interconnection with others, children and/or adult.
Feldy Sports - a path back to nourishing Play
Feldy Sports offers a setting where we can return to sports as innocent play, as exploration, development, self-discovery, fun and injury free.
It is also a setting to make sports more inclusive of, and fun for, people of all physical abilities, body shapes and sizes, ages.
In Feldy Sports we internally choose what and how we want to explore physically, psychologically, emotionally ... in the context of the fun, discovery and the body's need for nourishment through movement.
If the game is kickball, my "Feldy" exploration may not be in how far I can kick the ball but in how much pleasure I can feel in my body in kicking the ball and running for the base, or the fun of kicking and throwing with my less coordinated leg or arm. Or my exploration may be to stay in touch with feeling the flow of emotions as I play ... or it may be to let myself laugh a lot ... or to the feel of breeze and sun. Or exploration into infinite other possibilities.
My explorations will be unique to me and my interests and may be different that what other players are exploring. We explore together and enjoy the fun of each others company in the context of play. Winning, performing, measuring ourselves against others -- so central to mainstream sports -- becomes just something to smile at ... just a fun part of the "pretend" of innocent, childlike playfulness.
If the game is wrestling, the Feldy exploration might likely be carried at half speed, to feel balance and counterbalance of bodies moving in play with each other, the discovery of classic wrestling moves, the pleasure of human contact and muscular resistance without any fear driven needs to dominate or win.
In Feldy sports there is a pleasure and delight and interest in everyone's development.
Boston Celtic Bill Russell, arguably the greatest defensive player in NBA history, tells of feeling disappointed when his "nemesis" from the Lakers, Wilt Chamberlain was out of the game with an injury. He loved the challenge of playing Wilt. To play against Chamberlain brought out the best in Russell.
Russell tell the story of losing a championship game to the Lakers in which every player on both teams played with the total engagement of love of the sport, and the game had risen to a level beyond anything he'd experienced before.
Beautiful plays from the other team thrilled him as much as the play by his own team. To see every player rise to an unimagined level of play filled him with joy. The competition made the game fun, but the joy of the game not primarily about winning.
In the locker room after the game his teammates were downcast, and he says he knew there was no way he could express to them the joy he was feeling. Russell was playing in the spirit of Feldy sports.
Even singular sports like running and weightlifting can become more fun and more beneficial with an orientation towards exploring a felt sense pleasure, efficiency, effortlessness, flow rather than via pushing, straining, comparing, goal fixation, the domination of "mind over matter" or a "no pain, no gain" orientation. It is the latter orientation that leads to most sports injuries.
"Useful" Sports
I also have a category of sport, or play, that I call "Useful Sports." This might be something like shoveling snow or gardening or any other physical activity that has utility in our lives.
Snow shoveling or gardening can be as pleasurable, injury free, and physically beneficial as cross-country skiing or biking. Rather than injuring ourselves and dreading the "chore," we can turn this activity into physical nourishment and fun by slowing down and changing our orientation to the activity.
Here is a 5 minute video I made called "Effortless Snow Shoveling -- a Feldenkrais approach", or "how to shovel snow without hurting your back and making yourself miserable."
Watching the video, you may be able to sense the feeling of physical vibrancy and pleasure that can come from a simple change in orientation -- from a rigid fixation on the reaching the goal (goal orientation), to bringing attention to enjoyment in the process (process orientation).
A paradigm shift
Playing in this way, we are not only nourishing our bodies physically, but making a paradigm shift out of external referencing and unconscious programming into internal referencing, choiceful awareness, pleasure, growth, health, enjoyment.
Any sport or "useful sport" can be played Feldy style. Feel free to start your own Feldy Sport activity and advertise it here!
In the summer, Kevin organizes free "Feldy" kickball games where everyone is invited to join in and recapture the feeling of childhood play ... for fun, exercise, and human connection. Also hikes.
Kevin also coaches people who feel stuck in exercise routines that have been become repetitive, boring, drudgery, offering a re-orientation and approach that increasingly makes exercise fun, something to look forward to.
If you'd like to be on the email or call list to be notified of kickball games or hikes, or if you want to organize your own "Feldy sports" events, contact Kevin. kevincassity@yahoo.com. (907) 350-1715.