Chrish Krege Interview

 Hello everyone, and welcome to the online edition of Sensibility magazine. My name is Seth Dellinger. I'm with the Feldenkrais Guild of North America's Communications Board, and I'm delighted to be with Chrish Kresge today. Welcome, Chrish.

Thank you, Seth. Welcome to you too. For you, Yeah, I happen to know Chrish, because we're both in Washington, DC and. Chrish is a Feldenkrais practitioner as well as an Anat Baniel Neuromovement practitioner and we're going to be talking about working with kids today. But I've been lucky enough to lie on the table and get sessions with Chrish and she's a wonderful practitioner. 3 decades of experience she's taught in many countries around the world. She is also an actor and theater director. Here it is, the Coeditor of this book, the Feldenkrais method of learning through movement. And there you can sort of get a sense, of many different articles by many different practitioners about the many wonderful things that the Feldenkrais Method can do, but we want to talk about working with children and maybe you could just introduce us to how Feldenkrais Method and Anat Baniel Neuro movement can help kids?

 

Sure, sure. Yeah. I actually first started working when I was fresh out of my first training when I was living in Morocco, and I really didn't know what I was doing. But people, you know, a lot of people there have, there are some issues and you often find in some third world countries that they're a lot more for whatever reason. A lot more special needs children. And so people started bringing me their kids and somehow I muddled through and made a difference, You know, I mean now, 30 years later, I'm a different practitioner, but I think it's the fundamental principles of our work where we are, first of all, really moving slowly, getting the brains Attention. Also using the ground, you know, really relating to the ground so that any time a child especially with special needs kids, they need to learn the importance of gravity and how they can find the support through the ground reaction forces that we learn in our Feldenkrais training, you know, but. Mostly when people are working maybe with traditional physical therapy, those are the kinds of things that aren't emphasized as much. And I feel that they're very, very important. 

So, you know, there are so many different presentations of children that come to us. From cerebral palsy to developmental delays to autism, now autism is really growing, sadly. And then so many different kinds of, you know, difficulties that have all kinds of, you know, fragile X syndrome. I mean they're very, very specific difficulties in the brain. And of course, a lot of children have strokes in utero, strokes that present them to give them, you know, kind of hemiplegia. And so ultimately, you know, we're not looking at like, what is the diagnosis for this child, but the child is a human being, and we work with human beings. That's what we do as Feldenkrais practitioners. And we apply, you know, these principles regardless. And I think what's really important to emphasize for parents' perspective parents that maybe you're having some difficulties or have a child with special needs that the element of empathy, the element of connecting, and in fact Anat Baniel who's one of my teachers and is actually the founder of the ABM Neuro movement. She really emphasizes that it's a connection, not perfection and its connection and it's actually one of the chapters in her book is called. From Fixing to connecting so we don't fix a child. 

So anyway, that's probably a long answer to your first question. So but I just want to situate it in the work that the principles are very, very important and actually Anat has principles called the Nine Essentials. They're essential movements that she talks about. You can go online and look at them, they're very relevant for all of us. And there are things like slowing down, moving with awareness, moving with attention, and not being too goal-oriented. Trusting and subtlety, you know, reducing the effort in order to have that wonderful sensation of making fine distinctions. 

 

So you're talking about both qualities of movement, but also qualities of learning, right? And. when you mentioned the different, you know, diagnosis that these children may have received, but that you're focused on who is this child in front of me and how can I connect to them? But what separates them from the actual diagnosis, what are some of the actual movement challenges that some of these children face and how does Feldenkrais, help them, you know, to deal with those challenges and maybe in some cases, surmount them. 

 

Sure, sure. Yeah. No, they are fundamental challenges that in terms of just from development with a young baby, a young baby has, may have great difficulty in rolling from its back to its stomach or from its stomach back to its back of course crawling. I mean these are all you know, sequentially as you go along, you know. Two months a baby should be able to lift his head. But again, in our work, we're not looking for the milestones to be as important as maybe the pediatrician might say well you know they're, they're six months and they're still not sitting up or rolling over because we take the child where they're at so. Um, I think that. Crawling, of course, The Walking is something that parents always want their children to be able to walk. I mean, just this week I've had like two new children and the parents want the child to walk. But the child cannot walk, and it cannot learn to walk by walking. So often people will put them in the standard, and the Walker or the parents will hold them. And pull them along and actually nothing could be worse because it's they're learning the experience of difficulty. And so, in our work, we're really wanting to create conditions where the learning is pleasurable, effortless, and easy, and that the brain experiences that as something that's delicious, and wonderful. And that the child can actually, without needing to have the approval of the parent or the teacher or the therapist can feel good on their own when even when they're rolling from the back to the belly, and they lift their head. It's like a whole new world. And the parents don't even need to say bravo, but they do 

And that makes it, that they become independent and almost needy for approval. So that's one of the things that I think that Mosheim modeled very well is that you know, he wasn't like you did a great job. Maybe they did. But to actually imbue the child themselves with the feeling of, hey, I'm not so bad, I'm pretty good, you know, even if it's a small baby But of course, older kids as well, and children who have autism, and you and I worked together with it, with a young man who had autism, and it's very, very challenging. But at the same time when you distill it into making fine distinctions and having the person really feel what they're doing in real time, so. Often not Encourage a lot of toys to be in the room. You know, it's nice to distract the child, but at the same time, it's a distraction from the brain. You know, I have lots of toys and books here, but I actually rarely use them because I want this baby, this child, to be fully present in what they're doing, curious, and remaining connected to themselves. And to me, of course, and to the parent. 

So it sounds like, in addition to the movements that you're practicing, you're really conscious about. Your relationship to the child and almost standing in to create a potential new pattern of socialization from what they've experienced as a child with various challenges and the other experiences they may have had with, you know, traditional medicine and whatnot. Yeah, no, beautifully put. That's exactly right. I think it's. I think maybe it's not articulated enough in our training that this whole connection thing is vital, vital no matter whether we're working with a child or an adult. But to really connect on the level where the person is seen and there are many stories of people that felt that they were seen by. Doctor Feldenkrais, that they felt for the first time in their life, they were seen. And it was that sense of I get you, I get you. I'm here for you. I get you. I know I don't need to help you. You don't need to need me. But we're connecting. And I see you, in your beauty, you know, in your full potential. 

 

Yeah. When you were talking about UH. The emotional reaction sometimes from the parents around what the kid is doing I actually remember that Feldenkrais in his book The Potent Self writes about this and how you know it can set up this situation where So it's like we learn movements in our development as children but. We also learn associations with them. And. At the same time, what's really interesting, and I know you work with adults as well, is, is that often in the Feldenkrais method, adults are being asked to do developmental movements to improve their experience in their bodies as adults. Can you talk a little bit about the connection? 

 

It's one of my favorite things to do, actually, just. Today, as a matter of fact, I taught a lesson this morning to my students, and kind of knowing what I was doing, I was doing this interview this afternoon. I thought, well, I'm just going to go through the gentle little cycle of developmental movements, you know, from rolling onto the belly and, you know, obviously super acceleration from like two months to almost a year. But what was so fascinating almost to a person, everybody in the class cup, Oh my gosh, I feel so different. I'm standing so differently. But all we did was roll around and I often do a wall scan where they're standing against the wall to see how they are in the vertical. You know, it's in my vitality class And they're like, oh. How come all this folding and rolling we did and yet I'm standing straighter. So, it's beautiful to work with adults in developmental movements And on that on that note I really want to make sure that I emphasize the importance of the parent being involved in the work and if possible, taking lessons, getting lessons. Many of the parents of special needs children end up taking the training. So for example in my Anat Baniel Method Neuro movement training, which I did twice for children and probably 1/3 at least a third if not half of the people in the room learning were the parents of special needs children. And often would go on to actually teach it as well. But this was just to help support their child. But they themselves. We all made such huge, incredible leaps in our thinking, our creativity, our capacity to imagine, to move, and to again have this sense of self. You know this. The self-image. How through movement the self-image can be built? Enhanced and that feeling of, like I said earlier, you know what, I'm pretty good. It's a great feeling, 

 

Yeah. So when you have a new client who's a child, obviously you're going to meet their parents as well. Can you describe a little bit of that whole dynamic? Just talking about it. 

 

Yes, often, it often goes really, really rough in the beginning because they have this idea they've been doing PT, pediatric PT, and they think I'm just going to fix their kid. And often they'll come and they'll just put the child on the table and sit back and you know, try to take out their iPhone. And I'm like, no, you guys have to be involved, you know, this is. They're less of as much as your child's lesson, and it takes a while because they haven't really felt those feelings in their own bodies and so they can't even imagine. Often, even in the very first lesson, I'll get the parent to lie on their back and just roll around a little bit and they're actually exhausted after it. You know, a baby, after doing a little rolling around and trying to get to the next stage, is exhausted. And they understand what their child, who can't even do that in many cases, is going through. 

So, then they develop a different kind of empathy, which is not a feeling sorry for, but just a kind of. Wow. Yeah, I see you, you know? 

So anyway, I do encourage the parents to be involved on that level of really participating. Many of them resist it. And then when they do, they're like, oh, right, I get it. It's really important. Yes. So uh, yeah. Let me just say the other thing that is really important, is to persuade the parents that there is a big difference between traditional pediatrics and other kinds of physical, and physical therapy and what we do in Feldenkrais and ABM and NM because. There's no repetition. We don't do repetition. We don't do ten of these and five of these because the moment you do that, your mind goes into an automatic state. You just kind of distance you're counting, you're wishing it was over, you're not really enjoying it very much. And I'm sort of exaggerating a little bit in terms of PT because it's evolved a lot. But in our lessons, in our lessons with children working the way we work, we don't even know what we're going to do. We're not going to, like, go there. I think I'll do this particular lesson with this particular child. No, because we want to see what's on our table, what's on our floor, and go from there. And that's a bit of a shock for parents. The other thing is that we tend to encourage a lot of lessons in a cluster, a cluster of 5, 6, 7, and 8 lessons, and then take a break for the brain to integrate the work. And that is beautiful. It's a beautiful way to work. So now that I've. 

 

It's great. Glad I didn't jump in too soon. So, you know, it's possible someone watching this video might not be so familiar with the Feldenkrais method, and I think you've begun to paint that picture. But maybe they've got curious because the method is known for how it can help children. And maybe, you know, they have a young child and they're just observing their child and they have some questions because, in the early going, we don't always know what's going on with kids. They're not obviously articulating their experience to us the way we do as adults. 

So what would you say to a parent of a young child who might have some questions of, you know, like as you mentioned it's, are they meeting the developmental milestones or what? What are some of the things to just sort of look out for even if you're not a trained, you know, movement practitioner but your parent with your child? 

 

So you know, one of the things that's almost universal really is eye contact. If your child is not making eye contact with you and really being able to hold your gaze without the eyes moving in different directions because the eyes are organized, the eyes say so much about who we are and what we are on our own. Organization. So I think that is definitely a sign, you know, I could even say a warning sign possibly, I think also for a small baby. Needless to say, their pediatricians are probably all always. Frequently we'll say you know they haven't met their milestones, but to also trust your own instinct, you know that the parent actually. They don't trust their own instinct. They listen to the pediatricians and they're wonderful. Of course, they need to listen to them. But at the same time they need to take on their own curiosity, their own instincts and their capacity to observe their child and to really witness. Actually. And that will often lead them into knowing what's the right thing to do. Not always, but often. Um, a baby needs to be able to roll over, you know, onto his belly at some point. That doesn't mean you put a baby into its belly and hope for the best. On the contrary, tummy time is something that we don't encourage mostly. I don't know any practitioner of this work who says, oh, put the baby on the tummy and they'll learn to lift their head. Mainly they just smash their faces into theirs. Into this pillow. So I would say absolutely not. But. It's definitely an issue if a baby can't roll over, either from the tummy back to its back or from the back to its tummy lifting the head. Very important. You have to be able to lift your head to look around and see where you are in the environment. And maybe to be aware, I think a lot of new parents do this. They think that the baby needs to be on a soft surface, like a soft bed, and a soft below because the baby's so delicate. Babies are not delicate. They're incredibly resilient, and the firmer the support you give them, the more they can learn, and the more they can find skeletal support. And not have to rely on tensing their muscles, which is what happens in cerebral palsy and some other issues. So. I think that the parents need to kind of take ownership a little bit and really trust their gut because usually, they're right. You know, I've heard this time and time again parents come, they think, I think there's something, you know, I think something going on and indeed they're absolutely right. So, but eye contact is a big one. And when they start improving, one of the signs that things are getting better is eye contact. It's like, oh, wow, you may. And then to acknowledge that, not to say bravo, but just like I see that you're looking at me. Wow, this feels so good. You know, because it's. It's like a gift, right? 

Right. And you mentioned this earlier, but I know when my daughter was young, I had this idea that would come up like, oh, how is my daughter going to do this, that, and the other thing before another kid. Like there is I think, something in our culture that. You know, we get excited, We want to be proud of our kids or something. But there's an there's a danger is what I'm hearing from you in trying to accelerate things. There really is. There really is. It's, it's probably one of the most difficult things to persuade parents and even our students, you know, they always want to go a lot faster. But the parents and kids that have difficulties are in a sense already stigmatized a little bit. You know, your child is special. It's different. And so they're even more eager to get their kids, but even typical kids get pushed too much. First, children almost always are really encouraged to sit too soon. Or they put the baby in sitting, hoping that the baby will learn to sit. No, the baby has to learn to go from its back to rolling to the side to coming up to side sitting. And boom. Suddenly something great happened. But if they're just put into sitting, and I mean thousands of parents do this, they put their child in the high chair and they expect this is how this is where they're sitting. It's not true. They really need to learn the heart, remove Human beings, and develop, as you know. As we know, they develop in the slowest way, even slower than any other mammal. We take a year to reach maturation to even be able to stand and walk. And then all the rest of it, I mean really a fully, fully developed human being is really not till maybe there are 2021, you know? So it's a long process, but that's why we are learners. We can learn and we can improve at any age and any stage. I'm not excited. I mean it's at any stage a human being can still improve. It's not like a dog being able to still learn tricks. It's really the capacity to learn, to make distinctions. To learn how also to not be inhibited you know to inhibition is something that we have to learn also. You know getting this with special needs kids a lot, you know even with cerebral palsy that the inhibition is inhibiting that spasticity. It's very, very important and difficult to achieve. Yeah. So you've worked with a lot of kids I know. And just to sort of give a little more of a sense of some of the different themes we've been talking about, I wonder if you could share with us just a story or two about it. Maybe some of the kids that you've enjoyed working with. I know you've mentioned a couple times working with kids with cerebral palsy. 

Yeah, example there and I really it's, I mean I enjoy working with all the kids, you know, even when it's really hard. I really do enjoy my work a lot and I think that that's important. But I. One particular boy that comes to mind that's he's actually almost famous. He's a Turkish boy, he's the son of one of my colleagues at ABM and I started working with him after. A few months, maybe a couple of years after he was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and basically diagnosed. Saying that your son is never going to thrive. He's never going to walk, he's never going to talk, and he's his brain is a little more than a vegetable. These were the words that the mother had to hear. Wouldn't happen nowadays, and probably wouldn't happen in North America. But it did happen. And this boy has had many lessons from many, many different practitioners. And he is now walking, talking. He wants to be a politician. He's the most probably one of the more intelligent children I've ever met in my life. And at times it was a struggle to work with him because, you know, the spasticity was very, very strong. But slowly, many lessons, much patience, and love from his mother and his father. But. He's made it. And he's now really thriving and he's like for me, you know, just a perfect story of literally going from a dire diagnosis to being a fully-fledged, capable, competent human being. It takes time, but it's possible, you know, 

 

So, when you're working with a kid like that. And also the parents have sort of been primed to have such low expectations, it sounds like. You just going to have to change the context I imagined completely from what they normally do and like what you mentioned before about slowing things down and just working also I imagine that even though people might be imagining some sort of therapy or movement like it's you're working with the kids so that it's. Playful also is that. 

 

Absolutely playful. Yeah, and encouraging even the parents to not be in kind of therapy mode, But playful also, So getting on the floor, rolling around, I mean, all these things that parents can do with their kids. There couldn't be anything better, really, and that's hard to encourage adults to become playful again. But that's where actually Anat’s 9 Essentials are wonderful. They're just like a little list of all the things that people need to pay attention to and often will ask the parents to work on. Just one essential per week. How about this week? Just work on slowing down. Or how about we work on using the imagination right? Again, like Einstein said, when someone uses his amount, their imagination, their work, their brain is working at its highest possible capacity. Imagining and dreaming and all of these things are part of what we're really used to. So wait, did I answer your question? 

 

Yeah, Yeah. I was just trying to get a sense of, you know, how play comes in and curiosity. Yeah. Imagination. That's beautiful. And. And I was asking you about some of the kids you worked with. You mentioned a young Turkish boy. I know you mentioned to me that sometimes kids have different kinds of attention deficits. Kind of situations 

Yea, is that it's more and more frequent in a funny way. I kind of have to say sometimes it's TV and iPhone and iPad that does. I think it makes it harder for the kids, but umm, I've had actually a lot of success working with children with ADHD. Attention deficit disorder and it's of course about slowing down, but it's also meeting them where they are and sometimes they can only be super intense. So instead of trying to correct them and say, you know, you got to go slow all the time, you could also use amplification to kind of match them where they are. And so that they could start making these fine distinctions. We have a law Weber Fechner law, which is, you know, for example, the idea that if you're in bright sunshine and you turn on a flashlight, you won't be able to detect that difference. So these children have a lot of noise in their brain and we need to reduce the noise. By slowing down. But sometimes in order to slow down, we need them to know that they're going fast, that they're actually whatever they do, they shout a lot. They move around too fast. They oh, some of them are just incredible. I mean, it's exhausting to be with them, but the minute they notice that they are, Um, doing something that you're mimicking them and they're you're asking them to do a little bit less, a little bit more. They've made that tiny distinction. They've made that difference. And that's the difference that makes the difference is when they can tell, oh, there's this and there's this, you know? And that's. Hard for the practitioner, but that's kind of the way to work. That's very, very effective. 

And also getting the buy-in of the parents that they have to kind of trust the trust, the process that's maybe the hardest thing of all. 

 

I was imagining just now that, your theater background probably comes in handy sometimes when you're. 

 

Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it probably does. Being able to, you know, amplify and modify and yeah, play. But yeah, 

 

yeah, this has been wonderful just to learn. More about what you do and how you know Feldenkrais and Anat Baniel Neuromovement. How these wonderful processes can help kids and. I don't know if there are just any final words you might want to share, especially with any parents who you know are just learning about these possibilities before we would say absolutely, you know, really look into Feldenkrais. Look into an Anat Baniel neuro movement. Umm. And. You know you can't go wrong. Even if you just try it and you feel like it's not for me, you're still going to learn something. You're still going to improve yourself and your child. It's very potent. It's staggeringly potent. Many, many physical therapists are now doing the training because they've learned that that's helping them as well. So they can combine physical therapy. And of course, that means that they can also use insurance. So that's a lot. That's a big problem for many, many parents if they don't want to. You know pay the private fees that we have to charge because we're not we don't take insurance. So that's something to note it's important but all the more reason to just really. Scout around and find somebody that you connect with and the possibilities are just limitless, really. And I want to thank you for your lovely questions. And it's so nice being interviewed by someone who actually knows what I'm talking about, because, you know, I've been interviewed before and I like, have to explain the whole method from scratch. Very nice. Yeah. Well, it's wonderful. It's wonderful to do the interview with you. I can't help but think about it. There's even been a couple of vacations where you've worked with my daughter who is now a teenager and she's not dealing with questions that we've dealt with here. But she sure is a kid growing up and she's received wonderful support from you on many occasions. So anyway. A pleasure to be with you today. 

 

OK, Seth, thanks a lot. Thanks so much.