The Elusive Obvious: The Convergence of Movement, Neuroplasticity, and Health

by Moshé Feldenkrais

This raises a problem for us because most people think that the more we do something, the more we know about it. The Elusive Obvious suggests that we can easily come to understand least what we do most—if we do it without awareness.

There is no intention to correct you. Your trouble and mine is that we are trying to behave correctly, as one should, at the cost of quenching, with our own consent, our individuality. In the end we do not know what we want, to the point of believing that what we are doing is what we really want to do; moreover the annoying status quo becomes more attractive to us than what we believe or say that we want. An obvious solution is to preoccupy ourselves not with what we do but how we do it. The “how” is the hallmark of our individuality; it is an inquiry into the process of acting. If we look at how we do things, we might find an alternative way of doing them, i.e., have some free choice. For, if we have no alternative, we have no choice at all.