A few years ago, I came across an article that I find myself thinking about often.
It’s about a young girl named Elizabeth.
She was born missing a third of her cerebellum. The part of the brain that coordinates movement, balance, timing, attention.
Without it, doctors said she’d never sit up. Never walk. Never control her body.
At best, they told her parents, “profound retardation.”
She’d need to be institutionalized.
There was no treatment. No hope.
Then she met Moshe Feldenkrais.
And something remarkable happened.
I keep coming back to this story because I see how it relates to kayaking.
To the way our bodies can learn to move with more ease. To what might be possible even when we think we’ve reached our limits.
Who Was Feldenkrais?
Before he became a healer, Moshe Feldenkrais was a physicist.
But he was also a judo master. One of Europe’s first black belts.
And that’s where his understanding of movement began.
In the 1920s, when Arabs were attacking Jewish villages in Palestine, Feldenkrais studied how to defend himself without weapons.
He noticed something interesting…
When people were attacked with a knife from above… they instinctively raised their arms to protect their faces.
It was an automatic nervous system response.
Other instructors tried to train people to override that instinct.
But Feldenkrais did something different.
He worked with it.
He designed blocks that used that fear response… and sculpted it into effective defense.
It became a template for everything he did later: work with the nervous system, not against it.
Then he injured his knee playing soccer.
Doctors said he’d never walk properly again.
So he began studying his own nervous system. His own movement. His own pain.
And he healed himself.
Meeting Elizabeth
When Feldenkrais first met Elizabeth, she was thirteen months old.
She couldn’t creep. Couldn’t crawl. Could barely lift her head.
Her entire left side was locked in spasm. Rigid. Painful.
She’d been through conventional therapy. Therapists kept trying to make her sit up, over and over. It hurt. She cried a lot.
But Feldenkrais didn’t try to force her to do what she wasn’t ready for.
Instead, he touched her ankle. So gently. And felt the knot of muscle causing her pain.
“She can’t creep because it hurts her to bend her leg,” he told her father. “If we soften that up, you’ll see she can bend her leg. And as we do this, her whole demeanor will change.”
But here’s what’s remarkable…
He didn’t massage the tense muscle.
Instead, by moving her body very slowly and gently… in a way she could actually feel — he sent signals to her brain to stop telling the muscles to contract.
A day or two later, she was creeping.
Soon after, she was crawling.
What Was Actually Happening
Elizabeth’s brain maps were undifferentiated.
Instead of hundreds of areas processing different types of movement… her left side had become one rigid block.
Through slow, gentle, aware movements, Feldenkrais helped her brain re-differentiate those areas.
He’d gently pull her head forward to lengthen her spine. His student, Anat Baniel, who was holding Elizabeth, would gently roll her pelvis.
Suddenly there was movement throughout her entire spine.
They did it again. And again. With subtle variations.
At the end of the session, when Baniel gave Elizabeth back to her father, something had changed.
Usually Elizabeth would plop down in his arms, unable to control her head.
But this time she arched her back, threw her head back, then brought herself forward. Again and again. Facing her father.
Delighted!
The movement had been wired into her brain.
“She Will Dance at Her Wedding”
Feldenkrais could see her parents were worried about her future.
He didn’t usually say much on these occasions.
“She’s a clever girl,” he said. “She will dance at her wedding.”
Today
Elizabeth is in her thirties now.
She has two graduate degrees. She runs a small business. She’s happily married.
She walks so easily that no one would ever know what doctors predicted for her.
And yes…
She danced at her wedding.
Why I Keep Thinking About This
Most of us weren’t born missing part of our brain.
But sometimes many of us move like we are.
Years of sitting. Old injuries we compensated for. Patterns we picked up just to get through the day.
And for a while, it worked.
But what about those parts we don’t move much?
They might waste away in what researchers call the “use it or lose it” brain.
The brain processing areas might lose the ability to encode fine detail.
They might become undifferentiated.
Just like Elizabeth’s were.
And when we sit in a kayak, those patterns come with us.
Instead of your spine moving like a wave — each vertebra doing its part — it might move like a rigid board. Everything locked together.
Your pelvis might not rotate freely with your torso.
Instead of fluid, coordinated movement, there’s effort.
Tension in shoulders that won’t release. Muscles working against each other. Fatigue that shows up sooner each season.
When the Water Gets Rough
A tense, undifferentiated system can’t adapt quickly.
So we muscle it. Push harder. Brace more. Grip tighter.
It works… but it’s exhausting.
A Different Possibility
What if we don’t have to keep declining as we get older?
What if we could make up for it by moving better?
Not harder. Not more.
Better.
What if, when awareness improves, the brain re-differentiates?
Muscles stop fighting each other.
Movement becomes coordinated again.
Your spine starts moving like a wave instead of a board.
Effort falls away.
And we start moving with an elegance and efficiency we thought we’d lost.
This is what I’ve been exploring… how these principles might apply to kayaking in a practical way.
So we can keep paddling with skill and endurance.
So we can keep up with our friends.
I’m working on something to make this possible.
A way to explore re-differentiating the brain maps… in a way that makes us superb kayakers.
To help us move the way our bodies were designed to… fluid, responsive, effortless.
I’m curious what you think…
Happy paddling,
Paulo