Transcription of Jane Burdick for the show Equinox #27
Dr. Lisa: On today’s Maine Magazine Minutes, we have a very special guest, Jane Burdick who will be introduced by our co-host and Maine Magazine Minutes host, Genevieve Morgan.
Genevieve: Thanks, Lisa. Good morning, Jane.
Jane Burdick: Good morning.
Genevieve: I’m so happy to have you in the studio today. I know that Lisa is a Qi-Gong teacher, but you do something very interesting. You’re a Feldenkrais practitioner and you’ve been doing it for more than 15 years in the Portland area. Can you describe what Feldenkrais is?
Jane Burdick: Feldenkrais is a little hard to explain because it’s experiential, but basically, it’s the manual that you’ve always wanted for your body. And I don’t like to say it’s Movement 101, but it teaches you the movements that are underneath everything we do so that if reaching and sitting and standing and lying, we all have habits that we don’t know we have.
And they get in our way and overtime, we can have illness and accidents and then we organize around those. So, Feldenkrais is really uncovering our original patterning, I would say.
Genevieve: It’s a very gentle practice.
Jane Burdick: Yes. It’s a very gentle practice and it has a vocabulary of over a thousand movement patterns. So, and everything that is troubling you can be addressed through Feldenkrais. Everything physical that and maybe even mental too.
Genevieve: How did you come to practice Feldenkrais and then become a teacher of it?
Jane Burdick: I came by it very honestly through 20 years back pain and I was a potter for 20 years when I lived in Rockport. And for all those 20 years, I suffered with back pain just thinking that was the inevitable thing. And I didn’t know really and I was very athletic and guarded and this and that.
So, one Feldenkrais lesson at the Camden-Y, with then the only practicing Feldenkrais person in Maine, Maryland Hardy. And I got up off the floor and I had no pain. And I thought what is this? What’s going on here? So, I studied with her quite a bit here in Portland and then took a training, a 4-year training.
Genevieve: Tell me, Feldenkrais, what is it look like when somebody is doing Feldenkrais practice? I’m not sure what you would call it. Describe this a little bit more for me.
Jane Burdick: Well, there are two ways of working in Feldenkrais and one of them is called awareness through movement and that is verbally directed movement sequences that would take probably a half hour or 45 minutes in which you would dismantle movement.
So, that it’s unrecognizable. Let’s say you want to work on reaching, but you don’t even know that that’s what you’re doing because you’re doing in at least tiny little pieces.
And then at the end of the awareness through movement Lesson, you put it all back together again. And you’re reaching and using your ribs and using your spine in a very different way. So, it’s very slow, verbally directed, but the other aspect is called functional integration.
And that is where you would come to me, you would lie on my table fully clothed and I would move you in those similar ways. So, you’re completely off the hook. You are just hopefully enjoying and giving me the feedback if anything hurts you. Anything, anything, anything. Then we back up. So, we don’t work through pain at all. We work on this side of pain.
Genevieve: Jane, I did a workshop with you and one of my favorite exercises had to do with finding… It was a partner exercise where you worked on another person, but you found your own comfort first.
You put your own comfort first and people made the analogy of when the oxygen mask comes down in the airplane that you put your own oxygen mask on. I’m wondering as we move into spring, how people… their listening can use that analogy to find more ease and comfort coming out of winter. How can you speak to that?
Jane Burdick: Well, I think it’s really essential. I mean especially that in some way, we’re all caregivers. I mean whether it’s ourselves or aging parents or children or whatever it is, we’re all caregivers. And we’ll all come to some kind of difficulty with ourselves if we don’t nourish ourselves first.
So, it really is about self-nourishment. It really is about moving slower in the world. Moshe Feldenkrais, said something so interesting. Once he said, “You can go very fast without hurrying.” And so, hurrying is an internal job.
So, we’re just always thinking of the next thing and we have a lot of encouragement from our culture to go fast, fast, fast, faster. It’s better more. More is better. In the case of Feldenkrais, less is much much better because in Feldenkrais lesson at least, you can absorb and sense much more if you’re going slowly.
Genevieve: You have some personal experience, recent personal experience with this.
Jane Burdick: I definitely do. I moved three years ago. And I was just getting things done in one place and painting in the other and then I took off with friends for Nova Scotia and did the driving. I was invincible in that moment. Just all this energy and then I crashed and I stopped sleeping was the thing.
So, that hurry-up mode, that do-everything mode really got into my sleep even. And then overtime, that lack of sleep really, I quite got sick. So, I’m just coming up out of that now as we head into spring and I’m so delighted to feel the sap rising.
That’s what it feels like really and to feel some real energy and to remember the things that I’ve learned over the years that I’ve been doing Feldenkrais to really do them with more application for myself.
Genevieve: You were trained in Feldenkrais and you learned that it was important not to always have your energy be outgoing, you learned to be more mindful, you learned that you couldn’t always be a caregiver. And yet, you somehow reverted back to an old pattern in your life perhaps.
Jane Burdick: Exactly.
Genevieve: And got you back to a place where you needed to remember these lessons
Jane Burdick: I think remember them at a deeper level. And then I think the teaching can really take place from a deeper level. So, I’m not sorry that it happened this kind of burnout. I’m not sorry because it had a great gift in it for me.
And that is that as I certainly get older and I’ll be 70 on my next birthday that you can improve. Moshe Feldenkrais always say, “You can improve until the day you die.”
And I thought that was so encouraging and setting forth a new model for aging as I sit in the workshop. It really is a new model for aging. So, I had to learn that at a deeper level. I couldn’t pretend that I was 30 anymore.
Genevieve: Well, you have been a wellness pioneer in the state of Maine for now, I would say two and a half decades and an inspiration to many other healers and practitioners particularly with your meditation knowledge and wisdom and I know you teach a meditation circle.
Jane Burdick: I do.
Genevieve: How long have you been doing that and how does that play in to what you’ve been learning?
Jane Burdick: I have been meditating for about 15 years and I lead and have led a group every Thursday from 6 to 7 at 25 Middle Street and everybody is welcome to come and we teach practices of love and compassion and wisdom.
And I think slowing the mind, slowing the body, they really are not separate and so, each one feeds into the other and I feel so grateful that during this time, I had both to really rely on and deepen in and you might even say that what I went through is a spiritual practice, a spiritual crisis actually.
And I think that’s what happens before you sink to another level of being able to just be with yourself.
Dr. Lisa: I do think that it goes back to, Genevieve as she just pointed out because there’s 1998, is that what I understand?
Jane Burdick: That’s when I started.
Dr. Lisa: You started the training.
Jane Burdick: Yup.
Dr. Lisa: Okay. And you got so good at being everybody’s else’s role model and to be a healer and everybody else was looking to you and I’ve had this experience myself as a physician, as a Qigong practitioner, as a Qigong teacher that you almost reach a place where you know that things aren’t right for you yourself.
But it’s almost hard to admit that because then it makes you less of sort of what you do. It makes you less of a teacher, doctor.
Genevieve: Did you have that experience?
Jane Burdick: I think to some degree, yes. Really walking my talk. Really saying, “Okay. This is really important.” It’s not just something I’m saying that you should do. I need to do it. I really need to come from that place of having done it and that’s true in meditation as well. You’re really just sharing your own practice.
Genevieve: And did you have to start giving things up that perhaps you’ve been holding on to?
Jane Burdick: Oh, there’s no question. I think, for me, I’ve been out one evening in the last four months and that was to see a great movie and other than that, I’ve just been home. So, giving up? Yes. Giving up, saying yes to a lot.
Genevieve: Has that been a problem in your life?
Jane Burdick: Yes. Definitely. Definitely. And I think that can be. I’m sure that men go through that too, but I think for women, it’s a really, it’s a cultural thing to say yes and not to be able to think of yourself first, but think of everyone else first. So, I think learning that has been a lifelong thing.
Dr. Lisa: Well, going back to the equinox theme, it’s a little easier in the dead of winter when things are dark
Jane Burdick: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: And hibernating to nurture that quiet solitude those moments of rest.
Jane Burdick: Right.
Dr. Lisa: How do we sustain that center as we move into… as the sap is rising as you put it and we move into the more active fiery months?
Jane Burdick: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have any?
Jane Burdick: I think there’s always breathing. There’s always gravity. There’s always just sinking into where you are like right now, can we feel our bottoms on these stools? Can we just feel that? And just being where we are in the moment. Just being present and entering the moment more.
Genevieve: This time of year, do you notice restlessness amongst people that you might be treating especially here on the state of Maine?
Jane Burdick: I’m noticing a lot of illness this winter and maybe you have too. It’s more than usual. I have so many clients who come to me who are actually ill this winter and I think it’s… I’m not exactly sure what it is, but I think we expect so much from ourselves.
And you to not stop even in winter. So, I felt very fortunate this winter to be able to sort of go with the season and to really be like a bear and hibernate and feel that coming out now has a different flavor. It has a different quality.
And just as you walk just feeling your feet on the ground. As you speak to someone, just be there. So, it’s not complicated. It’s really just being present.
Genevieve: How long have you lived in Maine now?
Jane Burdick: I’ve lived in Maine for over 40 years.
Genevieve: And how did it draw you here?
Jane Burdick: My then husband and I were walking down the street in New York City where we lived and we saw an advertisement for a cabin in Lincolnville for rent and he had spent summers in Maine. And so, and I had been to a 1967 Haystack Mountain School of Crafts where I learned to be a potter.
So, I knew Maine. We both knew Maine. We both loved Maine. And we graduated from college, Columbia University, and moved up here to start a family actually. So, we did that and we moved to Searsmont, Maine. And we both worked at home. I had a pottery studio and he had an architectural office.
And so, that was sort of like back to the land time, people running out of the cities and fleeing and coming up to Maine.
Genevieve: You call him your then husband so, I guess that assumes you’re no longer married.
Jane Burdick: That’s right.
Genevieve: Was that a crisis point for you?
Jane Burdick: It was the very end of the Feldenkrais training and I think the training produces a lot of changes. And so, just things really had changed between us and our daughter was grown and it was just time to separate at that point.
Dr. Lisa: So, whatever the point was, you used it constructively?
Jane Burdick: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: And you were both able to move forward in your respective directions?
Jane Burdick: Very much so. He’s an architect up in Camden married to an architect. Very happy and I live down here and have a very full and rich life also. And our daughter lives in Falmouth with her baby. So, life is good.
Dr. Lisa: I do love the fact that you’re clearly very thoughtful, but you also have this physical aspect to what you do with the Feldenkrais and you have this creative aspect with the pottery. I mean you really have utilized so many different aspects of yourself and your brain and your personality. That’s unusual, don’t you think?
Jane Burdick: I feel tremendously lucky in my life to have pursued exactly what I was interested in and there was also another avenue in there called proprioceptive writing, which is a psychological form of writing that I did and taught for 15 years.
So, yes. It’s body, mind, spirit. And now putting them all together is really my pleasure and my happiness.
Genevieve: And I do know that it’s so appropriate to have you on this show, Equinox. Because the other word for equinox, of course, is balance. And you are one of the most balanced people that I know.
Jane Burdick: Oh my goodness.
Genevieve: Well, put it this way. You practice balance mindfully and actively.
Jane Burdick: Yes. And hopefully can convey that. I feel the importance of it in this crazy world. I feel as if really we’re getting way out there and just come back to center and come back to human values and ethics and beauty and what we have here in Maine I think is very important.
Genevieve: Do you think that what we have here in Maine is a greater sense of values and beauty and ethics?
Jane Burdick: I think it’s certainly possible here and I think there are a lot of people who are on that path. A lot of us. There are a tremendous number of artists and writers and bodyworkers and psychologists and every and doctors and writers. Every facet of life is represented here in spades it seems to me not just the restaurants.
Dr. Lisa: Which are also great.
Jane Burdick: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: I know we really do talk about balance. We have a little bit of everything in Maine.
Jane Burdick: It’s true.
Dr. Lisa: If I’m listening to this and I wanted to meet you. You said your meditation circle is open on Thursdays.
Jane Burdick: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: So, if you’re in the Portland area, you can just come and sign in.
Jane Burdick: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: And it’s not something that’s progressive. You can come if you’ve never meditated before.
Jane Burdick: You can come anytime. It’s a guided meditation and every time, it’s guided. So, beginners, experienced. Everybody is welcome to come.
Genevieve: And how about Feldenkrais?
Jane Burdick: And Feldenkrais, I have a private practice in my home and I teach workshops as well and I have a website, JaneBurdick.com. And I see people. Mostly, I see people privately in my home.
Genevieve: And how would someone who could benefit from your services know that…is a pain a big indicator?
Jane Burdick: Pain is a big indicator. Yeah, it definitely is. And that’s what people come for generally.
Genevieve: Okay.
Jane Burdick: Feldenkrais is very, very appropriate for people who would like to… They’ve reached a kind of plateau and playing a musical instrument or doing a sport for just being interested and being more embodied. I have a lot of people who come just for that as well.
So, really for almost anything that you can think of, it would be good to do Feldenkrais.
Genevieve: Thank you so much, Jane, for coming today.
Jane Burdick: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.