use is playing havoc with our elbows – keeping your arm
bent for sustained periods of time increases pressure on the
ulnar nerve, eventually causing severe pain, numbness, tingling
and muscle weakness in the hands and arms (known as cell
phone elbow, or cubital tunnel syndrome).**These changes
don’t just feel out of sync with our evolutionary template, they are
setting us up for a dramatic collapse.
‘The real problem of humanity is the following: we have
paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like
technology,’ as eminent Harvard professor and evolutionary
biologist Edward Wilson said. The upshot is a world in which
being a human no longer works. And, as we attempt to keep up
with that world, we are no longer working as human beings.ahid de Belgeonne knows this only too well. In the
late 199Os she worked as a computer programmer.
She was deskbound; shoulders hunched over
a computer for hours on end. It was a template for the modern
office environment and de Belgeonne experienced side
effects that would afflict increasing numbers of us as the years
passed. Her body ached, her eyes were fatigued, she was
in a constant cycle of fight or flight as cortisol soared through
her body. She believed the antidote to the technological
world in which she found herself was exercise. She kickboxed
and ran to obliterate the stress. At first it worked. Until it didn’t.
‘High-intensity exercise was my response to working in a very
stressful environment,’ she says. ‘I just didn’t know what to do with
these feelings of being overwhelmed. In the end, the work I was
doing and the exercise I was pushing my body through meant that
I burned out.’ Nahid left the world of tech and for the next 2O
years practised as a successful yoga teacher. She ran her own
fitness studios in London, where she became known for her inventive
form of restorative yoga. It was slow yoga: small, undramatic
movements, deep breaths by candlelight and bolster cushions to
support wonky skeletal frames. It wasn’t
yoga as most people would recognise it.
This was, after all, the Noughties. People
wanted to push their bodies as much as
they pushed their minds. It was a time
of extremes. Exercise became another
method by which to test the limits of human
potential. CrossFit, a high-intensity form of
exercise that purported to use exercises
that mimicked ‘real’ movement (bending,
squatting, carrying a 15kg kettlebell on
your shoulders) boasted of pushing its
disciples to the edge. Its mascot was Pukie
the Clown – a nod to the exercise-induced
vomiting many experienced. Spin-class
instructors talked gleefully about overwhelmed clients crying (a
form of ‘release’, they said), while yoga studios were offering new
forms of the ancient practice – hot yoga, ashtanga – that promised
to push clients’ bodies into advanced poses in record time. Exercise,
the thing that was supposed to alleviate the stress of modern life,
was in fact aping the very culture people were trying to escape.
‘I realised that everyone had forgotten how to be human,’
says de Belgeonne. ‘We had become humandoings, not humanbeings. Yoga, once about pausing, had become about movement.
I had clients who had been doing it for years, but were still stressed.’
Many of her clients were on the edge of burnout, suffering
from digestive issues, skin disorders, anxiety and extreme fatigue.
De Belgeonne realised that she needed to get them out of their
heads and into their bodies. She wanted to create a sense-based
movement that would allow clients to reconnect with themselves.
‘Your body tells you everything you need, but if you’re disconnected
from it, how can you know what it is that you need?’he Feldenkrais Method is a mid-2Oth century technique
devised by Israeli physicist and mechanical engineer
Moshé Feldenkrais that has been adopted by many who
experience chronic pain. It is, in a way, an ‘end of the line’ solution,
meaning most arrive at Feldenkrais when nothing else has worked.
Its methodology is relatively simple: teach the body how to move in
less stressful and more natural ways through repetitive movement.
This creates new neural pathways, leading to long-term changes.
De Belgeonne thought Feldenkrais could be the answer for
many of her clients. She started to incorporate it into her restorative
yoga practice. Clients living with long-term pain and anxiety
began to report dramatic changes, not only in their wellbeing but
in how they moved and breathed, too. They became more mindful,
and this allowed them to move their bodies in the correct way.
‘I realised I was holding my breath every time I wrote and
sent an email,’ says Catherine, a client who has worked with de
Belgeonne on and off for six years and now practises The Human
Method every week. ‘My sessions don’t stop me from holding my
breath, but they make me realise I do it. I wasn’t behaving in a human
way: I didn’t breathe correctly and never used my distance vision,
as I was sat in front of a computer all day. I didn’t sit normally, either.
I clenched my teeth when I was doing a task that required my full
attention. I was putting my body under all sorts of unnatural stress
because I wasn’t connected to it. It was just something that needed
to keep pace with the mental stress I was
working under. Now I feel back in sync
with my body, the benefits of which have
been incredible: deeper sleep, a body that
doesn’t ache 24/7 and a freer mind.
The Human Method, which de
Belgeonne teaches in west London and
at retreats around the country, isn’t whizzy
or glamorous. A lot of time is spent curled
over cushions and covered in weighted
blankets as breathing work is conducted.
She encourages clients to walk barefoot
as much as possible, in order to stretch and
work the often-forgotten muscles in the feet.
She makes clients explore the movements
of their hands, toes, elbows... all the overlooked muscles and
ligaments that our ancestors used every day. She helps clients to
stretch their skeletal systems and press pause on minds that fizz
with information. It doesn’t burn calories or leave you drenched
in sweat. But what it will do is transform your mind and body for
the long-term, and reconnect you to that most fundamental part
of who you are: your ancient self. Your body that was built over
tens of thousands of years.thehumanmethod.co.uk **Cubital Tunnel Syndrome, 2O17, Oxford Universit y Hospitals, NHS Trust.Photography: Florian Sommet/Trunk Archive.192 ELLE.COM/UK^ April 2020
Elle WELLNESS
N
T
” YOUR BODY TELLS
YOU E V ERY T HING
YOU NEED –
BUT IF YOU’RE
disconnected from it,
HOW CAN YOU
KNOW(^) what that is?”^