Cat Stretch Musings

by Wendell Hanna

I met Moshe Feldenkrais when I was 16 years old during the summer trainings in San Francisco in the mid-1970’s. What I remember most as I was introduced to him was the twinkle in his eyes. This was surprising to me as my father, Thomas Hanna, had spoken of him as a great genius, a miracle worker, and a formidable person. The man I met was at odds with that image and appeared to be a warm and playful man instead. While I never really got to know Moshe Feldenkrais beyond those meetings, I have often wondered where the Feldenkrais work left off and Tom Hanna’s work begin.

Hanna Somatic practitioners know well that Tom Hanna’s work was influenced by Moshe Feldenkrais (e.g., kinetic mirroring) and F.M. Alexander (e.g., means-whereby) as was emphasized in our trainings as well as in many of Tom’s own articles on Clinical Somatics. And we know that the practice of active pandiculation was a new idea set forth by Tom Hanna alone. But what about the “lessons” in Tom’s Somatics book? And why are only certain of those lessons referenced in the Cat Stretch exercises and not others?

The eight lessons in the back of Somatics: Reawakening the Mind's Control of Movement, Flexibility, and Health are Tom Hanna’s exercises, pure and simple. But the fact that Tom was personally trained and certified by Feldenkrais most certainly influenced the formation of those lessons. Moshe Feldenkrais created well over 600 Awareness Through Movement (ATM) exercises during his lifetime. Tom Hanna, on the other hand, focused on only eight in the Somatics book. These lessons were focused on muscles of the, 1) back, 2) front, 3) waist, 4) trunk rotation, 5) hips and legs, 6) neck and shoulders, and lessons on 7) breathing, and 8) walking. Why did Tom Hanna choose those specific eight exercises, and how might they relate, or not relate, to the work of Feldenkrais?

>>> Mia Segal and Yochanan Rywerant were two very important people who came into Tom’s life during the first American Feldenkrais trainings that Tom organized in the summers of 1975, 1976, and 1977. Both Mia and Yochanan were close assistants to Feldenkrais and during those summers became very close friends and colleagues to both Eleanor and Tom. They remained extremely closeuntil Tom’s death in 1990. Even though Mia and Yochanan were trained by, admired, and worked closely with Feldenkrais, they both deeply admired Tom’s innovative thinking about aspects of the work. Instead of rejecting these new ideas and remaining ideologically tied to Feldenkrais’ original teachings, Mia and Yochanan were fascinated with, and involved with many discussions around the evolution of what we know, and now understand, as Hanna Somatics. Yet they both continued to teach the Feldenkrais method and their teachings and published works are considered by some to be the most authoritative sources on the Feldenkrais method today.

Yochanan Rywerant was a contributing editor to the Somatics Journal beginning 1982 and in 1983 Tom wrote a beautiful forward to his book, The Feldenkrais Method: Teaching by Handling (https://www.amazon.com/Feldenkrais-Method-Teaching-Handling/dp/1591200229). In the forward Tom states, “What Rywerant has accomplished is to have taken this (Feldenkrais’) intuitive clarity and worked it into an ingenious intellectual framework that makes sense of the technique's elusive subtleties. He has succeeded in removing the mystery from a method that creates remarkable improvements in the motor system with a remarkable economy of means.” It seems clear that there was a lot of mutual admiration between both Tom and Yochanan’s somatic thinking. Yochanan Rywerant’s book details many hands-on techniques used in Functional Integration (FI) and if you read it, I think you may find some very interesting ideas for doing one-on-one somatic bodywork.

Mia Segal, Tom’s other close Feldenkrais colleague, broke off from the Feldenkrais association community after Moshe Feldenkrais’ death in 1984, but remained connected to the work through her own version called Mind Body Studies or MBS Academy, https://mbsacademy.org/about/ and still teaches today while in her 90’s. Tom respected her work highly and interviewed her for Somatics Journal, which was later published in (volume XVII, 2014). What is particularly interesting to me is that in the evolution of Mia Segal’s work she has simplified the enormous amount of ATM movement lessons into eight main areas of focus.

Tom Hanna designed the Cat Stretch as a “maintenance of your sensory-motor control” which was intended to be done daily. Tom Hanna had taught Hatha Yoga in the 1960’s and was well aware of the asana sequence Sun Salutation, or Sūryanamaskāra, literally meaning “salute to the sun” (surya = sun, namaskara=salute) which is a sequence of twelve linked asanas. Though I never heard Tom saythis directly, I am fairly certain that the formation of the Cat Stretch was inspired by the idea of yoga’s Sun Salutation.

What is somewhat of a mystery to me, however, is why certain lessons were included, yet others excluded, from the Cat Stretch. Lesson Three (Controlling the Muscles of the Waist), for instance, is excluded altogether but is often added by trainers as an “extra movement”. Lesson Seven on breathing and Lesson Eight on walking are also excluded. Lesson One, however, (Extensor Muscles of the Back) has three different movements included in the Cat Stretch (CS #1, CS #2, and CS #3). In contemplating the question of why Lesson Three was excluded I cannot think of any reason, as Tom had clearly articulated issues related to the Trauma Reflex in the Somatics book which directly relate to imbalance between the two sides (waists) of the body. I can only think it was an oversight on his account or that his thinking on the importance of this lesson was not as central to the Cat Stretch as the other lessons. The lesson on breathing might have been excluded because it would take more time than a refresher routine might allow, or perhaps since the other exercises included aspects of breathing, it was not essential to include a stand-alone breathing exercise. As far as the walking lesson, it might have been too complex to include. I would love to know what other HSE practitioners think of these inclusions and exclusions of lessons in the Cat Stretch.

One last musing on the Cat Stretch—its name. HSE practitioners know well that stretching is a dirty word in our field because of all the issues involved with the stretch reflex. Why would Tom, who was well aware of this, not call the routine something like the Somatic Salutation (referencing yoga) or a title more clinically accurate? One, perhaps, obvious answer is that when a cat stretches, they are pandiculating, which is what the set of exercises are instructing us to do. But beyond that, my more personal answer is that Tom Hanna called it the Cat Stretch because he was a playful man, something I think he had in common with Moshe Feldenkrais. He loved to be a bit silly and wrote many humorous songs and poems. An example of both Tom’s seriousness, as well as his sense of humor, was when Tom insisted that I come to his Novato, CA office to experience a session exactly as a client might. Upon arrival at the office, he did the formal intake, assessment with palpation, and an hour-long session on the table. Later, Tom sent me my “homework” of personalized exercises and at the top of the page it was titled, “The Wendell Wiggle”.

To conclude my musings, or should it be “mew-sings”, on the Cat Stretch, I would like to say that this routine is a precious jewel in the Hanna Somatics canon. As such, it is still only a third-person set of directions and can only be understood through first-person experiencing. Even if Tom were still alive today, he would insist that you do the Cat Stretch your own way. And because of your inner explorations, you may end up creating your own unique Somatic Fandango completely different than the Cat Stretch. Both Moshe Feldenkrais and Tom Hanna would have been highly in favor of whatever imaginative somatic routine you created. Somatics, after all, is a living and breathing art form of the subjective self. The Cat Stretch, as incredible as it is, is only one such conception in a world of somatic possibilities.