'On the Primacy of Hearing' - commentary on a vital essay by Moshe Feldenkrais
2 videos, including complete reading of the original essay
If you enjoy this post, don’t miss this Sunday’s Musicality of Sound workshop (1-3pm EST) where I will be guiding experimental somatic self inquiries into the ever-present embodied experience of living our lives in an always dynamically shifting soundscape.
Click here for more details & registration
Moshe Feldenkrais, creator of the Feldenkrais Method and one of the most important thinkers of the modern era - especially on the question of how human learn - coined a very useful phrase, captured in the title of one of his books, The Elusive Obvious.
It’s what it sounds like:
Something so obvious that you miss it.
For example, you might be sitting down as you read this, but fail to notice the ongoing sensory experience of your body weight connected to the surfaces below you.
-Until it’s pointed out to you and perhap you think, “well, that’s obvious.”
Yet, to actually pause long enough to take note of that elusively obvious feature of experience changes the way the present moment feels. And there are many elusively obvious features of our entire life experience that we never acknowledge - and therefore never enter into a relationship of choice with.
Here’s another example of the elusive obvious:
You can’t see what is happening in the space behind your head, but you CAN hear it.
In his essay, On the Primacy of Hearing, published in Somatics magazine in 1976 (the year I was born!), Feldenkrais explores the deeper implications of the fact that the vast majority of humanity relies upon vision above and beyond all other sense perceptions.
Yet, as he points out, our hearing ‘came online’ before our sight did. We were hearing in our mother’s wombs long before we could see anything. That is, developmentally speaking, hearing has ‘primacy’ over vision.
Speaking to this question of our relationship to space via the senses (the elusively obvious phenomenon mentioned above) he draws out a stunning conclusion about a (near) universally shared human limitation - which simultaneously points us towards a powerful hidden possibility for transformation that is right in front of our faces!
(Actually, better said, it’s just behind the backs of our heads.)
Any creature who had to guarantee his individual safety and security could not survive if two-thirds of the space around him was ignored and did not reach awareness.
When we pay attention to what we see we cannot help withdrawing our attention from the better part of the space around us. A wild animal that does not have a Samurai-like awareness of what is happening around it and above it can not endure for long. You and I can do what a trained Samurai can do: we can retrain and extend our awareness to the Reality all around us. The ears did just this before their information began to be partially ignored and neglected, and before vision became domineering instead of dominant.
- Moshe Feldenkrais, On the Primacy of Hearing
At the conclusion of his essay, Feldenkrais proposes a simple but powerful experiment to reawaken your natural born Samurai capacities which I urge you to try for yourself!
In the two videos below, I read aloud the essay by Feldenkrais and then give some additional commentary of my own on why this elusively obvious feature of our experience is so vital to understand in today’s chaotic world.
Also, my previous post, Experimental Self-Inquiry #4, provides additional guidance.
On the Primacy of Hearing by Moshe Feldenkrais
Commentary on the essay
Look for at least one more post this month with more resources to dive deeper into the transformational potential of deepening your awareness of how you relate to sound!
This is a great reminder, Seth! Thanks you! I, and perhaps many of your readers are engaged in a dance practice such as 5-rythms, soul motion, or ecstatic dance. In these practices, as we move through space, we become aware of the space around us --360 degrees...particularly what's at our backs. I have always lived in towns (since the '70's) where we have several opportunities per week to practice in community with others. Your post made me realize how fortunate I am.