Past Class Themes

I have a theme for this series, but I have no words for it. You'll find your back more supple and organized, your legs lighter, and neck and shoulders more free, and you might get a bit taller. That's all I can say!

1. Crossed legs, tilting knees to the side

From the fingertips and the toes, you can launch spirals that speak directly to your spine. But your feet and hands are windows into your real "core"--your brain. Your hardest working organ is the core you rely on to plan and execute action, adjust your intention to the feedback of the environment, regulate responses to stress, and integrate the specialized functions of each hemisphere. Get to know your left and right-handedness, footedness, and more in this six-week series.

1. Working with the dominant hand
2. Hands interlaced
3. Interlacing toes
4. Violin arms
5. From crawling to sitting
• Crawling to sitting addendum
6. Elbows in crooks

In this eight-week series, we'll clarify hips and shoulders in the context of the functional whole.

1. Flexors
2. Looking over shoulder
3. Legs to the side and lifting them with the hands
4. Dragging feet and head left and right
5. Bending while sitting and shoulder movements
6. Hooking the big toe and passing the knee
7. Classical twist on the side with an advanced opening
8. Sliding along the length of the leg
9. Leap year bonus class!

Can you turn on a dime?

The kind of flexibility we learn in Feldenkrais isn't so much about how wide you can open a joint or how far you can twist your spine. It's more about how readily you can respond to your environment (inner and outer), and change course.

In this six-week series, we'll refine our control around the central axis, manage and coordinate the masses of the pelvis and head, get a few nice twists in, kick out our heels (subtly), and learn how to turn on a dime.

1. Turning heels out
2. Turning heels and head
3. Recording failed. Sorry! An outline of the lesson is on Feldy Notebook at this page
4. From clarifying the hip to turning and lifting the head
5. Twisting the Pelvis with a Long Arm
6. Turning on a side axis

In September-October, we did a series of lessons exploring the function and physicality of the eyes.

1. Movement of the Eyes Organizes the Movement of the Body
2. Shoulder and hip circles
3. Sphinx and eyes
4. One lesson not recorded.
5. Eye lesson
6. The eyeball lesson

Another earlier eye lesson is:

Covering the eyes

In June 2011, we explored a series of lessons that challenge you to mobilize yourself from the core.

1. Reaching to Roll
2. Advancing on all four
3. Arm around in lying
4. Having the pelvis lie left and right

In this series, we'll roll gently into four weeks of finding the skeletal path from the foot on up for effortlessly lifting the head--and we'll soften the ribcage and shoulders into oscillating jelly on the way up. (Really!)

1. Rolling to sitting
2. Skewering the spine in the chest
3. Tilting legs on stomach
4. Oscillations "Jello Pudding"

In this six-week series in January-February 2011, we were following along (more or less) with the lessons Moshe taught in an evening class for the general public, during his first training of practitioners in the US, in San Francisco in 1976.

1. Tilting Pelvis Sitting
2. Extensors
3. Coordinating Flexors and Extensors
4. Classic Rotation Sitting
5. Rolling Arms (not recorded)
6. And a last class out of sync with the SF Evening Class, but one I wanted to share with the group, and a nice return to a theme of the first lesson: A Clock

This excellent intro set focuses on control of the pelvis in the context of global movements, before homing in on the shoulders.

In a reversal of millennia of evolutionary development, human beings now spend most of their work (and leisure) time sitting. This “intensive passivity” is a kind of marathon in terms of the demands it places on us—but we don’t see it that way. Sitting seems obvious, the easiest and laziest thing to do. In this month of classes we’ll find the resources in our feet, pelvis, and spine to sit truly effortlessly, while maintaining our freedom to act from the core. This month’s series of Feldenkrais lessons will be especially helpful for anyone who spends work or leisure time at a desk or computer, for those who sit to meditate, and for musicians who play or sing in sitting.

Do you have a “problem spot” in your back or neck? Both under-using and over-using various parts of yourself can result in the perception of a problem in a given location. Using clever and subtle techniques, we can make small adjustments in our habitual patterns of over- and under-use, with the potential to offer significant release of old aches and pains. In this month’s series of Feldenkrais lessons, you’ll become acquainted with vertebrae you didn’t know you have, and learn to perceive your spine in 360 degrees.

1. AY 177: Making the Spine Flexible and Integrating It
2. AY 217: On the side, the sternum becoming flexible
3. AY 218: On the side, bending and twisting the chest and spine
4. AY 85: Tilting the ear to the shoulder