the feldenkrais method with lynette reid
I’d better get this posted while it’s still summer, what with all the summer commentary about how to be your own teacher. Legs crossed, arms in a triangle–how far can you go and still keep your balance? Or maybe that question stops making sense, and you can go wherever you want to go.
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Kicking off a new series aimed at twisting things around, growing taller, and getting that spine of yours more supple. With a special shout-out to cousins who find it interesting to grow taller. This is a variation on a familiar kind of lesson, but it is a new variation, I promise.
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Taking the idea of turning around the axis into another orientation (lying on our backs, rolling to the side), and playing with some flexion along the front diagonals: you’ll get an interesting view into your shoulders with this one! Like an x-ray machine, only kinaesthetic, with zero radiation exposure!
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I’m surprised I haven’t recorded this one yet–a classic lesson, with a few quirks specific to the San Francisco Evening Class notes I recently acquired. In the first two weeks of the current series, we’ve done lessons heavy in one direction or the other (flexion, extension); this third lesson puts a twist into things–and gives us a whole new level of coordinating flexors and extensors.
This is a recording you can come back to and add your own embellishments: turn your head with and against; the same with your eyes (make four combinations of head/eyes….). Add some see-saw breathing. Stay with your knees to the side and lift/lower each shoulder, or lift your head with your interlaced hands, or slide your head and arms from side to side (side-bending). The challenging thing when making variations by yourself is to choose one or two simple ideas and stick with that, with the same patient pace of exploration you get in the recordings.
The recording quality is not the same as the last few weeks–I was missing my mic, so recording just with the internal mic on conference room setting.
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Oddly enough, this lesson takes place largely lying on the back. So “on the side” doesn’t refer to the position of the lesson. This lesson follows on the lesson On the side, the sternum becoming flexible, which “really is” on the side. That lesson achieves some amazing differentiation of the abdominal muscles in light of deep reflexes; this one continues around the torso, rebalancing the work of the abdominals and the back extensors. Between working on these two lessons this month, I got more for myself around Moshe’s idea of the chest hanging off the spine than I ever have from ATM before (it’s usually a post-FI feeling from a great practitioner, one that is tantalizingly transformational, but that I can’t find again after a few weeks). We embarked on a month of the spine, and I ended the month feeling I knew the function and freedom of the abdominal muscles beyond anything I’ve done before.
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I’m very excited that Ron Renz has begun teaching with me at the Yoga Loft’s [[Wednesday evening ATM class]]. And he’s contributing to the recorded ATMs.
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