Category: series

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

Asked to summarize the method in one phrase, Moshe offered “my aim is to make peace between the nervous system and gravity.”

In this pair of ATM lessons, we’ll refine our internal mapping of the diagonal relationships of our limbs, and then make good use of this new internal mapping in a little something that just might remind you of a Virabhadrasana…

Saturday, July 30, 2011, 12 noon – 2:00 pm
Cost: $20

1. Line of Effort
2. Second lesson: recording malfunction.

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”

Asked to summarize the method in one phrase, Moshe offered “my aim is to make peace between the nervous system and gravity.”

In this 2-hour workshop, we’ll play with Archimedes’s venerable principles (managing the weight of our long levers!) and find the magic feeling of weightlessness in standing that comes from accessing postural reflexes.

1. Lifting a long leg
2. Walking backward–or in a recording from a couple of years ago, Walking backward

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

A Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement workshop, Sunday March 7 2010, 1 – 3 pm.

At any moment, we act intentionally, and at the same time are supported by the “vegetative” processes, such as breathing, digesting, circulating blood. The autonomic and the intentional are integrated in action—the more sensitively these processes co-exist and support one another, the more vital, calm, and energetic we can be. In this pair of Feldenkrais lessons, we’ll explore the integration of breath and action, and the integration of rhythmic action of the sphincter muscles with intentional movement of the whole body.

1. Integrating breathing and action
2. Sphincters

Sunday, May 9, 2010, 1:30 – 3:30 pm

In this pair of Feldenkrais lessons, we will examine the subtle relationship of how we use the vocal tract and diaphragm, to find freedom and support through the neck, spine, and hips. In turn, finding the support of your skeleton—the essence of “good posture”—will transform your breathing and voice.

Effort shortens the body, restricts breathing, and creates wear and tear on joints. Efficient and accurate action feels effortless and creates length. In this month’s series of Feldenkrais lessons, you’ll find the ways to distribute work more evenly around your core, feel the support of your skeleton, and thereby let yourself lengthen rather than waste energy in tightening and shortening yourself when you act. Find the taller, lighter version of yourself that’s hidden underneath your habitual aches and pains.

1. Lengthening Heels and Arms
2. On the right side, head and knee under the frame of the left arm