By the end of this one, you won’t know left from right or up from down. But your shoulders and neck will feel different. Maybe your hips and self too.
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Hands interlaced
Explore some of the remarkable agility you have in your hands and wrists. And while you’re at it–who knows?–your neck may lengthen and shoulders re-organize.
I tried a slightly different recording arrangement to get rid of the annoying scratchy noises–it made them worse. Will try to fix before the next class!
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Working with the dominant hand
We typically make too much effort with the dominant hand, and hold too much strain in it in resting. This lesson gently differentiates the hand and forearm, explores the subtle movement of the humerus resting in the shoulder blade, and transforms the whole dominant side of the body.
Want to know more about handedness? Check out the book Right Hand Left Hand (http://www.righthandlefthand.com) by Chris McManus, and my blog post including comments at Which Side?.
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Sliding along the length of the leg
You’d think this is about the legs and the hips. But we’re focusing on the hips and shoulders in the context of the whole. Your shoulders are certainly finding all sorts of new connections for supporting and enabling action in this one. Maybe it’s really about the ways that both your hip joints and your shoulder joints really start somewhere around T8…
Local class participants note the whitewashing! I edited out all evidence of my arriving late for class.
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Hooking the big toe and passing the knee
Holding your big toe in a hook formed by your index finger, you pass your knee from side to side of your elbow. What lets your knee do this? What gets in the way? As usual, it’s a surprise how little your actual hip joint, and how much your spine and chest and head have to do with this.
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Dragging feet and head left and right
One of those miracle lessons. What do these actions have to do with one another? How can something so restricted get so easy by doing something else entirely?
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Flexors
This is a “core” lesson in many senses! This kind of lesson is usually one of the earliest lessons in an introductory series. It’s full of the paradoxical approach of Feldenkrais–free the extensors for more effective action by moving in the direction of flexing; “strengthen” the flexors by making more effective use of your back moving backwards (lengthening the extensors); and pay attention to the “vegetative processes” (e.g. breathing) as you go!
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Twisting the Pelvis with a Long Arm
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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From clarifying the hips to turning and lifting the head
This lesson continues from the previous week (for which the recording unfortunately failed–you can find an outline at this page on Feldy Notebook).
We’re clarifying the hip joints and finding the magic path of the head in space for a effortless turning, extension and lifting of the head, somewhere in between side-lying and face down, and somewhere in between side-lying and face up.
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Turning heels and head
Continuing the theme of turning in the hip, and now refining and relating the carriage of the head. It would be interesting to repeat the previous lesson (Turning heels out) some days after doing this one.
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