the feldenkrais method with lynette reid
This third lesson in the fingers-to-spine series continues to play with the independence of each finger (second lesson–but the recording didn’t work)–in relation now to extension, across the shoulders. This is a rare lesson: we do “both sides at once” from about a third of the way in.
March 2013: Updated file to right sample size.
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Watching the local students do this lesson this week was really a treat. It’s like watching a room of people giving themselves FI lessons (one-on-one hands-on Feldenkrais).
The work becomes most powerful when you can approach it with a very conscientious attention to the instructions (in this case, making a circle), while at the same having that attitude Moshe calls “wasting time.” It absolutely matters not at all whether you can draw a circle with the heel–so leave behind all the effort and trying you put into what you do every day–while at the same time, if you can even out, smooth out the circle even one little bit, you will find remarkable transformations in the length of your spine, in how you stand over your feet, in how you carry your head.
In FI one can spend a lot of time on this line through the skeleton from the heel (or just ahead of the heel) to find how every inch of the spine can be part of this foundation for action that is being upright in gravity; in this lesson you can work with it yourself.
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When I played during the week with the first rolling to sit ATM we did recently, I spent some time on a particular moment in the movement that’s always felt stuck for me. And I uncovered something about how I could “unstick” that moment in the movement by varying what I was doing with my pelvis (and therefore my whole spine).
So this recording is a demonstration of how you can take one element of a lesson that piques your interest and turn it into a whole process to discover something new. This discovery also will relate to the 2nd rolling lesson we’ll do.
Class in Halifax was small this week and very personalized–there’s more background conversation that you might only half-catch, but that’s fine; just listen for the instructions as usual.
There’s also a spell in the middle of the lesson on the “shoulders” that was not part of my plan–it just arose out of working with the student there. You might or might not be able to imagine or experiment with this idea of “a movement of the shoulders” that was parasitic to rolling the pelvis, but I’ve left it in the tape as it introduces important ideas about “parasitic movements” and how you can work with them. If you aren’t doing anything “parasitic” with your shoulders, maybe you are with your back or your jaw. Then you can take your own “parasitic movement” through the process you hear us go through on the recording, a process of beginning to break the hold of habit and introduce options.
(It was a very windy morning; that’s not traffic but the trees you hear, and hear us commenting on!)
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