Well, here it is–the last lesson I’ll be teaching for a while. Enjoy the archives! And don’t stop rolling!  

If you want to feel really asymmetrical (and who doesn’t?), this is the lesson for you! Feeling asymmetrical, by the way, is nature’s way for you to learn from yourself.  So it’s useful, apart from being fun.

How does your ability to shift weight on your hips and from your feet affect how you can use your arms? Explore what every good fencer knows using this lesson!  

We’re finishing up this series—this is the fourth last class perhaps for the next year—with some classic lessons. Whatever a “classic” lesson means! It’s surprising how much of a voyage of discovery a familiar lesson can be.  Side-sitting, your explore how combining different coordinations of your eyes, shoulders, head—and everything that supports all that, down to … Continue reading "Another “classic rotation sitting” lesson"

Lift your head, look around, and see what your legs do. And find out what they don’t need to do. This is more or less Moshe’s SF Evening Classes, lesson 2, for those keeping track at home.

As we start the last 6-week series before my sabbatical, I am in the mood for coming back to the basics–with the fresh eyes I’ve developed and you’ve all developed from doing more Feldenkrais. And from living. The title of this lesson talks about tilting the pelvis. There’s never one answer to the question “what … Continue reading "Tilting pelvis sitting: another recording"

You might think you’re safe from falling over when you’re already lying on the ground. But let’s see if we can’t find a little wiggle room for a few safe tumbles in that concept. For all Haligonians and honorary Haligonians everywhere who are slipping and sliding in the ice and snow!  

Aka watching the butterflies flutter by. Enjoy this bonus lesson! It’s AY 534, a continuation of AY 533. The idea that continues through the two lessons is finding the connection between turning your head (and your neck just so) so that everything follows…to your pelvis, to your knees, your feet.

The theme for this week and next week’s bonus lesson is a very lovely connection: how just the right turn of the head and direction of the spine at the base of the neck engages your whole spine and…bends your knees. (Just when I thought I’d finally stopped thinking about the knees.) This is AY … Continue reading "On stomach, face to knee"

This is a change of pace from recent lessons. A little learning about spirals, changing planes, getting from the floor to standing in a beautifully efficient way.

Of course, frogs aren’t bipedal; they don’t stand on extended legs really at all. So this lesson doesn’t have the kind of neurological and functional significance for a frog that it has for us.

All these years, I tell you to go slower, slower, slower–and now fast? Fast, quick, light movements? Astonishing. And just wait to see how your breathing and use of your spine changes. This is AY 447, for those keeping track. And a week is a long time in Canada, lately anyway. The bobblehead joke probably … Continue reading "Opposition on the side"

If this face-down lesson doesn’t add an inch or so to your height (subjectively, if not objectively), I’d be surprised. For those keeping track at home, this is a slow build-up, more or less half of AY473, with some loose interpretation.

Some pretty simple ideas and experimentation. See if it doesn’t make you feel a whole lot more refined and coordinated in your action.

Hmmm…thought I’d long ago recorded and posted this one. No! Somewhere between the low back and the knees, the hip joints play a major role in action. Here’s a powerful flashlight you can use to clarify this area in your self-image.

Well, this is a weird idea of what to do with your head. You’ll glide around the room with a long neck and everything below will feel very well-oiled, as long as you don’t try too hard. For those following sources at home, this is mostly AY 6, though you’ll see some ideas that aren’t … Continue reading "Turning the head around its circumference and in the center"

We’re thinking about Theo Jansen’s wonderful Strandbeests, and how ‘stupid’ the knees are. They don’t need any sophistical neurological control. They just have to unfold at the right moment and be there for the weight of the body to pass over them. How do you let your leg unfold? This version is AY 117, by … Continue reading "Frog’s Legs"

The first lesson of our new Sept – Oct 2013 series: a gentle twisting movement on your side. Some of my comments suggest that you might do the second side (as you go from side to side) in your imagination. This is always a good option when you can’t follow the instructions without pain. It’s … Continue reading "Somewhere in your back…"

You could say there’s a hierarchy of degrees of conscious control in ourselves–our fingers and mouths the most consciously controlled; our legs less so, carrying us along without much thought wherever we want to go. And our breathing, even more so, takes care of itself while we’re doing other things. We’ll reverse that a bit … Continue reading "Lying on the feet turned in, while breathing rhythmically"

Intimately connected to the rotation at the knee of the two bones of the lower leg, we find a new dimension of freedom in the hip joint and an unusual folding of the ankle. This the second of a four-lesson series recovering what are for many people long-forgotten knee functions.

Here we’re sensing how we use our knees–how we support ourselves from the floor–with a few new pelvic clock variations.

Lying face down, can your head wave from side to side like a reed in the wind? Where is your stable point connecting to the floor? For those keeping track at home, this started out as AY 549, which for some reason has the title “lifting the pubic bone,” and then wandered considerably based on … Continue reading "Face down, lift head with free spine"

It’s all very simple, but in another orientation and configuration, it may feel like a challenge! Take as many rests for your wrists as you need.

Remember all that toe-bending a couple of weeks ago? Coming back to the same basic position, we start to see what we can accomplish with the foot we aren’t holding.

Things got a little crazy on Charles Street on Wednesday. Make a circle with your arms, hands interlaced, and now try to lace your legs through this. We didn’t quite get to the point of skipping rope with our own bodies as the skipping-rope. Maybe we’ll do that next week.

You have a lovely set of twistable floating ribs…I know you do…. Let’s see if we can smoke them out, and change the way you organize the use of your legs at the same time.

This will take your shoulders to new places. Your neck just might notice the change. This is AY 374 for those keeping track at home!

There are a lot of hidden gems in this very simple idea of lying on your back with standing legs and lifting your pelvis…give it a try and see if your back doesn’t get much longer and easier, your arms lighter and more free, your breathing deeper. Go easy to find those gems! Based on … Continue reading "Head and Pelvis"

Probably the most neglected function in modern life is extension–lifting the head to look up, reaching up to touch something overhead. We live in an environment carefully designed to obviate the need ever to do this. And every day we forget more and more what geniuses we were to be able to use our spines … Continue reading "Extensors with a twist"

Harness the power of the pelvis to support your upper limbs — with some twists, bends, and an intriguing mystery with the toes. I’ll try to figure out what all those crunchy noise are and stop them. I think it’s a hair-microphone thing. (This is AY 440.)  

A subtle coordination of the head and spine to support the bending of the leg--it just may put a spring in your step in the middle of winter (for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, that is!). You may want to have a few flat, firm cushions or flat, folded towels for under your head as you lie on the side. Depending on the organization of your spine, shoulders, and neck, you may be able to do it without. If your neck is strained, that's an extra barrier to feeling the dynamic connection with your pelvis and legs.

The "dead bird" is a classic lesson. The image refers to the way you hang the arm in front of the face, at eye level or a little lower--with the wrist limp, like a dead bird's wing. I was listening to Moshe teaching it at Amherst. He says, maybe it's an intelligent bird's wing. Not a bird mindlessly using energy or effort to hold the wrist stiff...

We spend a great deal of time concerned with the contents of our head--but its physicality? Its shape, size? What we can sense with sensory nerves and what we can "map" in our self-image? The space the brain rests inside? And how can it possibly transform action and feel so much just to pay attention to these things?

We can go our whole lives without realizing there's some subtle movement of the ankle or use of the sole of our feet that has become a blind spot to us, unavailable. Then we buy orthotics or fuss about the right shoe to push our feet around in certain ways. Try improving your ability with your feet! Sneak preview: we've working on the ankle-neck relationship this week and next.

It doesn't get more "core" than how you organize yourself to use all the nuances and shades of potential action that your pelvis can generate and support. This classic pelvic clock lesson is an essential exploration you can return to again and again.

Drawn from the Awareness Through Movement book, this lesson explores and differentiates the "mechanisms" you use to breathe. Ribs and sternum lifting and subsiding, diaphragm tightening to lower and then returning to its high resting dome. And then shall we turn everything upside down?

Feldenkrais had a general idea about "efficient action"--that you would use all the musculature proportionately to its mass/size. More work in the large, central (proximal) muscles, light refinement from the distal muscles. This lesson explores that fundamental idea.

After a slow season, lessons are beginning again. Here's something quiet, introspective--just a little lifting of a shoulder here, a hip there, a head from time to time. And the basic "directions" that structure the image of the action, while we're at it.

A fall re-acquaintance with the floor. The smoother your roll, the greater the lengthening of your left side--the more cleverly you're organizing yourself for a "reversible" movement.

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.

Something about phase changes between solids and liquids...that and some good old-fashioned Newtonian laws of motion. The third.

Remember spinning and spinning and spinning in circles when you were a kid? Back when getting dizzy was a fun, mind- and world-altering experience and not an unpleasant crisis?

A little long this one....but early reports describe the lesson as "invigorating" or "a wake-up"! Face down, and figuring out what your feet are doing back there behind you where you can't see them (and how your back is helping).

In this lesson, you'll explore the elements of your own personal bridge (the series of "arches" rising from the floor and the parts of you that rest on the floor, providing support for the arches), and start to play with your arches....raise the bridge, lower it, raise some part and lower others....developing a more supple spine and clearer perception of transmission of forces in gravity, with special bonus organization of the hips and shoulders!

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.

This fascinating lesson (but which lesson isn't fascinating?) is (literally?) an eye-opener. Picking up some ideas from [[Violin arms]] but moving closer in to the core, it will show you some connections and some distinctions you probably have never felt before in your shoulders.

Do the last lesson [[From crawling to sitting]] first! This is just an experimental add-on, a little trial of some ideas, an exploration to see what happens, tacked on at the end of the lesson for those who would stay.

A little bit of this with the hands, a little bit of that with the feet... yes, shoulders and hips. But can we put it all together into something functional? For a baby at least? Find spiral transitions and stealth twistings of the long axes of the arms and legs?

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.

You have habits of how you interlace your hands....but your toes? How can you have a habit of how you interlace your toes? Have you ever done this before? Since you were 2 years old?

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!

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?]].

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.

The kayak image isn't Moshe's; it's local colour. We specialize in local colour in Nova Scotia. Meanwhile, I doubt there's a better lesson for lengthening your neck, greasing your hips (how did that happen?), changing your walk, and reorganizing the use of your arms. Check it out.

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.

Here we get into more detail with the shoulders, but still in a manner that relates everything to everything. I'm not quite sure why the class found that idea so funny. ;-)

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?

Zooming in on the hips, but within a context where everything has to play along--the weight shifting on the pelvis, the shoulder lengthening instead of clutching, the head willing to go anywhere, the chest and spine flexible.

I do apologize for the crackling. You can skip this if sound quality matters to you at all! If you persist and do it, you just may find yourself with a lengthened neck. The previous lesson referred to is [[From clarifying the hips to turning and lifting the head]]. And I'll investigate whether it was my turtleneck sweater interacting with the mic that caused this sound!

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!

Returning to our theme of turning on a dime, this lesson finds the relation between really standing, the freedom of the head, and the freedom to turn. Heavily but not completely edited to remove all my evening's left-right mix-ups. Left in the local colour in the form of free-associating to Ellen Page (from Halifax) and the movie Hard Candy.

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!

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.

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.

This lesson--entirely in standing--is about finding your axis for turning, with the head and the pelvis coordinated in a smooth arc, and the volume on the extensors of the back "turned down." It's the first of our "turning on a dime." I'm particularly intrigued by this lesson in relation to a passage in The Potent Self that I've always found intriguing. In the chapter, "The means at our disposal," he talks about needing to shut down the habitual work of the extensors in the low back and neck before anything new can be learned. This makes sense and doesn't in light of his usual progression of introductory lessons--a "flexor" lesson is often first. And of course lessons are usually done in lying for this reason. But none of these intro lessons are as extreme as what is described in that chapter of The Potent Self. This lesson, paradoxically in standing, actually carries through this thought: maintaining the rounding of the spine while shifting weight and "coming up on each leg" is remarkably potent as a means of reeducation of the generally over-working and poorly-organized extensors.

We've been focusing (so to speak) on the eye in its functions of vision and leading action of the whole self--now, let's weigh (so to speak--is the pun tired yet?) its simple physical existence: our grasp of the eye in our self-image.

In this lesson focused on the eyes (so to speak), we take our eyes through the range of divergence and convergence--looking at objects near and far away.

In this lesson, we're organizing the eyes and extending the spine--with some adjustments to the head-neck relationship on the way.

In this lesson we slowly develop circles of the shoulders and hips on one side.

Kicking off our first fall 2011 series with a lesson differentiating the eyes. If you're a seasoned Feldenkrais person, I'm curious what you think about the arm position as I teach it here. Looking back at the lesson in the ATM book, it's ambiguous between starting with the arm long and bending as you turn, and starting with it bent. I'm curious what you think about trying it this way. Discussion at Feldy Notebook: http://feldynotebook.wikispaces.com/Movement+of+the+Eyes+Organizes+the+Movement+of+the+Body You'll also notice that I actually mess up the instructions for eye-head differentiation. Mea culpa. See above outline at Feldy Notebook (or the ATM book itself) for the right variations.

In Body and Mature Behaviour, Moshe writes about the "fixing" of the trunk for the movement of the limbs--not, as we imagine, the general immobility of "core stability," but finely calibrated to the direction of action, and with the least possible sum total of work in the muscles: "The trunk by itself is normally not rigid. It consists of two smaller parts, the almost rigid thorax and the pelvis. Thus, before any significant movement can be made, it as necessary that the thorax and pelvis should be more rigidly connected [so that, as a unit, they will be the heavy part and the action of the muscles joining limbs to trunk will move not the trunk but the limbs]. And the stability of the whole body relative to the ground should be increased in the plane in which work is to be done. Among all the numerous possible configurations of the segments of the body in each case there is a group in which the total amount of pull in all the muscles of the body is the smallest." (p. 54, beginning of Chapter 7) You can think of this lesson as an exploration of that idea.

The grand finale--a proposal that focuses you on generating movement from the core. In other lessons we roll or transition with the push or pull of our limbs, or at the very least their weight carries us along. Here everything is kept very close to home, and you have no options left but to move from the core and lengthen the spine.

You never know, in life, when you're going to be stuck up against a wall and need to reach into your back pocket. If this function concerns you, this is the lesson for you. On the other hand, you may have more generalized interests, like ungluing your shoulder blades, freeing your neck, or undoing patterns of holding in the abdomen that limit everything else you do. This lesson can help you with those things too.

When you have to balance on your knees, you really start talking to your hips and spine about what they're up to and whether they're talking to one another. None of that fine adjustment in the feet, the bones of the lower leg, the knee joints to save you.

This lesson--a version of the first lesson Moshe taught at San Francisco, and the first lesson in my training--takes the idea of lying flat on the floor and shows you how rounded you really are in that situation. This is the first of four classes that are going to develop some refined control from the core.

This lesson is a further exploration of the ideas we started with [[Skewering the spine in the chest]]. I almost don't want to post it--I made several mistakes in teaching it. I'll list them here, and you can adapt around as well as possible while listening to a recording! 1) I talk about the flexing and extending of your right ankle "shifting your whole right side." This is the wrong image. It's still a lesson of "skewering the spine", but from one foot. (It gives quite a different idea to think of shifting one side up, rather than thinking of shifting the whole torso, the spine--but just from the one foot.) 2) When you have your arm overhead, you should spend some time continuing the movement, and looking towards your hand as you push up from your heel so that your knuckles advance on the floor. 3) When you're face down, also do the movement with your arm long overhead, so that the push from your toes advances your arm--and look up towards your hand as you lengthen it. The latter two points will start to connect in some relationship to turning your head, which should help set the stage for the upcoming step of taking your head under the bridge.

Two days after the 2011 Canadian federal election, we have a deep exploration of the dynamics of tilting and looking left and right. Somehow I missed the obvious point that looking right drives your knees left, and looking left drives your knees back right. All those liberals who voted conservative at the last minute, driven by the rise of the NDP.

This is the first of three amazing lessons that get right to core matters. There was an interesting conversation after class about how people found the "spine as skewer" image--did it connect or not? One student said he was imagining the meat (tofu?) on the shish kebab was sort of folded or bunched up, and it flattens as the spine "skewers" it. Play with the idea!

We're off to a rolling start with this four-week series in April-May 2011. This recording has some introductory and framing comments for new-comers about the developmental and learning approach of the Method. And you probably haven't had this much fun trying to do something seemingly impossible since you were 8 months old or so. Find yourself a little more space than usual for this lesson.

I haven't decided whether this lesson is about attaining freedom from/using the floor, or the amazing things that happen if you refine a pathway for the lower leg that stays parallel to the spine through a range of folding and extending. Or what. It's a follow-up on a missed recording two weeks ago, but don't worry. We could have done this one first anyway.

In this lesson in side-lying, you refine control of your legs while finding the subtle ways that you can use your spine and trunk for this fine control.

This lesson works in internal rotation of the hips, and shows you how much that has to do with your shoulders....neck....head.

This isn't the first pelvic clock lesson I've posted--it has some special nuances, ones that let you study your own patterns and biases in control of your pelvis in action. Check out other versions at: http://www.kinesophics.ca/diyatm/atm_themes/pelvic_clock

This "classic" lesson (we call the theme the "dead bird" lesson) works in sitting, and shows the surprising power of the eyes to organize movement--or, perhaps better, your willingness and availability to move.

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.

This extensor lesson may have you seeing the world in a whole new way. What other limitations in the world are limitations in your own organization? Oh dear; philosophy and sociology rear their heads. I'm not really into personalizing responsibility like this. Let's have a long blog post about that when I'm not heading off to catch a plane.

This is the second of two lessons in the [[January 15 Workshop: Weight and Weightlessness]], 2011. In the first lesson, [[Lifting a long leg]], we were in sidelying, finding how to manage the weight of the long leg in various directions/configurations. This got us using our spines and relating ourselves heel to pelvis to head. Now we're on to weightlessness: finding the reflexes in standing and the lengthening of the head up and forwards as the hip joint goes back and down, to turn walking into a gentle springing orchestration of reflexes.

This is the first of two lessons in the [[January 15 Workshop: Weight and Weightlessness]], 2011. We're in sidelying, finding how to manage the weight of the long leg in various directions/configurations. It's a mash-up of Mia & Gaby's lesson (1977 #9) and Moshe's AY #232 (minimal movements lying on the side, for those following along at home. The second lesson is [[http://kinesophics.ca/diyatm/atmrecordings/walking_backward_0|Walking backward]]--or in a recording from a couple of years ago, [[Walking backward]].

First class back on Cornwallis Street, and a classic, though perhaps challenging, introductory lesson. Refining control of the pelvis from the core, and relating this to some fun activities you may not have enjoyed since back before your memory starts... I hope you can all enjoy the boost to my recording volume and clarity brought on by using the iPhone plus HT Recorder!

Factoid verification, after the lesson. There's actually 26 bones in each foot....making one quarter of the bones in the human body, but nowhere near 66! And here's your sensory and motor homunculus images to contemplate. You feel more in your feet than you control, a feature shared in a more extreme form by teeth, gums, and genitals, which don't appear on the motor homunculus. And you comparative control some parts in greater detail that you actually sense in less detail. (Click the image to see.)

When we fold forwards (flex) we think of this as shortening. But every shortening involves lengthening. You can lie on your back and take your knee and elbow towards one another--and that involves a certain level of challenge in lifting lefts and head. This lesson takes a familiar idea and does it in a different [[Vary the lesson: orientation, manipulation, timing|orientation]] -- sidelying -- and in this very low-effort environment, more refinement is possible. This is the second lesson in the April 2010 month of lengthening lessons.

The theme this month is "Finding Length." Here's a suggestion for working with this lesson. You might do it first in a very casual way where you pay attention only to getting comfortable with lying on your side with your legs in the positions described. Don't make too much effort with the arm/chest/chin directions on your first go through. Come back a day or two later, and do it again (fog horn comments and all), and now that you're not so much occupied with your balance on your side and your leg arrangement, you can play with the lengthening movements and the arms/chest/chin in a lighter and more refined way.

Beyond the breath, many processes of digestion and excretion take place constantly as we go about our lives. This lesson plays with the actions of the voluntary sphincter muscles--these curious muscles around the eyes, the mouth, in the pelvic floor that don't open/close joints or pull on bones, but that open and close orifices. It's not as weird as it sounds.

This is the first of two lessons in the Integrating Life and Action workshop, March 2010. I keep talking in this lesson about how your breath "accommodates itself" to your actions and positions in the world. This strikes me as a little strange as I listen to it and do the lesson.

The last two classes ([[On the side, the sternum becoming flexible]] and [[On the Side, Bending and twisting the chest and spine]]) had everyone in class talking about our lack of clarity in side-bending. First, what it is when simply standing or lying flat on the floor, to maintain the face in the same plane in sidebending.

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.

The spine will only be as flexible as the ribs attached and the sternum allow it to be--and those will only move if they can see themselves moving relative to the pelvis. This lesson addresses that whole relationship.

Chronic tension of the lumbar and neck extensors is a fundamental pattern of limitation. This lesson addresses these areas actively and passively, with ingenious variations that address some key "hidden spots," particularly in the upper back and neck.

To finish this month of fingers-to-spine lessons, we explore the connection between lengthening and turning along the axis of the arm--as though a gentle pull and twist from the fingers could draw across your spine and move your whole pelvis around your opposite hip joint. We also played with distributing intention.

This third lesson in the fingers-to-spine series continues to play with the independence of each finger [second lesson coming soon--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.

This lessons demonstrates the reach of your fingertips extending all through your spine and chest....and in all directions.

Now that we have the idea of the primary image from the first lesson of the Agile Awareness workshop, let's start to refine it and fill it in. There are places in the back, between the shoulders blades and at the base of the neck, that are often a blank place in our self-awareness. This lesson finds and integrates them.

Start with this lesson, and learn something you can use to transform any lesson that you do. This is the first of two lessons from the Agile Awareness workshop in September 2009. The second lesson is [[Simpler]].

What does this have to do with lengthening the hamstrings? Holding your feet and rolling from side to side?

Where does flexibility come from? Why is it that we can only move so far, and then we stop? Tight muscles? Bad joints?--Or habits?

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).

With a certain obsessive focus I return from three weeks of holidays to come back to the last theme I was teaching....the raising and lowering of the head will be familiar from the [[Lowering the head]] lesson.

My niece is at that stage of figuring out how to balance that big heavy head at the top of a small neck--tiny little vertebrae without a lot of big muscles around them--as she heads off running down the street. It's fun to watch. This lesson may broaden the resources available to you in keeping a good head on your shoulders!

Two weeks earlier, we did a lesson (not recorded, but similar to [[Amherst, Year 2, Tape #31]]) that involved rolling a full 360 degrees on the floor. I noticed that there was much less agility in the phase of the rolling that was face down--and in that lesson, we spent less time on that aspect. So here's a lesson a couple of weeks later to spend some time developing that agility face down.