August ATM's - a variety of lessons #3

Continuation of Lesson3 in the ATM Book

Part 2 of Lesson 3
Some Fundamental Properties of Movement
page 91

The first paragraph of this chapter reads:

“In this lesson you will learn to recognise
more of the fundamental properties of the
control mechanisms of the voluntary muscles.

You will find that about thirty slow, light, and short movements
are sufficient to change the fundamental tonus of the muscles,
that is, the state of their contraction before their activation by the will.

Once the change of tonus is effected,
it will spread to the entire half of the body
containing the part originally worked on.
An action becomes easy to perform and their movement
becomes light when the huge muscles of the center of the body
do the bulk of the work and the limbs
only direct the bones to the destination of the effort”.

Today’s lesson is a continuation of the previous from Moshe’s ATM book. We will be doing some very similar movements, as Moshe says, over and over to explore and discover all the ways possible to do the same thing.

You’ll hear Moshe ask often during these movements “WHEN do you mobilise…” (the pelvis or the back), strongly hinting at the timing of the movements he invites us to explore. Even if that be all that is learned from this lesson it is something that can be brought into all of your movements from here on end - if you choose or if your body remembers - particularly when pain or tension is being felt. It could be worth asking your self when you move… what could change if you altered the timing?

During this lesson you will be invited to feel for your self, when you press the back in to the ground, is it before lifting, during lifting or after lifting the limbs… so that you can feel which way makes the most sense.

Moshe invites us to feel by the quality of movement…
the expression on the face,
frowns between the brows,
grimaces of the mouth…
tightening of the muscles around the neck…
and then move with the options that have you WANT to do more because…

“wow that was interesting”.

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Enjoy part 2 of Moshe’s lesson: