Awareness Through Movement #174

Knees Outward To Floor - SELF ORGANISATION

After each lesson people in the ZoomRoom share a little about their experience, and last night’s lesson saw both Dale and Brendan learned something about the differences between the right and left sides of their bodies… which is one of the aims of these lessons. Moshe Feldenkrais came up with these unusual configurations for exactly that reason, for people to learn how we move habitually through one ‘dominant’ side, and therefore very often neglect large parts of our selves.

When we continually move the same way over a long period of time, it’s inevitable that our bodies start to take a particular shape that becomes something like our ‘signature’ self. We develop patterns that make it easy to distinguish our entrance into the room simply by the way we walk.

These lessons invite us to return to the natural lines, curves, the shapes our skeletal systems are naturally designed to move into. Which can drive the internal dialogue a bit crazy “no, no, do it this way, this is the way you’ve always done it”.

When we are safely lying on our backs with the ground supporting us, that can sometimes be the perfect setting to fully let go and explore movements like we all did when we were children - which is one of the reasons Moshe has us lie on our backs to connect with the ground at the beginning of most lessons. Then we can work out ways to interrupt these patterns without relying on somebody else to ‘fix’ us. We eventually end up with our own tool kits that can be used when we find ourselves in an uncomfortable position - when pain presents its self for no apparent reason.

self organisation, when the larger muscles take the brunt of the load, then the rest can tag along for the ride.

Standing upright, with only our feet touching the ground makes it difficult to fully let go and feel through those same bones that helped us roll from the back to the belly to the back as infants.

Connecting with the ribs can sometimes make all the difference, we’ll explore more tonight :)