Awareness Through Movement #178

Lengthening The Arms - Marianne Rivington

Marianne graduated from the Southern California training in 1986. When I asked her to write a bio to introduce herself, she came back with
“movement and awareness have been my lifelong steadfast guides”… which,

1. tells you a little about her modesty

2. (in my opinion) totally undervalues who she really is

So allow me to introduce somebody who has been a massive influence in my studies of this practice, and my life.

Marianne is somebody who takes this work/method very seriously, she spends hours working through the lesson herself before recording… reading through any notes she has made over the years as she poured through the hours and hours of lessons left to future practitioners from Moshe’s legacy.

We met through an ongoing project for practitioners only, called anAYaDay, where we worked our way through these manuals every day at a particular time… which shifted three times a year during daylight savings in both the northern and southern hemispheres.

Working my way through the manuals you are now experiencing for two point five years of (almost daily - I missed around 25 lessons) participation had me completely alter how I relate to my body, how I move, think, and, connect with others. Unfortunately the either 11am, 12noon or 1pm timeslot proved too challenging when my savings started to run really low, I reluctantly had to stop….

and create MySelf.study. The intention being that together with other interested practitioners, we can build a library for anybody wanting to either do the lesson at 8pm with other people four days a week, and also, make this resource available for any people interested in learning more about their physical, spiritual and mental bodies.

In the daily practitioner-only AY lessons, people from all around the world would share insight into their discoveries after we’d done the lesson. More background that seems relevant to share here: Moshe died unexpectedly half way through the very first practitioner training and the people who “took over” were not quite sure how to move forward with his method (for movement). Physiotherapy was the industry that ticked most of the appealing boxes so the practitioners who formed the ‘Feldenkrais Guild’ focussed their efforts on promoting Feldenkrais to physio organisations around the world. The discussions we had after the daily lessons proved extremely valuable when experienced Feldy/physio’s offered their ‘professional’ knowledge of how the lessons affected our skeletal systems biomechanically.

Marianne initially learned about Feldenkrais via her physiotherapy practice. Through these group discussions Marianne and I ‘clicked’. Her ability to explain the movements really resonated with me and we have had hours of discussion about how this method can affect humans being in many many different ways… emotionally, spiritually, ontologically. Her insights make complete sense for me, and our relationship has continued through our secret study group - we meet once a week with two other practitioners and a non-practitioner who has assisted her translate Moshe’s recordings digitally. That’s why our group is secret, if it were known we were sharing (some) proprietary materials with somebody who has a deep love of robotics, we would be in big trouble… so please, ssshhh… don’t tell anyone.

Our little study group has been meeting over the last 4? 5? years, it’s where I continue to learn more about myself, the way I move and make sense of this thing called a body. I think of Marianne as a mentor and am very happy she is part of this project by way of listening in her own time from her home in Canada, and contributing with her recordings. In the earlier lessons she also contributed her quirky commentary so we can reminisce over the years to come, they’re worth reading if you have the time.

After an introduction I feel is more fitting for the voice you’re about to hear, here is what she says about #174, lengthening the arms:

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“I really like this lesson… here are my notes from 30 years ago …FABULOUS !!!

Each time I do this lesson I deepen my appreciation of how Moshe guides the student to “soften” and “find the skeletal relationship”. Starting with a push through the foot and “pay attention to the trajectory of the force” he describes how the movement is transmitted segment by segment, bone by bone… many times… and it started to become clear each time I turned my gaze inward and paid attention to the sensation of the “line of pushing”.

I had the good fortune to do this lesson after #176 Turning in the heels, Part 2… with the recent experience of sensation of pushing from between the big toe and second toe…and gained a new appreciation of how the lessons inform and enhance each other.”

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“And now, this time around, I also had the wonderful memory of the “foot bones song” from #176… which had me understand why there were so many comments of appreciation on the youtube clip by med students studying for final exams. Each of my foot bones just enjoyed so much the recognition of its contribution to the sequence of movement through my skeleton.”