Awareness Through Movement #259

Bending Knee with the Chair part 2 - THE WHOLE SELF

This lesson is a step into another series, a small one that has me think that Moshe very likely noticed how people were moving and started to work out ways for people to learn how to soften their/our weight in to the legs… and invite the feet to be more involved in these movements - by accepting the weight and pressing sometimes the heels, often times the balls, and always the toes into the ground to move UP. Then the question is WHICH toes? Whenever you hear the words “distributing your weight” in a lesson , this the fine level of detail Moshe was asking us to experiment with.

So yes, in today’s lesson there will be a few more variations of the movement we did last night. For what it’s worth, my experience of these lessons used to be… one of dread, I HATED them initially. AS I’ve shared before, I used to think that my legs were the top region only - the thighs. Until I did these lessons my feet were the clumps hanging off my legs and they were really only toes and the balls which took most of my weight. My ankles used to be part of the feet and had nothing to do with my legs - so this lesson, like many others caught me, my brain, my way of thinking, all the habits I’d formed… by surprise.

Although this small series was initially met with resistance, the results had me dancing through the streets of Elwood, and still, to this day these movements come back to haunt me in a very good way.

It’s only now that I’m able to take some weight in my heels - yesterday at the gym on the leg press I got a sense of the calcaneus opening up so that my WHOLE foot could press against the machine. That caused a chain reaction/response in to the pelvis which had my leg go all wobbly in protest

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
We haven’t been here before and we don’t know what to do -
hold back on the weight for a moment, don’t go as far”

So I listened and took it shakily slowly. When I got out of the machine and wobbled my way over to the squat machine to feel any differences, I felt the calcaneus open to take weight through the heel in to the tibia… and OMGoodness it was an unusual experience. It’s like starting again, again… much to the amusement of others, with big smile on my face working my way through these new discoveries.

I know these lessons are not really a favourite for many people. Feldenkrais is supposed to be lie on your back very gentle meditation type movements where we smile in bliss for the whole lesson… right??

Yes, some of the time and definitely not ALL of the time. Moshe was very conscious of MOVING people through traumatic times and he really got people out of their minds by working through these giant jigsaw puzzles we live in to work out pain free, efficient ways to move through life. A LOT of the time his lessons were more like complex yoga series, workouts that left people invigorated AND feeling like they’d solved a massive puzzle - if not immediately after the lesson, then as the movements were approached months or years later.

Tonight I invite you to move through any resistance your internal dialogue could be presenting you with… and get yourself in to the room to at least listen to what your legs *could* be doing,

bare minimum through your imagination :)