Awareness Through Movement #315

Preparation for sitting with swinging - TIMING

As the title suggests, we will be exploring more of the movements where the legs are swung to bring us up to sitting. Moshe has broken down these movements in numerous lessons to teach our bodies some ways to make coming up from the floor even more interesting. Having just done a lesson in falling for the secret study group, I am developing a greater understanding for why he insists we learn these fundamental movements and reduce the fear of falling.

I heard somebody in TelAviv today mention that Israeli’s are having to run for 1.5 minutes to shelters when warnings of a potential strikes are sounded, and people are getting injured in their rush to ‘escape’ the potential threat because in the panic, they fall.

What we’re learning in these rolling lessons is how to use our bodies to reduce the risk of damaging our selves in the event of a fall. Sometimes these kinaesthetic learnings, or our newly developed Feldenkrais habits, return us to our instinctual patterns of protection and keep us safe from harming our selves.

And the ability to reverse a movement can pique our curiosity to return to standing… in a fun way.

The other day an elderly woman with a walking stick shared concerns for her “high risk” of falling. She looked at me a bit strangely when I suggested she could learn to fall - “why on earth would I do that?” Although perplexed she did seem to walk a little more erect as she left our conversation… “oh, I’m too old for that” a little distracted by what we discussed… perhaps.