Awareness Through Movement #345

Diagonal Image - we continue... DEVELOPING AWARENESS

A heads up:

“During all of these movements, did you think of your image,
of the longitudinal line —
that line of length from the tailbone to the head through the spine?

Did you think of the directions of the arms and legs or their length?
If you did not do this, you missed the main essence of the previous lessons.

You did the external parts,
the movements of the muscles.

This helps nothing.

It does not change anything in the spine

except perhaps
increase the pains, or sometimes, if you did it slowly,
perhaps made it a bit more comfortable.
However, a fundamental change that changes the spine
to be flexible, strong, and straight does not happen
without relating the movement to the image.”

Moshe Feldenkrais

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As I prepared this lesson I had a huge smile on my face - I’ve intuitively been Feldenkraising one of the machines at the gym…. and looking like a real oddball amongst the strictly one-plane’d regulars. This single leg leg press is the machine of choice, it’s been making the biggest difference with my whole body strength.

I’ve been adding more weight each week much to the raised eyebrows of some big, bulky regulars

“wow Dale, 2.5 plates, not many people can do that”

I thought they were joking, now though, when I see others on the same machine I realise it’s true! I also think it’s a bit funny when obviously ‘steroided’ newbies come in with their selfie cams hooked up for video footage and they grunt and groan with much less weight on the machine - to impress their viewers.

It’s all about the organisation, as I press the weights up what I mostly have been focussing on is the length of my spine, and pressing the vertebrae in to the mat behind me, ear to shoulder. Which is a little bit different to what is suggested in this lesson - although through the pressing I’ve been thinking really long, and when the long leg gets longer then the shorter leg with the weight seems to naturally bend more so it’s kind of the same!

Vita and Asanga I think you’ll like this one, you’ll be on your back the whole time, for a nice meditative inner space cadet styled 45 minutes.

Enjoy learning more about your Self :)