Elegant expansion: Letting go of unnecessary contraction

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These lessons sequence and organize movement in ways that are not habitual. You will start to relate to the gravitational field with different muscles. We will look at lengthening and rotating for a feeling of expansiveness. Any time we rotate, we also lengthen. Length is fundamental for health, posture, digestion, and balance. 

Start with a sense of length in the breath. I love this lesson because it’s done almost—but not quite—in the imagination. You can have powerful results letting go of tension in the little muscles in between the ribs. There’s not much movement here, but a lot of attention and awareness of the structure and function of the lung.

This is an eye-opening lesson about how much we are holding in our abdomen. Amazingly, the more we contract and let go in very precise ways, the more the belly opens and lengthens. The back flattens out and the face softens. Test it out for yourself.

I love this lesson because it’s so instructive. You have to wiggle and test and experiment to find a way to do it. It teaches you how to teach yourself.

One of my students thought she wasn’t doing the lesson because she wasn’t doing the movement. The lesson is in the learning, not the movement. I cannot stress that enough. The learning is how you relate to yourself at any given moment. With curiosity, interest, and creativity, or with struggle, strain, and negativity? Do you think you’ll move better if it’s the latter?

* * *

From my teacher, Dennis Leri, on this lesson:

There’s no misinterpretation, just experiment. You test your guess, then you get more information.

There’s no reason to change your behavior unless it doesn't work. These lessons show you that maybe you've taken a certain trajectory through life where you’ve avoided these kinds of challenges so your sense of yourself doesn't get these counter examples. These lessons just show you many times, “Oh, in fact, I don't know what I'm doing.”

Then, rather than stopping and giving up, say, “I don't know what I'm doing in this moment, let's listen to the lesson, let's do the things that make a lesson easier, more enjoyable.” You play with it. You can't fail. There's no failure in there. Getting the leg in and out isn't the lesson. It's just an orientation.

(AY377)

We all have default learning and ingrained patterns, especially around the breath. It’s a survival mechanism. How do we change it?

From my teacher, Dennis Leri, on Moshe’s process:

Dr. Feldenkrais had problems with his knee from a soccer injury. He was told he would never walk again. He fixed his own knee by manipulating it. He would do ONE movement, note what happened before, during, right after, five minutes after. Then he would do ONE DIFFERENT movement, and note what happened. Over time, he meticulously compiled an understanding of which things worked and which didn't.

Then he tripped and jarred his other knee.

He wondered, how do we walk? He started asking people. People didn't know. Whether you walk well or poorly, it doesn't make any difference if you don't know what you're doing. To make that statement to some people, it makes no sense!

Yet, if you don't know what you're doing and you can't change it, it's an intractable habit.

Dr. Feldenkrais always said you should have options to do something else within your domain of experience. He realized that there were characterological and emotional things that were part of his original injuries. He realized he couldn't deal with the injury without dealing with who he was as a person.

He wasn't his old self after his realization, he was more of himself. He wasn't limited by his habits.

* * *

This lesson shows you how to do something else with the breath. Let go of your habit and let the intelligence of the system take over.

This is an iconic lesson that unravels much of the holding we have in the ribs and upper back. You'll feel flatter and smoother after this.

The folding and unfolding and breathing different ways allows us to let go of stuff we didn’t even know we were holding onto. There is rotation and rolling in this lesson, as well as folding. The genius of moving in two planes at once—like flexing while rotated—is very helpful for unwinding pernicious habits of tension.

Second and third parts of coordinating flexors and extensors. An overall wonderful lesson I come back to again and again. Feel how you become longer and taller.

Rotating creates length. This lesson unwinds more tension in the chest and spine. The way we coordinate the musculature allows for more and more length.

Any definition of strength has to include an ability to feel your base of support, to understand your own balance so that you can sense your position in space. As you feel more centered around the axis of the spine, that balance over your base of support becomes more obvious, not by thinking but by sensing.

Second half of lengthening and unwinding.

This lesson asks you to make a cognitive leap in what you imagine is possible. At first it seems like the hips don’t “allow” you to move a certain way, but it’s really between the ears—in your brain—that you don’t at first conceive of this possibility.

Contracting muscles more powerfully will not improve how you do this, or any act in the world. Bringing awareness to your sense of effort and sensing more possibilities will eliminate habits that interfere with strength.

Tip: Don't force your knee over to the other side. Instead, consider what you're doing in your ribs at your waist. How much awareness can you bring to that area? 

AY302

This is another softening and lengthening lesson in flexion, similar to lesson #2 in this series.

Did you feel that some of these lessons were effortful? Effort is the sensation of wasted movement caused by conflicting impulses arriving at your muscles. Well-coordinated movement has an absence of effort.

This lesson asks you to notice effort while paying attention to the tanden, or the center of mass. It’s an awareness challenge and also a deeply calming lesson. I include it often to lower stress .

Comment on strength and spontaneity

If you are on a base of imprecise support, this requires more musculature to maintain and limits the freedom to act. In particular, if your abdominal muscles are already tense, they are not available to move the trunk. Their potential power is used up.

To be spontaneous and responsive to life, we have to learn how to transmit force in any direction at a moment's notice. That means coordinated activity. Even the most developed muscles are of no use if they cannot work in coordination with our intention to act in the world.

Spontaneity is the capacity to respond to the environment with clarity instead of compulsive contractions.

Reaction to the environment is a cue to our muscle patterns and attitudes. We want to choose behavior X but we do Y because earlier experience informs our choice. We’re not free to choose when we’re compulsive.

Purposeful action is when we are free to choose our own responses.