Lessons 1-14
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In this lesson you practice composing the five lines of the skeleton. As Moshe points out, any child or adult knows that even the most rudimentary sketch of five lines is a representation of a human being.
Here you start to use the eyes to scan the lines, and then you start tapping various parts of yourself to feel the ease and speed of your voluntary contractions, unimpeded by the background effects of the necessary functions of the nervous system.
My teacher, Dennis Leri, says at the beginning of this lesson:
Sometimes you want to have an experience in a lesson, or the lesson creates a certain set of experiences that you may or may not be completely aware of, and you want to organize "it." People often say, "I want to organize the lesson into what I want it for," rather than letting the lesson organize them.
You might say, "I feel my shoulder is forward or my breathing is funny, so I want to use this lesson to make it better." You can use it this way, but often the thing that's not in your field of awareness is the thing that's missing for you in the structure of the lesson.
We all have various experiences that we are more or less aware of. For example, Moshe said to a student in the 1977 San Francisco training, "In this last lesson your pelvis did a certain movement."
"But that's not my experience," the student said.
Moshe said, "It was your experience, you just didn't know it. Because you couldn't do that thing with your leg without moving your pelvis."
Moshe goes on to say that our self-image—in terms of how we organize ourselves somatically and our repertoire of possible behaviors and movement activities—is really very small. Part of this learning process is to expand our domain of what we know about ourselves.
In the San Francisco training, Moshe uses the phrase, “the big body.” We all have a "big body," which is an incredibly spacious, nuanced, rich place to be. As we're moving, our self-image can approximate and move in the direction of occupying this big body, this bigger sense of self.
In every lesson, as in life, lots of things happen that we don't know we're doing. On top of that, there are things we don't even know that we can do.
So in these lessons, don't worry about correcting yourself. The lessons are self-correcting in the sense of the big self, the big body.
This is a version of classic extension, with different variations. With one leg out to the side, you stack the hands and then lift the head and arm, then the long leg with the head and arm. I love the quick pulsing movement he asks you to do as it unravels so many excess contractions in the back by contracting and letting go many times.
One interesting thing in this lesson is the gradual awakening of the use of the back muscles in many relationships to the head and arm. With the head in different directions relative to the turn of the spine, eventually every variation improves through repeated testing and exploring.
(called “Lying on the stomach and lifting head,” by Moshe)
This is a version of flexors and extensors, a classic lesson that involves turning the lower trunk and then the upper trunk, with lots of seesaw breathing as you are tilted this way and that.
This lesson invites many eye variations as well. For me, it always unravels tension along the spine. I feel longer and taller, and my head turns lightly and easily on the top of the spine.
(called “Tilting crossed legs,” by Moshe)
More flexors and extensors lessons:
43 Tilt knees, lengthen arms
76 & 77 Coordinating flexors and extensors
87 Tilt knees, rotate spine, fold chest
91 Tilt knees, roll chest and head
211 Eyes, neck, arms, triangle (focuses on the eyes and neck)
I love this lesson, especially as I have chronic hip pain. When I do this lesson, I am higher functioning in my hip and I don’t experience the pain as much. I am more organized around my high-functioning self instead of the lowest functioning parts. (Just because I have pain doesn’t mean Feldenkrais is not successful. It means I can have a high-functioning life even with injuries.)
This lesson lets the right leg hang in the joint as you explore many options for sensing the leg in the hip, folding and turning the ankle, sliding the leg this way and that. At the end there is a long sequence of lovely flexion movements, again with some pulsing that help the back and leg connect and integrate.
(This is the lesson where the foot goes tap-tap, then tap-tap-tap, and tap-tap-tap-tap, and so on until your nervous system is well and truly scrambled, but it does sneak in the back door of one’s habits and unravel a lot of holding.)
This is similar to a pelvic clock lesson, leaning first on the hands in sitting and tilting the pelvis many ways, then leaning on the forearms and elbows. You will activate the back muscles in new ways to explore these movements. Eventually, the whole self comes into focus and both sides of the ribs and both hips and knees play a role.
This lesson has a lot of eye movement. As you free the head and neck and then test the pelvis movements again, it becomes obvious that the eye muscles are intimately linked to the freedom of the pelvis.
(called “Intro to dial movement of the pelvis” by Moshe)
This lesson invites you to roll up the spine, feeling the upper back between the shoulder blades. Then, you oscillate from the feet and jiggle the ribs in between the shoulder blades. There are many variations with seesaw breathing, turning the head, and rocking the upper back side to side. The whole focus is on pressing and yielding to the floor in the upper back in between the shoulder blades. It allows you to soften while finding strength at the same time, letting go of pernicious knots in the shoulders and helping the whole system reduce the high muscle tone so indicative of stress.
On rolling across the shoulders, Dr. Feldenkrais says,
“Just let the body fold with pressure on the floor until it realizes that it can be a regular arc, the shoulder blades, the vertebrae, the whole spine, the whole thing is soft, yet resilient, strong to hold the weight, but soft enough, regular enough to fall into the contours of the floor, which is straight, therefore the body must change.
You see, the number of movements you do is completely immaterial, the attention to what's happening so that all the vertebrae and all the ribs organize themselves so that they can let go where there is excessive pressure and push down where there is not enough pressure so that the pressure is uniformly distributed and the movement becomes pleasant and brings to your awareness the clear feeling of every part of it.”
(called “First of spine-chain series,” by Moshe)
This is the “twirling the legs” lesson. You hold a foot in sitting and play with swiveling such that the elbow can go inside and outside the knee, then you clarify the same thing lying down, many ways. It helps the hips wake up and move in relation to the folding and lengthening of the ribs and spine.
Note that this lesson starts with a complex move and then unpacks it. Don’t expect, necessarily, to be able to do the complex move from the get-go.
(called “Actual and mental right hip symphony” by Moshe)
This is a genius, genius lesson. It looks at our perception of middle and how subjective it is. It also invites a lot of gentle leg tilting with the head in various positions. But the questions about how we perceive middle are mind-bending to contemplate: all our perceptions are funneled through our muscle tone. Our muscle tone affects our orientation in space. That’s how we know the outside world, through our sense of spatial orientation, which is informed by how much we are holding in the muscles.
This lesson proffers one of Dr. Feldenkrais’s ingenious moments of teaching where he makes the abstract concrete by showing you how this is true.
(called “Tilting legs to find center,” by Moshe)
Other interesting measuring lessons:
420 Lines crossing and balancing the center: clarify many nonhabitual X’s to find center
223 Slinky lessons: sense eight lines from various points in yourself as you swivel the head
331 Diagonal trajectories with dots: link dots and lines across yourself as you fold
This is a rolling the arms lesson, feeling the shoulder blades go up and down, feeling the ribs and the weight on the pelvis and the natural turn of the head and the shape of the spine. With many, many variation in sitting with the soles of the feet together, the head and neck become freer and lighter. You will discover the benefit in doing first one pattern, then the opposite, over and over as your brain discovers how to create new options that are ever more easy and elegant. It’s worth exploring just to see how your arms hang afterwards!
(called “Wringing the shoulder girdle” by Moshe)
What to do with our constant need to stretch the hamstrings? Here Moshe shows how the back muscles are linked to the ability of the leg muscles to organize efficiently, appropriately, and intelligently.
With lots and lots of flexion, lifting the head and the leg and folding the spine, the system wakes up to the possibility that maybe, one day, the foot could go behind the head. Perhaps. Only with a totally flexible spine in every position—on the back, to the side, and in sitting—can you conceive of this possibility. Test it out, and then see what happens. One day it might feel like nothing!
(called “Restoring life to the hamstrings” by Moshe)
Dr. Feldenkrais comments on the eyes that, “The ultimate purpose of the visual process is to arrive at an appropriate motor and/or cognitive response. The main point is that strained eyes add strain throughout the whole self, in addition to compromising vision.”
This lesson can have a dramatic effect on the tone of your whole musculoskeletal system. Both the muscle movement of the eyes and the function of seeing are addressed. Thoroughly checking different arcs, focal distances, and tracking ability will challenge the ruts in your visual cortex on every level. Being able to see while moving the eyes across the horizon and across different focal distances is quite a feat. Dr. Feldenkrais says, “Eyes get into a position equivalent to a scoliosis.” As you unravel all these stuck habits, you will find the neck is released, as well as a sense of softening everywhere else.
The most amazing thing about eye lessons is the improved muscular responsiveness in the whole system. But don’t listen to me, try the lesson yourself. Dr. Feldenkrais continues:
We are all to some degree stuck in an older self-image and cannot sense all parts equally, which hinders creativity. The point of clarifying our self-image is to change the quality of how well we enact our intentions.
So, back to my original question, why the eyes? Because there is a functional connection between the state of contraction of the eyes and the state of contraction of other muscles in the body. If we have a faulty self-image, which we all do, and if the eyes affect the tonus of other muscles, we can circumvent this faulty self-image and reach parts of ourselves that we don't yet know.
(called “Reeducation of the eyes,” by Moshe)
This lesson should really be called, “total freedom of the neck,” with its light, easy swiveling of the head. In fact, the whole lesson is rolling the head between the hands in various positions in gravity, and with various hand-holds.
All of these inform you about when the neck is free, what we call differentiated, and when you are picking up the vertebrae further down in the back as a way to compensate for the neck not turning.
Feel free to rest often and do fewer movements in this lesson. There are a couple variations that are, let’s say, quite a reach for the average person. Do not strain to do anything in this lesson. If it’s not accessible in this moment, pushing harder is not the intelligent thing to do. First, do way less. Second, change your strategy in terms of the speed, direction, force, or timing of the movement. Or, try another lesson (like an eye lesson, which frees the neck), and come back to it.
(called “Differentiation of the head,” by Moshe)
This is a marvelous take on seesaw breathing, taught in a unique way to this particular group of people. Dr. Feldenkrais spends a long time testing how the abdomen operates optimally in various positions whether it is contracted or expanded, whether you are breathing in or out.
He often asks you to do he same experiment on the back, front, sitting, standing, lying on the side, and on the hands and knees with the head on the floor. After so many variations, you find the breath moves with a delightful ease, nicely responsive and in the background as it’s meant to be.
We are not meant to think about how we breathe. Hence, all Feldenkrais Method breathing experiments are designed to help you get out of your own way and unhook your co-dependent muscular habits with the diaphragm and abdomen. When you are not forced by habit to constrict the breath, you can respond fully to whatever demand is made on your shape, your need for ventilation, and your relationship to gravity.
Let the innate intelligence of the nervous system take over.
(called, “Abdomen and chest in breathing,” by Moshe)
More breathing lessons here and a lovely series on four-part breathing to reduce anxiety here.
“Provided you do not strain. Do the light part, and you will find it becomes easier and easier. If you insist where it is difficult, you will get aches and pain and feel tired. You won’t be able to go to the end of the lesson.
If you do it short of the limit of difficulty, you will find gradually the flexibility increases and the range of easy movement increases. That’s more important. What is easy and comfortable will be used. What is uncomfortable and strenuous, you will reject anyway. Therefore, it is of no value. ”