Lessons 15-31
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This lesson is outrageously useful for the hip joints, as well as for pushing off of the feet. You learn to integrate the leg into the power of the trunk by making many variations of undifferentiated and differentiated movements, legs together, legs apart, feet in the same direction and opposite, all with varying positions of the ankles.
I recommend this lesson as a useful challenge to the tension we hold in the calves and ankles, and to recognize how dissociated our legs can become from our trunk. The questions he asks in this lesson become more and more easy to answer as your brain says, “Oh yes, I know this. I can do anything with my legs, hips, and ankles now!”
(called “Foot and hip differentiation,” by Moshe)
This is a wonderful, wonderful lesson that wakes up counterbalance and weight shift in standing. I encourage anyone who’s had a challenge with their ankles, toes, or hips to play with the lesson again and again. You will also find a tremendous improvement in walking as the brain clicks into the meaning of balance without unnecessary effort. You don’t have to perform any of the movements perfectly. Just seek more and more clarity in your self-image in terms how you use your spine, low back, shoulders, and legs.
The improvement will arrive with the exploration, not by telling yourself to do it correctly.
As you stand, you take the hips backward in many, many ways, with different variations of the arms, chest, spine, and head. Then you perch on the heels in many ways. Eventually, by the end, there is a long stretch of walking backwards, which can has the potential to reorganize what “normal” means for all the leg joints relative to the back.
Try it for yourself and see what happens.
This lesson wakes up the neck and upper back in phenomenal ways.
While I was prepping, recording, and editing this lesson, I had the “opportunity” to do it three times in one day. Not that you should do that, however I can attest that repeated experiments will yield amazing results. The amount of swivel in the neck that happens is unbelievable, kind of like those bobble heads you see in people’s cars.
The catch is that the constraints in this lesson are quite strong and to succeed, you must make small, careful movements. The improvement unfolds as you explore the different positions of the arms, chest, spine, and feet. Take care of yourself and go slowly and you will improve, especially after repeating the input.
Note: This lesson has only a couple differences from Dennis Leri’s “head through the gap” lesson, which is the first in the judo roll series.
(called “Head through the gate,” by Moshe)
This is a complex lesson that has many components, all leading towards how we “anchor” the limbs in the chest. In the big picture of this lesson, Moshe comments that,
“Every time we integrate a limb into that region where we become intimately in contact with our internal being, completely in contact with it, that limb will be lighter, longer, more extended. If we succeed in getting this integration into the spine and through the head, our posture improves. We are extended, upright without effort, and the body stands tall with ease, with no strain.”
In the small picture, you’ll put the arms overhead and roll the chest a few times to feel the relative rotation of the arm bones so that the elbow can be on the floor. (Really, it works!) Then you’ll spend a long time practicing sensing the precise connection of the right leg and arm into the middle, anchoring the movement into the chest for lighter limbs and less interference of that pesky, parasitic co-contraction.
We often over-use the limbs and become horribly inefficient in our middle. Even athletes succumb to this pattern. I have seen many, many people improve low back pain after this lesson. I often give similar lessons to my clients when they can’t sit upright without pain in the sacrum.
(called “Mobilization of right side only,” by Moshe)
More diagonal lifting of the limbs: 341 and 342 in particular
This continues the theme of the previous lesson with connections and discoveries lying on the front. As you test how the arms lift, you turn the head in interesting ways and observe how it affects the muscles of the back. Then you are asked to test many options lying on the back with the head, arms, and legs. Deconstructing how you mobilize to lift the limbs in precise, coordinated ways yields a wealth of information about your habits. Test doing very small movements here. It is not about making big movements but precise ones.
I’m not kidding: Make small movements, smaller than you think. Your brain needs to sense the pattern, not the contraction, even though you are using big muscles, make the effort appropriate to the learning, not the other way around.
(called “Furthering the learning of the first lesson,” by Moshe)
I love this lesson because the capacity of the spine to bend sneaks up on you. It starts out with standard folding: bringing the knee to the elbow and the elbow to the knee many ways. Then you bring the hands between the legs to hold the thighs, then around the front, then you hold one foot and angle the forehead to the knee, then you bring the elbow between the gap, with many more variations thrown in.
It’s almost a basic flexion lesson, but with extra sauce. As with many of the Esalen series, some of these variations are not in other lessons. (At the end, you can envision bringing the foot behind the head…)
(called “Flexors mostly,” by Moshe)
This is a famous lesson called “jelly pudding,” by Moshe, mainly because he was in the UK during World War II where they call dessert, “pudding.” I assume it jiggles, because this lesson has a lot of gentle rocking, which grows into a light, easy jiggle through the spine.
The main feature is discovering the relationship of the femur bone to the pelvis from many perspectives. I love this lesson: my legs swing, I’m more upright, taller, and even sleep better as the unnecessary holding along the spine lets go. Feel your back spreading on the floor, “like cookie dough in the oven,” as my client says.
Note that you can take a break at any time in this lesson. I know it’s a little longer. One good spot is at 34 min just before you stand on the heels.
(called, “Jelly pudding,” by Moshe)
One of my favorite lessons. Even if you think you have a differentiated shoulder, this lesson will likely blow your mind. As you go through the many options of connecting and then differentiating your shoulder, the possibilities for previously unfathomable easy movement increase tenfold. Moshe comments that,
“It's really interesting, how we use our shoulders all our life, yet you can see that they are stuck in the patterns for the use we make of them, but each part is completely undifferentiated, left as it was early in childhood, with only a slight differentiation that was necessary to use the head and shoulders as one big lump. What I contend is that our consciousness and our awareness is only a small, small part of what it can be if we let it integrate into our life. You will see.”
(called “Left shoulder differentiation and reintegration into the self-image,” by Moshe)
This is a folllow-on from the previous shoulder lesson, inviting the arms to move relative to the trunk in more sophisticated and differentiated ways.
This is one of the most helpful lessons I have ever found for the upper back and shoulders. I did it four times while prepping for recording, and each time I felt something else wake up. That said, there are many ways you can over-strain here.
Don’t force yourself to DO each movement. Just play around with the lesson. “Much about,” as Moshe says. Performing is not your friend. Because some movements will be tricky for some people, slow down and do less. You will get better through sensing, not forcing your muscles to crank, pull, stretch, pinch, or otherwise cause pain just so you can say you “did” the movement. There’s nothing to gain from painful will and everything to gain from ease and skill.
As Moshe says,
“Don't try to do it perfectly. Let the thing improve at the rate you can afford. If one keeps improving, it gets good. That needn't be this very moment, it could be tomorrow. As soon as you let the ambition down—meaning, the will to achieve it in spite of your inner contradiction where the body says no, it's painful, it's no good—you will find that making it easy will achieve the thing now, not tomorrow.”
(called, “Raising the Entire Self To Function With A Live Shoulder,” by Moshe)
In this lesson you’re on your belly and pushing through the toes to create a light, easy jiggle.
You can free up the clunky, chronic stickiness of all the ribs as you ask the back muscles to come to the skeletal party. New connections start to wake up as you push from one foot to the opposite armpit for a diagonal jiggle.
The lightness that emerges will help all of us get through the day, especially if we try to hold ourselves together with tension. Take lots of rests off the belly as you need.
See more oscillating lessons here (on the back).
(called, “Exploring the extensors of the back,” by Moshe)
Here is another version of one of Moshe’s classic lessons. The movements recall a baby’s action of holding the feet and bringing them to the mouth, which babies do with ease. What happened to our adult selves that we can no longer do this?
Our spines happened, that’s what. Years of stiffness, immobility, desks, even athletics can inhibit aspects of our natural flexibility in favor of a single pattern of action.
This lesson asks you to gently and slowly reintroduce movements in the spine, chest, shoulders, and head can so you can recover that flexibility. It is possible. I’ve seen it happen in many people you would never suspect could put their feet on their head.
See more flexion lessons here.
(To improve your ability, lengthen your back with a couple flexion lessons, then try this one again.)
(called, “Foot Above the Head And Its Integration Into the Self Image,” by Moshe in this workshop. Other versions are, “More flexible than a child” in the San Francisco evening classes, and “Perfecting the self-image,” in the ATM book.)
I had a discussion the other day about doing only the lessons you like to do and not the ones that feel like work. We all do that, of course. However, it’s also a useful strategy to go through many lessons you would not normally approach.
I am here to tell you that this lesson is truly amazing for swiveling the hips in walking. If you don’t ever want to walk better, don’t ever do this lesson. Yes, it’s on the hands and knees, but you move around a lot while you’re there. And, as a bonus, there is a cool move at the end that makes it all worthwhile.
The more important aspect, however, is the integration of the shape of your spine with your strategy for articulating the hips. You must locate, sense, and explore movement in your spine to elicit the swivel in the pelvis. It is this exploring that accomplishes the overall coordination of the locomotive joints. Once you know what you’re doing, you can come back to it again and again.
Similar lesson for help with sitting on the heels:
503 Lowering pelvis to sit
(called, “Primitive Locomotion—Coordinating the Locomotive Joints,” by Moshe)
Note: This lesson is done with the left side while lying on the back. You can do this (recommended the first time) or use the right if it’s more comfortable.
This is what I call an unraveling lesson. It unravels many hidden habits in our nervous system that we don’t even know we have because they would not rise to the surface unless we looked for them. In this experiment you tap many things in many ways, like your eyelids, wrists, fingers, feet, shoulders, tongue, elbows, hips, head, and more.
I said it was things we don’t normally look at! The coordination that emerges can be quite incredible. The tapping here is not 1-2-3-4. Rather, you tap once, then twice, then three times, and then four times, over and over. Linking this repetitive language sequence to the kinesthetic motion is what unravels the habits.
Normally, we use words to count. It’s not hard. And we make repetitive movements in various tasks, also not hard. But linking the two requires tremendous attention, precision, and skill in how you differentiate the muscles. All our patterns are hooked together in weird ways we don’t know about. This lesson unhooks those codependent patterns, creating the freedom to move in any pattern at any moment without dragging fifteen other contractions along with it.
Find out for yourself how easy—or not—all this repatterning is. And don’t worry if it’s a bit of a brain scramble. Sometimes the best scrambles yield the clearest results.
More tapping and counting lessons: Four-part breathing
(called, “Rhythmic coordination,” by Moshe)
The poor toes. No one thinks about how important they are, up to and including the general tone of the tone in the muscles of our feet. If that tone is chronically contracted and we don’t use the full potential of our feet, we feel wobbly. A rigid surface is much harder to balance over than an adaptable one. (Think of steel skyscrapers bending in the wind: Just like our postural sway, rigid things topple.)
When our feet are stuck, we grip and brace to compensate for the lack of articulation and adaptability to the shifting ground.
Or, we start relying on other joints, like a knee or a hip, to make up for the lost balance. Then we create hip or, more likely, knee pain. The knee is not meant to articulate like the foot. When we overuse it for minute adjustments to balance, it gets inflamed.
Or, we stop breathing because on a deeper level, we don’t feel we can rely on our feet to keep us upright.
Or—this is very common—we have neck pain because the nervous system tries to maintain the head on top of the spine by bracing instead of freely shifting around the center of gravity.
This lesson helps the feet yield to new muscle patterns. It is truly, truly amazing how much of a difference it makes when you equalize the tone of the foot so that it’s not all extended, all flexed, or jammed into some co-contracted muddle. Letting go of all this tension affects your balance, breathing, digestion, neck pain, and more. Don’t listen to me, try it yourself.
Note that this lesson plays with just the right foot. If you want to do the left foot, go ahead. Just keep the integrity of the lesson by doing only one side. This matters for how your brain makes clear sensorimotor distinctions.
(called, “Differentiation Of Toes—Increasing Awareness Of Toes In Action,” by Moshe)
The articulation of the shoulder in this lesson can be life-changing! You are invited to place a hand up near the head on the floor and rotate it many ways, feeling the wrist, lower arm, and shoulder, leading, eventually, into the full skeleton through the spine, ribs, and pelvis.
Being very sneaky, this lesson creeps up on the possibility of bending, or bridging, your entire spine. There are a few tricky moves that are best played with in a light, easy way. Don’t insist that you do every variation exactly as suggested. Just do what you can do in this moment.
The bridging series is a Feldenkrais classic. This is the beginning lesson in that series, although it has a few additional challenges given the way Moshe taught the Esalen workshop.
Other lessons that can help with bridging:
36 A flexible spine connects to the feet
39 Soft spine curling and uncurling
187, 188 Rotate hand, arm on chair
207 Liberate upper back
(called, “Exploring Floor Behind the Head, Making the Bridge,” by Moshe)
There is no movement in this lesson. It’s all internal sensing, tracking, and mapping. You create a brush stroke along yourself in different places, using the imagined tactile sensation of the brush, like a 2” paintbrush, to clarify what you know about yourself and what is foggy, distant, or dissociated.
As you cross the vertical and horizontal planes, you are asked to find out what you can know about yourself from the inside, not what you take for granted or what your sensations tell you about your achy neck, but really, truly, how well you know yourself. And, even though there’s no movement, the tonus of the entire body changes from the power of your attention.
Moshe comments,
“Even in the imagination, we skip those parts we can't find. Those parts we skip are actually linked to the movement of the eyes. When the eyes scan like that, they look at some parts clearly and skip over other parts as if they’re unimportant. This means that the scanning is not uniform. When the eyes don't scan uniformly, it means the person has never used his attention to scan uniformly, therefore also in the cortex it's not uniform. We want everything to be viewed with the same clarity of awareness.”
(called, “Looking for yourself—Cleaning the left side of the self-image,” by Moshe)
Again, a lesson with no movement. This one is about measuring distances, angles, and relationships in your skeleton, some obvious, some perplexing.
This is a fun lesson where you clarify relationships in yourself that you might never have perceived, or even thought about. I call it a “self-image puzzle.”
Measuring is also one of the most potent things you can do to clarify how you move in space. To know the angles, lengths, distances, bends, folds, curves, and linkages throughout yourself means you are very, very self-aware. It’s like a touchstone of awareness, a door you can open at any moment into your felt sense of existence.
Moshe comments:
“You could actually begin to draw a picture of what you feel, and that picture contains as many parts of your body as you can now recollect, or join into that image. While you do that, think also with that improved generality—the improved body image, with so many points clearer—that the body lies completely differently, as after some exercises. There are tonal changes which make it lie differently, feel differently, breathe differently.”
(called, “Concretizing the Self Image,” by Moshe.)
More measuring lessons:
420 Lines crossing and balancing the center
223, 224 Slinky lesson: Hold eight lines in your awareness while rounding the back
92 Dots and lines soften the low back
“You cannot act but by what you sense, and it’s very often not what we really are. Therefore, some feet sprain and some knees sprain because we use them as we imagine them to be, but, in fact, they are very different. ”
“Feel that the amount of effort that one puts in is so ineffective that it’s useless to insist. It’s necessary to change and change and change until you see it from twenty different angles and aspects and then it finally dawns on you—some sort of possibility to do actually what you want. ”