Basic flexion

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Introduction

Flexion is the best way to alleviate a contracted low back and feel tall, upright, and balanced. Well-organized flexion helps with walking, running, sitting, breathing, digesting, and more. It also helps with anxiety, tension, and fatigue.

The ability to use the whole spine is a fundamental, necessary skill. I can’t emphasize it enough! If you use only a piece of the spine to fold, the muscles are working very hard to move against the part of you that’s frozen stuck. It’s exhausting! Think of these lessons as “unfreezing” your back.

Note: If it is not possible to hold the front of your knee right now, try “Basic flexion #2,” which is all flexion lessons that do not require you to hold the knee. Then come back to these and find out if anything has changed!

Every Feldenkrais training covers flexion in the beginning. It’s fundamental to humans that we flex and fold without muscular interference along the spine. Lifting the head is something babies learn very quickly, without the tension and cross-motivation of adults. Grownups have to re-learn what gravity really means for our spines.

This lesson highlights how we can create difficulties for ourselves. Once you compare, over and over, the feeling of what’s easy versus what’s hard, you’ll wonder why we fight with ourselves just to lift the head. But we do. And that pattern can change. I recommend doing ALL the flexion lessons this week. Your back will thank you for it.

Tip: Rest often in this lesson. Even if the directions do not indicate a rest, please rest whenever you like. Fewer movements with greater awareness are more beneficial.

The second flexion lesson brings new variables to invite different angles of the back into play. One of those variables is bringing the knee to the shoulder instead of the elbow, which asks the back to bend in a different place. I also love the rocking side to side to soften the back. My back feels super long and upright after this.

I come back to this one in particular over and over again. I love sinking into these lessons and allowing them to move me. Sometimes my awareness drifts, and then I come back. The person who influenced me the most, Dennis Leri, used to say that we go forward to go backward—and we go backward to go forward.

This lesson reminds me of the movie, Touching the Void, where a climber falls into a crevasse in the Peruvian Andes. To get out, he has to go deeper in. He goes further down into the darkness instead of up into the light, which is so counter-intuitive it beggars belief.

That’s what the folding lessons feel like: To get out of a contracted state, I have to go deeper into it. Then, when I stand up, the shadows are gone and I am upright without contradictions.

Another basic flexion lesson with knees to elbows. This softens the back again and again. You’ll love the way it allows the breathing to expand and the posture to feel effortless and upright.

It’s also wonderful to do after work if you have “hunchy computer shoulders.”

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Knees to elbows in a different way. Yes, we will repeat this pattern many times. It is so important to letting go of tension across the back.

This lesson experiments with the chin to the knee, the forehead, the nose, the lips. I love the protrusion of the lips forward mirroring the protrusion of the spine backwards. You’ll train in sensing the arc through space forward at the same time as backward. Getting good at shapes, angles, and pressure will help you stay mobile throughout the day. Plus, it’s so lovely to feel so long and straight!

The second lesson for foundations of the back. This one invites a different exploration of the legs in relation to the back, and explores a new way to fold the chest by pointing the elbows. Find out how long and tall you can possibly get.

This lesson is about the hip joint and lower back relationship. I could put it in a “hip joint” section, but the low back is so pivotal to allowing the hip to move freely, and there’s so much flexion in this lesson, that it makes equal sense here.

The ability for the leg to move has everything to do with the flexion in the low back, as you’ll quickly discover.

This lesson complements 307 More Flexible than a Child. I recommend doing this one first, and then try that one. See how your flexible spine influences your hips.

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