Hoisting vs. Levering

Counterbalance with weight shift is a very important skill to learn if you don’t want to fatigue your muscles all the time. Learn the difference between effort and ease, not through increased muscular strength, but through increased awareness of how the body works. 

“The floor is your teacher,” Moshe Feldenkrais always said. Use the floor in all these lessons.

Press the floor on one side to lift the other side. Feel how you get lighter and lighter the more skeletal you are. Make friends with gravity with a clear, solid connection to the ground.

Note: This lesson is just for one side. After you walk around and feel the difference, come back and do the other side.

Practice weight shift with the pelvis in the air. Shift the weight on the feet, lift one foot, then the other. Walk left, walk right, walk the feet around C7 at the base of the neck—all with the pelvis in the air, which challenges you to find the best way to transfer force, I guarantee it. You can’t get away from it!

Then, on the hands and knees, find flexibility in the spine and hips to help the pelvis become lighter and lighter. This is a stunning piece of movement education. After, this, feel how you connect with the ground as you walk.

For more like this, see the diagonals section.

In this beautiful lesson on balancing the musculature in front and back, Moshe comments:

In the kinesthetic sense, we do not distinguish the amount of work that you do, but rather the absence of good coordination. Good coordination demands that the movement of the limbs in one direction will be balanced by what goes in the opposite direction.

The part that goes opposite is heavier, larger. The movement is smaller and almost not seen by the eye. If the mistake is small, the final influence on the movement is very considerable, even if it is the smallest mistake. It is possible to learn to take these mistakes completely out.

For this, it is necessary to increase the finesse of the distinction.

As we have already seen, and more than once, the finesse of the distinction is dependent upon the amount of effort that is already there. If the effort is large, it is impossible to distinguish an addition, a small shortcoming, or fault. The addition, shortcoming, or the fault, needs to be large so it is possible to distinguish it. As long as the basic stimulation is small, the addition, shortcoming, or fault that you feel is also small. That means the ability to distinguish increases.

To the degree that this ability grows, the movement improves, and with it, the organization of the body. And, of course, this is to say the organization of the entire nervous system. When a lesson succeeds to lower the burden on the body of unnecessary, unorganized mobilizations, there is a wonderful feeling of ease and length. This always can be preserved if you know how to organize it, but it is not so simple.

AY334

A classic lesson demonstrating the “hoisting vs. levering” principle, which I love. This lesson helps the arms float, yes, float, backwards. Most of us use the arms in isolation without the help of leveraging the back. It's a wonderful “ah-ha” moment when you feel "the difference that makes a difference," as Moshe says.

This lesson is good for anyone who uses the arms, such as golfers, tennis players, piano players, swimmers, and more.

Tip: If you feel any torque in the neck when you lie on the front, place a rolled towel horizontally under your ribs just below the collarbones.. The ends will stick out to either side. Your arms will be above. This will take strain off the neck.

(Gaby Yaron)

Over time, through computer work or simply getting through the day, most of us end up gluing the shoulders to the ribs. Trying to yank them apart by cracking, circling, stretching, or forcing does not repattern the brain. Learn to use the floor to slide your shoulders more and more over the ribs.

Lying on the front, you move the arms in a way that asks the shoulders to move outside your normal habits. Once you are outside your habits, your brain starts waking up new patterns of action. I call it unplugging the socket and plugging it in somewhere else.

For more like this, see:
212 Ear to hand
57 Integrate neck and upper back
233 Ear to hand with fluid neck and eyes
215 Sphinx, sink spine, slide shoulders

Find the lever in the spine that creates lightness in the limbs. Learn to stop straining in the neck as you clarify the sideways, backwards, and forwards planes of your spine.

It’s amazing how power from your middle moves the limbs.

Note: This lesson is done on the right side. If that is uncomfortable, do the other side.

This is a weight-shift lesson that uses a functional side-bend to counterbalance the leg and the head. As you play with it, feel how the shape of your ribs helps you move with lightness and ease. Follow the trajectory of your leg and hang the head. I love this lesson for offering yet another logical, counter-balanced way to come to sit.

Tip: If you get stuck, could you move your ribs even more? Don’t by shy, really bend those bones. If you get stuck again, really, really hang your head. Most people try to lift it. It's counter-intuitive, but let it hang.