Hooking the toe: Flexible hips and spine

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Introduction

“Hooking the toe” is a funny name. You do start by holding the toe, but then you progress through increasingly challenging movements in the hips and joints of the leg.

These lessons are about creating wildly flexible hips with a wildly flexible spine and chest. Many people don’t realize that muscles in the hips must be coordinated with the muscles along the spine, sometimes until it is too late and too many compensations for too long have caused injury.

This series will highlight that vital coordination.

TIP: To lengthen the back and unbend the leg, you must be easy with yourself. If you pull, stretch, strain, or yank, you will not like the results. Instead of applying force to the leg, apply intelligence to folding the ribs. Invite multiple angles in the ribs and pelvis while maintaining lightness in the arm.

As with all Feldenkrais lessons, the movements progress slowly and incrementally.

If you need a break or an alternative way to practice this pattern, see:
283 Basic flexion #3, Lengthen legs without stretching
303 Lengthen spine, caress legs, swivel to sit
112 Lengthen leg by withdrawing pelvis

And the section on:
Touching toes, squatting, straightening the legs: Coordinate your hamstrings without stretching

Here you float the leg toward the ceiling in sitting and on the back, with some help from bending the spine. Feel how your spine gets feedback from the floor on your back, then use that to replicate the shape in sitting. You also do some rolling left and right while holding the foot, arranging the spine to respond intelligently to the bending and unbending of the leg.

Amherst week 5, July 11, 1980

A continuation of bending and unbending the leg in sitting and on the back.

Here you start to bring the knees inside and outside the elbows and find new ways to soften the chest.

Spend some time articulating the toes to feel how it affects the hip joints. Also, a more challenging way to move the legs in relation to the chest. If you get stuck, fold, don’t yank.

Start bending the joints to bring the feet under the rear end and begin, just begin, to sit backwards.

Probably you have never done this move in your life. It is possible, going slowly and gently. You will swivel the whole leg in one go underneath your pelvis.

For more lessons like this, see sitting on the heels.

Now we are out of hooking the toe, just practice swiveling the legs in the hips in all kinds of ways with your new, flexible back.

More rolling around, fun with the legs and spine.