Integrate your legs

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Ideally, we can move from any position to any other position without hesitation. When our legs work too hard, this becomes a chore. Over time, it’s downright fatiguing.

Often, we overuse the legs because we’re compensating for back muscles that are too contracted to be bothered. Hence, many students report feeling “stronger” after these lessons. Not because you’re straining more with the muscles, but because the movement is generalized throughout your whole self. You can act with more choice rather than compulsion.

This lesson has some cool, somewhat tricky, moves that open your eyes to how your ribs help you unbend the leg (remember our theme). Try this one first, then come back to it after you've done the other lessons in this series and see if it changed.

There are some novel moves for the shoulders in this lesson. So much so that some of my clients find it more helpful for the shoulders than the hips. In some variations, you fix the arm and roll the ribs over the shoulder, which is a nice change.

Go slow and a reminder to take the instructions literally. Don’t worry if some variation feels elusive, novel, or perplexing. All new questions for your nervous system are good ones. You are still “doing” the lesson by testing and experimenting. Performing the movement is not the lesson. Rather, it is how you treat yourself as you learn.

(SF training year 2)

With your legs bent, you start to slide the foot on the floor (a smooth surface is recommended). Pretend that you have paint coming out the sole of your foot and you're covering the floor with the paint.

The smooth swivel of the ball and socket joint in your hip distributes movement throughout the joints in the leg. As you continue to sense the knee in relation to the foot, you might discover that moving the pelvis, ribs, and spine has something to do with the leg. Then, the leg becomes part of your whole self, not just a thing hanging off your hip. The legs feel light and swingy after this.

This is a helpful lesson to relieve hip tension, back pain, and even upright sitting as the pelvis rests on top of the hips.

For more good lessons for the legs, see the skiing section.

AY111

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:, legs together, legs apart, feet in the same direction, feet 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!”

The lesson wakes up your hip joints, ankles, toes, and spine. It will help with running, walking, sitting, and more.

Tip: While this lesson is on the hands and knees, don’t be put off. Rest often.

(Esalen workshop)

This lesson improves flexion and extension in all the joints: the ankles, knees, hips, and low back. It’s useful for walking, hiking, skiing, and keeping the joints healthy. It’s important to keep these relationships in sync so we don’t do something silly and strain ourselves.

Many of my clients find this lesson helpful for swinging the legs and softening the low back. The back muscles must integrate with the fold of the ankles. If the back cannot appropriately respond to the ankle flexing and extending, it causes a compensation pattern in the legs that can be a precursor to injury.

My suggestion: Keep the ankles, knees, hips, and low back on speaking terms. This lesson will do that.

Second part of ankles and low back with many variations. Try to do these in sequence on the same day or right after each other.

Don’t be fooled by the beginning of this lesson with all the arm and chest movement. It is a legs lesson as you discover where the power to move the legs actually comes from. Starting in a half twist, you lengthen the arm down toward the feet. As you clarify the bending and what happens in the spine, belly, and low back, you start to wake up the relationship of the pelvis to the trunk sliding.

After a lot of seesaw breathing in funny positions to let go of any excess holding in the belly and the chest, eventually, it becomes possible to start the movement using the large muscles of the trunk.

Without letting go of all the pernicious contractions throughout the ribs and low belly, we cannot access our full power.

Accessing the pelvic area appears to make the legs feel “stronger,” but really what happens is that you now have clearance to enter the power center. When everything is mobilized, the legs, head, shoulders feel lighter and lighter.

Tip: If you are not comfortable in a half-twist, support your legs with a blanket to reduce the twist. Just make sure the legs can fully rest.

For a similar lesson, see the Esalen lesson 40 Mobilizing the full power of the pelvis. You might like the lessons under skiing, too, for more power in the legs.

If you think you have tight hips, try this lesson. You’ll discover that your hips are influenced by so much more than the one joint. This is another of Moshe Feldenkrais’s masterpieces. The slow growing of folding the spine in relation to the legs shows how the low back affects the hips, chest, neck, and arms. The whole self starts to move in ways we have not moved since we were very small. It’s a re-genesis of our natural movement birthright.

This is the lesson where you move the elbow inside the knee and outside the knee in sitting and on the back.

For more like this, see:
8 Twirling the right hip
11 Lengthen leg for an integrated hamstring
41 Twirling legs and folding spine, 36 min
287 Folding forward, lower leg to chest (excellent for right hip!), 36 min
Hurdle (scissor) lessons
Splits - 4 (AY211, AY212) (you don’t really do the splits, just practice moving the hips!)

(SF evening classes #11, Free hip joints)

Following our theme, this lesson invites the whole self to help move the legs, particularly the spine and ribs. This is a good “ah-ha!” lesson about how to pivot the pelvis and lengthen the back. I love this lesson. Every time I do it I find more places that can soften.

It's similar to the previous lesson, but asks different questions of the spine and hips.

TIP: Instead of pulling on your legs, push your back into the floor again and again. Feel how this increases your flexibility more than pulling or straining in the joints.

This lesson has a few references (if you're familiar with the endless jumble of lesson names, you'll know what I mean):

• Perfecting the self-image, ATM book lesson 8

• Foot to head, SF evening classes booklet text title

• More flexible than a child, SF evening classes audio title