Support for the ankles

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Here you coordinate rolling the head and tilting the ankles. It's a yummy whole-self movement. You’d be surprised how this coordinated syncing connects through your whole self. It creates easier walking, more trust in the ankles, and a softening through the calves, knees, and hips.

This lesson also improves your balance, the simple act of shifting off your center and coming back.

Tip: This lesson has a knee out to the side. If the leg cannot rest on the floor, raise the floor and support your knee with a rolled blanket. Avoid hanging the leg off the hip socket.

AY433

Second half of integrating the ankles and rolling the head. These lessons that connect up the whole self always feel relieving, like my system was somehow craving it but I didn’t know it.

This lesson is powerful. It moves the ankle in every plane, which means it’s brilliant for your knees and hips. There are some tricky moves so stay with it as the results can be eye-opening. Your nervous system will begin to access all the angles and directions of the feet that have been missing in your life!

Even if this lesson has some challenging movements, stay with it and play with the variations. That said, do not force your foot or toes into a position for which you are not ready.

For a complement to this lesson, see 165 The foot and its toes.

For more on moving the lower leg, toes, ankle, knee, and hip, see Sitting back on the heels under Longer series from trainings.

AY251

Lying on the back, you flex and extend the ankles and wrists in various patterns. Easy, right? The neurological consequences of coordinating the ankles and wrists cannot be overstated. Discover how this connects a flexion and extension pattern through your whole self.

This sequence is also amazing for walking: Swinging wrists and ankles translates into a whole-self swing.

This is also a good lesson to notice how hard it is to direct yourself through space when you think you know what you're doing. It's humbling to see how jumbled each and every one of us can get trying to coordinate the wrists and ankles. Never mind the folks who struggle with connecting the brain to their movement every day! People living with MS, CP, the effects of a stroke, traumatic brain injury, and other neurological conditions often don't have the starting point of even the most basic coordination that the rest of us have. Compassion all around for our fractured, flawed, imperfect humanity.

(Amherst, June 10, 1981)

Continue to flex the ankles and wrists…who knew it could be so puzzling? This is a wonderful “ah-ha” lesson as it can have a profound effect when you stand up.

For a similar lesson, see
345 Magic back lesson, coordinate hips and shoulders

Whenever I say that the ankles are linked to the low back I get some initial funny looks. However, let’s look at it: if you take a step forward and your heel is on the ground, your ankle is flexed, right? And when you push off your toes, it’s extended. That’s clear.

Think of the low back: It is in the SAME pattern! When you put the heel down, the low back is flexed, when you push off of the toes, the low back arches. Try this lesson and feel for yourself how the uniform flexion and extension moves through you.

I often give this lesson to clients who are in a constant “arching" pattern in the back. Learning how to integrate the leg joints and the flexion of the back can be so relieving as you sense the flexion of the ankles and the rounding of the back. Plus, all the ankle movements change the tone through the hips and pelvis.

Still connecting ankles and low back for smooth, fluid, effortless walking. For me, these lessons make concrete and explicit something that my nervous system is constantly searching for. It has been said that Dr. Feldenkrais’s skill was in making the abstract concrete, over and over again. This lesson does just that.