Unlock your pelvis

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The pelvic clock asks such good questions of our movement! I love it. Feldenkrais has many types of clocks. They help us link thought and action in novel ways, using different muscles than we usually use for precise movement. Avoid being willful in this lesson and instead look for places to soften and yield. 

This is a basic round-the-dial kind of lesson. Notice how the moment you become judgmental, you tense. The moment you think there’s a right and wrong, you tense. Let go of all that and do the lesson in a way that simply feels enjoyable for you. It will improve your movement anyway, without “you” trying.

A weight-factor lesson where your pelvis rolls over the hip socket. Once the swivel factor emerges through the variations, the movement can feel nearly weightless. I love the intentional use of the eyes to guide the center of gravity over the pelvis and hip.

This lesson is excellent for upright posture and easy walking, and it's “super fun,” as my eleven year-old client informs me. You get to roll up to sit in one graceful, elegant move.

For more like this, see:
326 Slow tilting of legs
329 Arms frame head
317 Tilt legs to come to sit from belly

A lesson with the knees out to the side. It’s phenomenal for releasing tension in the back and clarifying the pelvis around the hip socket. Really a go-to lesson for me if I want to feel longer and more fluid. I forget how much choice there can be in swiveling the pelvis!

Tip: With the knees out to the side, there is no need to hang the weight of the legs in the hip sockets. Decide for yourself where to hold the legs without straining the ligaments.

This lesson invites a clock movement in your pelvis and a linked movement in your head, with many variations, of course. Despite, or because of, its complexity, my students love this lesson. It’s like patting your head and rubbing your belly at the same time, or is it patting your belly and rubbing your head? It’s fun to make so many different movements that your habits give it up in the end. By challenging the system to create new patterns, the old ones become less tyrannical. You feel a new freedom of the head on top of the spine.

Allow yourself to be wiggly and free in the ribs and spine. Avoid gripping and bracing. And have a good laugh. Don't take this one too seriously.

I love this lesson because it asks me to shift my thinking. It uses a unique imagery where you imagine making an imprint of the numerals of the clock in wax. The fluid movement of the pelvis helps your head become lighter and lighter as your spine becomes more supple in response to the pelvis.

This is very useful for walking and swinging the legs.

This lesson invites even more variations you don’t normally use. Using the legs one at a time to circle the clock, the counterweight shows you what muscles you're actually using. You can't cheat and flop around in your well-worn ruts, you have to find a new path.

This lesson highlights the line between ambiguity and clarity.

Once a movement is clear, you can choose exactly what you want to do instead of living at the mercy of all the confusion created by the motor cortex firing willy-nilly.

The vacillation between excitation and inhibition in the synapse creates confusion—and often anxiety. Once we sense how we’re moving, the synapses fire in an orderly fashion and we experience the vivid relief of clear, self-directed movement.

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For the full pelvic clock series, see Pelvic clock under “Longer series from trainings.”