Hello Felden-fans!
Do you ever get so interested in a theme of study that you explore every similar ATM lesson you can find? This happens to me all the time, which is why Feldenkrais Project ATM notes include the Related Lessons tab.
I’m in the midst of a deep dive into our primary spinal bias, a concept I’ve learned from a decade of advanced training with senior Feldenkrais Practitioner Sheryl Field. This particular idea has been tremendously valuable in my own life, and it’s at the core of almost all the lessons I teach in my one-to-one, hands-on Feldenkrais practice.
Over the years we’ve added many primary spinal bias lessons to The FP. I’ve included two below, but you can also enter the term “bias” on our lesson search to find all of them: short lessons, full-length lessons, free lessons, and Patron lessons of different difficulties.
I emailed the first lesson below to students after a recent class for “homework.” I was delighted to receive back and email about it from a student.
I hope you enjoy reading Nancy’s story. The context she shared with me is that unusual events in her health and healthcare have led to some neurological difficulty with walking and balancing. I love how real this story of change and the messy learning process is (and I think her guess about her current state is probably spot-on).
I hope you have time soon to explore your own primary spinal bias!
Nick Strauss-Klein
Nancy writes:
Hi Nick,
I’ve been struggling, these last 8 months, with balance, and falling to the right, etc. All sorts of weirdness – my right arm torqued inward and my right foot angled out.
Anyway, yesterday, I decided to do the Gathering the Spine lesson, which for some reason I hadn’t done before, but I was inspired by the lesson I did with you at the Marsh. Well, I’m not even kidding, I went for a short walk at Lake Harriet yesterday afternoon and it felt really strange. And then when I was walking up to my house I noticed my foot had “re-found” its forward-pointing position. I was so shocked…and pleased.
I had really tried to take the gathering of the spine idea deep into myself as I walked around our house immediately after that lesson. Anyway, it seems to have unwound something really quickly.
But I did notice today that now my walking is just really chaotic-feeling. That unique weird thing seems to have totally cured itself – and I really credit that lesson for that – but now it’s like my body is all over the place trying to relearn another way to walk.
Thank you! And thanks for your work.
– Nancy Brown, 47, Twin Cities, MN, USA
Featured Free Lesson
Gathering the Spine, Stepping Down
Back-lying, side-lying, and transitioning into side-lying, refining and harnessing your image of your spine’s bias and action as it relates to (and powers) the stepping down of your feet. All toward reorganizing your gait.
Becoming aware of your primary spinal bias, and learning to sense and harness it in your movements, is potent self-study. Experienced Felden-fans can dive right in. Or find this challenging lesson at the conclusion of our collection called Learning the Limbs, from the Center.
For Patrons
Your Naturally Asymmetrical Spine (35 min, Patrons)
Back-lying, learning to sense the relationship of movements of the arms in the plane of the floor with movements along the side aspects of the spine, and eventually to initiate them from there. Discover essential differences between one side of the spine and the other (which I call the primary spinal bias), and how those differences are part of every action we take.
For more primary bias lessons, enter the term “bias” on our lesson search and filter. You’ll find short lessons, full-length lessons, free lessons, and Patron lessons of different difficulties.
This post appeared as one of our monthly featured free lessons newsletter. You can join the mailing list here.