Back-lying. Gentle movements of the hands and careful covering of the eyes relax and improve them, and calm the whole nervous system. Recorded early on in the pandemic, this lesson was designed to reduce anxiety and bring us home to a quieter sense of ourselves.
We offer over 50 free lessons, but this one’s just for our donors. You can learn about it in the lesson notes below, but to access the video you’ll need to join The FP as Member or Patron. Learn more
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Comfort & Configuration:
Please experiment and adapt to find comfort for your shoulders and your whole self as you gently turn over your interlaced hands. As mentioned in the discussion after the lesson, you might prop little pillows under your elbows if it helps you to relax and enjoy the many positions of your interlaced fingers laying on your front.
Curiosities (from the discussions):
We discuss a young cellist’s questions before and after the lesson. A few months later he sent a note about his music making and Feldenkrais study, which I later included in a newsletter you might enjoy: A young musician finds “a powerful sense of dignity” in our lessons.
The Brain’s Way of Healing is the book by Norman Doidge that recounts David Webber’s story. Here’s my blog post pointing to an excerpt and resources about it. It includes links to excerpts. Doidge’s book also has a chapter detailing Moshe Feldenkrais’s biography, and aside from all the Feldenkrais-specific content it’s an amazing read that I highly recommend.
Regarding the question about scoliosis and lessons for freeing the thoracic spine, as I mentioned in the recording our best bet is usually learn to use the whole spine and chest in a more supple, distributed, and integrated way. Often when there’s scoliosis there’s a habit of using the spine in a kind of monolithic way that supports the neuromuscular patterns that are the cause of most scoliosis. (We think of scoliosis as a skeletal issue, but most of the time the root causes are neuromuscular.)
When on this path of study for scoliosis it’s often very useful to focus on the interaction of the pelvis, hips, spine, and ribs. That’s of general interest to all Feldenkrais students, and our Getting Oriented collection covers this over and over. It’s worth a thorough exploration. After that I would recommend working through our collection for Freeing the Chest, Spine, Shoulders, and Neck.
Context:
Recorded live with donors on July 23, 2020, this replay is part of our Bonus Video Content for Members and Patrons. It also appears in our “little dip” called Lessons for Anxiety.
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