Sitting and Turning with Length (26m)
Part of our Getting Oriented collection. Our free collection called Essential Lessons for Easier Sitting is closely related.
Learn how to make sitting more comfortable as you improve turning and twisting. Access and enjoy your full length in motion even while seated, including head and eyes, pelvis and knees, and everything in between.
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Before you begin read this for practical tips and your responsibilities, and check out Comfort & Configuration below.
Recorded live in a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement (ATM) class, this lesson is copyright Nick Strauss-Klein, for personal use only.
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Tip 5 – Discomfort
Study tip: If a configuration or movement causes any increase in discomfort, or you feel you just don’t want to do it, don’t! Make it smaller and slower, adapt it, or rest and imagine.
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Patrons can listen to Getting Oriented tracks 5-7 (the Access Your Axis talk and lessons) without interruption as a 70-minute workshop recording.
This lesson is found in Getting Oriented, our introductory collection of Feldenkrais basics for newcomers (and longtimers looking for a “tune-up”).
Our free collection called Essential Lessons for Easier Sitting is also great for Feldenkrais newcomers looking to build healthier sitting habits.
To learn more about the planes of movement mentioned in this lesson and some healthy guidelines for sitting, check out About Dynamic Sitting.
In lessons 3 and 4 (and their intro talk) I make reference to “celestial gravity.” I’m indebted to Feldenkrais Trainer and master Zen teacher Russell Delman for this beautiful image, which I was introduced to in his Embodied Life II collection of lessons, available for public purchase. Terrestrial gravity is the center-of-the-earth gravity we think of usually. Celestial gravity refers to the many aspects of being human that lift us up, including our evolutionary journey rising away from ground-level living.
Finding ourselves more and more often at our maximum skeletal height, elegantly suspended between terrestrial and celestial gravity, has a profound influence on our joy and comfort, our ease of movement, and the effectiveness with which we function.
Claiming our full graceful length more often is one of the many goals of Feldenkrais study.
You’ll need a simple, level, non-rolling chair, with a firm or lightly upholstered surface. Find a chair that’s an appropriate height for you, so that when you’re seated at the front of the chair your hip are slightly above the height of your knees. Knees are bent simply, at least hip-width apart, and your feet stand on the ground underneath them.
If your feet don’t reach the floor easily, stack something firm under them, or under your bottom if your knees are higher than your hips.
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I find it very useful when keeping the eyes still and moving the body around to take off my glasses. We glasses wearers are trained to limit our gaze to where it can focus through the lens, but of course the eyeball can move a great deal farther than that. Because I’m very nearsighted, I place a bright object about 10 feet in front of me at eye level, so I can focus on that even though I can’t see any details.
Those are some very helpful suggestions thank you Joan. I wear glasses as well and in the earlier lessons I remembered to take them off but did not this time. I will try it again without the glasses
Hi Nick, these short lessons are such good explorations and reminders! I hurt my back a couple of weeks ago with yoga, and the re-organization of my bones is invaluable! thank you so much for helping me to get better.
Fantastic – thanks for letting me know! I agree: short lessons can be a lifesaver. Soon you’ll find yourself playing with little bits of these seated lessons spontaneously while you’re doing regular life chair activities!
I’ve just begun this course of lessons and the difference in my posture and suppleness is already palpable. As a singer I have especially noticed the benefit of a constant awareness of the relaxed breath – it’s been quite revelatory! Thank you.
That was extremely interesting especially the last standing part because it had been quite painful in the last lesson when I did the initial twist, and my right knee complained. This time when I was standing and feeling the length and curve I could move much more freely and turn farther. When we thought ourselves heavy my knee complained loudly again! That is a very useful tool Thank you
Nick, this is amazing stuff! the instruction toward the end when you suggest we turn, but then look down to the pelvis and twist the pelvis (?) and then arch back up….this is the only instruction you’ve ever suggested that im not sure I follow how you mean….any help?
Sure! In the middle, the moment when you’re not turned at all, you are in a pretty fully-flexed position: pelvis tilted back, back rounded, head low. Then as you turn you unfold into arching, and looking up. Does that explain it? Feel free to ask more questions.