Advanced Twisting Part 2

Prerequisite lesson: Advanced Twisting Part 1. Back-lying, using the tilted crossed legs as a constraint to help learn more suppleness and better upright organization of the spine, chest, shoulders, and neck, with awareness of and sensitivity to one's own biases.

61m

Join the FP

The Feldenkrais Project's 52 free lessons, including the one below, are a crowd-funded labor of love. We are proud to be ad-free and 100% funded by our listeners. Please donate to support our vision!

In addition to Nick’s 15+ hours per week, it takes about $25,000/year to pay for technology and part-time staff to maintain our website, add new lessons and features, connect with our users, and spread the word. Your support really matters.

Become a Patron for $21/month or less and access 70 more lessons, all for about what you'd pay for a single in-person Feldenkrais class! Or become a Member for as little as $3/month. Learn more

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.

Tip – Directions are Relative

Study tip: Directions are always relative to your body. For example, if you’re lying on your back “up” is toward your head, and “forward” is toward the ceiling.

Browser/device size and audio player

Tech tip: On mobile? Depending on screen size, the audio player appears differently. Try landscape mode or start playback then use your phone’s audio controls.

Tip – Pause the recording

Study tip: If you’re really enjoying a movement and want to explore longer, or you just need a break for a while, pause the recording!

Tip 2 – Social Sharing

Project tip: Try the social buttons below. Please help us to achieve our vision: spreading the life-changing benefits of Feldenkrais study as widely as possible!

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.

Tip 3 – Head Support

Study tip: It helps to have a large bath towel nearby when you start a lesson. You can fold it differently for comfortable head support in any configuration.

Tip – Comments

Project tip: Leave a lesson comment below! It’s a great way to give feedback or ask a question, and it helps google find us so we can achieve The Feldenkrais Project’s vision!

Tip – Login

Join the Project! If you already have, thank you for your support! Members and Patrons can access the full lesson notes in the tabs below: just login.

Tip – Technical Difficulties

Tech tip: If you have any trouble with the audio player, reboot your browser. That solves most issues. If not, please contact Nick.

Tip – Lesson names

What’s in a lesson title? Lessons are about an hour unless a shorter duration is shown in the title. Thanks to our donors they’re freely offered unless marked “Patrons” – those are how we thank our Patron-level donors.
  • Comfort & Configuration
  • Clarifications
  • Curiosities
  • Context
  • Related Lessons
  • Source
  • Download

It is important that you do part 1 of this lesson before you do this follow-up lesson. The Comfort & Configuration notes for part 1 are all applicable to part 2.

This lesson involves many complex simultaneous uses of the left and right sides of the body. If you get confused, don’t worry, just continue onward. All of the variations are explored on both sides. The many variations are designed to create a very thorough exploration, and it’s ok to miss a step here and there.

The legs-crossed, tilting (or sustained tilted) configuration is not about flexibility, though that will likely improve. It’s about the learning opportunities that can be created elsewhere while in this constraining configuration.

ATM lessons often use what Feldenkrais Practitioners call “constraints”: configurations or instructions which prevent some movement possibilities and require you to learn others.

This lesson is found in the collection called Freeing the Spine, Chest, Shoulders, and Neck. It has three recommended prerequisite lessons, which are best studied in this order (or just progress through the whole collection in order).

Or you can approach these Advanced Twisting lessons in another context: they’re also in our Free While Constrained Deep Dive.

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

Members and Patrons. Learn more or login:

Tried It? Liked It?

If you like what you heard...

  1. Join the Project! You’ll support our free lessons while enjoying awesome donor benefits
  2. Sign up for our twice monthly newsletter for featured free lessons and new lessons
  3. Spread the word: Simply copy this page's web address to share this free lesson

Got a question for Nick, or a thought about this lesson?

Use the comments section below! Public comments build our community and help search engines find us.

horizontal-squiggle

7 Comments

  1. Chris Sigurdson on December 17, 2017 at 7:35 pm

    Whoa! Interesting. More difficult than previously because of small movements in constrained positions. But the clear instructions make it doable and despite wondering at times if I was “ doing it right”, the result was really interesting. Very different and lovely sense of my torso as I walked. Freedom and space.

    Reply
    • Chris Sigurdson on February 19, 2018 at 5:44 pm

      Easier the second time with more confidence about small movements and thus more relaxed. Similar fullness in my torso as a result and some relief if a neck issue.

      Reply
  2. Lorraine on October 8, 2020 at 3:03 pm

    Thank you for this lesson and for the repeat button!

    Reply
    • Nick Strauss-Klein on October 9, 2020 at 10:18 am

      Love that you called out our 10 seconds back button! It was surprisingly hard to implement – makes me smile to know it’s getting used.

      Reply
      • Matthew Lanzi on October 23, 2020 at 5:37 pm

        I use it ALL THE TIME. Very grateful you went through the effort of implementing it!

        Reply
  3. Lorraine on May 18, 2021 at 5:22 pm

    I didn’t need the repeat button the second time I did this lesson, and I felt more free to do less and feel more.

    Reply
  4. J Jordan on December 26, 2022 at 6:42 am

    Very nice lesson, thank you from my ribs and spine

    Reply

Leave a Comment