Please be sure you are very comfortable with Connecting Shoulders and Hips Part 1 before exploring this lesson.

Also read the Comfort & Configuration lesson notes tab for Part 1 (they’re applicable for Part 2 also).

There’s one configuration difference with Part 1 which may not be initially clear: the resting side-lying position is generally less “square” in the legs. The knees are still bent and stacked on top of each other comfortably in front of you, but they’re not asked to be right in front of the hips like they are in Part 1. Rather, you may have less of a “lap” in this lesson (if you think of the side-lying position like sitting in a chair would be). To put it another way, the resting angle at the front of the hips is looser than Part 1’s 90 degrees, except where explicitly noted.

Copied from Connecting Shoulders and Hips Part 1 Curiosities:

While our limbs, the most distal parts of the body, usually do most of our direct interacting with the world, their muscle and bone structure is designed for refined, detailed tasks of enacting our intention in the world: touching things, balancing and orienting our weight on two little feet. They’re made to precisely direct muscular forces that come from more proximal (central) parts of us, not to create our efforts, as we sometimes think.

Despite this reality of physics and anatomy we often have the idea that our hands, feet, and limbs are the source of our power, but even the powerful leg muscles are designed to work in harmony with more powerful muscles of the torso and pelvis. Most of us spend little time improving the coordination and efficiency of our “center,” our proximal selves. This faulty self-image leads to self-use that creates wear and tear for our distal structures as they struggle without enough effective support from our powerful middle parts: carpal tunnel, tennis elbow, and many knee, ankle and foot troubles are a few common ailments often related to this phenomenon.

While improving the proximal/distal relationship is a regular goal in Feldenkrais lessons, this lesson starts our collection specifically designed to help you understand and improve the clarity, effectiveness, and ease of moving “from the center.”

This lesson is found in the collection called Learning the Limbs, from the Center.

It can be helpful to continue on to the next lesson in the collection, which benefits from this learning, soon after this one. It’s called Rolling to Sitting, and Beyond.

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