Folding, Foundation, and Length (Patrons)

From our Legacy and Alternate Lessons collection. Other ways to study this material are in the Alternate Version and Related Lessons tabs.

Lying on the back, holding the head and knees in different combinations, improving the forward folding of the body through building awareness of the use of the ground (foundation) and aspects of lengthening. Relating the ankles, lower back, and head.

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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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  • The recording picks up with the last few seconds of a lively “what is Feldenkrais?” discussion before class began. This class meets in an exercise studio in a fitness center, and I was differentiating the Feldenkrais Method from other kinds of classes that meet in that room. I called Feldenkrais part of the fourth area of fitness: coordination training, as opposed to traditional “exercise” forms of fitness in the more common three areas: strength, cardiovascular, and lengthening (or stretch) training. The Feldenkrais Method, strictly speaking, is a somatically-based educational method.
  • There’s never any goal to make the elbow and knee touch in these movements. Often through the course of the lesson they will spontaneously start to get much closer, or perhaps touch, but this is not due to more effort. In fact we’re looking for you to use less effort to fold as you become more efficient and get free of unnecessary muscle tonus that is competing with the folding.
  • Those who are very flexible can certainly simply move the elbow and knee past each other, with the elbow brushing sometimes the inside of the knee, sometimes the outside.

At 27:00 I mixed up a right and left. The left hand is actually holding the head, but I fleetingly say “right” one time.

This lesson is found in our Legacy and Alternate Lessons collection.

Like most of our lessons, this one can be studied out of context.

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This is an alternate teaching of Folding, Foundation, and Feet, from our Lessons for Better Posture, Walking, and Running collection.

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4 Comments

  1. Claire on February 4, 2016 at 9:04 am

    Wow that was my favourite lesson so far. You really are very good. Thank you.

  2. Anne McDonald on July 20, 2019 at 7:52 pm

    Thank you. I needed that. Up-down, right-left, forwards-backwards are now easily sensed. I’m in my body and out in the world! Again, many thanks, Nick.

  3. Ileana Vogelaar on January 2, 2022 at 8:28 pm

    Great lesson for the whole body.
    I got a little confused on “rolling to the heel””. Sometimes felt like pulling my heel as rolling, that made low back arch.
    Other times felt like pushing, ever slightly , and surely, low back flatten.
    Was I doing too much with my heel ?

    • Nick Strauss-Klein on January 3, 2022 at 12:57 pm

      It’s nice to keep the leg rolling quiet, slow, and small enough to not make the lower back to arch.

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