Getting Free with a Bell Hand (Patrons)

If you’re not yet familiar with “bell hand” lessons please explore this one or this one first.

Mostly in a "three-quarters prone" position (halfway between side-lying and front-lying). Learn to use a gently pulsing "bell hand" to calm and regulate your nervous system, and to help you organize larger, more demanding movements with greater freedom and skill.

More Challenging  front-lying  side-lying  transitioning or rolling 

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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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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.

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Tip – Complete the Movement

Study tip: Complete one movement before beginning the next. You’ll improve faster if there’s enough time between movements that you feel fully at rest.

Tip 1 – Interrupted?

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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 – what to wear

Study tip: Wear loose, comfortable clothes that are warm enough for quiet movement. Remove or avoid anything restrictive like belts or glasses.

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Tip – LESSS is more

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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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Tip 4 – Padding

Study tip: Comfort first! Carpeted floors usually work well, but it’s great to have an extra mat or blanket nearby in case you need a softer surface in some configurations.

Tip – skip a lesson

Study tip: If you can’t find a comfortable way to do the initial movements or configuration of a lesson, it’s ok to skip it for now and go on to another lesson.

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  • Comfort & Configuration
  • Clarifications
  • Curiosities
  • Context
  • Related Lessons
  • Source

If the three-quarters prone position is difficult you may place a pillow under the bent knee that’s out in front of you, or under your head if lying on your arm isn’t easy.

The bell hand should always have fingers free of the ground, meaning its palm is oriented to the ceiling or to the side.

While the bell hand pulsing is more or less continuous, the lifting movements of your other arm and leg aren’t. Improve your comfort and improve more quickly by completing each lift: between movements let all the efforts dissipate and pause briefly before beginning the next lift.

Eventually you’ll get to choose which side you’re lying on. You’ll hear me frequently refer to the “floor side” or to “pulse your floor side arm” to remind you which hand you’re pulsing, but I don’t mean to move that arm, except when you’re transitioning in and out of lying on your back.

The “silk scarf” is an image for gently floating something into the air, as if someone slung a scarf under your wrist (or later, your ankle) and delicately lifted.

Moshe Feldenkrais called the movement “bell hand” because of the shape the hand makes. He also spoke French and many Feldenkrais teachers have suspected he was thinking of “belle” (beautiful), too. Having an esthetically pleasing sense of the movement, both in its felt-sense and appearance, hugely benefits the lesson.

I also enjoy an image of the metaphorical bell that’s rung in the nervous system when you sustain this movement. It announces “Pay attention, every other movement you make is connected to this ringing bell.”

For humans, learning to do two or more different things skillfully at the same time is common and enormously practical. When you think about it, it’s also miraculous. We must patiently practice, differentiating and integrating until there’s a sense that the movements are a single coordinated action. When either movement is handled in an isolated, abrupt, or forceful way they disrupt each other. But when both are done beautifully, each benefits.

Learning specific skillful combination of movements is really valuable in all of life’s activities, but note: if you practice your actual learning skills by developing your capacity for differentiation and integration, you can learn faster — and learn almost anything. Try our Illusion of Isolation Deep Dive.

This lesson is found in Patron Treasures, our collection of lessons exclusively for Feldenkrais Project Patron-level donors.

It also appears in our Deep Dive course called The Illusion of Isolation.

It was recorded on January 26, 2021.

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1 Comments

  1. Sara on August 19, 2024 at 7:22 am

    Phew what a profound level of relaxation this brings, making the puzzle of lifting that heavy lower limb quite a revelation!

    Reply

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