Head Under the Gap, Supine (Patrons)
Prerequisite: Long Belly, Strong Back (38m) resembles the recent classes mentioned in this lesson. Enjoy it first, then watch the 1-minute video demo below before starting this lesson.
A new approach to a classic Feldenkrais lesson originally designed to clarify extension patterns in your shoulders, thoracic, and neck. After briefly introducing its challenges, this version backs up and uses the context of our Long Belly, Strong Back lesson to build pelvic and spinal support for the eventual return of arching and turning your scapulas and sternum with a bridged hand. Great for posture, breath, athletics, confidence, and groundedness. Framed with brief standing explorations.
We offer over 50 free lessons, but this one's just for our Patron-level donors. You can learn about it in the free lesson notes and comments below, but to access the audio you’ll need to join The FP as a Patron. Learn more
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I’ve done this lesson before, I think, several times. I think I may have done a version on this site. What is different is Nick’s teaching this new way which I think he calls organizing everything all at once. My experience in this new approach is very different than the soft, intimate relationship to the earth that many earlier ATM’s call for. This new way feels less pleasant and indulgent to me at first but in this lesson when everything began to organize together, I suddenly, quite lightly, found my head slipping under the bridge of my arm. At the end of many ATM’s in the past, I’ve sought and found a release of tension and a kind of snuggling into the ground. After this, I felt relaxed but ready to move.
I really appreciate this reflection on your studies and the shift in my teaching. I think it’s an accurate distinction you’re making: I now often ask people to work more directly toward organizing better functional ability for themselves (“ready to move,” you said) by steering students toward more awareness of ground reaction forces and the profoundly enabling buoyancy they offer, and toward more immediately and simultaneously distributing the image and muscular contractions of action throughout the whole self.
I’ve noticed in recent years that teaching in this way is more empowering for students. It better leverages – and brings conscious attention to – natural advantages for self-improvement created by the interaction of physics and our nervous systems. And these two awareness skills (ground forces and global distribution) can be taken instantly into any activity, without first “relaxing”. Relaxation becomes a wonderful side effect of functioning more efficiently and effectively, rather than a first step toward it.
And I also want to acknowledge: there is great value in the softer, “snuggling,” “indulgent” (great words!) approach too, and there will always be many lessons like that at The FP, especially for newcomers. With more emphasis on “relaxation” in these lessons, the nervous system and musculature shed self-limiting, pointless busyness. Then, since the nervous system is predisposed to more efficient function when we’re relaxed (when parasitic efforts are inhibited), new options are easy to introduce, and easy for the student to select, during the lesson.
Both pedagogies seem very effective for most people. The older one may be more important for newer Feldenkrais students, and for all of us whenever we’re struggling with self-care. I believe the newer one offers more responsibility and agency to the student, more clear training for how to take this work off the mat and into all life’s activities.
Grateful to you for reflecting with me, here and offline, on this shift in my teaching! I’ve been meaning to write a blog post about it and will when I can. Please keep the feedback coming.
I especially like the way working one side of the back and then the other helps to reveal and then harmonize the two sides so that they work together well. Actually, one side crosses over to the other from top (shoulder blade action) to bottom (hip/pelvis roll) in a diagonal (and vice versa) so that the harmonizing is even more wondrous. I love Feldenkrais method! And Nick’s teaching.
Wonderful empowering lesson. Hypermobility makes it easy for me to perform movements like bridging and sliding my head under my arm, but makes it hard to feel hów I do these things and how I can better organize and control it. Exploring the different ways to initiate the (seemingly) same movement was great for this. I’ve recently been i’n search of’ my middle back muscles/ lower shoulder stabilizers and lessons like this one are really helping me locate and activate them.