Reaching Reorganized: Everything Everywhere All at Once (Patrons)

After a “cold open” you’ll get to enjoy a standard opening scan.

Discussed in the lesson but worth remembering from the beginning: to avoid lower back discomfort, make the movements of lengthening your pubic bone small, gentle, and distributed through your whole spine. Let your entire back lightly arch, not just your lumbar. Rest frequently and make the action smaller and smaller as suits your comfort. You will learn and improve more this way than if you power through any increase in discomfort!

• Plumb means vertical in gravity. The arm’s home position, when you “reach and unreach” forward, is standing upright in the room, oriented directly toward the actual ceiling. It’s just like the art of our logo at the top of this page!
• After each reach, settle the shoulder blade back on the floor and pause a moment, but keep the arm standing plumb.
• When I say the spine “is the most fundamental structure of being human,” I mean skeletally. The overall award goes to the human brain!

Because we explore the movements mostly on the right side, then invite you to improvise on the left, it’s a great lesson for reversing all the rights and lefts on second listening.

Our Zoom class discussion was especially rich after this lesson. Do the lesson first, then come back here to enjoy a few notes from our chat:

• A student asked, what comes first, rolling/rotating or the lengthening of the spine? I quoted Feldenkrais to reply: “This feeling of the spine lengthening accompanies [my emphasis] most actions of the body when they are properly carried out.” In well organized movements all of these things happen all together, all at once.
• One student said, “A small problem can feel unsolvable, but if you make it part of a bigger problem, then you can find a solution.” As we all know, the minutiae of trying to find “what’s right” for each part of our body in any action can be paralyzing. This lesson steeps us in a bigger, more holistic sense and intention, rather than seeking to “fix” particular details of how you coordinating reaching.
• To say it another way, in the “cold open” I was baiting you a little bit by asking about the sequence of movements of reaching. Over time we discover that the action improves immeasurably if we can sweep up any small “problems” we encounter into a clear organization of our whole self simultaneously.
• The nature of our nervous system is to enact its whole current organization in every action. As Feldenkrais wrote, “We act in accordance with our self-image.” When we feel disjointed or sequential in “turning on” an action, we are feeling our habitual inhibitions that are simultaneously turning on – or already present – as we begin to act. Identifying and reducing the efforts that are extraneous, or compete with the action, leads to that wonderful sense of wholeness and smoothness in action. And yet, we are always whole, even before we do this.
• This is, in a sense, the point of the lesson: if you know you’re always functioning as a whole system, why not practice – in ATM lessons and in life! – with a wide open attention, so you can bring a wide-as-possible experience of your body, mind, and environment (everything, everywhere, all at once!) into your current action immediately. As we practice with this clear intention and open attention, our awareness of self and environment expands, and acting as a whole becomes easier and easier.
• One “cheat” to diffuse your attention rapidly is to remember to seek out a clear lengthening role for your “primary line” – your spine, pelvis, and head – in any challenging action in life or lessons. Another trick: are you breathing pleasantly?
• I was playing off the movie title from a few years back, Everything Everywhere All at Once, but one student shared that we’re also quoting Thomas Aquinas’s concept of the divine vision, “tota simul” in Latin, “everything at once.” The student pointed out that this was particularly fun because we were reaching heavenward.

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

It was recorded in The FP Weekly Pay-What-You-Can Class on September 17, 2024, a week after a lesson closely resembling Long Belly, Strong Back (short or full-length), mentioned in the recording as “last week’s class.”

We went on the next week to record Head Under the Gap, Supine (Patrons), which is a great follow-up.

The live recording has been edited to improve flow, clarity, and audio quality.

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