Stretch Without Strain (39 minutes)
Feldenkrais isn’t stretching, it’s learning! Mostly side-lying. Learn greater ease and mobility of your shoulders, neck, ribs, and hips, and discover how a reference twist of sweeping a long, straight arm sideways through the air can improve without any strain at all!
Please have a bath towel nearby to fold to a comfortable height for side-lying head support. A smooth, level surface will allow your head to shift and roll.
If your mat feels too hard for comfortable side-lying, lay a smooth blanket or two on it.
Whenever you’re resting on your back, if you want your knees bent and your feet standing, let your feet and knees be comfortably apart, about the width of your hips.
When you begin moving from the first side-lying position, described as “quite square,” with legs “as if you were sitting in a simple chair” and the arms are straight out in front of you at shoulder height, it will look something like this…
…when you “open that top hand away from the bottom hand and sweep it up into the sky”. Of course you’ll “open the arm away from the other arm just as far as is absolutely comfortable”, which could be more than what you see in this photo, even as far as the arm going some distance behind you, as long as there’s no strain or stretch.
The other side-lying configuration used frequently is with the arms and legs comfortably resting however you like. Elbows can be bent, the ceiling side arm can be balanced on your side or have its hand anywhere in front of you, knees can be loosely bent and stacked wherever feels best.
Got a question for Nick, or a thought about this lesson?
Use the comments section below! Public comments build our community and help search engines find us.
11 Comments
Leave a Comment
These icons are part of "My Journey," where you can make lists of your own saved and favorite lessons, courses, and talks.
To access this donor benefit login below or Join the Project
Click here if you need to reset your password
Thank you for these lessons.
Body scan before versus after was dramatic.
Before was noticeably stuck on most of right side.
After the tissues felt more loosely draped from the centre line.
Nice to feel such a change in a short period of time.
Thank you especially for inviting us to share these. Resources I look forward to further engagement with you.
Equal footing, weight on right and on left.
A magical shift in the balance of my body! Significant daily pain experienced in my left side. I laid first on right side. trying to coordinate the movements was really curious as I literally felt I could watch my body learn!! At the end, I felt all the called out feelings plus a sense of balance. At 75 quite unique experince right now as I am learning to use a ¾ inch lift on left leg. I promise I won’t write a book”. Wanted to express how much I am learning and appreciate joining. Thank you!
Delighted to read all this, and thanks for joining the Feldenkrais Project! We’re honored to have you study with us and your support!
A wonderful creation of yours! Your take on the method always encourages me to sense more and criticise less.
i am so delighted by today’s lesson. Something clicked with regard to all the invitations you make for us… to find our own way, to do it smaller, to not do it at all, to be curious… i utterly love the imagery you use, and i was reminded of how i used to teach (‘natural’) dance 30 or 40 years ago. It suddenly struck me that this attitude you cultivate in us, of deep compassionate, pleasure seeking curiosity, is precisely what drew me to the dancing way way back then… an opportunity to ‘come home’ and to explore. So it was a powerful day today, to rediscover this ‘ability’, and realise that is ALWAYS available to me, not matter how old! and the information about how muscles can’t do anything without ‘trying’/aka/contracting made me think deeply about how to deal with my adductors, which are still agonisingly keen to do ALL the work. i wondered what i could do to help them lengthen and release, and that was when i remembered an image i was given ten years ago by a woman who now teaches feldenkrais… she said that it might help if i imagined threads on my knees drawing me forward… and it’s so true… when i focus on the image rather than on the muscles ‘doing’ it… i can allow change to happen. i went right up the hill and back without pain… those threads leading me along, and keeping it light and easy. thank you so much… This lesson was just brilliant…
I’ve worked with the side lying position for a while now over the last year or so, my struggle however was that my shoulder was uncomfortable with side lying to begin with. I would either have pain or would go numb. Recently I bought a wedge pillow so that my shoulder could hang over the edge, with a big pillow for my head and WOW! Massive massive difference! So I thought I’d share this here in case anyone else is already uncomfortable from the start.
That’s a great, sensitive, creative response to discomfort! Thanks for modeling your experimenting.
Hi Nick! Lovd this Lesson! not sOoo Long;-) but long enof to make me feel years younger !
so fluid and easy—ThankYou so much !
also, i sent an old fashioned check snailmail —. i don’t like particularly like online ‘pay’
i am a member now i think!
I’m glad you mentioned the ratcheting effect! My right shoulder does that with about any movement…almost no cartilage. It WAS moving a little bit more freely by the end though, and I definitely didn’t push it.