Position: back-lying
60m
Breathing for Liftoff (35m + 25m, Patrons)
This pair of short lessons is designed to be completed together the first time, or with a short break between them.
- Lesson 1 - Reduce tension and anxiety and free your breath by sensing the details of how you hold and release it, then explore a new image of exchanging air with the environment.
- Lesson 2 (begin at 34:00) - Experiment with the elasticity of both the ground and your breathing apparatus, and directly experience what physicists call ground reaction forces.
60m
Lifting Like a Baby + Simultaneous Lifting (Patrons)
Discover how baby-like games of effortlessness can make you a more poised and potent adult. Starts with explorations of how you first lifted your head while lying on your belly in your crib. Then in back-lying you'll learn to quietly, precisely lift and lower parts of your body while studying details of ground support, muscle tone, and reversibility of movement, leading to a discovery of surprising "new" baby skills at the end. Begins with a three-minute talk about the perceptual paradoxes of "effortless" movement.
59m
Joyful Lifted Rolling (Patrons)
Starts with an exploration of grounding in standing. Then very simple side-lying movements gradually expand toward rolling. You'll learn to extend and gather the limbs on one side of your body, then the other, as you coordinate larger rolls with increasingly skillful control of your flexors and extensors. All this creates a profoundly lighter sense of your body and mind. Starts with a two-minute talk reviewing the major principles of grounding for liftoff.
58m
The “Morning Prayer” Lesson (Patrons)
With the hands together like a child praying, learn to move them up and down in front of you first in lying down, then sitting, then kneeling, gradually expanding this gentle movement into a larger and larger action. Details of the scapulas, spine, atlas, tongue, eyes, and floor support are investigated. Framed by brief explorations in standing.
57m
Lifting Up and Through
Back-lying, mostly one knee bent, one foot standing. Develop an action of lifting your hip forward in a grounded and distributed way as you learn to draw clear support from the earth up and through you. Great for stability, strength, and confidence in walking, and all upright movement. Framed by experiments in standing and walking.
58m
A Spiral of Length and Power (Patrons)
Back-lying, one knee bent, one foot standing, learning to lift that hip and spiral out of the ground into diagonal lengthening. Clarify your hip joints and create lightness, power, and eventually the seeds of explosive athletic action as you learn to distribute muscle tone proportionately throughout your whole self. Then enjoy an unusual inchworm-like experiment. Framed by brief explorations in standing.
58m
As Light as a Finger: Games of Weightlessness (Patrons)
Back-lying, framed by brief standing experiments. Create a lighter sense of your body and mind in the field of gravity by using a playful neurological analogy. Explore how your hips, feet, and head can become as light as a finger when you learn to lift them with evenly distributed muscle tone throughout your body. Begins with a 3-minute talk about work, effort, "weightless" movement, and proportional tone.
44m
Integrating the Feet, Torso, Head, and Breath: Connecting to the Earth (44 min, Patrons)
Back-lying, framed by standing. Refine your connection with the ground and use it to improve your posture, breathing, and action. Lengthen your feet and heels, differentiate your toes and ankles, and integrate your feet with your hips, diaphragm, spine, ribs, shoulders, head, and eyes. This lesson points at powerful primitive biological organizations of flexion, extension, and uprightness.
60m
Hip and Shoulder Diagonals for Better Walking (Patrons)
Back-lying, framed by brief standing and walking explorations. Develop the diagonal connections across your torso and limbs through gentle movements and creative imagery. Expand the scope of your learning through references to the pelvic floor, breathing with length, and the freedom of your head.
35m
Differentiating the Pelvic Floor Part 1 (35 min, Patrons)
Back-lying. Refine your pelvic floor sensitivity, awareness, and control by learning how distinct, gentle contractions of the front and back of the pelvic floor are neurologically connected to movements of the pelvis, spine, hands, and lips. A brief chair-seated beginning helps you identify the four skeletal landmarks of the diamond-shaped pelvic floor.