Position: standing
63m
Long Belly, Strong Back: Expanded Workshop Version (Patrons)
A 3-minute talk introduces the workshop. Then, after a few explorations in standing, you'll lie down and dive into quiet, precise movements of your pubic bone, sternum, scapulas, and sitbones designed to organize your spine and hips for powerful action and easier uprightness. Late in the lesson, juxtapose your new skills with common movement habits that diminish our abilities and confidence: do you press the ground or lift up and through? Are your hips in front of the action or behind it? The more clearly you sense these differences in all that you do, the better life gets.
38m
Long Belly, Strong Back: Short Version (38m)
This simple, powerful lesson is designed as an antidote to pervasive cultural messaging about flat stomachs. The truth is that tensing and withdrawing your abdomen severely limits freedom of movement, contributes to anxiety, and can even affect digestion. Feel for yourself the ease and potency of a long belly and well-organized back, and unlock profound benefits for spinal health, hips, shoulders, posture, confidence, athletic skill, and everyday actions. Framed by explorations in standing.
60m
Skillful Scapulas Make Graceful Arms and Hands (Patrons)
In this mostly back-lying lesson you'll discover lighter, more graceful arms and hands as you learn to support and counter-balance their movements by skillfully engaging your scapulas. Later you'll integrate your pelvis and legs. This lesson has surprising benefits for posture and confidence, and improves everyday activities like cooking, typing, and playing an instrument.
60m
Rotating, Interlacing, and Integrating the Hands, into Palms Lengthening Overhead (Patrons)
Reduce anxiety and organize your nervous system by refining simple, pleasurable actions of your hands, arms, and shoulders. Integrate them better with your head and eyes. Eventually expands into lengthening your whole self, with surprising effects on stability. Framed by brief explorations in standing.
63m
Arms in a Hoop, with Continuous Ground Support (Patrons)
Back-lying, feet standing. Explore turning and twisting movements of the shoulders, pelvis, head, and eyes with arms held in a loose hoop in front of you, and find a flowing sense of ground support through your feet and back. Framed by detailed experiments in standing which connect your mat learning to upright life.
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.
44m
Integrating the Feet, Torso, Head, and Breath: Connecting to the Earth (44m, 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.
54m
Free Your Torso for Better Posture, Walking, and Running
Mostly side-lying, framed by standing and walking explorations. Using your sternum as a reference point, free your shoulders, hips, chest, and back for better posture and upright movement. Experience how different organizations of your torso affect your ability to move with freedom and confidence. Ends with a 2-minute talk from the after class discussion.