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This third lesson in the fingers-to-spine series continues to play with the independence of each finger [second lesson coming soon--the recording didn't work]--in relation now to extension, across the shoulders. This is a rare lesson: we do "both sides at once" from about a third of the way in.

Chronic tension of the lumbar and neck extensors is a fundamental pattern of limitation. This lesson addresses these areas actively and passively, with ingenious variations that address some key "hidden spots," particularly in the upper back and neck.

The spine will only be as flexible as the ribs attached and the sternum allow it to be--and those will only move if they can see themselves moving relative to the pelvis. This lesson addresses that whole relationship.

Oddly enough, this lesson takes place largely lying on the back. So "on the side" doesn't refer to the position of the lesson. This lesson follows on the lesson On the side, the sternum becoming flexible, which "really is" on the side.

The last two classes (On the side, the sternum becoming flexible and On the Side, Bending and twisting the chest and spine) had everyone in class talking about our lack of clarity in side-bending. First, what it is when simply standing or lying flat on the floor, to maintain the face in the same plane in sidebending.

The theme this month is "Finding Length." Here's a suggestion for working with this lesson. You might do it first in a very casual way where you pay attention only to getting comfortable with lying on your side with your legs in the positions described. Don't make too much effort with the arm/chest/chin directions on your first go through. Come back a day or two later, and do it again (fog horn comments and all), and now that you're not so much occupied with your balance on your side and your leg arrangement, you can play with the lengthening movements and the arms/chest/chin in a lighter and more refined way.

When we fold forwards (flex) we think of this as shortening. But every shortening involves lengthening. You can lie on your back and take your knee and elbow towards one another--and that involves a certain level of challenge in lifting lefts and head. This lesson takes a familiar idea and does it in a different orientation -- sidelying -- and in this very low-effort environment, more refinement is possible.

This is the second lesson in the April 2010 month of lengthening lessons.

Factoid verification, after the lesson. There's actually 26 bones in each foot....making one quarter of the bones in the human body, but nowhere near 66! And here's your sensory and motor homunculus images to contemplate. You feel more in your feet than you control, a feature shared in a more extreme form by teeth, gums, and genitals, which don't appear on the motor homunculus. And you comparative control some parts in greater detail that you actually sense in less detail. (Click the image to see.)

This is the second of two lessons in the January 15 Workshop: Weight and Weightlessness, 2011. In the first lesson, Lifting a long leg, we were in sidelying, finding how to manage the weight of the long leg in various directions/configurations. This got us using our spines and relating ourselves heel to pelvis to head.

Now we're on to weightlessness: finding the reflexes in standing and the lengthening of the head up and forwards as the hip joint goes back and down, to turn walking into a gentle springing orchestration of reflexes.

This isn't the first pelvic clock lesson I've posted--it has some special nuances, ones that let you study your own patterns and biases in control of your pelvis in action. Check out other versions at: http://www.kinesophics.ca/diyatm/atm_themes/pelvic_clock

I haven't decided whether this lesson is about attaining freedom from/using the floor, or the amazing things that happen if you refine a pathway for the lower leg that stays parallel to the spine through a range of folding and extending. Or what. It's a follow-up on a missed recording two weeks ago, but don't worry. We could have done this one first anyway.

This is the first of three amazing lessons that get right to core matters. There was an interesting conversation after class about how people found the "spine as skewer" image--did it connect or not? One student said he was imagining the meat (tofu?) on the shish kebab was sort of folded or bunched up, and it flattens as the spine "skewers" it. Play with the idea!

When you have to balance on your knees, you really start talking to your hips and spine about what they're up to and whether they're talking to one another. None of that fine adjustment in the feet, the bones of the lower leg, the knee joints to save you.

You never know, in life, when you're going to be stuck up against a wall and need to reach into your back pocket. If this function concerns you, this is the lesson for you.

On the other hand, you may have more generalized interests, like ungluing your shoulder blades, freeing your neck, or undoing patterns of holding in the abdomen that limit everything else you do. This lesson can help you with those things too.

In Body and Mature Behaviour, Moshe writes about the "fixing" of the trunk for the movement of the limbs--not, as we imagine, the general immobility of "core stability," but finely calibrated to the direction of action, and with the least possible sum total of work in the muscles:

"The trunk by itself is normally not rigid. It consists of two smaller parts, the almost rigid thorax and the pelvis. Thus, before any significant movement can be made, it as necessary that the thorax and pelvis should be more rigidly connected [so that, as a unit, they will be the heavy part and the action of the muscles joining limbs to trunk will move not the trunk but the limbs]. And the stability of the whole body relative to the ground should be increased in the plane in which work is to be done. Among all the numerous possible configurations of the segments of the body in each case there is a group in which the total amount of pull in all the muscles of the body is the smallest." (p. 54, beginning of Chapter 7)

You can think of this lesson as an exploration of that idea.

We've been focusing (so to speak) on the eye in its functions of vision and leading action of the whole self--now, let's weigh (so to speak--is the pun tired yet?) its simple physical existence: our grasp of the eye in our self-image.

This lesson--entirely in standing--is about finding your axis for turning, with the head and the pelvis coordinated in a smooth arc, and the volume on the extensors of the back "turned down." It's the first of our "turning on a dime."

I'm particularly intrigued by this lesson in relation to a passage in The Potent Self that I've always found intriguing. In the chapter, "The means at our disposal," he talks about needing to shut down the habitual work of the extensors in the low back and neck before anything new can be learned. This makes sense and doesn't in light of his usual progression of introductory lessons--a "flexor" lesson is often first. And of course lessons are usually done in lying for this reason. But none of these intro lessons are as extreme as what is described in that chapter of The Potent Self. This lesson, paradoxically in standing, actually carries through this thought: maintaining the rounding of the spine while shifting weight and "coming up on each leg" is remarkably potent as a means of reeducation of the generally over-working and poorly-organized extensors.

Taking the idea of turning around the axis into another orientation (lying on our backs, rolling to the side), and playing with some flexion along the front diagonals: you'll get an interesting view into your shoulders with this one! Like an x-ray machine, only kinaesthetic, with zero radiation exposure!

Returning to our theme of turning on a dime, this lesson finds the relation between really standing, the freedom of the head, and the freedom to turn.

Heavily but not completely edited to remove all my evening's left-right mix-ups. Left in the local colour in the form of free-associating to Ellen Page (from Halifax) and the movie Hard Candy.

Zooming in on the hips, but within a context where everything has to play along--the weight shifting on the pelvis, the shoulder lengthening instead of clutching, the head willing to go anywhere, the chest and spine flexible.

Here we get into more detail with the shoulders, but still in a manner that relates everything to everything. I'm not quite sure why the class found that idea so funny. ;-)