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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.

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!

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.

This "classic" lesson (we call the theme the "dead bird" lesson) works in sitting, and shows the surprising power of the eyes to organize movement--or, perhaps better, your willingness and availability to move.

Where does flexibility come from? Why is it that we can only move so far, and then we stop? Tight muscles? Bad joints?--Or habits?