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Thanks to the class members for agreeing to let the lively discussion on spiral staircases stay in!

Retrospective learning is highly under-rated. I mean by this the realization of something already "known" (or, more accurately, "heard about"). My thesis adviser Peter Winch would say this of the experience of having begun his teaching career as a colleague of Rush Rhees: the rest of his life was spent realizing "Oh that's what Rhees meant when he said..."

So I was at a workshop by Jeremy Krauss recently on teaching out of Alexander Yanai, and he commented on the process of inventing "helping movements," extra steps to throw into the lesson to ease a difficult challenge, that sometimes it helps keep the theme or the overall harmony of the lesson to find something else in the lesson to relate your "helping movement" to or draw your helping movement from. (This "helping movement" isn't a technical term. I don't recall what term Jeremy used.)

So here in this lesson, conscious of how it can be challenging for people to be in this "baby" position on their backs (elbows and knees in the air pointing to one another, lower legs and arms hanging), I threw in some folding movements to ease this position as a starting point for our exploration.

Later, thinking about it, I recalled that on many occasions doing this lesson, I've seen teachers use some time spent in side-lying, bringing the top elbow and knee towards one another, sometimes relating that to lifting the leg and arm away from the floor and beginning the rolling, sometimes not. Aha! That's the kind of thing Jeremy meant. It's a way to introduce some flexion movements into the lesson, to ease that position lying on the back, but in a way much more harmonious with the overall action we're developing.

Try it out when you're playing with this lesson--spend some time on your side, sliding knee and elbow towards one another.

The accent of the movement in this lesson as recorded is the leg and arm opening to the side, tipping the whole self into rolling. How about trying it with the other knee and elbow reaching to the ceiling? So you roll to your right side because your left knee and elbow reach towards the ceiling?

How far away are your knee and elbow in the rolling? Try bringing the knee and elbow towards or away from one another as you lift them from the ground and start to roll towards your back, so they are moving in two arcs; try also imagining that you are holding a straw between your knee and elbow, and you can't drop it. Then your knee and elbow have to keep a constant distance throughout the entire roll.