Lesson analysis

Why lesson analysis?

The structure of the DIY ATM section of the website encourages you to try out Feldenkrais ATM lessons and to move very quickly into making them your own -- trying out variations and relating them to different principles.

This is a good process, and yet there's something more at work in a Feldenkrais ATM, beyond trying out variations on a theme. Those variations are in service of improving the integration of layers of reflex and conscious neuromuscular control into effective action, involving the whole person. So for my own study I'm working on getting deeper into Feldenkrais's lessons and understanding the way their variations are structured around specific ideas about these layers of neurological control. The rotes of this process are below. Most of them are discussions of lessons posted or this site.

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Commentary on AY 177: Making the spine flexible and integrating it

In Chapter 13 of The Potent Self ("The means at our disposal") and a similar passage in Body and Mature Behaviour (in the chapter "Tonic adjustment"), Moshe discusses the question: how do we effect change in deeply held patterns of action?

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Analysis of AY 217, On the side, the sternum becoming flexible

A fellow practitioner suggested to me reading Chapter 7 of Body and Mature Behavior alongside the lesson On the side, the sternum becoming flexible, while we were discussing it on Feldyforum (Feldenkrais practitioners' mailing list). It's a delightful lens for this lesson. Many ways over.

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Amherst, Year 2, Tape #31

These are my notes of an ATM lesson in year 2 of the Amherst training program. This is the lesson of rolling from side-lying in the fetal position to face-up, arms and legs extended. This lesson is taught in the days that Moshe is introducing FI to the Amherst students.

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