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Move your right shoulder forward. Now move your left hip forwards. (You can do this sitting in chair, or on the floor, or your back or side.)

Was that second movement the opposite of the first?

Or is it actually the same movement?

We often use the image of a clock in guiding an exploration. The Pelvic Clock is famous lesson type that uses this strategy. Lessons based on the clock can be very slow and methodical. And very potent.

This kind of geometrical image, one that makes subtle distinctions in degrees of turning (not just turn left or turn right, but turn to 10:30), can really invite us to find the hidden spot that we would skip past for the rest of our lives if we were just doing free and open movement improvisation.

A very important resource for working on challenging lessons is the human capacity for disobedience and cheating.

After all, when faced with a choice between Obeying the Command of the Teacher and preserving your own well-being, why would you ever choose to do what the teacher tells you to do?

Orientation, manipulation, and timing are three facets of organization that have to come together for an action to be successful (doing the right thing in the right place at the right time).

You can create a new "manipulation" (the movement, considered as a configuration of the body in relation to itself) by altering the configuration of the starting place of the movement.

In order to catch a ball coming at you in the outfield, you have to be on the field, in the right place, facing in the right direction (the right orientation in space), holding out your hand with your palm in the right direction (making the right manipulation of your body), and at the right moment (timing it to be there when the ball reaches you).

Now that you've done the lesson that was recorded for just one side, and before too much time passes, teach yourself the lesson on the other side. It may help to think over some questions before you begin.

It's interesting to notice what sticks with you about a lesson and what didn't.

If I sum up the Sidelying, sliding hands and knees lesson from my own memory (almost a week after teaching it), here is the "skeleton outline" I would make of it.