A movement for pleasure, undoing pain, and talking to both sides of our brain

We could do this lesson with pictures,
and it would be "easier" because it would all
be on one side of the brain.

Most "movement" classes, not only are watch and copy,
but also don't really require a use of mental attention that
actually increases our intelligence.

This lesson,
giving you words to translate into actions,
and giving your brain/self some challenge and non-habitual chances
for your attention,
can do a lot for your ability to move think and be
with more ease grace and pleasure
in the world.

Take advantage.

Go slow, slower, slowest.
Do the movements many times,
as if each time were new.
Look for pleasure and connections you might not
have known before.
Look for ways to make this easier and more alive for you.

So, here goes.

Get on your hands and knees.

There is a yoga thing called cat and cow.
That's our start.

A.
Begin with the regular cat and cow,
where for the cat,
you lift your back and belly towards the sky,
let your head drop,
pull your belly in,
and rotate your pelvis so your sex and nose are
going toward each other.

You might even like to breathe out in the cat phase.

Do this slowly, and stay "relaxed."

Then undo this and come to the "cow,"
which is belly down and forward toward the floor,
back arched,
head with nose up to the sky,
pelvis rotated as if the bottom of your rear end
is coming toward the back of your head.

Go back and forth between cat and cow
and then rest.

Kneel, or lie down, and put your head down,
or get up and walk around. You decide how to rest.

Now the first variation:

B.
Let your head hang down toward the Earth
the whole time.
So in cat it's like it would be anyway,
but then as you arch your back and rotate your pelvis
for cow,
keep your head loose and hanging down.

Rest after doing this ten or twenty or thirty times.
Do it "many," and so slowly it is pleasure,
and so much in awareness that is as if each time
is new.

C.
Second variation:
Your head will go the opposite of the way
it did in A, the "normal" cat and cow.

Which means:
in the cow part, when you arch your back
and tilt your pelvis so the rear end is toward your neck,
your head will travel down toward the floor,
even as if you were to look at your belly.

And in the cat part, when you round your back,
and tuck your pelvis under, you bring your head "up"
as if to look at the ceiling.

This can be confusing.
Realize that the back and head are here
going up and down in sych: head toward the ceiling when belly lifts,
head towards the floor when belly drops.

Rest.

D. Now do the "normal" cat and cow,
or A,
and in the first way:
D.1. notice what your eyes want to do,
and deliberately look up when your head is going up,
and look down when your head is going down.

Rest a bit.

D.2. Now,
continuing to do the "normal" cat and cow,
bring your eyes the opposite of your head

so in cat, head down, belly up, and eyes up

in cow, head up, belly down, and eyes down

go slowly, very slowly,
be gentle
follow your breathing
take it easy
rest if confused
go slowly and gently,
did I say that?

Rest.

E. for extra credit,
do C, where the head goes down when the belly goes down,
and up when the belly goes up,
and have your eyes go opposite your head.

Rest.

F. Do, just a few times do the "normal" cat and cow, but with almost delirious pleasure
at how sweet and easy the "normal" way has become.

Rest on your back.
Notice feelings of upgrade and feelings of relaxation.

Roll slowly to sitting and then easily come to standing
and walk around.

Again notice feels of ease (relaxation) and potency ( increased connection inside of yourself)

Good.

Rolling to sit, some "advanced" practicing, for practioners who practice and learners who learn

Rolling to Sit: A graduate course

You can lie on your back and feel what this is all about: two shoulder blades on the floor, the back of your pelvis on the floor, the backs of your legs on the floor, some part of your arms resting down, down, gravity holding your self secure and calm.

How does your breathing go here?

What do you see in front of you?

What is the direction that seems “forward” to your pelvis and torso?

Ah, good.


Now, imagine this: you are sitting. You have somehow come to sitting from this lying on your back position. What direction does your head face now and at what are you looking? How is your torso facing and what is the position of your pelvis? Imagine this pelvis connection to the floor a bit more thoroughly: what parts press down, what parts are up from the floor, where does “forward” seem to be for the pelvis?

How is the spine connecting your head and pelvis in this imaginary sitting position?

Good.

There are a number of ways to get from on your back to your sitting position and this essay won’t go into them, but will suggest that a thorough and slow and almost endlessly delightful study in transitional possibilities from the lying down pelvis and head to the sitting pelvis and head is rich, rich, rich with learning delights.


And hey, another thought experiment: lie on your belly, and feel what is forward now, where are your eyes and nose pointed, what are your legs up and down to, where is your spine, how about your arms?

In this lying down position, it’s possible to come to sitting without using the arms, but why not be fully human and let the game be played as we would as a baby? So your arms are in what’s called “push up” position, and your head can come up and look at the world from any almost vertical axis and now the game: how to get to sitting from here?

Three games really: how to get to sitting look the same way with your head?

How to get to sitting looking to one side or the other?

How to get to sitting looking the way of “down,” the way your feet are presently pointed.

This can take a lot of slow thinking and experimenting and discovering.

All efforts with awareness in any of life are rewarded, and efforts such as this to discover transitional and functional movements like these can be highly rewarding.
Try ‘em and find out.



Now, for some rolling to sit that is a little like what can be found in the Alexander Yanai series, and a lot like what anyone who pays attention can discover who is willing to feel how gravity and their four limbs and the spine pelvis head thing cooperate.

We’ll start like this:

Rest propped up on your back, with your legs wide and easy, and your elbows holding up the top half of your torso and head in a vertical position. This is to say, you are half upright in head and chest, and the lower half of your back is on the floor.
Feel how the elbows holding you this way has all sorts of possibilities for a person/ child discovering all sorts of things about crawling, but for now, just shift a bit side to side and feel how one elbow and then the other supports most of the top half of you, including your head.

Have a little fun with this, and drop your torso a bit as you come through the middle, and come back up more as you shift your weight from one elbow to the other, always keeping your head vertical.

Then rest.

Come back to this propped position, and come with your weight more fully to your right elbow (we’ll cater to the world of right handers/ left footers for starts), coming enough to the right so that you can feel weight shift to the right side of your pelvis. And then come back.

Now do a kind of fun thing, where you shift your weight in a bit of an arc to the right and forward, so the head goes in an arc, and the weight on the pelvis shifts as if on a clock from 12 to 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 o’clock.

At six o’clock your weight could be forward enough so that you were sitting. (the right hand coming in handy somewhere along the way).

Play around with this. (Technical term: “fart around” with this.). Let the head arc to the right and then forward, and the pelvis rotate the same way and feel the legs provide the ballast as it were for this shift forward and up of the head and spine.

Notice the weight when your are sitting, and then coming back to the reclining position, notice the reverse shift in your pelvis and head.

Rest.


Now, maybe you recall an Alexander Yanai, when, on your back you scissors your legs one way to come more on your belly and the other way to coming to sitting over your elbow. Maybe you don’t. Either way is fine.

But, again, playing right elbowed/ left legged, from the reclining position, raise your left leg and bring it to the right over your right leg, and in this scissored position, roll the head and pelvis as before as you take the left leg back to the left, and see how sweetly and easily this goes.
Play/ “fart around” with this. Imagine, if you are a practitioner, guiding this movement either from behind the neck, or with the “free” arm, or with the “free” arm and the swinging leg. Realize how going slowly enough could teach a lot to ribs and sternum and head and chest and pelvis and weight shifting and gravity connecting and all that good stuff.

And rest.


Now, you are on your back, a baby, and you lift your left leg and fling it to the right. You roll mainly to your right side, but since you aren’t in a Feldenkrais lesson with your arms starting above your head, you trap your lower right arm under you.

Darn. This is annoying.
But, you feel a toy over there on the right side where your left foot is, and your head wants to come to it, and you swing your head that way, and your left leg swings back over to the left to counter-balance and get out of the way, and your left hand reaches down there for the toy and you have rolled up to sit through your elbow on the right side.
Yes, yes, the bending of the knees ways are “easier” in the world of rolling up to sit, and keeping the head even lower to the floor has a lot of amazing learning. Still, though, in the above you can sort of roll your head along the floor toward the toe near where the left foot landed over on the right there.

Isn’t this fun?

I hope so.

Everyday awaring, every day awaring

We have a spine.


This is good. And how often are we aware of this amazing piece of our architecture?


Think about the two ends to this flexible stick of ours: the head at the top, up high to see things and hear better, and at the base the pelvis, rooted in our legs, with Seitz bones on which to sit. Either way, standing or sitting, the pelvis is there, here now, at the bottom of 24 vertebrae, holding up our head by giving the base to our back.


The back is a collection of muscles and ribs and our spine.


Can we play today with noticing whether our spine is more in the rounding position, or the arching?


Can we feel the shape of our spine, and feel how it is holding up the head. In sitting, is the push from pelvis up through the spine, or is a back of a chair propping up part of our back, so the weight is somewhat down into our pelvis, and somehow down and back into the chair?


No right or wrong. Just notice: spine more as if stomach in, or spine more as if stomach out? Spine somewhat upright, way upright, curled in, or arched deeply?


This is a big part of being human, the pelvis spine head thing. Let’s notice it, sense it, aware it as much as we can enjoy today.

Up from down

Up from down

So yesterday, we played with coming down to the floor, hands and feet on the floor, and then spiraling down by putting our knee between the opposite hand and foot.

Today we’ll play with spiraling up from the floor.

So please come down to the floor, maybe the way we played with and (maybe) learned yesterday.

Sit cross legged, so one leg is in front of the other. Notice which foot and leg is the one in front. Then take the other hand (if the left foot and leg is in front, take the right hand; if the right leg and foot is in front, take the left hand) and put that hand on the floor beside yourself and slightly to the side.
If it’s your left hand, to the left side and slightly behind. Right hand, the other way.

Then begin to move your head in a spiral toward your hand as if your nose is going down toward it, and as you do this, do three things: one, put weight on the hand you have down; two: rotate the front foot so it is pressed down and standing on the floor; rotate your bottom up to the sky.
.
From this position, one hand with weight, one foot coming to standing, keep spiraling toward the down hand, and keep your head low and spiral your bottom up in the same direction that everything is spiraling.


This may sound like nonsense or “too hard to figure out.”

It isn’t.

Go really slowly. It’s the reverse of spiraling down yesterday, so you can play with yesterday’s game/ learning to get clarity on this side.

You can learn this.

Do it.


And for the rest of the day, every time you get up and down from sitting to standing, do something like a spiral. And notice your head and pelvis all day. Again. Yes. Again