This has been an exciting week with the Feldenkrais Awareness Summit through Future Life Now.
I had the pleasure to speak to teachers around the world, trained in Feldenkrais, Yoga, Pilates, Personal Training and more. I am posting the standing roll down lesson I created to access imagery for core coordination with a Feldenkrais lens of awareness. Enjoy. Please post comments on your experience. Thank you.
Start with a check in. Notice how you are standing and the support from the ground. Slowly lift one arm and then the other so you can sense the connection to your spine, legs, feet, lower abdomen, shoulders and breath.
Walk over to the wall. Gently lean your back into the wall, without pushing into it. Walk your feet out about one foot away and allow your feet to be under your hip joints.
Notice the contact of your back to the wall. Notice your breath. Sense the ground support. Without moving, how far away is your head from the wall. Slowly take your head back to make light contact and notice where you touch and the actual distance. Then return your head to your starting position.
Slowly shrug your shoulders and lower them down with gravity to notice their location on your body. Slide your right hand down your right leg, allowing your spine to curl in that direction. Notice your ease and how your spine segments adapt to the movement, then return. Slide your left arm down your left leg to notice how the two sides compare. Pause in the middle.
Gently slide down the wall, bending your knees and ankles. Only go as far as you can do it to sense a fuller contact of your back to the wall and not to overly engage your legs. This is not a wall slide exercise. Pause in this position and make sure you take plenty of rests as you need to by sliding back up the wall.
Gently roll your pelvis under and then slightly arched, as if you are doing 12-6 with the pelvic clock on the wall. Sense how you do this. Can you soften your belly to make the movement fluid and easy? Which way is easier? Rest and slide back up the wall.
Slide back down the wall as before, and pause. This time start to roll out the spine by moving your pelvis away from the wall, detaching your spine, segment by segment. Then return to the wall, noticing how you reverse the movement. Do this a few times, noticing your breath, weight shift through your feet, how your eyes participate and how this effects the way your arms hang down.
Rest, by sliding back up the wall.
Slide down again and pause in the same position. Rest your hands on your thighs and gently slide both hands down towards your feet. Don’t go very far, just enough to sense your spinal chain movement and repeat this a few times, reversing the movement back to your start position. Pause.
Do the same movement, but this time put both hands on your right thigh and slide them down on the right side. Repeat this a few times.
Try this on your left side. How do they compare?
Rest back up with your legs long.
Now imagine a space, a cylinder, “a constellation of attention*” measuring just under your first ribs, just above your pelvic floor; from below the width of your sits bones and from above the two mastoid processes of your skull. This is not anatomical and an approximation just for you to attune to this space. Take your hands and move them towards each other to gain more awareness of the space you are mapping in your imagination. Sense that there is almost an energy to the space. If you allowed yourself to really attend to it without tension, it may feel like it is subtly pushing back out into your hands. Move your hands in a few places, to the sides of the cylinder, and from top to bottom of the cylinder.
Now rest your arms by your sides. With your legs out long, start the Pilates roll down exercise, beginning at your head and eyes. Articulate bending from the top down, segment by segment as if you are a soft willow tree bending to just about your knee caps (if that is easy and comfortable). Allow your arms to hang free and to dangle. Reimagine your cylinder, and the reformed shape.
Start to roll back up, by imagining your cylinder is the support, and giving you inner strength to ease back up, and allowing your spine to ease into the wall, segment by segment. Take your time, and allow your breath to be easy and un-interfered with. Continue until you fully reach your full height. Pause and sense your inner and outer space. Move your arms to the wall, and lightly press into the wall to shift you back onto your feet to come to full standing without the wall support. What do you notice?
Take this with you and try and imagine this when you lift something, push something, or even exercise to reach your full potential. Thank you.
*Olena Netifor reference LA regional event 2017
