podcast – kinesophics

Well, here it is–the last lesson I’ll be teaching for a while. Enjoy the archives! And don’t stop rolling!

If you want to feel really asymmetrical (and who doesn’t?), this is the lesson for you! Feeling asymmetrical, by the way, is nature’s way for you to learn from yourself. So it’s useful, apart from being fun.

How does your ability to shift weight on your hips and from your feet affect how you can use your arms? Explore what every good fencer knows using this lesson!

We’re finishing up this series—this is the fourth last class perhaps for the next year—with some classic lessons. Whatever a “classic” lesson means! It’s surprising how much of a voyage of discovery a familiar lesson can be. Side-sitting, your explore how combining different coordinations of your eyes, shoulders, head—and everything that supports all that, down to … Continue reading "Another “classic rotation sitting” lesson"

Lift your head, look around, and see what your legs do. And find out what they don’t need to do. This is more or less Moshe’s SF Evening Classes, lesson 2, for those keeping track at home.

As we start the last 6-week series before my sabbatical, I am in the mood for coming back to the basics–with the fresh eyes I’ve developed and you’ve all developed from doing more Feldenkrais. And from living. The title of this lesson talks about tilting the pelvis. There’s never one answer to the question “what … Continue reading "Tilting pelvis sitting: another recording"

You might think you’re safe from falling over when you’re already lying on the ground. But let’s see if we can’t find a little wiggle room for a few safe tumbles in that concept. For all Haligonians and honorary Haligonians everywhere who are slipping and sliding in the ice and snow!

Aka watching the butterflies flutter by. Enjoy this bonus lesson! It’s AY 534, a continuation of AY 533. The idea that continues through the two lessons is finding the connection between turning your head (and your neck just so) so that everything follows…to your pelvis, to your knees, your feet.

The theme for this week and next week’s bonus lesson is a very lovely connection: how just the right turn of the head and direction of the spine at the base of the neck engages your whole spine and…bends your knees. (Just when I thought I’d finally stopped thinking about the knees.) This is AY … Continue reading "On stomach, face to knee"

This is a change of pace from recent lessons. A little learning about spirals, changing planes, getting from the floor to standing in a beautifully efficient way.

Of course, frogs aren’t bipedal; they don’t stand on extended legs really at all. So this lesson doesn’t have the kind of neurological and functional significance for a frog that it has for us.

All these years, I tell you to go slower, slower, slower–and now fast? Fast, quick, light movements? Astonishing. And just wait to see how your breathing and use of your spine changes. This is AY 447, for those keeping track. And a week is a long time in Canada, lately anyway. The bobblehead joke probably … Continue reading "Opposition on the side"

If this face-down lesson doesn’t add an inch or so to your height (subjectively, if not objectively), I’d be surprised. For those keeping track at home, this is a slow build-up, more or less half of AY473, with some loose interpretation.

Some pretty simple ideas and experimentation. See if it doesn’t make you feel a whole lot more refined and coordinated in your action.

Hmmm…thought I’d long ago recorded and posted this one. No! Somewhere between the low back and the knees, the hip joints play a major role in action. Here’s a powerful flashlight you can use to clarify this area in your self-image.

Well, this is a weird idea of what to do with your head. You’ll glide around the room with a long neck and everything below will feel very well-oiled, as long as you don’t try too hard. For those following sources at home, this is mostly AY 6, though you’ll see some ideas that aren’t … Continue reading "Turning the head around its circumference and in the center"

We’re thinking about Theo Jansen’s wonderful Strandbeests, and how ‘stupid’ the knees are. They don’t need any sophistical neurological control. They just have to unfold at the right moment and be there for the weight of the body to pass over them. How do you let your leg unfold? This version is AY 117, by … Continue reading "Frog’s Legs"

The first lesson of our new Sept – Oct 2013 series: a gentle twisting movement on your side. Some of my comments suggest that you might do the second side (as you go from side to side) in your imagination. This is always a good option when you can’t follow the instructions without pain. It’s … Continue reading "Somewhere in your back…"

You could say there’s a hierarchy of degrees of conscious control in ourselves–our fingers and mouths the most consciously controlled; our legs less so, carrying us along without much thought wherever we want to go. And our breathing, even more so, takes care of itself while we’re doing other things. We’ll reverse that a bit … Continue reading "Lying on the feet turned in, while breathing rhythmically"

Intimately connected to the rotation at the knee of the two bones of the lower leg, we find a new dimension of freedom in the hip joint and an unusual folding of the ankle. This the second of a four-lesson series recovering what are for many people long-forgotten knee functions.