A framework for progress in three steps
1. Establish comfort
When I work with clients, the first object is to establish comfort by reducing unnecessary contraction. I call this "getting out of pain." When we under-work or over-work in our muscles, our movement is full of effort and tension. It can even lead to total exhaustion from the inefficient use of energy—we waste a lot of muscle contractions that don't move a bone. It doesn't matter why we do this. Possibilities include surgery, injury, disease, stress, trauma, or the strategies use to get through the day.
Sometimes this phase takes a few weeks, sometimes a year or more. Retraining the nervous system is different for everyone. Consider how long you spent creating these habits!
2. Rebuild components
The second object is to rebuild the movement components that have dropped out of your repertoire, such as folding forward and backward, rotation, and side bending. You might think, oh, I can do all those things, no problem. But can you do them in every relationship to gravity using your whole self, or do you cheat and do them with half your spine and a quarter of your ribs and no breathing at all?
Do you have awareness of the whole spine, all the ribs, the collar bones, all ten toes, the hip joints, the eyes, jaw, and the breath? Can you do each movement around a fixed constraint and in a funny position? That's life, after all, full of constraints and funny positions!
This phase refines your awareness in tracking movement and noticing sensations as well as how to improve balance, weight shift, and the four aspects of movement:
trajectory (what direction)
force (how much work)
speed (how fast)
timing (sequence)
3. Learn new movement
The third object is to develop new patterns. This is where we invite all the learning we've done to inform new options. Moshe often said his method was about developing spontaneity and freedom. Here, we use our skills in lessons that coalesce into a bigger movement. Yes, you could even say a goal or end point, rather like music resolving from dissonance to consonance.
This phase can be satisfying and fun. We experience more and more competence, and then confidence, in doing things we never thought possible.
View the full post from Zoe’s SOS: A framework for progress plus the lesson, Leg over to stand.
“Learning must be slow and varied in effort until the parasitic efforts are weeded out: then we have little difficulty in acting fast, and powerfully.”