All possible movments: Training your spine
When I designed the FeldenkraisTREASURY, I had already spent over twenty years taking notes on Feldenkrais movement sequences that fit together. I wanted to create a mini-training that gave everyone the opportunity to grow their awareness of all possible movements in the human skeletal system.
Well, "all possible movements" still remains elusive, but the idea here is to offer long sequences is to help you change and change and change by small degrees of accumulated awareness and understanding over a period of time until there is no longer any sliding backwards into dysfunction and pain—and if there is, it's a temporary state that you know how to get out of.
This happens at different times for everyone.
One time I went away for the weekend and left my partner with a series of lessons to do, promising with my endearing hyperbole hat they would be life changing. To my surprise, when I got home, he could not stop talking about how they were, in fact, life changing!
So you never know when that moment will emerge when your nervous system shifts gears so deeply and profoundly that you wonder why you ever felt differently, lived differently, or breathed, walked, sat, or slept differently.
I set up the Flexion section under Fundamentals in part to offer this possibility. There are 42 lessons in this section, and if you do nothing else in the next six months, take 42 days and do all 42 lessons, in the order they are presented, to retrain your spine. (You can even do two lessons a day and finish in 21 days.) These lessons are around 30-40 minutes each.
Benefits of retraining the spine
Well-organized flexion helps with walking, running, sitting, breathing, digesting, and more. It also helps with anxiety, tension, and fatigue. The ability to use the whole spine, not just little chunks and pieces, is a fundamental, necessary skill. I can’t emphasize it enough.
Doing these lessons, your pelvis will feel fluid, your hips will get unstuck, and your spine will feel so light and airy you will wonder what gravity even is. Yes, I speak in total hyperbole, but unless you test this for yourself, you will not discover the amazing benefits.
I have seen people with back spasms, slipped discs (including me), degenerative disc disease, aches and pains in sitting, pain in walking, difficulty sleeping, and more, restore function and improve their quality of life so that they can once again move and live with tremendous skill and joy.
However, it does take an investment in yourself. All Feldenkrais lessons have a cumulative effect on your nervous system, but that effect does not happen if you don't start accumulating.
Here are the six sets of fundamental flexion lessons to jump-start that process:
Basic flexion: seven lessons on lengthening the back
Pelvis rolling: seven lessons on the pelvic clock
Prep to roll: seven lessons on counterbalance
Rolling with graduated flexion: seven lessons on rolling across the spine without hops or skips
Counterbalance 1: seven lessons on counterbalance and weight shift, including baby rolling
Counterbalance 2: seven advanced lessons on counterbalance and weight shift
Find out for yourself how this series affects the flexibility of your spine. You never know, it could be life changing!
Try this lesson: How do you know you are doing it right?