Turning and folding: Free the ribs for better balance
First of all, sorry for the delay! I had a bizarre tummy upset that kept me in bed for two days and I didn’t do anything at all. It has mostly subsided, but I’m not eating much. When I don’t feel well, lying on the floor and just listening to a lesson is the best thing for me. I give myself permission to not move. It’s an amazing skill to practice! Permission to just be.
This lesson in the SOS is in the ribs section, even though it’s about the arms. Well, the arms are connected to the ribs and for the arms to be free, the ribs must be really free. Freedom of movement in the ribs helps with posture, digestion, breathing, and balance.
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I’ve been talking with clients this week about jumping the tracks of our habits. We get into ruts and repeat our compulsive strategies, mostly because we don’t know we can do things differently. Feldenkrais helps us feel, sense, and move differently.
Experiment with balance in standing:
Try standing without shoes with your feet parallel. Shift your weight from heel to heel slowly, to feel how you land. How far to the right or left do you have to go to be on the leg? Which leg is easier?
Now cross one foot over the other, but a little bit in front. Straighten them out so they’re parallel. Shift your weight to inhabit the front heel. How do you move your pelvis, spine, ribs to find it? Try breathing in and moving over the heel on the exhale, then stay there a little, breathing. Settle on the heel. Then shift onto the back heel and rest a moment. Then go back and forth.
Stand in the middle again. Is it different how you settle onto the feet? By challenging your sense perception and motor cortex to find a new balance, you have jumped the tracks of your normal habit.
Do the other crossing. You can do this any time, preferably in bare feet!
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More lessons:
This lesson is from the Flexible ribs, Flexible life section in the Feldenkrais Treasury. Subscribe here to access more movement programs to do at home.
Or, download five more lessons on Mobile Ribs at my audio shop.
Quote of the week:
“Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can.”