Cure hunchy shoulders: rolling long arms, 31 min
This is an amazing lesson, unraveling years of tension in the back and shoulders. It is slow, detailed, and informative. The variations deconstruct the relationship of the arms to the torso, bone by bone. If you truly do it slowly, as indicated, you can sense the possibility of the chest responding to the arms.
You don’t have to do part 2, but it does layer more onto the pattern.
I have done this lesson three times in the past two days. I find the more I’m a bit lazy about it, the more my system learns. So play with it, flop around, let the bones move. It is tempting to add tension by trying too hard to do it perfectly. Make it imperfect, wiggly, and fun.
(For Feldenkrais folks, this is a deconstructed version of the Errol Flynn lesson, AY68, Rolling Fists.)
(This is from the Calm and Destress section in the FeldenkraisTREASURY.)
Thought for June 20: Adapting, not fixing
The truly important learning is to be able to do the thing you already know in another way. The more ways you have to do the things you know, the freer is your choice. And the freer your choice, the more you're a human being.
—Moshe Feldenkrais, Master Moves, p. 20
We first make our habits, then our habits make us.
― John Dryden
For Dr. Feldenkrais, functioning meant choice. A choice to be free from compulsive, inefficient movement and behavior, no matter what its cause. The cause could be an injury, debilitating disease, chronic pain, an emotional pattern, or a demanding life circumstance. (For example, shifting away from the compulsion to read the news every day...)
Feldenkrais doesn't teach you how to fix your movement because the second you’re “aligned” or “fixed” or “corrected,” something new just pulls you in another direction: An economic shock, a pandemic, a riot—who knows!*
Feldenkrais does teach basic human resilience by reminding us we have options. Perhaps after this week’s lesson, you find you’re using your arms differently, or there’s a new shape in your ribs that allows you take a fuller breath, or your shoulders feel flatter and more comfortable. Yes, the habit might shift back, but then it will shift again. And again. Until eventually you adopt a new way of being.
A single, correct way to move is not only impossible, it goes against everything that's both tragically and beautifully human because there's never one way to be in the world.
The second you think you’ve nailed it, the process of adapting starts all over again. It’s the human condition.
(*Note that fixing a medical issue is outside the purview of Feldenkrais. Any external mechanical fix of an injury, broken bone, or other structural dysfunction relies on an allopathic medical model, whereas acquiring self-directed skill using sensory awareness relies on a somatic learning model.)