Redefine reaching with ease, 32 min
An amazing lesson to alleviate tightness in the chest, tension in the shoulders, or stiffness in the upper back. As you clarify how the arms connect through the bones, the muscles become available for power instead of tension.
Note that this lesson has many, many questions about what you’re sensing and very few answers. If you’re new to Feldenkrais, this can be confusing. Feldenkrais lessons don’t tell you what to do so much as how to sense and notice.
Continue through and more and more variations fill in the picture. As you do your own sensory detective work, your nervous system will learn way more than if someone just told you what to do with your arm.
* Please stand the feet at any time or put a rolled blanket under the knees as this lesson is entirely on the back.
Thought for March 14th: the immune system, resilience, and stress
Stress affects the immune system. It lowers your levels of white blood cells and shoots cortisol through your system, overwhelming your inflammation response.
To find out if you’re stressed, check your belly, breath, and jaw. Shallow breathing, a tense jaw, and a contracted belly are all physiological signs of stress.
Or, try this simple test: Count how many cycles of in and out breaths you complete in 15 seconds. Is it more than four? You may be in a stress response.
How do we manage stress? Increase resilience.
Resilience is the ability of a system to withstand a change in the environment and still function. How do we withstand the current change without sinking into fear, panic, or a fight-or-flight response?
By giving your nervous system a chance to feel different.
Over twenty years ago I was confronting a personal tragedy in an advanced training with Dennis Leri. I kept trying to talk about it, or cry, or do whatever people do in that situation and Dennis just said, “Get on the floor and do a lesson. All you can do is lie down and move through it.”
I was super upset and that’s not what I wanted to hear, but it’s what I needed to do. It was some of the best advice I ever received.
So give yourself space to connect with your thoughts, feelings, and sensations while moving, which means you’re processing stimuli from the external world from a place of calm.
Our ability to withstand shock—what I call spontaneous self-organization—emerges from constant intelligent adjustments to ever-changing conditions.
Let the movement do you. Don’t overthink it. The complexity of the lesson and its questions is more than enough to create new connections. When you do this, you will:
let go of holding patterns.
develop skill in noticing when you’re stressed.
uncover many more potential strategies to respond to the world.
Special offer extended this month!
Due to the current situation, I invite you to take advantage of my special offer to calm and destress with the Feldenkrais Treasury.
Start streaming these 35 calming lessons:
Destress and calm - Seven Best section
Calming with the Bell Hand - Soft Hands, Easy Arms section
Gentle lessons for tired brains - Mobile Spine section
Gentle hip and leg lessons - Better Hips and Legs section
Calming with the breath - Breathe for Life section (and all the breathing lessons!)
Plus, get hundreds of carefully composed sets of lessons that guide you to stay mobile for the rest of your life. Learn more.
Join for one month for just $16.99
Expires April 1st. Regular price: 24.99 monthly. Cancel any time.
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The Treasury is exactly what I wanted: All the lessons in one place. Zoe's voice is easy to hear and follow. You can tell she has a deep understanding of the Method.
—Kate H., Feldenkrais Trainee, San Francisco, California
I love the clarity of the lessons, Zoe’s voice, the messages she puts in between the instructions that help me grow. She teaches Feldenkrais as easily as breathing.
—Alexander E., Publisher, Oslo, Norway
Zoe has created an amazing resource with an easy index. I use the Treasury all the time from my phone.
—Joe R., firefighter, Vail, Colorado
When a necessary surgery left me partially paralyzed, Zoe helped me walk again. She explains things very clearly and she has an amazing ability to sense what’s going on in the body. She has changed my life for the better.
— Paula B., Lafayette, CO
quote(s) of the week:
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”
“In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”
“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”