Table Of Content1974 London
ATM Workshop
Moshe Feldenkrais
Awareness Through Movement®L essons
1974L ondon
ATM Workshop
LONDON, ENGLAND • MAY, 1974
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS
fELDENKRAIS ® RESOURCES
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CONTENTS
Lesson 1: Turning while sitting 1 Lesson 15: Head and pelvis 111
Lesson 2: Balance on all fours 9 Lesson 16: Rolling arms 115
Lesson 3: Foot on dial of clock 15 Lesson 17: Lifting arms and legs 121
Lesson 4: Cardinal lines 19 Lesson 18: Breathing 127
Lesson 5: Flexors 25 Lesson 19: Freeing the neck 133
Lesson 6: Elbow variations 37 Lesson 20: Rocking to sides 137
Lesson 7: Pelvic clock variation 41 Lesson 21: Individuating the toes 145
Lesson 22: Getting taller 151
Lecture One 55 Lesson 23: Chair lesson 153
Lesson 24: Legs crossed 165
Lesson 8: Circles with legs 61 Lesson 25: Standing on head preview 171
Lesson 9: Standing better 63
Lesson 10: Rocking pelvis 69 Lecture Four 175
Lecture Two 79 Lesson 26: Legs to side of stomach 181
Lesson 11: Sitting to kneeling 83 Lecture Five 191
Lesson 12: On all fours to sitting 87
Lesson 13: Hand holding chin 93 Lesson 27: Extensor variation 195
Lesson 14: Praying 101 Lesson 28: Advanced extensors 201
Lesson 29: Foot to head 207
Lecture Three 107 Lesson 30: Heels to head 217
Lesson I: Turning while sitting
You probably all know the Freudian idea that the human unconscious and the mo
ment of consciousness begins with an oral phase and then an anal phase and then a
genital phase. Well, all those subconscious functions have all been conscious to begin
with, because the child had an oral phase and this was suppressed, and became anal,
and then the anal phase is suppressed and becomes unconscious, and then you get to
the genital stage, and you are a grown-up person, and all that became subconscious.
Freudian theory, oral, anal, genital, is all there. That means all our consciousness, all
our awareness is connected mostly with the top of the human body, the brain, the
human direction, or whatever. What we are trying to do is show that awarenessa nd
consciousnessg rew with the generalityo f the awarenesso f the body, not only oral, anal
and genital, but if you want to function really humanly, usingy our full potential, then
you must bring into consciousnesst he rest of the body.
I will show you that if you do that for a few minutes you will feel an enormous
difference, such that space can be distorted for you.
1. Alright. Now, would you please sit comfortably and bend your right leg back
wards, with the sole of your left foot just above your knee, to touch the knee;
facing the front with your right lower leg parallel to the side wall.
You will see the reason for this precision. First, because any human ac
tion must contain two parts. One is orientation-timing, space and time.
Second is manipulation, i.e. performance or execution. Whatever it is, it
must be performed , involve muscular activity; whether it is talking, using
a tape recorder, you must do something and it must be done in the correct
time and in the right direction. You can't play tennis if you hit the ball
away from the net. You may hit the ball very nicely, but if it is not directed
to where it should be, there is no point in doing it.
Some of you are resting your hands in your laps; some of you have your
left hand on the floor. Of course, you can sit without holding yourself up
2 Moshe Feldenkrais
with your hand. Many can; stiff people can't and therefore lean on with
their hands.
la. Try to put your left hand on the floor behind you, and lean on it. Of course,
you will find it difficult. Really lean on the hand, but do not cause yourselves
pain. Now you will see that some of your knees are not lying completely on
the floor.
Now, the strain of putting your hand behind you is minute-some of
you are not aware that it exists. But, if you do not reduce the strain to
the minimum, your sensitivity is not at its highest. If you take away the
strain, the stress, your sensitivity increases. For example, if you are in an
airplane, near the engines and there is a 100 db or 120 db noise, whether
you played Beethoven, Bartek or Debussy, you would not be able to listen
to it, unless you could raise the noise of the music to compare with the
engine noise. But in complete silence you can hum a tune imperceptibly
and somewhere, somebody will hear it. .. Suppose a fly stood on my hand.
Would I notice its weight? Certainly not. But suppose a pigeon stood on
it. I'm sure I would distinguish that. A turkey certainly.
There must be some sort oflaw which shows you that your sensitivity, that is, your abil
ity to detect the smallest change occurring, bears some relation to the weight I hold,
or the amount of the stimulus present. .. There is a kind of physiological law which
is nearly right for most of our senses, in the ranges where we use them normally, and
it's called the Weber-Fechner law; many of you have probably learnt it in Physiology.
Roughly, this is that the smallest detectable difference, positive or negative, added to
or subtracted from the present stimulus is always a part, a definite part, a constant part
of the stimulus. For instance, if in weight I hold 40 lbs., then a fortieth of that weight
is the amount I could distinguish, that is, I would have to add or subtract a pound to
become aware of the difference. Well, in hearing it is one two-hundredth. In light, it
is approximately one one-hundred and eightieth; in weight it is one-fortieth . It means
that if you hold 40 lbs., you will detect one pound added or subtracted. But, if you
hold a feather, then a fly standing on the feather will bend it and you will feel that
something has changed in weight. It means that if you reduce the exertion you produce,
you will become sensitive to a minute change.
1974 London ATM Workshop 3
2. Now lift your right hand in front of your eyes. Just normally, simply. Now twist
your whole body the smallest amount that you feel easy and simple, to the right,
but provided your eyes are on the hand, and twist the whole thing, with the whole
body. Everything moving together, eyes, head. Eyes must be on the hand. Now
try to project your nose on the wall, and take this as a sign of what your normal
twist is. That's a twist without strain, that's your normal twist.
Now we will see how through awareness this can be increased almost
without limit. You can increase the twist as much as you like.
2a. Now let's do it again. This time, move to the left, as you did before. Every
thing together, hand in front of the eyes. At this point, observe whether you
are holding your breath.
26. Now move the eyes and the head back to the right, only the eyes and the
head, and then back to the hand. Repeat five or six times.
2c. Now we will do something very funny. Close your eyes, turn the whole body
to the front, everything. Eyes closed, left hand on the floor. Now turn to the
left, guiding yourselves only by your kinesthetic sense, that is, the muscular
sense which we want to perfect now. So, turn to the left and stop where the
ease of movement ends, and stay there. Open your eyes and see if the initial
projection of the nose has moved to the left.
Now, that's extraordinary, isn't it? It means that the natural body twist
has increased by moving the eyes and the head in the opposite direction.
3. Now, let's try again. Turn to the left, or wherever you can easily. Stay there. Move
your eyes only, to the right. Not the face. As far right as you can go. And back
to the hand. And again, and again. Six or seven times. Now close your eyes and
move them to the front as before. And now, with closed eyes, guiding yourselves
by a feeling of ease, turn to your left until you feel the ease has stopped. Now open
your eyes and see if you have moved further than before.
3a. Stay there where you are. And now observe one thing. Observe that to do
that, it is your right buttock that goes nearer to the floor and lifts the right
knee. Try to move to the front and observe that it is the right buttock, actu-
4 Moshe Feldenkrais
ally the right hip joint, that moves the body back to the front. Become aware
of how the right hip joint moves the pelvis, moves the spine; think of which
part of the spine you feel. Can you feel the ischia, that is, the two bones
which sit on the floor? Do this several times, following through with your
attention.
Can you appreciate how the right foot, the right knee, the right hip joint,
move the pelvis, and how movement of the pelvis reaches the head?
Through which direction? Through what bones? Can you feel in between
the lumbar region? The coccyx? Can you feel the ribs, between the shoul
der blades and in your neck? You will find that your head goes higher into
space when you move to the left, than when you sit to the front.
3b. Now come to the front, close your eyes, and now, very gently, guiding your
selves by the least amount of strain that you are already familiar with, move
to your left, provided that you stop the moment you feel that the strain has
changed. Try again. Open your eyes and you will find that you have moved
another few degrees to the left without knowing it.
3c. Now stay there, and this time, move your head and eyes to the left and ob
serve how this starts in your right leg; and back again, and again to the left;
pull the head and,the eyes to the left and back again to the hand in front.
Observe that when you have your head to the front and you intend to
move your head to the' left, you will already feel that your hip joint and
the back muscles are getting ready to move. When you think of moving
your eyes to the left, you will find the neck muscles and the spine and
the hip joints already getting mobilized. The strain is so small that you
should be able to detect the contraction of the muscles before you intend
to move.
Spatial Sense Exercise
Now, lie on your back. Some of you will feel pain in your left wrist. Why is this? This
has to do with the direction of the fingers on the floor and, of course, the strength of
the muscles in the back.
1974 London ATM Workshop 5
Lie on the floor, legs straight and feet as wide apart as your shoulders. Open your
legs as wide as your shoulders, without looking. Now, keeping your heels where they
are, lift yourselves to a sitting position. Are your feet as wide apart as your shoulders?
Some people-too narrow, some-too wide. You see, people have no real ability to
show with their hands, or with their legs, what their real dimensions are. And it de
pends also on with which hand they do it. Now, try this. Shut your eyes. Spread your
hands wide and then bring them together to show the width of your mouth, but with
out, at any time, actually touching fingers. Now, open your eyes and see how wide you
think your mouth is ... The kinesthetics ense is more important than eyesight,b ecause
some people are blind, but they can move and know where they are with a stick. This
is the most important sensef or anything we can do. If this is short of what it can be, it
reducest he ability of the eyes, the precisiono f the ears, the precisiono f your talking.
We act, not as our body is, but what we feel of it. If I feel I can do it, I say, "Yes, I
can:' You judge, not what the body can do-you can learn to do it, probably. You, in
fact, judge yourself by what you feel you can do. That means, by the imagey ou make
to yourself of your own body.W e react to the image of our own body. But the image of
our body, (and that is the important thing we are going to learn this month) is smaller,
by definition, than the body. Everyone of us is only a part of what he is and what he
can do.
In fact, my estimation, and other people's estimation, is we do 5-10% of what we
are able to do with our body; most of us don't reach 10%. Extraordinary champions
and geniuses reach 10% or more. Now all this movement and ability involves the
brain, and our self-image is only about 10% of what we are. Througho ur imagination
and our education, we hold ourselvest o a small part of our ability.
Now every animal makes some sort of noise, has some sort of communication.
The human animal has speech, it's a wonderful sort of instrument. I will show you
that this instrument, because it is wonderful, stops us seeing that it is one of the great
limiters, and limits us to 10% of our ability. One of the most important hindrances is
speech. By accident of birth, every child learns one language and all others are foreign
to him. Our education and our knowledge have taken a wonderful human brain and
have wired it to be a computer of some sort and that's all. And it can onlyf unction now
