Carol's Writing

Creative Connections Through Your Tongue, Jaw, Throat and Pelvic Floor

In Members, News by Mary RuddAugust 20, 2020

By Carol Lessinger

Have you ever been on the floor doing an ATM® lesson when your body responded in a way that was totally new to you? Were you astounded? Every time? That was my experience one morning when I was playing with coordinated movements of my tongue, neck, jaw and pelvis.  My play was inspired after I began listening to the Amherst recordings. It was the first time that I had heard them since I was there in 1980. Toward the beginning of the second summer, in the middle of an Awareness Through Movement® lesson, Moshe briefly alluded to the way that animals used their tongue and neck for drinking when at watering holes. The watering hole was open to all animals, predator and prey alike. So, for survival, everyone needed to have their neck free to see in any direction while they were drinking. A healthy baby who is being breastfed has a similar tongue/neck pattern. Unfortunately as we mature, these primary movements are inhibited by any number of life’s uncertain circumstances.

Out of curiosity, I expanded just one tiny little piece of the material in that Amherst lesson and created a four lesson series. The culmination of that series is the content of my presentation for the 2020 Annual Feldenkrais® Conference.

The lesson goes like this: The students’ own hands assist gentle neck extension so that they receive feedback from the outside while their tongue assists the neck movement from the inside. We then progress to connections from the jaw, to chest and  the shoulder blades and onward to the tailbone to stimulate the pelvic floor. 

I’ve successfully taught the lesson on Zoom, but be advised that it is not for beginners. It can, however, be transformed into an in-person student assisted Functional Integration® lesson for anyone, beginner or not. In this case, the practitioner would be sitting at the head of the table and be the one to support the student’s neck while instructing the student to softly do the ATM’s movements to make the connections in their body. As the practitioner, you have plenty of feedback through your hands to gently indicate where movement could be improved in their neck or wherever else your hands are drawn to go.   

Working in this way, either through the ATM or the FI® session,  my students reported increased comfort in their whole body, especially in their hip joints and neck, low back and sacrum. They also noticed elegant changes in the carriage of their head. More importantly, they reported a perceptual shift in their internal sense of self. I believe this occurs for two reasons. The first is that when you carry your head in a more dignified manner, you perceive more dignity in yourself. Secondly, when the carriage of the head shifts, the placement of the eyes relative to the head also shifts. Perception of the outer world is received from a new angle…maybe making new possibilities available. These reasons are just my personal musings, but I like them. As an aside, I’ve used this lesson very effectively when I’ve needed self care for my own neck.

The thing about this lesson that grabbed my attention the most was that rather than making skeletal connections, this lesson works through the informational and perceptual network of our fascia, which, like a fiber optic, conducts consciousness throughout our whole body. Therefore the exploration is delicate and deep. Here is a link to a short live fascia video for your pleasure and information. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

As Feldenkrais® teachers, we are aware that everything in our body is connected to everything else. Both the skeleton and the fascia are masters at this. However, some relationships are linked more closely than others. For example, in utero, the tongue and heart emerge from the same muscle. As they migrate and differentiate, the fascia between them stays in close relationship so that the pericardium and the movement of the tongue are one of those especially intimate relationships. The expressions down hearted, light hearted, tugging on my heart strings, or my heart was moved, or she speaks from the heart are as literal as they are metaphorical. Can you imagine that you can literally move your heart by connecting it to the motion of your tongue!  An extension of this lesson would begin to move a person in that direction. It is always true that our heart connections are vividly important, but especially in these extraordinary times, we yearn for our hearts to be as available as possible both to our self and others. 

We know that all Feldenkrais lessons are unique and elegant. This one, however, can take you for an exceptionally deep dive.

. 

Remember The Light

Do you remember the Light?

The indescribable luminous Light?

Deep in yourself, perhaps, you remember

before you were born and after you die.

The Light is love and that’s all there is.

Let go to remember.

What will you let go of?  

You know the answer to that one.

It’s not buried too deeply. 

I know that you know and can 

let go to remember the Light.

Irish Hospitality and Feldenkrais

I recently returned from a long wished for trip to Ireland. It was magnificent. Irish hospitality and open hearts are soooooo expansive; music, and humor so grand. Their often repeated famine story made me deeply aware of the ancestral trauma that was present there. It sat so closely side by side with the beauty of the culture and place. I'm grateful to my Embodied Life Studies which helped me hold both....to feel my heart ache and still be immersed in the loveliness of the land and people. Many times, I paused to feel my feet on the ground to remind me to embody where I was and take it in even deeper. I was over the top with gratitude that I even got to be there. 

The juxtaposition of the Irish sense of loss along with the Irish warmhearted caring brought me to thinking about how we are when we do Awareness Through Movement Lessons.  (I have this really good habit of my mind meandering to metaphors about the Feldenkrais Way with whatever is in the forefront of my experience.) There is such richness in the relevance of the seemingly simple movements we do on the floor and how life presents itself. How we can hold the opposites of being in the learning process and still feel what displeases us. How we can be in joy and recognize loss simultaneously.

When I’m in my Feldenkrais practice there is often something that I want to improve because I have a sense of discomfort or pain or a sense of disappointment because I wish I could be better..…Better range, better flexibility, better alignment, better strength, better ease, better person, better teacher. However, the magic happens when I remind myself to hold warm-hearted caring toward what feels unskillful or painful. At the same time I am  consciously, deeply attracted to what is connecting in my body through gentle movement. That is when I gain greater skill and comfort. Often it is accompanied with an ah-ha moment of discovering something that has been there all along, but it’s the first time that I noticed it! Gratitude sets in. The new learning is joyful and life giving!

However, being more curious than critical isn’t easy for adults because the inner critic is so bossy. Evolutionarily our nervous systems are biased to pay attention to the negative. Ancient ones who did not look out for danger, failed to contribute to the gene pool.  However, we have the gift of continuing to evolve. There is a growing cultural movement toward acceptance and community. It’s my opinion that we as individuals can strengthen the larger community by supporting the neural networks that nurture loving kindness and inner healing. That doesn't mean to ignore the yet to be healed parts of ourselves that are asking to be heard. To be able listen with curiosity rather than worry is a skill that is learnable. 

Very young children, who live in a safe environment, are more curious and more spontaneous. Perhaps the younger we feel, the more available we are to this state. Practice is needed to get off the critical thought train and return to a caring curiosity about what we are noticing. Aware movement nurtures this potential that our cellular memory also knows, its just not as readily available. Courage is needed to stop the habitual thought loop, notice the now, and return to present time awareness. One of the best ways to do this is through a clearer body sense. That is the at the  heart of what we do in Awareness Through Movement.

In Ireland, people were genuinely curious about others and about what was needed to make my journey easier. Caring acceptance and helpfulness flowed toward me everyday. There, the culture of caring was as natural as breathing.  I’m hoping to make that feeling contagious within me and to share it with you.

Creative Connections Through Your Tongue, Jaw, Throat and Pelvic Floor

In Members, News by Mary RuddAugust 20, 2020

By Carol Lessinger

Have you ever been on the floor doing an ATM® lesson when your body responded in a way that was totally new to you? Were you astounded? Every time? That was my experience one morning when I was playing with coordinated movements of my tongue, neck, jaw and pelvis.  My play was inspired after I began listening to the Amherst recordings. It was the first time that I had heard them since I was there in 1980. Toward the beginning of the second summer, in the middle of an Awareness Through Movement® lesson, Moshe briefly alluded to the way that animals used their tongue and neck for drinking when at watering holes. The watering hole was open to all animals, predator and prey alike. So, for survival, everyone needed to have their neck free to see in any direction while they were drinking. A healthy baby who is being breastfed has a similar tongue/neck pattern. Unfortunately as we mature, these primary movements are inhibited by any number of life’s uncertain circumstances.

Out of curiosity, I expanded just one tiny little piece of the material in that Amherst lesson and created a four lesson series. The culmination of that series is the content of my presentation for the 2020 Annual Feldenkrais® Conference.

The lesson goes like this: The students’ own hands assist gentle neck extension so that they receive feedback from the outside while their tongue assists the neck movement from the inside. We then progress to connections from the jaw, to chest and  the shoulder blades and onward to the tailbone to stimulate the pelvic floor. 

I’ve successfully taught the lesson on Zoom, but be advised that it is not for beginners. It can, however, be transformed into an in-person student assisted Functional Integration® lesson for anyone, beginner or not. In this case, the practitioner would be sitting at the head of the table and be the one to support the student’s neck while instructing the student to softly do the ATM’s movements to make the connections in their body. As the practitioner, you have plenty of feedback through your hands to gently indicate where movement could be improved in their neck or wherever else your hands are drawn to go.   

Working in this way, either through the ATM or the FI® session,  my students reported increased comfort in their whole body, especially in their hip joints and neck, low back and sacrum. They also noticed elegant changes in the carriage of their head. More importantly, they reported a perceptual shift in their internal sense of self. I believe this occurs for two reasons. The first is that when you carry your head in a more dignified manner, you perceive more dignity in yourself. Secondly, when the carriage of the head shifts, the placement of the eyes relative to the head also shifts. Perception of the outer world is received from a new angle…maybe making new possibilities available. These reasons are just my personal musings, but I like them. As an aside, I’ve used this lesson very effectively when I’ve needed self care for my own neck.

The thing about this lesson that grabbed my attention the most was that rather than making skeletal connections, this lesson works through the informational and perceptual network of our fascia, which, like a fiber optic, conducts consciousness throughout our whole body. Therefore the exploration is delicate and deep. Here is a link to a short live fascia video for your pleasure and information. If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

As Feldenkrais® teachers, we are aware that everything in our body is connected to everything else. Both the skeleton and the fascia are masters at this. However, some relationships are linked more closely than others. For example, in utero, the tongue and heart emerge from the same muscle. As they migrate and differentiate, the fascia between them stays in close relationship so that the pericardium and the movement of the tongue are one of those especially intimate relationships. The expressions down hearted, light hearted, tugging on my heart strings, or my heart was moved, or she speaks from the heart are as literal as they are metaphorical. Can you imagine that you can literally move your heart by connecting it to the motion of your tongue!  An extension of this lesson would begin to move a person in that direction. It is always true that our heart connections are vividly important, but especially in these extraordinary times, we yearn for our hearts to be as available as possible both to our self and others. 

We know that all Feldenkrais lessons are unique and elegant. This one, however, can take you for an exceptionally deep dive.

.