Your study guide for ATM lessons

 

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Synopsis

This lesson works with tilting the knee to the inside and lengthening, to draw the arm (extended overhead). In lying, sitting and leaning on elbows behind, and leaning on hands behind. Variations of turning the head, and of lengthening the arms while tilting the knees.

Lesson Outline

  1. Lying face up, feet standing: tilt R knee to inside towards floor; other side.
  2. Same position, R arm extended overhead on floor. Tilt R knee to inside towards floor; feel R arm shorten/lengthen on return. Turn face L, with knee. Turn face R (to arm). Rest & other side.
  3. Same position, both arms long overhead. Alternate. Let head follow knee tilting. Then turn head other way.
  4. Cross R leg over L; L arm extended overhead on floor. Tilt knees R. As you tilt knees R, lengthen L arm overhead. Precision, initiation, thinking. Switch arms but leave the rest the same, and lengthen now the R arm as you tilt knees R.
  5. Change legs, L over R, put L arm up. Take knees L and lengthen L arm. Switch arms. Take knees L and lengthen R arm.
  6. Feet standing, leaning on elbows and forearms behind. Alternate lowering each knee to the floor between legs. Faster, lighter.
  7. Feet standing, sitting and leaning on hands behind. Alternate lowering each knee to floor between legs. Bring your head into the movement: when both knees are standing, your head is in the center at the lowest point; when one knee is tilted to touch the floor, the head is lifted and oriented over that knee.
  8. A spell in flexing to counteract: interlace hands behind head, bend knees: lift knees and elbows towards one another.
  9. Scan at end includes image of air filling all the spaces of the body.

Focus of Mia’s Teaching

Ribs lifting from floor and moving into floor. Space between ear and shoulder. Connection between possibility of moving knees/hips and the shoulder.

Related ATMs

 

 

 

Initiating:

 

 

Resources:

Share Your Insights (ideas, principles, strategies, experiences, …)

 

  • Think of yourself having two cones of diagonal spiral, whose apexes meet somewhere in the chest or neck. Like an X, but in 3-D. In 1-3, the X is very tight, and the crossing is high, under the shoulder girdle or at the base of the neck. The shoulder that the spine twists away from has to differentiate from the neck and spine to allow the movement. In 4-5, the X is wider, and the crossing is lower, in the low (floating) ribs or so. The shoulder that the spine twists too has to do much more (flexing/twisting in effect forwards) to allow this all. And then there is a greater weight to control when lowering and bring back up with the knees crossed, so more long, slow eccentric and concentric use of the abdomen. Leaning on the elbows behind brings the focus even more clearly to this shoulder and what it has to do, now in weight-bearing, to allow the legs this action. (I could put this in the discussion, because I’m just thinking it through now for the first time…) – LynetteReid Mar 9, 2011
  • From a comment from a student tonight–many will have been given an exercise like this for internal rotation/adduction, where the point is to keep the pelvis still and just turn the leg in. As usual, we are letting, encouraging, exploring the pelvis to roll. We end up exploring internal rotation here largely by the “relative conjugate”–the hip of the leg that stays standing while the other tilts is the one getting the adduction and internal rotation. – LynetteReid Mar 9, 2011

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