Your study guide for ATM lessons

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Synopsis

  • Explore how you can move given the constraint that your fingers on a hand are interlaced with your right foot.

Lesson Outline

  • Sit. Take off your socks. Put your right hand on top of the right foot and interlace the R fingers and R toes. (Through the lesson the hand changes from R to L, but one is always working with the R foot.)
  • Play with your foot:
    • Bend the foot to flex it. Bend inward and then outward.
    • Look at the sole of your foot.
    • Do anything. Play.
  • For each of the following explorations, Moshe provides a lot of time for each person to explore a wide range of different movements on their own:
    • Interlace the R hand and R toes in a different way (R thumb between big toe and the next one) and play.
    • Put L hand below the foot and Interlace the L hand and R toes. Play.
    • Explore different orientations: sit, stand, kneel, lie.
    • Did you think to try putting the L leg above the L hand? Why did you put the restriction on yourself?
    • Change back to R hand interlacing with R toes. Explore
    • Stand on your knees. Hold R toes with R hand. Explore
  • Lie down. Feel the difference between left and right side including your face and cheeks.

Focus of Moshe’s Teaching

  • The importance of a baby learning to put its feet on the floor.
  • The important of the feet: “In other words, our lives depend on the feet being serviceable”
  • Importance of exploring in a way that leads to learning and change:
    • To play, but not to work hard.
    • Don’t focus on what you do wrong. “Make it so that you can live the things you do, and then you will find that the wrong things you do actually become useless in themselves. And when they are useless you don’t do them. “
    • As soon as it becomes a mental exercise….. It’s an exercise. And when it’s an exercise, it wouldn’t do you any good…”
    • “… there is one way, the one most important way of learning is ‘know thyself.’… Why is this movement difficult? And see what you could do about it, without doing. Just feel. Where do you create a difficulty? With what?…”
    • “Don’t do anything that is difficult to do. When it’s difficult, find what do we do in order to make it difficult. Don’t hurry. Most of you hurry. Do anything you like, provided it’s slow and it doesn’t feel awkward while learning because if it feels awkward now, or anywhere uncomfortable, you will never use that think in your life and that’s the most important part.”

Related ATMs

 

Fingers interlacing toes:

The feet:

Foot to mouth:

Resources

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