Source

• Alexander Yanai Vol 2 (#98, page 643)
• Reel 8, Track 1, Lesson 2 (according to Eva Laser https://www.somatik.se)
• Reel 1, Track 1, Lesson 2 (IFF)

Synopsis

While sitting with your spine like a stick, move your spine in a conic shape; make clocks with nose and top of head

Lesson Outline

The key movements in this ATM are:

1. “Arch the back” but don’t take your head backwards: i.e. arch the low back without engaging the shoulders and neck. Every one of the subsequent instructions begins with the idea of lightly engaging this arch first.
2. Maintaining your spine like a stick: tilt left and right, forward and back.
3. Move your spine in a circle. The spine creates a cone shape. Become aware of the path the top of the head take. If there was a pencil on the top of the head, what shape would it draw on the ceiling.
4. Move your nose in a small circle. Become aware of what path the top of your head takes.
5. Direct the top of the head to also make a circle, and be aware of the path your nose takes.
6. Break the circle down into quarters, and clarify for each quarter the relative directions of the respective clocks of the nose and the top of the head, in both directions (clockwise and counterclockwise).
7. Check in again on making a cone with the spine, and on arching the back. Does “arching the back” mean something different now? Is the idea of the spine staying straight more clear?
8. Lying face up, explore the same coordinated clock circles with nose/top of head.

Focus of Moshe’s Teaching

• …

Related ATMs

• AY 82, 85, 88, 95 (nose circles, movement “in the circumference”)
• Sitting-cross-legged
• Tag Rounding-And-Arching-The-Back
• Tag Dial
• Tag Sitz-bone

 

 

Spatial awareness:

• AY095 Turning the nose in a circle (Listening to the right side in a symmetrical movement)

Circles with the top of the head:

• AY288 Lengthening the back in refined movements, in sitting
• AY539 Fresh Standing
• AY543 Continuation Movements of the head in hand

Spine as a cone:

Shifting weight on sitz bone, sitting:

• AY326 Sitting – Lying

Resources

• A recording inspired by Zen sitting is available as part of the Open ATM Project (By Sharon Starika, 11/23/2004)

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

• Freedom and clarity in the hip joints–which is the basis for the ability to maintain the spine “straight” in the “conic” movement–is intimately tied to freedom at the base of the skull (to speak of the “body parts” involved)–and the ability to organize the skull around the “centre” from which all points on the head are drawing circles (to speak more in terms of organization in space). –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• Principles: Freedom and clarity in carriage of the head (containing the teleceptors) is fundamental for the organization of the spine. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• Strategies: Clarifying the clock
• From #85, also applied to #95 and here to 98: “We will try to do one movement in its whole circumference–one head movement in its circumference…approximately with all the possibilities that you see in the moment. Actually, after you do it like this you will see that you discover another hundred possibilities. In other words, there are endless possibilities. You will see that it is enough to do one movement with the head [moving] truly throughout the whole circumference in order to change tall the content of holding and standing of the body [fundamentally changing the way of standing and carriage of the head].” (p. 550) –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• This ATM is ideal for improving the ease of sitting, be it on a chair, on a mat, or on a meditation cushion. –  yedwab Sep 5, 2010
• This ATM clarifies the hip joints through freeing and creating greater precision in the carriage of the head. Its effects can be felt in standing, walking (balance shifts), or sitting. Change in voice (related to neck/throat and breathing changes) may result. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• The resulting clarity in the hip joints is highlighted by returning to arching the (low) back–just as you found the centre in your head that movement organizes around, you find the centre in your pelvis, and the arch in the low back becomes more of a rotation around the hip joints (low belly moving down, sits bones moving back), rather than the launching up onto the backs of the thighs you get when you arch the back without this clarity. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• The key to the lesson is finding the centre in the skull so the nose and the top of the head can make their respective and coordinated circles. You can make a circle with the nose while just drawing a line forwards and backwards with the top of the head–that would be like continuing the axis of the spine up through the skull and just tilting it forwards/backwards while drawing a circle with the nose. If you actually make the coordinated circles of nose/top of head that this lesson spends so much time developing, you find all sorts of amazing tilting directions as your head is organized around its centre (and any line through that centre is drawing two equal and opposite cones). –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• The tilting movements of the head it activates will be more culturally available to some than others–in Indian culture, the head is used expressively in many more planes than the “yes/no” options of European and European-derived cultures. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
• Getting a sense of the simultaneous circles of the nose and top of the head is very challenging: as he says in the transcript when he first introduces the idea of even noticing the shape the top of the head draws, “you will see that you sense something very confused.” So it is important (as he does) to give students a lot of time to get confused, frustrated (whatever their habit is) and then develop enough of an internal compass to work productively with refining the circles. Rests, use of finger tip on nose/top of head, etc. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010
  • NB: He had previously taught 95–“turning the nose in a circle (listening to the right side only in a symmetrical movement)” where he gives people a lot of time to feel the relative movements of different parts of the head while drawing a circle with the nose. And AY 88, where he worked with the nose circles, and back of the head circles–and has the group draw cones with arms/circles with hands in front and behind self (expanding spatial awareness). Both of these contribute to students being able to refine these circles in this lesson. –  lereid Sep 6, 2010

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