In Optimal Lifting of the Knees, I have found the variation which comes at 4a, where you swing the lower legs left and right, to be a turning point for many people. Somehow that variation seems to shift the relationship between pelvis and chest in such a way that both the pelvis and the chest can mobilize less during the lifting of the legs.
A FeldyForum user wrote:
“The whole length of the spine and the head can provide buoyancy to the leg. Done through effort (inefficiently: just stiffening), it will restrict the breathing. Done efficiently, you could breath in or breath or or breath however you need to.”
I think that some ATMs are best approached within the context of other ATMs. This provides a learning web that makes it more likely that a very familiar action (lifting each leg) can finally be organized in a very unfamiliar way. Here are some ATMs which I have used to create a learning web for Optimal Lifting of the Knees.
The primary image (5 line) ATMs are a wonderful supplement to softening the chest and doing less in this ATM, because they develop underlying directional attention upward through the spine and, simultaneously, downward through the legs. That is somehow used by the non-conscious parts of the brain to organize the action in ways that work beyond direct conscious direction. Secondly, the directional lines of attention seem to develop greater independence between the pelvis and the legs, so that the weight of the legs does not immediately co-opt the pelvis.
A particular Primary Image ATM that works brilliantly for this exploration is AY #340 Simpler Thighs. But I have found that thinking about all five lines has to be more than cursory imagining; it needs to be almost like a hallucination. In hallucinations, I have been told, people actually believe what they are seeing or experiencing, they don’t think they are imagining. So, really what I mean is that if the imagining is so real that it is not only seen but sensed, it will work more effectively. I find the primary image explorations absolutely phenomenal since “simply” by imagining direction, emptiness and lightness I can influence not just how I move, but what I “think” about and believe about movement and its biomechanical necessities. Using the primary directions convincingly, and exploring this in #340, gives greater possibility and meaning to Moshe’s comment in 4f “Pay attention if it is necessary to do a movement of the body relative to the leg when you want to lift the leg.”
For the breathing aspects of the ATM I find that AY #172 Stopping the breath is wonderful
as is AY #280 On hands and shoulders.
I find it also helps to be really, really clear where the hip joint is, and to imagine that the pelvis drops backwards to the floor directly behind the hip joint, not below and not above the hip joint, but directly behind it. Not pushing it back, just being clear where the back of the hip joint is in the pelvis. And lastly, play with slight rotations of the femur in the hip socket and think, at the moment just before you lift, and the moment of lifting, of how the forces travel through the hip joint, then through the SI joint into the spine. If you find that path really clearly, you will find that the weight of the leg, as it is being pulled up, can give a push up to the spine and therefore not pull the pelvis downward (anteriorly), or later posteriorly. In 3h Moshe has us imagine that someone is lifting the legs, which again is a great moment if you can truly imagine (hallucinate) that when someone else brings the legs up, there is no need for the spine to be pulled down. This imagining provides a sensorial possibility which can then be used to self organize the lifting of the legs.
I find it important to remember that it is working towards the possibilities in an ATM that makes a huge difference for life, not “succeeding” 100% within the lesson. The proof is in the lightness of walking afterwards.
Olena
