Process Notes on a Bendy Hip
I love all the strong back lessons. The purpose is not to strengthen by contracting against resistance, but to refine the optimal organization of the muscles.
Once you know how to use your big muscles with precision, you can leverage every possible combination in the pelvis and limbs. You might think, oh, I'm strong enough, I don't need to do this.
But variation is different than strength.
You might be strong in one pattern of action but not in another. I have a client who's a master yoga teacher with this issue. It's true of many highly trained people, including dancers and athletes. They are amazing at what they do, but some patterns have dropped out of their repertoire due to the very rigor of that training.
Instead of training in performance, Feldenkrais trains in variability and adaptability. It asks your nervous system to uncover options, avoid ruts, and stay mobile with constant novelty. We only use a fraction of our potential awareness, after all.
The bendy hip lesson in one of my all-time favorites, with dead-simple variations but a mind-blowing final flourish. I still remember the moment I thought, "My hips can do what?" This is the lesson that, once I learned it, I could not wait to show all my friends, co-workers, and anyone who would listen, whether they wanted to hear about it or not!
If you go slowly and carefully, only increasing the movement when you feel in your own self that it makes sense to do so, the lesson will organically expand into your spine, ribs, shoulders, belly, and back. If you lift force the bend in the hip too early without becoming aware of what you're doing in the back, you'll hurt something.
I just did this lesson today after slouching for too long in my recliner chair last night (yes, I slouch, and yes, I still don't have a couch, and I love it!).
My process
In the first instruction to lift the head, I thought, "nah, I don't feel like doing that." So I imagined the first three or four movements. I just felt too tired. My back hurt from slouching in my chair and I wasn't ready to launch into a big, strong activation. After a few minutes, once I'd settled into the lesson and focused my attention, I felt ready to experiment with lifting the head a few times.
Moshe Feldenkrais says, "Don't try to do it perfectly. Let the thing improve at the rate you can afford." In other words, if it costs too much--given what you have to spend in attention and effort--you won't improve. So I went slowly, at the rate that felt accessible to my bandwidth and my comfort.
When I first lifted my foot off the floor, it was only four or five inches high. How many people will try to lift the foot as far as it can go just to prove they can do it? Oy. That's not the point. The point is to feel what you're doing.
I just wanted to feel the femur bone turn and locate the tiny shifts in my ribs. I was not ready to do anything big in my back until I heard the suggestion to initiate from the pelvis. Then I swooshed my ribs and pelvis way over to the side and swung the whole leg up.
Yes, I could have done that at the beginning. After all, I've done this lesson dozens of times over the last twenty-five years and I "know" the movement, so why be so cautious? I simply wanted to give myself the time and space to reconnect with my sensations. I chose to work up to it slowly, with small iterations.
That is how you, too, will improve! Now we can all swing our legs up and over for years to come, without pain, injury, or limitation.
(Plus, it's a super fun party trick.)
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“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”