Note that the time stamp, shown here in bold, is highlighted yellow in the PDF download. These time stamps occur when I felt they were helpful, with at least three or four in each lesson.
The *** indicate interesting meta comments or other references.
7 First of spine-chain series (sample transcript)
Please lie down on your back. Lie still. And now look very closely how the backs of your knees lie on the floor, and the chest, and the shoulders. Just feel the floor, sense the floor, and the shoulder blades and the elbows and all the ribs, where you really touch, and you'll see another extraordinary thing, that unless you become really aware of yourself, I mean enlarge it—really aware is a far-fetched thing—but a little bit more aware, you will find the things that you think that are simple, that's there, you will really find what is behind it.
Everyone thinks that his chest is free now doing nothing, and lying properly. You will see the difference that you feel if you do it with the hands, then you will see the back is quite different to what you feel in this moment, though you have already worked on yourself quite a bit in so many different disciplines.
Now bend your knees so that you do nothing to hold them, if you were on ice or on a slippery floor covered in oil they wouldn't slide because the weight would go through normal to the floor. The muscles don't have to hold the feet from sliding forward or nearer to yourself.
Now, very slowly try rocking the pelvis, it means lifting the lowest part of the spine off the floor. And lower it again. Do this very slowly, lift it and go down again. You will, of course, feel that the head moves and the spine does something, pushes the head, moves it so that the chin begins to move away from the throat and nearer to it. Keep on doing that.
Now, gradually lift more of the pelvis. Observe the spine, what you lift of the floor goes gradually back. You lift the lower end and if it were a chain, you would lift one ring and then the other and then the third. Going back, the third, the second, and the first, last. Keep on doing that and watch to see whether you put them back to the floor in the opposite order of lifting. It should be really uniform.
Lift, and lift. See when you lift a little more, the lumbar vertebrae, the chest, watch if you put them back on the floor with the same regularity as lifting. You will see that in some vertebrae you feel a regular touching the floor one by one, and in some parts you will find that a few vertebrae go up together, and coming down you skip some and you touch with the lower part before the upper part is touched.
Keep on doing that a few minutes until you can realize which parts come down the way you think they ought to.
***Then you will see in this crazy arrangement, even that which you feel now being correct, orderly, uniform, is nothing compared to what you will do when you have the back and the spine clearer in your awareness.
Lift the pelvis a little higher in the air and stay there. Try to move both knees a little to the right and the left, the pelvis will move. Pay attention to the vertebrae on the floor: the upper thoracic and the seventh cervical. The knees side to side, and the head with the knees. Keep on doing that. Your attention is on the floor, on the back, to see whether you can feel the spine, how once you lean on one side of the vertebrae and once on the other side of those upper vertebrae.
This time, lift your hands to the ceiling, touch the palms. Go with your knees to the right and left, and the head right and left. Leave your hands to the ceiling. Lift the pelvis higher and keep on doing the same thing, move the head with the knees, right and left. Don't move the hands, they remain in the middle.
Note what's happening to the top vertebrae.
Stop moving the knees, now make a movement of the arms toward the head and back. Note what is happening in the upper back, slowly. That's right. Now, do the same small movement right and left. Leave the elbows straight, don't slide the hands. Just move them right and left. The pelvis up in the air, otherwise it's useless. The pelvis is high up in the air.
11:00
Rest. Listen to the spine, the way it's lying.
Bend your knees a little bit, lift your forefeet so the heels are on the floor. Lift your pelvis high up. Now, make small movements of pulling with the heels your body forward and pushing it back, oscillate to and fro. It will slide through the upper parts, the shoulder girdle, like a spear through flesh.
The feet don't flex, the ankles don't move, just push and pull with the heels. Keep on sliding like that to and fro.
While you do that, turn your head to the right. Note what is happening on the floor to your spine. Listen to the top vertebrae, the right shoulder blade. See what's happening there. What do you feel? What's happening?
Stop, rest. Note every time we stop the difference of the picture of contact of the torso with the floor.
Again, draw up your knees, stand on your heels, lift the pelvis, stand on your heels, face left and oscillate, push and pull with the heels. Can you feel that this is equivalent to drawing the shoulder blades down in the standing position? When you push the spine up, the shoulders go down, which is the same thing.
Stop that, bring the feet nearer to yourself, lift the pelvis as high as you can. On the heels again, stand on the heels, try to do the same thing doing with your head whatever you like, forward, side, are you clearer what's happening with the contact with the floor in the middle of the spine, in the cervical vertebrae?
Now, when you push up, what does the sternum do? What happens to the chest, the clavicles?
Put your feet on the floor, adjust your legs so you can lift the pelvis higher, to the comfortable position but higher. Push it all the way up and stay there. Now, push your abdomen out, and the chest reduced to its minimum, and the other way around, widen the chest and draw the stomach in. Do that a dozen times. Observe where you feel it, wherever it is.
Stop that, lower the pelvis, stand on your feet, keep on standing. Try what we started with: Lift your pelvis slowly, gradually, to wherever you can, and observe that when you go down, you do it in the exact opposite order in which you lifted, and whether it's completely uniform and easy to do. Slowly, lift the chain of rings, or rings of the chain, it means the vertebrae, one after the other, and lower them in the best comfortable way possible.
19:00
That's right. Stop it, lengthen the legs, rest. And of course have a good look whether you can detect some change in the way the torso is touching the floor.
Join your feet together. Just join the feet. Put them together. This time, try, using the heels on the floor, pull the spine so it does something similar to what you did before. It means touching wth the lower articulations of the ankles. Hold them together. Flex them and lengthen them, use the floor, pull the body so the pelvis will rock in both directions. Use the floor to grip with the heels and push with the heels so the spine can slide through the thoracic cage as it lies on the floor. Do it simply, slowly for the moment.
Then observe what does the breathing do? Stop the movement. Now, flex the feet toward you and breathe in, then extend them and breathe out. Slowly, slowly, at your own rhythm of breathing. Breathe out when you extend the ankles. Breathe in and out inaudibly. Listen to your lower abdomen as you do that. Your feet must touch each other, you will find the feet are inductive to the breathing. Now go on until you find you do it with the least possible effort with the legs, and everywhere in the body. Therefore, listen to yourself until it's really easy and pleasant to do.
Now that being so, reverse the connection: Breathe out when the feet are flexed, and breathe in when they are extended. Try slowly You will see you will fall into the previous arrangement without knowing it, so try to be careful. See whether you are doing what you intend to do. And, after you go through that experience, decide for yourself, which is the natural way, which way should it be.
Stop it. After a few seconds, try it in the previous arrangement: Flexing, breathing in, extending, breathing out.
Rest a while. Stop doing anything.
Now, put the feet together, bend your knees, stand on your heels, this time try to rock the pelvis with the heels like we did before, the knees together and the feet together. Make it a tiny movement. Rock, rock, rock, rock.
Note where the hip joints are, where the grand trocanter is. That's what protrudes on either side. Keep doing the same thing, but flex and extend the feet as you feel necessary.
Stop flexing the feet, but lift the pelvis higher and move the spine again with the heels. Note whether you are holding your breath. Listen to the spine and the shoulder girdle.
Turn the head and eyes to the right and stay there. On which side of the spine are you actually grabbing the floor? Now on the other side: Turn left.
Rest.
Spread your legs, bend your knees and bring the feet near to you so you can lift the pelvis as high as you can without any effort or strain, but lift it high. Now, hug yourself with the right hand on the left shoulder blade, and the other one on the other side so you are hugging yourself very nicely. The arms are one below, one above, one elbow further to one side than the other, they must cross each other. Stay still with your legs, with the pelvis high, and rock your upper body right and left. The important thing is to pay attention to what is happening on the floor, how the pressure distributes itself on either side of the vertebrae and on the shoulder blades, and the way, the regularity, the uniformity, of the transference of the point of contact from right to left, whether it is regular or there are bits where it jumps over.
Turn your head and eyes together with the movement. Make the passage regular, say you had a regular arc between the tips of the shoulders and through the spine should be a real arc. Go on rocking like that, gently, until you can make it so, but without strain.
***Just let the body fold (fall?) with pressure on the floor until it realizes that it can be a regular arc, the shoulder blades, the vertebrae, the whole spine, the whole thing is soft, yet resilient, strong to hold the weight, but soft enough, regular enough to fall into the contours of the floor, which is straight, therefore the body must change all the time.
(Rest here.)
Bring your feet near, lift the pelvis higher, change over the arms. The one that was below must be above, and try the same thing again.
***You see, the number of movements you do is completely immaterial, the attention to what's happening so that all the vertebrae and all the ribs organize themselves so that they can let go where there is excessive pressure and push down where there is not enough pressure so that the pressure is uniformly distributed and the movement becomes pleasant and brings to your awareness the clear feeling of every part of it.
32:00
Lengthen the legs, lie down. Of course, listen to the floor and the torso. Now bend your knees again, lift your pelvis very high, the highest point you can do without straining. Now, join your hands in the direction of the ceiling. This time, keep the triangle undeformed and describe with the two middle fingers a circle on the ceiling. And of course, make it slower and let the shoulders and everything on the floor go through a very soft adaptation to the floor.
Now, make that circle using both knees, the head, the whole body rocking together with that circle, so the circle which moves on the floor can go on increasing from one shoulder to the other through all the vertebrae to the back of the head, slowly. Lift the pelvis off the floor, high. You can't have the pelvis on the floor and lifted at the same time.
Now make it slower but bigger in the shoulder girdle. Also, the circle on the ceiling and the movement of the legs and the pelvis should go together. The whole body rocks right and left and top and so on, because we are not interested in speed now but in what you feel in your back. Note your sternum when you do this.
Rest.
Bend your knees, lift the pelvis, do the same thing but rotate in the other direction. Small circles, rock the knees and the body and the pelvis so that the whole thing rolls and the circle, the contact on the floor, as the body touches point by point, should become more regular and it should be clearer which vertebrae touch, which ribs, and which don't.
Rest.
Slide a little bit so you have space to spread your arms out at shoulder height, with the palms upward. Bend your legs, stand your feet, bring them nearer to your body, lift the pelvis. Now, rock the legs and try to make a circle around the seventh cervical vertebrae. Spread your feet, let your knees go wherever they like to make a circle around the cervical vertebrae. Let the head roll on the floor and make a circle similar and the same way in sympathy with the knees. Change the direction.
Observe what happens to the sternum. Now, continue but move the head in the opposite direction of the knees. Try slowly. Move the head in a circle opposite the movement of the knees. You will then realize what you are holding in the sternum and the spine and the upper vertebrae. By the time you can do it, you will undo some of the knots that you saw me undoing this morning with the hands.
Slowly, until you see in order to do that, you have to be aware of each part and be able to differentiate the movement.
Stop the movement of the knees and turn the head in a direction you like, make a complete circle with the head. While you do that, gradually bring in the movement of the knees to assist the head, that will be in the same direction. The knees and the head in the same direction.
Stop the knees, and keep on moving the head, then think now, how to bring in the legs so that they don't interfere with the movement of the head and move in the opposite direction. Slowly.
***You will find yourself doing the head and knees in sympathy and wholeheartedly, innocently believing you are doing it the other way around. There is no one who will correct you except if you know what you are doing. It doesn't matter if you can't do it, if you can't do it it's a minor thing, it's a technical thing. It doesn't matter, but if you don't know, you will have no human qualities. You can see that in fact if we try to do a non-habitual thing which we haven't wired in long ago, we find ourselves completely unable to undo the old wiring and wire in something else. We have no free will except for those things we do and we think we do them of free will and actually we have wired them into ourselves under very stringent and compulsive conditions. Once it's wired in, it's very difficult to undo.
Rest, see how the body lies.
44:00