by Renee Lindstrom, Author of The Somatic Archetypes – the Fantastic Five
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Somatic functional movement patterns, using the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education, guide participants through patterns designed to refocus their attention away from pre-conditioned beliefs and pre-existing understanding of movement. In other words, what they already know. The patterns encourage exploration of movement by bringing their focus to their sensory awareness from the inside with these fantastic five core senses.
This picture demonstrates interpretive dance patterns of movement. The interpretation hints at sensing movement, yet the focus of the patterns these models are making could suggest they are focused outside themselves, versus from inside connections, as in contact dance. Functional Integration, and Awareness through Movement, the Feldenkrais Way focuses on the skeletal movements in connection to the contact with gravity and its responses through the joints that are unlocked and in a posture to invite gravity to travel through the whole skeleton. In the picture above, the models are not making solid contact with the floor to connect to the force of gravity moving up through their bones. It appears to me, as a Feldenkrais Practitioner specializing in this movement pattern, that they are using their soft tissue to support their weight.
When the skeleton is making full contact with gravity through the feet in standing, the sit bones in sitting, the hands in a posture of pushing off, or crawling on hands and knees, or in a prone position on the full skeleton on the front, back or side body on a hard surface the pressure thorugh the bones creates a weightlessness in the soft tissues in the body. The more one makes contact with gravity through skeletal movements, the more ease and freedom one has in their joints, vertebrae and ribs. This increases counter-balance and functional movement abilities.
The guidance patterns in the Feldenkrais Method use felt sensory words on the actual movement of the anatomy, with a focus on the potential for using the force of gravity. It is a powerful shift from analytical thinking that takes one out of a closed mindset function into the exploration of the experience itself, through the movements in connection with the force of gravity. The focus is on the felt sense of the bones and the discoveries through them to reconnect the body’s own elusive responsive connections to the intricacies of movement that are beyond the current comprehension of social conditioning. In essence, the movement is retraining the brain to expand and use more of the available functions in movement.
Why do I write reconnect?
When babies are born, they have the capabilities to use their full range of available learning potentials to guide them to come upright and participate in society. They do so without the educational encouragement of those surrounding them. Those surrounding do encourage them, yet they lack the understanding of how the function of the brain, body, felt senses, and mental is coming online to work in harmony that enables a baby to roll over, sit up, crawl, stand, walk and run while learning to speak and think. It is beyond the comprehension of the family members, as their own process was just that, a process. It wasn’t memorized, itemized or catalogued. It was learning through the experience.
With the focus of attention in society that seems to be focused on evaluative concepts and analytical statements, there has been a separation from the somatic patterns of functional learning that each of us was born with. When an adult speaks, it is through the evaluative expression of analytical thought patterns and statements that are far removed from the actual experience of functioning through the somatic experience. When speaking from an analytical perspective, it is a small interpretation of functional learning. It is like the difference between ballet and contact dance. One dance disconnects the artist from the ground and lacks the connection to the force of gravity, and the other pushes off the ground using the force of gravity. If you observe the two styles of dance separately, one stretches their muscles and holds their joints in a way that is different than the other. The contact dance method uses organic functional movement patterns. One dance appears to have effort with an intention to be interpreted as effortless, while the other one is effortless. This would describe the difference between mentally organized movement from strategies of thinking and spontaneous movement that includes all functioning components through the somatic felt sense as the origin. Basically, one is from the outside trying to define what can happen organically from the inside out.
The early learning patterns for movement are inherent within us as we are born. They evolve around the somatic senses of the fantastic five: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. Each of the senses stimulate the others, and they are the inspiration to get up off the floor and walk, talk and become members of society. Each child will have one or two senses that will have the strongest response and will become the filter to the environmental stimuli surrounding them. I have begun to call these senses Somatic Archetypes.
I offer movement through group classes and individuals that support these dominant Somatic Archetypes in response to the guided patterns. These are called Awareness through Movement lessons that are group classes, and the other is a personal session or consultation called a Functional Integration.
Please investigate the classes and a personal session or consult:
Read more about the Fantastic Five Stomatic Archetypes:
- The Original Somatic Archetypes
- The Somatic Archetypes – The Fantastic Five
- The Somatic Archetypes in Functional Movement
- Feng Shui Relationships with the Fantastic Five Somatic Archetypes
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