This morning's ATM (Awareness Through Movement lesson, in which we lie on the floor and follow Alan's instructions) was something I probably did during my Feldenkrais Training years ago. It was probably harder then. This time it was doable.
Alan began with a description of the sacrum. The most salient point Alan made about it was that there is actually a little movement in these fused bones. I remembered all the lectures we had on the sacrum in my training, how we moved the model pelvis to see how it had a little play in it.
We lay on our backs and reached around our torso with our right hand to hold our shoulder blades with our left. We examined the shape of the shoulder blade, which is slightly different for everyone. Then we did a movement where we pulled the shoulder blade with the hand, so that we were in effect rolling ourselves to the right using the impetus of the pull. We also did this movement on the opposite side. I was fascinated with how low the base of the shoulder-blade is, and I remembered how I've long struggled to bring sensation and movement into the ribs in that part of my chest area. I wondered if this ATM would help.
An important constraint of this activity is that the knees be bent and the feet standing. This way the pelvis remains stationary so that as the torso rolls, it differentiates from the pelvis, so you feel how the two are connected yet separate entities. At some point Alan made a nice comment that I might want to put my feet a little farther apart. I did so, and then I remembered his point about the movement in the sacrum.
Suddenly a light went on. I began to see a massive relationship between the shoulder blades and the sacrum, like points on a triangle. I made a frame with my two forearms holding onto each other, and I rocked left and right, but I kept my pelvis on the ground instead of letting it follow the roll. I began to feel, or imagine, the little play in the sacrum that made more movement possible.
Oh, wow. When I got up something was different. I took a quick walk. I consciously walked down the hall with my legs a little wider apart. As I walked, I wiggled my pelvis, and I thought that I could wiggle it lower, where the sacrum is. Sure enough, I could. I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. There it was, a movement I've never had before, a dance move.
I've always looked stupid when I dance. I hated disco dancing, because it wasn't pleasurable for me and I didn't think I looked good either. Yet I looked in the mirror and I was shaking my booty in a slightly different way. My ribs were staying stationary, and I could feel the shoulder blades as reference points. My shoulders were down and my chest was up and out. It felt GOOD.
I didn't want to go to the piano yet, so I watched some lessons. One of our world-class pianists was getting a lesson, and I watched the way she moved while she played. I watched her pelvis and her shoulders, wondering what I could see now that I was feeling something. While I watched, I noticed that I could sit more comfortably with my sitzbones farther part...again, more play in the sacrum. Why didn't I think of that before, I wondered. This was new.
I went to the piano, but I didn't want to stay there long. I decided to take a walk. I went outside and wiggled and strutted like a cowboy. I kept my sacrum and my shoulder blades in mind. I felt light, my chest remained open. I began to think about all those things I've had trouble doing: dancing, throwing a ball, keeping a hula hoop going...these were things that really required a knowledge of sacrum and shoulder blades. I sat on the ground and, although I've always had trouble sitting with my legs straight out in front of me, I discovered that, again, by widening my sitzbones, it was a little easier. Again, why didn't I think of that before, all these years?
I watched some more lessons, and then I decided I'd better go back to my host's house and have lunch, and maybe take a nap, let my mind consolidate this information. So I did. All the way home I was noticing smells of the flowers that had never registered. I was noticing that with my shoulder blades in my awareness I could turn around easier to look behind me when I heard a sound. I felt like I was open to people passing by, like I could look at them and smile and say hello.
I had my lunch. I read. I slept.
When I woke up, I went downstairs and sat at the piano in my host's living room. For the first time I had the thought, "I think I'd like this bench lower." Before, I was always mystified as to what height the bench should be. I set the bench down lower that I usually have it, and I began to play.
It was easy. Oh, my GAWD it was easy! No heaviness, no effort. I played through some of the Chopin C-major Etude. I wasn't hitting all the right notes every time, but my fingers were dancing across the keys, and they were going faster with less effort. My hand seemed to be naturally moving in the directions that Alan had suggested two days ago.
I started playing the Mozart. I had a light touch, not jazz-heavy. It sounded like a classical pianist. I experimented with different touches, different textures, and different SOUNDS came out! I was creating those sounds. And I was doing it by making all those artistic movements in my torso, like I had seen our world-class pianist making. I was feeling like those great pianists looked.
I played some of the Chopin a-minor Etude, the one that used to hurt. It didn't hurt.
I stopped for a minute and looked around. Was I dreaming? Was this really happening to me? Was I delusional? I couldn't have gotten THIS much better overnight. But it felt like I had always been able to play this way, not like I was a different person. The heavy-playing person, that was a dream. This was the real me.
It occurred to me that I've had 35 years to register the way pianists look when they're playing beautifully. I know what genuinely artistic piano playing LOOKS like. I think there have been times when I was by myself, maybe late at night, when I fell into that kind of playing, when I moved in an artistic way and the playing was easy. But never in front of anyone, and never with any understanding of why I was doing it then and not other times.
Now I was making a conscious choice to move, and I could do it because I had stability in my widened sitzbones, a little play in my sacrum, some differentiation between my pelvis and my ribs, and a sense of my shoulders which went all the way down to the middle of my back. I could FEEL myself, and so I could move on purpose.
This didn't go away when I went to practice later. I kept it. I still took frequent breaks, but I found that I was sounding pretty good, and that I was enjoying playing. When my previous habits of freezing and locking crept back, I could feel it and I had a choice.
The only issue I noticed was that my lower back began to hurt. I remembered that I had a big problem with this when I was playing the piano at sixteen, and it remained with me for a number of years. Maybe this was a regression to a previous state of organization, a more open one, and now I'll have a chance to solve that problem another way.
As a coincidence, Alan says tomorrow's ATM will be great for lower back pain. How about that?
Dinner tonight at one of our local participants' house. She has a 200 year old cello, and she let me play it! Everyone is starting to get to know each other. We talked, and a number of us went to the pianos and sang choral arrangements. So many of us are good singers and readers that we were able to sing in tune, acapella, very quickly. What a nice gift.