This is a meta-mini-lesson you can apply to any repeatable series of movements that you do with awareness. Take any Feldenkrais lesson, or sequences from hatha yoga, t’ai chi, or dance. You can even repeat a sequence of everyday movements like: walk across the room, sit down, and pick up a book. Observe:
A. What is your feeling-tone before you begin? If it’s not clear to you, think of
what music would be a good soundtrack for your current mood. Blustering
strings? Heavy metal guitar? Celestial harps?
B. As you begin to move, allow yourself to focus on the sensations of
movement. How does it feel in your skin, your breath, the pressure of the
floor under you?
C. Continue moving, resting as you need to, but choose to do the movements
“wrong” for a little while, whatever that means to you. Maybe you do them in
the wrong order, with the wrong body part, in the wrong direction, or in the
wrong speed—the possibilities are endless. Stay within a safe range of
movement.
D. Go back to moving “correctly”. Observe the differences.
E. Go back and forth now between moving “wrong” and moving “correctly”.
Give yourself the freedom to experience both sensorially, and in great detail.
You may even begin to lose track of right and wrong.
F. Be playful and non-judgemental. Allow for the “wrong” movements to be as
“good” as the “correct” movements. (Imagine an infant learning to walk. For
the infant, falling on her bum is not forbidden, but part of learning to get up.
There is important information embedded in every fall about her self-in-
motion.)
G. When you finish, come to rest and observe your feeling-tone. What music
would be an appropriate soundtrack for your mood now?
H. Share about your experience with someone you love!