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Online lessons: 2
Lesson 2: Ease your shoulders
Before you start, take a minute to check how you are breathing right now:
- fast
- slow
- deep
- shallow
Look to your right.
- what can you see to your right?
- remember it.
Look to your left.
- what can you see to your left?
- remember it.
- How do your shoulders feel right now?
- Have you any notion about your shoulderblades?
Sit on the front edge of your chair.
Let your right arm hang at your side, your left hand can rest on your left thigh.
Now lift your right shoulder up as high as you can without pain or strain or effort.
Your right arm is hanging at your side.
Now let your right shoulder come down as far as it can come down.
Try and let it come down without stops and jerks.
- Was this movement smooth and oiled?
Do it again:
Lift your right shoulder in the direction of your right ear ... as far as you can ...
And let the shoulder come down, each time getting the movement smoother, more oiled and each time getting the quality of the movement better.
Breathe in as you lift your shoulder ...
... and breathe out as you let it go down
- Do you look down as you do this movement, or up?
Look into the horizon and then close your eyes and lift your shoulder up again, see if it goes higher and if by now you can eliminate the stops and jerks.
The most important thing in this lesson ...
... is not only to do it but to be aware of what has changed since you did the movement. So please: with your eyes closed
Compare your right shoulder to your left shoulder.
Can you sense any difference between the two?
- is one lower
- higher
- bigger
- smaller
- brighter
- darker
- clearer
It may not be easy for busy people to spend even one minute considering such strange questions ... but give it a chance! You may yet be surprised! As time goes on and you get more apt at it ... you may find that by just spending a few seconds remembering one or other movement from a lesson you took time to read, that instead of building up stress or strain, you have tools at your fingertips to instantly eliminate both! So why care for your computer, your printer, your car ... when at the same time you neglect the most important thing in your life: you !
Look to your right.
Yet again lift your right shoulder as high as it will go without pain or strain ...
... and let it sink down...down...down.... as far as it can go ...
... and do it again and again, breathing in as you lift your shoulder, out as you lower it, until you can do it without stops and jerks, but smoothly, oiled and, functioning as good machinery ought to function.
Stop and rest, but as always whilst resting scan yourself and detect any differences you may feel in your right shoulder, compared to your left shoulder, or any differences you may feel in your right shoulder now, compared to when you felt your right shoulder before lifting and lowering it.
Look to your right.
- how far can you see?
- is it the point you memorised ... or did you automatically look further to the right?
Look to your left.
- compare: is it easier to look to the right or to the left?
Repeat with your left shoulder, what you did with your right shoulder.
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Cambridge Centre for Lymphology and Feldenkrais (CCLF)
283 Milton Road
Cambridge CB4 1XQ, England
Tel: 07746 964151
Email: tina@cclf.co.uk
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