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Anat Baniel Method Professional Training Vitality and Anti Aging TML’s Vitality & Anti Aging Segment 2

Anat Baniel Method sm ©2017 [1] V&AA 2017 Seg 2 TML ver 5.3.docx

Anat Baniel Method Professional Training

Vitality & Anti Aging

Transformational Movement Lessons

Segment 2

Trainers: Anat Baniel and Marcy Lindheimer



Vitality & Anti Aging Segment 2 TML’s

TML 1: STANDING ON KNEES TO STANDING (#1 IN SERIES) ...................... 4(Transcription as Taught by Anat; Segment 2) ........................................................................................... 4

TML 2: TWISTING (LYING ON BACK, SIDE AND BELLY) .............................. 23(Transcription as taught by Anat Baniel, V&AA Seg 2) ........................................................................... 23

TML 3: STEPPING WITH USE OF LOWER BACK (#1 OF SERIES) ............... 33(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) .............................................................................. 33

TML 4: STANDING ON KNEES TO STANDING (#2 OF SERIES) .................... 48(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) ............................................................................. 48

TML 5: HANDS BEHIND BACK ......................................................................... 64(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) .............................................................................. 64

TML 6: IN LYING, LEGS PUSHING THROUGH TO HEAD AND ARMS – ROCKING THE BACK ........................................................................................ 83

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel) ................................................................................................. 83

TML 7: STANDING ON KNEES TO STANDING (#3 IN SERIES) ..................... 95(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) .............................................................................. 95

TML 8: LYING ON BACK AND ON SIDE: ROTATING TO STANDING ON ONE KNEE AND ONE FOOT .................................................................................... 112

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; V&AA Segment 2) ............................................................... 112

TML 9: FROM SITTING TO STANDING IN THREE WAYS ............................ 120(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel V&AA Seg 2) ........................................................................ 120

TML10: HOPPING ............................................................................................ 144(Taught by Anat Baniel) .......................................................................................................................... 144

TML 10: Hopping (different version) ...................................................................................................... 156(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) ............................................................................ 156

TML 11: HOPPING CONTINUED ..................................................................... 165(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel V&AA S2) ............................................................................. 165

ABM V&AA Seg 2

Anat Baniel Method sm © 2017 [3] V&AA 2017 Seg 2 TML ver 5.3.docx

BONUS: FS COACHING TRANSLATING TML INTO FS AND LANGUAGING CLARITY ........................................................................................................... 171

(Taught by Anat Baniel) .......................................................................................................................... 171

BONUS NOTES: FS #1 REVIEW DONE AS A TML, PARTS 1 & 2 ................ 190(Taught by Marcy Lindheimer Day 2) .................................................................................................... 190

BONUS TML’S FROM V&AA SEG 2 ............................................................... 198

TML: Lying on Back: Tilting Crossed Legs, Coordinating with Head and Eyes (was TML 2 in previous V&AA S2 segments) .................................................................................................................. 198

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel) ............................................................................................... 198

TML: Standing on Knees to Standing (# 4 in Series) ............................................................................. 204(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; V&AA Segment 2) .............................................................. 204

TML: Stepping with Use of Lower Back (#2 in Series) ......................................................................... 219(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; V&AA Segment 2) ............................................................... 219

Editor: Deb Loest Deppe

Assistant Editors: Jane Flyman, Behi Sobhani, Sharon Tomsky, Linda Wilson, Judith Henrickson , Liz Elgin, Joyce Cameron

Transcribers: Deb Loest Deppe, Lou Basch, Sandy Berber, Clare Conley, Sharon Tomsky, Dee Cope, Chris Elms, Judith Henrickson, Jeanie Tang, Carole Keefe,

Betty Basarich, Meta McDaniel



TML 1: Standing on Knees to Standing (#1 in Series)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat; Segment 2)

NOTES

1. How about I give you two seconds to lie on your back and scan your body so you are happy. Hopefully. Scan the way you’re lying on the floor. Maybe take your glasses off.

I have given you a pretty complex presentation of the ideas, which I know, takes time to recreate for oneself and basically you will understand it as you re-create it. But I will then move into more like sound bites things so that you also have simple things that you can understand. But just understand that behind the sound bites is the bigger conversation. Ok? So it doesn’t just reduce into small sound bites.

1a. Feel the length of your spine, the five lines basically; from your hip joints to your heels and your shoulders to the tip of your fingers and from the tip of your tailbone to the base of your head and you can even do it to the top of your head. Depends how you want to do it.

1b. Feel the way you’re breathing. Notice what participates in the movement of breathing.

2. If you can maintain the five lines in your mind’s eye, roll to your side and come to stand on your knees. If you need any padding or softening you can take an additional mat perhaps or fold your mat. Just make sure that you don’t feel pain in your knee standing on them because then it won’t work very well.

Why won’t it work well if you have pain in your knees? It will be down to survival. The brain will be busy with the pain. In the truth of the matter is it won’t care about your future vitality, anti-aging and being a successful practitioner; it’ll just want you out of that pain. Ok?

So now, put your right foot standing. And if you need to rest or whatever, you are already very well trained. Put your right foot standing. And now do a few movements so that you can lean on your right elbow and forearm. And stand up again and do it a few times until you find where to place your forearm on your right thigh that you could really lean on it.

ABM Vitality and Anti Aging Seg 2 TML #2 Lying on Back: Tilting Crossed Legs; Coordinating with Head and Eyes


What does it mean to lean? It means that…. What does it mean to really lean? That it bears weight. That some of your weight is carried through your forearm. Excellent. And wherever that is it won’t get a lot better by doing it a million more times, so wherever it is, lean on it.

You’re not leaning on it Wanda. You’re kind of like doing something with the other arm. Lean on it. There you go. Clearly.

2a. Now gently, actually, switch over the legs. Let’s just do it the other way first. And do the same thing, put the left foot standing and do the same thing with the left forearm and see if the leaning here is clearer?

Some of you seem to twist and bring the other arm long down to the floor, and then you’re not leaning on it as much.

I mean bring yourself to lean on it. There you go. See how a simple thing like can require…….

2b. And stop that and switch the legs back with the right foot standing.

You know she can simply do it sitting, Maralee. She can simply do, until it calls for something else, she can just have, oh yah she can just have. That’s also good, what you’re doing, it’s ok. If it’s not too hard for her. Thank you.

Now lean as clearly as you can, whatever leaning means to you now. And gently see what it would take to bring back the leg, bring yourself back up and bring down the leg without interfering with the breathing, the chest, and the length of the spine. You understand? So you come back up, you stand on your knee and your foot with the least eventfulness in your chest and in your back, with no interruption to the breathing and bring back the right knee to stand on the right knee. You can free your right arm; you don’t have to hold it. That was interesting. Then very slowly, bring back the right foot to standing.

2c. And see if you can, most of you can’t at this point, but how can you bring the leg back up without interrupting in any way with your breath.

That means that there isn’t any abrupt seizing in the chest. Most of you will not succeed at this point. So just know that, but feel, feel what would it take to be able to….. So it’s almost like if somebody watched your chest, your shoulders, your spine, your upper back, your head, they wouldn’t know whether the leg is up, down or in between.

2d. You will see that in order to do that, you need actually to shift……. You don’t have to come back, let’s make it simpler. Don’t come back to leaning on your forearm, so you don’t have an extra movement to do there.



But just see that when you bring the foot up or down you need to actually shift your weight quite a bit to the left, but in such a way that the weight, gets caught; runs through your left hip joint clearly and through the left thigh and that’s what most of you don’t know quite how to organize yet. Once you can stand clearly on your left knee, the weight is carried by the top; the weight goes through the top of your left hip joint, I mean the ball. Comes through the top, through the ball down to the knee.

See, it’s already a little better. Just that idea improved it for you a little bit. And don’t worry that it’s not working. These little mistakes, what you call it, almost falling, or this or that are just…remember you’re getting off balance literally and figuratively and this is the information that you need to use to figure it out. Because if you can’t do it and you don’t get this information, let me tell you, you’ll never do it. So the more you let the mistakes surface, the more you say, “Oh, let me see how I’m going to mess it up this time,” the faster you’re going to learn. Don’t do mistakes on purpose, Michelle! That’s very different! Don’t do a different movement. The lesson will give you the variations.

Lie on your back and rest for a second.

And you’ll see the important thing about the mistakes, the little mistakes that you make and that attitude, which is a part of “the essentials’, the attitude to Goals, right? Remember that? Is that, when we do not welcome those mistakes and we try to do it without the mistakes, they become severe mistakes. That means that the chest freezes, the abdomen muscles have to contract very intensely or violently or whatever you want to call…. and that will limit the ability to perform really well and do more complicated things and more demanding things later.

So actually that attitude to the mistakes, that occurs spontaneously, welcoming them, becoming aware, feeling what it is, trying again easily, is the basis from which we avoid limitation and big grooved in mistakes in the future. And one of the big grooved in mistakes that people have around balancing and standing, it shows up very, very clearly when people get older or can’t move well because of surgery or injury or whatever, is that people seize the abdomen muscles very violently and freeze the chest when they try to actually be able to balance and be able to either in standing or transitioning or whatever. And that habit makes it that people are unable to stand well, unable to generate good balance, unable and of course don’t breathe well and so on and so forth.

3. And again, stand the same way on your knees, put your right foot standing and resume this movement again - with this thought in your mind, that you’re welcoming little mistakes. It doesn’t matter if it goes smoothly yet or not. And let the head go down a little bit; that means free the chest a little bit; not more than is useful to you, but if you did too much it’s just another little mistake.

Let me tell you truly, you couldn’t do anything about it if you didn’t do what you’re doing which will include not being perfect until you’re perfect.



Excellent! Just the permission, I could see it in a few of you, it’s wonderful! Just the permission to say, “Oh, ok, for the next five minutes I have permission to make mistakes and not be anything “wrong,” I could see at least five chests drop. The effort and the tension in five chests just disappeared. Which can tell those people what they do when they feel they are suppose to perform beyond what they are sure they can do at that moment. That’s a pretty useful awareness of oneself, don’t you think so? You can say, “Well, I’m old enough now. I’m old enough to not do this. I’m old enough that I don’t care if somebody thinks I should have done it differently. I’m going to do what I can the best I can and let them have their opinion.” Not in a defiant way, not in a mean way, just in a realistic way. You don’t have to stiffen your chest. It’s not going to make the other person happier. It’s going to make you perform worse.

1[STORY OF ILLUSTRATOR FOR HER BOOK AND DEADLINES]

3a. Back on your knees. Next time, one toe turquoise, one toe orange, then we’ll see then maybe you guys will start doing interesting things and I’ll copy yours. Sparkle. Ok.

Put your right foot standing and now lean on your left hand and do the movement a few times and see once you…. Lean on your left hand on the floor, on the floor. And now, do the movement while you lean on the hand and see has it become a million times……

Unless it’s hard for you to lean on your left hand, of course, but then you can use one of those garden pads, to two or three or four, has it become easier? If it has not become easier, lift your hand up. You know, take some of those garden pads. Do we have garden pads in the room? Gail, do you mind? Here they are, they’re helping, Loann, that’s right, and thank you. Garden pads.

3b. Do you feel the difference; how much easier it has become? No or yes? No, who is no? Lift your arm for garden pads. As a reference for doing it without it? Can you balance; does the right leg get easier to move slowly and control?

That’s what I mean. No, you need a garden pad. It doesn’t have to do with her. You can have a garden pad. Hey grab some garden pads here. Here, there are a few garden pads here. Steal them, see if it helps. Do the garden pads help? Anybody, the garden pads doesn’t help, go to…… Who it doesn’t help, raise your hand, the garden pads didn’t help? The garden pads didn’t help?

2[Demo] [AFTER DEMO] Now stand up on the knee. Stand up on the knee and

do a few movements with your foot now and see what it’s like. But don’t over exaggerate it, do it by feeling. Don’t do it by ideational. Do it by feeling.



Because when you work with people, you also have to do it by feeling. You have to feel what happens with your student. We can’t abstract it though our mind. We have to feel it then our mind helps us organize it. You feel the difference, you guys?

I see some of you are a lot more solid on your left knee. Can you feel that? Thank you, Loren! That was cool!

You’re doing the streaming right? Isn’t it wonderful? For those of you who get it, it’s been problematic. But I got a new computer so last time it should have been better, except some of you have Mac’s and we don’t know what to do with the MAC thing. Ooooooh!

Lie on your back.

I don’t know, because MAC gets on the internet, so I don’t know. I cannot imagine what it could be. Andrea is figuring it out, Andrea is unbelievable. Is Andrea out of the room? Let me tell you guys….. Can she hear what I’m saying? (Anat turns off her microphone 4:44 minutes.)

4. Roll to your side, stand on your knees. This time put your left foot standing. I mean stand on your knees and this time do the same thing. That means that you’re going to put the left foot standing and take your time and feel how does, so to speak, how does your right hip joint now catch the weight? That means, how well are you already situated to stand solidly on your right knee so that you have freedom to move your left foot forward and put your left foot standing and back? You see how the learning transfers quite quickly even if it’s not…..

4a. Notice, are you stiffening your chest?

Some of you, I can see are intentionally looking to leave the chest alone, maybe let the chin go a little down and now put any tension in the shoulders and in the shoulder blades. But if you do, you do! Then just you feel it.

I promise you plenty variations. We’re going to work with this throughout the nine days. I’m going to run a few themes throughout the nine days. This is one of them. So, I’m not expecting you to get the whole blown thing in one time.

4b. Now put your right hand down on the floor and of course use your garden pads if you want or need. And if you need one fine and if you need ten, fine. If you need to stand in front of a table, fine. And feel.

3[DEMO]

Lie on your back and rest.



A lot of people have gone through a lot in the last couple of three months. It’s been…. What? Yours? I was just talking about recently, there’s been stuff. A lot of people are going through stuff. You guys are wonderful. You’re so fully marinated. You’re like refried beans, you know, very easily digestible; you have been refried many times.

5. Come back on your knees. Stand on your knees. And now do the movement, once with your right leg, right foot. Bring once the right foot to standing and once the left.

And just feel what it’s like one way and then the other way. First of all, just the general feeling. What feels easier, simpler, is there one direction where you tend to seize up your abdomen muscles and your chest and another direction where the chest stays hanging and free or not or maybe you seize up the chest in both directions or maybe free in both directions? Tighten the back of the neck one way, but not the other? And feel what your head does in space?

5a. Now do a few quicker movements.

5b. And now, put both hands down on the floor.

Wow! That looks like a windmill or something. Interesting mistake.

5c. And now, do it once with one foot and once the other. And if you need to free one arm at a time, then do. And start maybe perhaps slowly.

5d. And then do it quickly.

And can you feel your tush starting to dance? Once one hip, once the other? Do you have a dancing tush yet or what?

Because this is like 90 percent of vitality is a dancing tush. What? Yes. It’s true.

Lie on you back and rest.

Ten percent of potent think brain and ninety percent of dancing tush and we’re off to the races.

6. Roll to your other side than from before. Come up on your knees. Put your right foot standing. Your right foot standing, yes.

Oh! God my brain! Is there a possibility for too much vitality? I wonder?



Now lean on your right forearm somewhere, forearm/elbow wherever it works for you, but that you lean. Now put the toes of your left foot like for running. And try to have the point of pressure mostly between the big toe and the second toes. So not on the little toes. It’s not toward the little toes, but really between the first and second toes.

And now very slowly, free your neck some, make sure you don’t shorten the neck, free your chest, shift your weight a bit to the right, but don’t over exaggerate it and begin pressing on the left toes until the left knee starts lifting off the floor. But you’re leaning, you’re leaning, you’re leaning on your forearm.

4[DEMO]

6a. [GROUP DEMO PARTICIPATION of MOVEMENT IN DEMO] All of you stand up for a second, put your hand under your left ischium, in standing, and push yourself up like that so you lift the heel a little bit. You feel that? That’s it. That’s the movement! Thank God nobody’s coming in from the outside right now. (laughs) It’s a class where people put their hands in their asses.

Come down. Put your right foot standing.

[But do you see what’s anti-aging? That’s anti-aging. You thought anti-aging was going to be this lofty thing, right?]

And now, put your toes like for running, mostly on the big and second toe. Lean on your elbow. You’re leaning on your elbow. Don’t jump, don’t run. Free your neck, take your time.

That’s it! Very good, Lisa. Do you feel that? Yah! I’m not going to look at you so you can do it. But don’t lean on the hand on the floor, sweetie. Ha, ha, there went that, that’s right. You got it. But don’t jump; don’t jump, slow, slow. That’s really training the nervous system how to use the skeleton and use the power of…. There you go, excellent, Rebecca, you’re feeling it now. Just make sure you’re also, aaaaaaaa. When you come here, it’s also an opportunity to let go of the chest. More, more, more, a little, the head. This is a marvelous opportunity to learn to stop using excessive efforts in the middle of the body, in between the tush and the head. Lovely, that’s very nice Charlie. You feel? Slowly, you will have less of a push and certainly no work with the front leg. You feel, that the front thigh doesn’t do much work? But you don’t shorten the neck, don’t shorten the neck. Forget it.

Lie on your back and rest. [AFTER GROUP PARTICIPATION]

I want you to feel it. And feel by the way, the change in the way you’re lying and the organization. Can you feel huge changes in the one leg, the other leg, the spine, the breathing? Your breathing is so different, it’s like you’ve done an hour long breathing lesson with better outcome than a breathing lesson



exercise. Feel the breathing comes to life, gets free the more skeletal we become.

It means the more you figure out how to work with gravity and use our muscles to get us on the bones. That means, move. Excellent.

Now when I teach this lesson, not to a training program, I go through the movements and teach them briefly, give five, six repetitions and have people rest, do a little demo, but I don’t take all this time because for you, you need to learn what’s behind it. But people can get one or two ideas in a general public class and that’s enough. I give you way more because I train you. This lesson serves many purposes. But you can teach it to the general public.

7. And now roll to your side, the other way and put your left foot standing. Put

your left foot standing and lean on your left forearm, elbow/forearm, whatever is good for you. And then toes of the right foot, the right toes like for running. Make sure that the weight is primarily between the first and second toe. If it starts going toward the little toes, move your foot maybe a little more to the right, to the left, whatever where you can really lean on the big toe. Big and second toe, between those two, like that’s the place of, should be, maximum pressure.

7a. Reduce the tension in your chest; reduce the tension in your neck. Let the head hang down at this point and lift, lift slowly, find a way again to put the hand on your right ischium now if you like and think you’re helping bring somebody up like I did with Michelle [SEE DEMO ENDNOTE 4 and GROUP DEMO PARTICIPATION]. There you go.

7b. And feel if this side is easier for you, harder for you? And each time is an opportunity to free the breathing, free the sternum and look to maybe you have gone too far to the left. Maybe you have not gone enough to the left. Maybe you’ve gone too much forward. Some of you drive the left knee way forward, not necessary. It’s really finding a way to pick up the tush. Excellent.

Leave that alone and lie on your back and rest for a moment.

8. Come back on your knees. Put your right foot standing. Lean on your elbow and forearm. Put the toes like for running and this time do lean on your left hand on the floor and resume doing the same movement.

That means slowly finding a way to lift the left knee off the floor.



8a. And feel, free your neck, let the head go down and see that it gets easy when you don’t try to do too much with the front leg.

8b. And you push on the toes, which help lift the pelvis. The head then goes further down. The tush goes up and the head goes down. And then when you do it like that it can become quite easy to do. It all sort of fits.

8c. Make sure that your breathing is uninterrupted.

And feel what efforts……. On your toes, on your toes the whole time. You’re pressing on the toes. Somebody did something different, so I made a comment.

8d. Now, take the left hand away and see if you can organize yourself similar now without leaning on the hand. Come up a little bit and lean on it, just on the elbow and forearm.

But Victoria, really lean on the elbow and forearm. Let the head, Marlena, the neck, the neck. Let go of the neck. You see, you got baboom when you fell down. That means that you’re not quite doing it yet. If you go down and you get like a smack on the knee, then it’s not organized quite properly yet. There you go.

8e. And now, change over the legs. Put your left foot standing. Lean on your left forearm, elbow, whatever. Lean on the right hand on the floor. Put the toes of the right foot like for running and take your sweet time.

And find how to organize yourself so that the neck gets freer and freer.

Doreen, you keep shortening the back of your neck. You keep lifting the head up. If the back of the neck doesn’t work, trust me the head will be down. It’s not, its way up.

Don’t lift the leg yet. Don’t lift the leg and drop your head down. That’s down. Now lift your head up. Don’t do the leg yet. Lift your head up. That’s up. Lift it more up, more up. That’s very up. Now take it half way down. That’s still up. Take it a little more. That’s still up. Take it all the way down. That’s down. You see, you’re trying to do a whole lot with your front leg. Press between the big toe and the second toe. Lower your head, lower your head first. Free your chest. And now, that’s it! The back toe is starting to work. You feel? And then the head doesn’t get short. Now you could lift the head. It’s not like something bad if you lift the head, but if you have no choice but to lift the head, then you’re not in good shape.

8f. And now do it without leaning of the hand a couple of times and see what it’s like.

And lie on your back and rest please.



Now, how old can you possibly think you are if you can do this movement well? Not very. Imagine a ninety year old person doing it easily. They will still be ninety years old, but they’re doing it easily.

What does that mean? It means what? Well it means that the whole idea of what it means to be old can be very different.

5[STORY OF ANATS FATHER AND INVENTION]

9. Ok, on your knees and put your right foot standing. Lean on your forearm, right forearm. And now, slowly put the toes of the left foot like for running and do this movement of gently free your neck and get up. Don’t lean on the other hand unless you have to.

9a. And now, switch the legs. Lean with your other forearm on the left thigh. Put the toes like for running, but stand up when you switch the legs. So we’re combining. So you stand on your knees. You put the right foot standing. You bend down to lean on your forearm. You put the toes like for running. You come up like that. You bring the knee back down. You lift the forearm away from the thigh. You bring the leg down. You swap the legs. In between you’re on your knees standing. Not on your feet, on your knees.

On your knees. People simply put the hands down to switch the legs. Don’t put the hands down. You only lean with the forearm on one thigh. Then when you are ready to bring the leg down, come up on your knee, don’t keep leaning on …. Did you understand me? Just come up with your head so you stand up on the knees when you switch legs. And then do it to the other side.

9b. And feel which leg, which one is easier, which one are you working harder, where are you shakier, where less shaky?

9c. And slowly, slowly see if you can lean less on your forearm until you can just not use any of your hands and simply do it one way and the other. But gradually, don’t just get rid of your forearm in one….. Slowly. Find out gradually how to transition.

But you still bend the head. Lou! That was a classic! Can you show how you did it?

6[Demo] …



9d. Ok, do it on the other side. Do it on the other side. You did both sides right? Yah.

So do it both sides without leaning. Do it a few more times. If you can lean and not lean, the yes lean and the not lean until you know how it doesn’t matter whether you lean on your elbow and forearm, you still…..

No, Marlena, you stiffen the back. So the chest and the breathing uninterrupted. Not simple. But once it’s done it’s the simplest way to do it once you figure it out. That’s very nice Linda. You feel? You took the time to feel how to really catch the weight and then you just do it. Because once you do it, it’s no big deal.

And stop it and rest for a moment.

We’ll do one more thing, which is really nice. But feel with all the imperfections feel how you’re re-organizing, feel the length of your spine.

10. Roll to your side and come on your knees. Bring the right foot to standing. Put the toes of the other foot for running like you have been doing. Don’t lean on your elbow. Let the head bend down a bit. Bring yourself up like that until you come up completely to standing. That means you bring the left leg, not together, but parallel to the other leg. You stand. You simply stand. Then slide back the same leg, with the toes on the floor to find how to go back down like that. Bring the other knee down and bring the left foot to standing and do it on the other side. And the whole movement also bringing the foot to standing, look to do it gradual, slow, nothing abrupt. You can slide the foot on the floor, you don’t have to lift it in the air.

You see you can slide it backwards until you feel it’s time to begin leaning on the toe and putting the knee down and then very slowly bringing the other knee down. You see, you come up, you stand, and you do it.

You see how at least some of you are now putting the knee down slowly. There is no concern of losing the weight. Then go down, bring the leg back, etc., etc., back and forth. Lou, you are too straight up. You are totally straight up.

7[Demo] 10a. [AFTER DEMO] All right, all of you go back. Do all the way back to

standing and then slide. Some of you are doing it in the air. Again, why? Slide your toes back. Slide them, slide them, slide them.

8[COMMENT ABOUT PREVIOUS DEMO WITH LOU]

10b. All of you, I’m not going to say anything more. Just do the movement a few times. I promise. And catch yourself, are you stiffening your wrists,



are you clenching your jaw, are you grimacing, are you holding your breath?

That’s a bad one. Are you …. That’s right, excellent Rebecca. That’s very nice and that will actually help your neck enormously. Toes, all the time, toes. You see, that’s the best way to help your neck, is to not worry about the neck, but to learn about everything else, that the neck will just be a detail that falls into place. And that’s one of the ways to work with people that are older or have injuries. All the time, sliding the toes, sliding, you know when you go back

Chris. Don’t lift the leg up, let it slide. Lighten it, but let it slide. That’s right. There you go. See if you can do so you can do it slow. The slow is the key.

Jacqueline a little more even. You fell. The reason you fell is because there is still too much work in the upper part.

Yes. Somebody said to me about something. Oh it was Neil actually, that the one time his voice box (voice mail) was full and that was the one time I tried to leave him a message. He says, “One time, the one time and you catch it.” Within 30 seconds of it getting full, that’s how I am. Just now. So if it’s the one time you fall, I’ll be right there to say, “Hey, did you notice?” And now, do it within safety. Do it easier, lighter, faster. Now, do you know that somebody who has had a stroke can learn to do that? Hup! You still pushed. I saw it. You still pushed. It’s ok, we love mistakes, but we need to be aware of what we’re doing. Do one more movement and stand up.

10c. And feel how you are standing. Feel where your arms are now. Feel if it’s different? You chest is completely re-configured, do you feel that?

Feel you too, Michelle, the whole, huge, huge change. There you go.

Walk around. Feel yourself in walking.

Now that I have been doing those lessons again, I remember that it is very, very wonderful. I like this t-shirt, it is bejeweled.

1 [STORY OF ILLUSTRATOR FOR HER BOOK AND DEADLINES]

I want to share something that I shared with Charlie, with all of you, very private, very personal, don’t tell anybody else, but you know I have you know, I’m not the only one in my office, all the people working for me, everybody is just so busy, but working really, really hard, we’re at the tail end of the book you know, we have like two, three weeks to be done and I’m working on the drawings with this wonderful man in Israel who did this piece of work and he’s doing it for me just because I’m his friend. I couldn’t hire him, nobody could hire him to do what he’s doing for me and, and, but he’s very busy and he was in Brazil and he was in Europe and he’s again going to Europe and his wife is going through chemotherapy and aaaaaaah, just like intense and I have a deadline and I finally told him two weeks, that I’m going to be breaking a contract, that I don’t have anybody else today and he works fast, so I knew that he could do it and I love his work. Anyways, so we are really pushing and I talked to the editor and all that, so I worked until three-three thirty in the morning because in Israel it’s ten hours later and we needed to be on the phone and emailing back and forth and my email doesn’t come to him for some unknown reason, can’t figure it out and so I have to email my brother and my brother has to forward the email to him so I …..Anyway it was



intense. Then of course, preparing for here and the office and all that stuff and taking care of everything. I’m not complaining you guys, but just know the more successful you are the harder you’re going to work. I have Marcy on the phone and I said to her, “Marcy, I’m taking a vacation. I’m going to have my nails done.” This is my vacation, right? The little ladies that do it down in Larkspur and they already know me and I like to tip them well and so on and so forth so they forgive me my idiosyncrasies. And I usually don’t put color, I don’t like those chemicals my hands pretty much never now, and I chose a color for my toes. I felt, I am old enough to have fun. May I? (Anat removes her sock to show the audience her toe nail polish.) My toes, do you see that? Does that glow? Does that glow? Marlena, what do you think? My Turquoise toes. I had a little voice saying, “Anat, you’re too old to do that.” I said, “I am going to be teaching these people an anti-aging and vitality course, I am not too old to do that.”

2 [DEMO]

Let’s get all the people the garden pads, come on. Michelle go and be next to her. Let’s look at all the people that are not helped with garden pads. Now if you want to really mess up with your student and want them to really not do well and you want them to not be able to lose balance easily, so to speak, you know, move from thing to thing. Say, “I’m really disappointed with you, that garden pads didn’t help you. Very disappointed with you.” Can you feel, how that…..? Now, now, let’s see. Oh well, I can see why it doesn’t help you.

Yah, now how about you? I didn’t talk to you, I talked to Michelle. Yes, go ahead. Yep, now do it without the garden pad. First of all, let’s look at Mia. And do it back. And now do it with the garden pad. That’s interesting, very interesting. And now you do it (Michelle) with and without the garden pad. I’m going to do something else with the two of you. And now do it with the garden pads (Michelle). Not much easier. Do it on these many garden pads (Anat adds to Michelle’s stack of garden pads to equal five garden pads.) That’s better, that’s right. So both of you come here. Julie, can you go just to the edge. That’s it, that’s good enough. Then the two of you. Not you, you go. I didn’t demonstrate on you all together. I’m sorry sweetie but let’s just finish with them.

So how about both of you be with it like that. (Michelle and Mia are facing a low treatment table and placing their left hand on it.) Lean on the table and do it leaning on the table and see if it got easier? Easier Mia? Ok, so this is a lot of garden pads. So they needed that much lifting up, but what makes it easier, because it’s not easier in standing, I’m comparing it to standing and to leaning, what made it easier is that you can use the hand to balance yourself. You see once you, but going down….. So let’s go back and see how the garden pads don’t help. So come here Mia, first of all. See and that can actually make a huge difference for you Mia, for the rest of your life. I mean it’s so interesting for me, it’s like an x-ray. Oh! My goodness! She hasn’t figured that one out yet! Ok. It’s kind of like, each movement, each lesson is an opportunity to discover like a blind spot, sometimes a big blind spot, you know? But it’s sort of blind until it’s not blind. Here we go, go ahead and do it. Don’t shake the head each and every time. Just see if you can feel that you’ve reduced the tension. And look, what is it that doesn’t occur to Mia to do? And how does she do it in an attempt to make it easier? So the balancing actually does help you a little bit, it gives room for you to experiment.

You see, it’s a little easier now and mostly because she did it here (at the low table) and then went back here. So she figured something out. But look how she figured for herself how to do it. Phenomenally interesting. Because, for me, put your leg back down. And now look at what she does. She’s figured out if she pulls the belly in and she reduces, actually the differentiation in the chest, she can move the whole thing and then it is over her left hip joint and then she can bring the



leg slower up. You see? Now, it’s interesting because now bring the leg down, bring the leg down. Now stand on your knees and try to do it the same way standing on your knees and see if it’s helpful? No, you didn’t do it. Try to take your belly in. That’s it and see? But you’re sitting back. Don’t sit back. Stand up, take your belly in, and see if it gets easier? You see, you have no choice, but to go back to sit. So it’s useful for you. She actually reduced differentiation when she’s leaning on the hand.

Are you still following, yes? So she figured a way to make it easier, but a way that will not translate very effectively to a higher demand. And the thing that I saw, that I thought was very interesting…. It’s too bad you have these stretchy ones (pant waist band is stretchy). Yah, yah, because I need to be able to catch your pants here. I’ll catch them over here. Wait, let’s go slow, ok sweetheart. Because it’s going to take time to do that. The thing that I saw that Mia, pretty much from here to here in your back in your spine, (Anat touches Mia’s back along the spine from her bra line to her waist line) feel how different this feels from other places, (Anat touches her spine up above her bra line) How does it feel to you when I touch you? Rigid. Good, that would describe it. I would say, like a board. So we’re about the same. So this part (above the bra line) has not been utilized in certain ways and is not connected, or with the way we say also self image. Now think, do, do, push the belly out, push the belly out and just lift this a little bit (Mia lifts her right hip up towards the ceiling) and go back. But slow, not fast. It is very new for you. That’s it. You see. There you go. And now stay there (Mia maintains her right hip up.) And then feel what happens here. (Anat helps Mia to bring her right foot forward.) There you go. Do you feel the difference? This, let it arch (low back tightens causing it to arch toward the floor), not the shoulder so much, let it arch so that you see what you can do? You can take the leg backwards, bring it forwards. You see the leg can go places. That’s it and put it down. And now, do it yourself and let’s see what it’s like. There you go, you see, it’s very new for her. (Mia lifts her right hip up and takes her leg up and behind her.) Now do it the other way. Now do it by pulling the belly in. You see, you see how you have to rush the leg? Now do it the other way, slowly. This is a huge change. You had issues with your back and it is a huge change. That’s it, now you have let go of the diaphragm. Don’t take it behind you. (Don’t take the leg up and back.) Just lift the hip, that’s it. You’ll figure it out. But you see how new it is? You’re starting to have a back.

[Demo]: Now with you, Michelle. Where are you? Lean, lean, you are simply doing it in a way that is very difficult to do. You are doing it in a way by bringing the knee straight forward. So it’s very hard to do. Whereas again, you see it requires enormous amount of taking the belly in. No, no do it. It is a way to do it. I’m not saying you can’t do it. And if you want to do, look at me a minute, also Michelle. If you’re sitting on your heels, right and you want to jump up? You know how people come down and up to jumping? Then you do it with both legs that way. You don’t take them through the side, you take them straight forwards. So it’s not like a wrong movement. It’s not a bad thing, but given everything, why do it that way? Why not go the easiest way? So come back on your…

What’s the easiest way? The easiest way of minimum effort? Right? The trajectory of minimum effort and using the most powerful muscles to participate. Right, remember that? One of the things when people age and lose vitality, the whole center of the body is either gone or so disordered, so under used or poorly used, that there’s no choice but to do poorly. And you see, the thing is, how are we going to lift….? See how she thinks to lift her leg. Do it again. You see, she lifts the shoulder. That’s the first thing she does with her attempt to lift the leg is this (right shoulder). Look how far she has to go before it helps her. Now, is this a bad movement? No, if you do it intentionally. It’s an interesting movement. Why not do it? And you can learn to do it really well. But for her right now, it’s the confusion. Now don’t try to bring the foot anywhere, but lift this hip (right hip) to the ceiling. No, to the ceiling. No, this to the ceiling. Bring it closer to the ceiling. Lean on your elbows and forearms, elbows, both, both. Take away the support pads. Now lift this (right hip) to the ceiling. You see, she can’t do the shoulder when she leans on the forearms and the elbows. Dirty trick. Right? So you see, lift this (right hip) to the ceiling. Don’t lean on the head though, right? Lift this to the ceiling, lift this to the ceiling (Anat holds onto



Michelle’s pants at her right hip and directs her to lift her right hip up to the ceiling and Anat is also pushing into Michelle’s spine with her fingers all along the lumbar spine.) That’s it! (Michelle, lifts her right hip up and takes her leg straight back behind herself.) Lift it to the ceiling. (Michelle lifts her hip and foot to the ceiling.) There you go. That’s using your back.

The shoulders have nothing to do with it. The chest is nothing. On the contrary, you have to let go of the chest. Now, don’t lift the foot to the ceiling, but lift the hip to the ceiling. No, you used your abdomen again. The hip, the back, this thing. (Anat pokes at her sacral/hip joint.) Imagine there is a rope from here to the ceiling and somebody is starting to pull that rope up. No, this is not where the rope is, (Michelle starts to round her back toward the ceiling) no, this is where the rope is. How do you get that? No, hang the knee down. No, this is not your tush. (Anat slaps Michelle’s upper back softly.) This is the tush. (Anat slaps her hip softly.) You see, don’t know, don’t know. You see, no idea. That’s why it didn’t help them, those pads.

Now, thank God we have more variations. They’ll figure it out. I’m not worried. That’s another way. It was very interesting. Stop, stop sweetheart. You’re going to figure it out, but it’s going to …..

You see and that is very core, very central. You know when I thought…. I have completely changed the curriculum of the anti-aging from the last time that I did it. It was very good. I decided to do it differently. It’s been a few years and I have new ideas. So, but the thing is that, that what occurred to me, which I kind of thought then too, but it is very focused. When we work with children, we have to facilitate for them to learn, to sit, stand, walk, talk. When we talk about aging and vitality, what are the things that need to be worked on? The same things. Exact same things, but at a different time as a result and do it in an effective way for this time of life. When you’re already walking, when you’re already sitting, when you are already living your life and now how are we going to do that? Have to work with the same darn things and get from that the secondary benefits of you know intelligence, and better memory and the brain gets of course working and so on and so forth. So let’s continue with the lesson, you see, here we are, we need to work in sitting and standing and using the lower back, just like a little child. Interesting huh?

So all of you lean on your left hand, and bring up the right foot to standing and back down and see how are you doing it? Lean only on one hand.

How are you doing it? What are you using to get up? What is it that you are using? You see? Because as the leg gets closer and the knee comes forward, then you have to use your belly again. You see, it’s not just the back. And you take the knee sideways.

Michelle brought the knee straight up.

Take the knee sideways. Take the knee sideways. You have a circular hip joint. The knee, you’re taking the foot. The foot can go too, but…… Take the knee sideways. Then the foot draws a circle on the floor.

All of you try to do it [the way Michelle did it. ]

Take the knee straight forward and see what that is like. Do you see how it requires the small muscles of the top of the leg that connect to the hip and the pelvis, it requires it to work. But in order to take the knee sideways, you have to use your back. Surprise, surprise. And the chest has to actually be free.

That’s one of the worst things that happens; that’s how people age. Their chest’s goes completely rigid and dead on them and then the lower back can’t work and the whole thing doesn’t work.



3 [DEMO]

But Neiloosh. Look what Neil is doing. Even though I love the blue you’re wearing, it matches my toe nails. Look, look, do it the way you just did it. It works quite well for you, but look what he did. Look there. This is a different movement! Do it again. Because, look, he is doing it very well. But the hip, the shoulder actually goes a little ahead of the hip. So as far as this brain it’s walking with its shoulder. (Neil asks Anat what he should do with his free left hand?) Put it in your mouth.

Now do the movement. There you go. You see, now look how nicely he’s using the lower back and then the abdomen muscles at a certain point. Right? All of you put your hand in your mouth and do it. It’s a variation that just occurred to me. It’s a pretty good idea! Talk about an instant regression and accessing all things in the brain. Look, many of you do better with the hand in your mouth. Well at least for a minute. You see, many of you do it so much better when it is in your mouth! Goodness! It’s a neurological thing, it’s not a …. Because it brings the weight in front of the arm, so it’s not that. But look, it organizes your…. It brings you to use your lower back. Look at that! It’s a neurological thing. Heh! Look at it. Interesting. Now put your hand elsewhere and see if you can…, but don’t lean it. Don’t lean on your left hand, just wherever. But you see it still works. Once putting it in your mouth helped, taking it out of your mouth, it doesn’t matter anymore because it’s not being in the mouth that made it. It’s what happened when you put your hand in the mouth that made it. So if you do that, you don’t need it in your mouth anymore.

Now, stand on your knees and see if that got better? Put your hand maybe in your mouth for a minute, who knows? Maybe, it’s too regressive for standing, I don’t know. Let’s give it a try. A little too regressive for standing. Take it out of your mouth and see. She put both hands in her mouth. And you are doing the other knee than everybody else, do you know that? The other leg? You’re out to lunch. You’re in confusion. That’s ok. You’re moved out of your little puddle. You’ve been thrown into a slightly different ocean. Different fish. Now put your hand down again and put your hand in your mouth again and do a couple of movements like that and ….. Look at you Doreen. Not bad huh? Yes. The other Doreen. She’s not here. She’s gone through a lot.

4 [DEMO]

Somebody’s laughing? Why, did your knee get glued to the floor? Isn’t it funny when the knee says, “Na, na, na, na, na, na. You think you’re going to do this? Ha! Ha!” I’m glad you’re laughing, that’s a perfect response. Why don’t we look at Michelle, she’s having a wonderful time, before she starts suffering again. Because she’ll do it. No, you wouldn’t be suffering. No, I tried to be clever and it didn’t work out. So did you hear Huckabee yesterday tried to be clever in the gun control people? There was a loud boom in the room and he made a joke that implied like that Obama must have been shot. That was bad. Even he knew it was bad, he really apologized very quickly and profusely, but boy he was trying to be cute. Didn’t work too well. Anyway.

Show us how you fail. (Anat is asking Michelle to demonstrate the movement.) You’re failing so good Michelle. I am very proud of you. You are. You are. It is very true blue. Go ahead. You see the thinking is all wrong. So she can’t do it. Who is laughing? Sharon, you think that’s funny? You see she somehow has no idea how to do it. Anyway, and she has intelligence. We know that, I know that, I hope you guys know that too. I hope the ears are ok? (Anat holds onto Michelle’s head.) Wait, you see she’s trying to get up by… Her thinking is here. (Anat points to Michelle’s shoulders.) This is where her idea is. Just like Michelle lifted her shoulder when she was thinking of lifting the hip. The other Michelle. Maybe it’s a Michelle thing. Maybe if you’re called Michelle, that’s not going to work for you so easily; this lesson. What? Yah, Neil did it, but he was very



ready to switch. Now she’s being smart. So, we need to go to feeling. We need to feeling what it means.

Let me do something here with you, you have the perfect pants for me, what it means to put pressure on your t… That’s better, a little better already. You see the movement is…..no you’re running away. You see you have an ischium here. That, that, is what somehow is going to come off. (Anat lifts Michelle’s hips into the air using pressure from under her left ischium.) You see, that is what you sit on. The one that I’m poking at. Wait, you see you are running away with the shoulders. I want you to feel, this. (Anat pushes up on the ischium from underneath with her fist.) Don’t try to stand up. I want you to feel this feeling. How are you going to help me with this direction? There you go. You see that? I want you to feel…help me here, help me here. That’s what you do. Think of helping from here. Rotate a little bit. There you go. That’s it. There needs to be a little rotation here. (Anat touches Michelle’s right ribs.) Now, so soften the chest. Now, that’s it and help from here. That’s it. Now stay there. Nice, now arch your back, look up, round your back, look down, arch your back, look up, round your back, look down. (Michelle is standing on her right foot, her left leg is behind her with the knee slightly bent.) You see, you can be in this position and then start doing funny stuff. And now slowly go down. You see, now you can control it. That’s it. On the toes. Now you do it. Think my hand is under your ischium and help me lift that ischium. There you go. That’s it. Much better than being glued.

5 [STORY OF ANAT AND HIS INVENTION]

My father is going to be ninety this year. He can do this movement easily and quite a few others. One of his favorite is standing on his head and falling into a bridge. You know, you stand on your head like what I did with the baby. You know, you stand on your head, you arch your back and you drop the feet down. What? Whatever you call it, like a bridge. You know, you’re on your head and take the legs and you arch and fall, the feet come down. I mentioned that he invented this remarkable….based on an older patent of his that is so old it is not a protected patent anymore.

But he developed something from it that looks like it could…… It will make it possible to take any natural waste, like from food, you know and things and change it into sugar. Then you can take that and change it into ethanol. Which means, that you don’t have to take food to make ethanol and do it in a way that is very clean. The process for doing it has been in existence for many years, but it was very expensive and very polluting. And he figured a way to do it so it won’t. One of the difficulties, they’re trying to raise money, because they have to build a plant and of course he can’t do that. Right? People find out who is the person who invented it and they know roughly how old he is and it’s kind of like they don’t know quite what to do with it. But the French company now seems to …… Anyway, we’ll see. We’ll see, but what happens. But you know why not, why not do it? Now it’s a very interesting discussion, I heard yesterday on the news about McCain. That one of the things is that he’s so old; he’s seventy-two. Now, it doesn’t mean I think that McCain should be the President, but the fact that he’s seventy-two, doesn’t seem that meaningful to me. I mean, if he were my kind of seventy-two years old, I would like him to be President. But they interviewed this aging something, agency something, not-for-profit, expert woman. And I didn’t expect it, otherwise I would have written it down. It was a classic. She said, just perfect for today just starting this course, she said, “Look it, he might be able to take walks and talk and have….but there’s no question that his functioning as an older man is diminished, because everybody when they get older, their functioning is diminished. Finished fact, I mean it is a statement of fact and all you have to do now is believe her and it will be so. I don’t know. It was so interesting. People will say things like they know for sure….. Anyway, what the hell.

6 [DEMO]



Watch Lou. Watch Lou. Go ahead do it. Now that she’s not leaning, look, the legs are working like crazy and you’re way too upright. Now lean on your forearm and do it. Look at the chest, look how easy…..let go of the head, let go of the head, drop. That’s it. And do it again like that. Go down and do it again. Just don’t fall. There you go. You see? Much easier. Now get up. Take away like that. Be upright. Now do it the way you did it. Stay upright and do it. No don’t lean. Do it the way you did it. AAAAAAAAAAAH! Do you feel the leg is shaking; way over working the front leg, not using the toes and completely, not really using…and completely not allowing the force, not organizing the skeleton for the force to give you the…..this is ninety-nine muscular. It’s ninety-nine muscular. It’s just because you are so strong, you can do it like that.

Now lean on your forearm again. A little bit more the forearm. That’s too much. That’s it. And now, drop the head. Now first of all do you see your chest is free? Do you feel the difference? You have to feel the difference, otherwise you can’t learn. And now do it in a way that your head is down and leaning on the….. There you go. And do it. Yes, I want you because when you don’t lean you do it as if we have not done the whole lesson. You see? And a little bit more. You see? Let go. (Anat holds Lou’s head in her hands and moves it in all directions to help Lou let go of tension in her neck.) Now which trajectory, which trajectory can you…that’s you see? Then it’s not so much hard work. You see? You have to figure out which trajectory to take it. Down the head. Down. Ok, it could be more. Anyway, that’s it, that’s it, long spine. Bang! Up, up, up. There you go. (Anat holds Lou at her neck and is also lifting under her right ischium with her finger tips.) You feel? Now come back like this without the arm, but think the arm is there, but don’t have the arm there. Think the arm is there. Think the arm is there. You see, that’s how easy it should be, boom, but slowly back, don’t fall on the knee. Put the toes… There you go. How about if you just put the leg somewhere like where it can be a little more useful. (Anat moved the left back leg with the toes for running, to the left.) There you go. Thom, Thom, Thom, Thom. (Anat moves Lou’s body right, left, forward by pulling/guiding her with her neck.) I am discombobulating her a little bit here, but do you feel the difference here a little bit sweetheart? You have a lot of power in your thighs, so you use it, not knowing you’re using it. It gets in the way.

One of the ways that people age and lose their vitality is that they…. years of using too much force, not enough the skeleton, not knowing their doing it, getting both the wear and tear and aging. You know, we do get older and then trying to do it poorly organized and not having the ability to do it anymore. And not having the knowledge that you’re working so hard, because people that get older, they look frail. So you think they’re weak, but they’re actually too much force. Not enough agility, not enough differentiation, complexity and not proper training how to use themselves in relation to the gravitational field. So it’s like ugh, ugh, ugh…

7 [DEMO]

Again, watch Lou. She can do it just because she is so athletic. But it doesn’t mean if you are athletic you should do it like that. Bring the leg back to place. And now, start doing it. Look, she starts doing it and the shoulders haven’t started moving forward. Keep going the way you are. Don’t change. Don’t change. You see? Too straight up. Only you can do that. Other people could do it too, but the amount of pressure it puts on the knee is remarkable. If you were to do this movement a lot of times, I would predict a big problem for your knee. If you were less athletic and a little older, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You would just fall on the floor and never try it again.

You see, all of us are working on it. All of us have a moment, so some of us have to work, we know each other for so many years, and with your permission Heidi I’m going to say something, ok?

Heidi, has had to work a lot because she is so flexible and because she has also been trained going to extreme movements, right? It was very valued to be very flexible or expressive maybe or I have no idea. So to be able to do something in a contained little movement, because if Heidi is



going to work with people and empathize with them, ninety-nine percent won’t be able to do what Heidi does, but also it’s Heidi’s weakness, the fact that she can do it so well that way. Because there are times where you don’t get the chance, or didn’t, now it’s very, very different, but in the beginning of the training remember? She couldn’t reorganize, because she was not doing it small enough. Other people, it’s fast. Other people it’s negative self talk. Other people, it’s whatever. Some people have actual surgeries in the past. All of us have our stuff; meaning we are somewhere and we have room to grow, do and have more freedom and more possibilities.

For you, is that you’re actually too strong. It’s good that you’re this strong, it’s fantastic, but your strength, just like it’s fantastic she’s flexible, I mean it’s wonderful, but the weakness is that the strength goes ahead of you. It goes ahead of your say. It goes ahead of the opportunity to reduce the force. And what we pay with as a result, is actually reduced sensitivity at times. You’re a very delicate, sensitive person. So it’s not about who you are. But mechanically and neurophysiologically, that’s how it works. So for you, you go like, “What does Anat want from me? I’m just going up and down, big deal!” Right? You do it, it’s not big deal. But I want ….I know where you’re wanting to get to in your life and in your work. So to find ways to do it that feel easier, even though you have the strength, so it’s easy enough for you to do it both ways. It can feel easier.

8 [COMMENT ABOUT PREVIOUS DEMO WITH LOU]

You see, one more thing Lou. You see why I wasn’t trying to [ *unintelleigible ] until this second, but I’ve done it before, but you see, I’m just thinking. You see, I’m just thinking of sliding my toes back. Let me use, I rarely do that; let me use myself as an example, ok? So, I’m standing, and I’m doing nothing and I’m going to take my toe back. Look at what my body is doing. I haven’t done anything, I haven’t even lifted. Look where I am at. You see? Just to release the weight, I am that, so….

That’s why babies need to do the transitions before they do the thing itself, because the transition holds the thing in it, the transition from lying to sitting holds all the elements for sitting. The transition from sitting to standing holds all the elements for standing, ok? The transition from standing more or less equally on two feet and thinking I’m going over to the left, however much, and a bit forward. So now, I’m on my left leg. So now I know that I can do things with my right leg, because I don’t need my right leg, ok? It still helps me a little with balance and then I’m starting to take it back and as I take it back, I look to not make it any harder. So see, the shoulders just let go and then this knee (left knee) starts bending and the tush starts actually going a little backwards. I’m looking at you, but I could take my head down, etc. Just in this part, I’m already forward. I haven’t done anything. For me to do it like you (Lou) I could, but I feel right away, I have to be really careful that I don’t hurt this knee. For me, I’ve hurt this knee before, so you know, it’s like part of the vitality and part of getting younger is feeling the difference between doing it like this (hard way) and selecting the easier way. That’s the part of the vitality, we will select the more comfortable way, we will select the safer way, and we will select the more pleasurable way when we’re well.

So that’s what I talked about earlier, the higher brain inhibiting and there’s not enough being informed by feeling…… Not, look it. If something happens now and we needed all to, I don’t know, something happened in the room and we needed to put a lot of effort to fix it and make it so the training…. We would all put the effort. I’m not about living life like, if I’m healthy, I am an amoeba. It’s not about that. But it’s within the power, it’s within the moving forward, it’s within the vibrancy that every second we have an awake system that’s says, “Oh, I can do it like that, it’s easier, I’m going to go here.” Not only that, “I have so much that I want to do, it had better be easier.” Anywhere it can be easier, anywhere it can be safer, anywhere it can be more assured, I will go for that. Because I don’t want to waste my energy and time and opportunity on nonsense. Work with that.



TML 2: Twisting (Lying on Back, Side and Belly)

(Transcription as taught by Anat Baniel, V&AA Seg 2) Length of lesson: 40 minutes

Aggression is intimately connected with life and vitality. If you cannot bite into food, you die. Now we live in a society that has feeding tubes and open stomachs, so we have ways of keeping people alive. But a child that can’t chew is a child that is at the lowest level of their vitality. And chewing is aggressive. Teeth. You know, when you look at the skeleton, and you show the teeth, it always looks like a monster, right? Grrrr. Teeth.

So now let’s go real gentle. For those of you who are afraid or something. Anyone is uncomfortable with these distinctions that I gave? And has the courage to raise his hand? Are you cool with that? Do you understand you can be as gentle as possible but incredibly organized into vitality? And then it’s fun. It’s energizing, it’s great.

NOTES

1. And long legs, and just scan the way you’re lying. Get to feel yourself. Maybe go to some basics.

1a. Feel the right heel, and left heel. And then go up one leg, whichever one you want first. The contact of the lower leg, the back of the knee, thigh, etc, back of the hip joint, the other one.

1b. And feel the contact of your shoulder blades with the floor. And feel if they’re the same or different.

1c. And listen to the length of your spine. And the contact of your spine with the floor or the lack thereof.

1d. Just feel how it is on the right side and the left side.

2 And roll to lie on your right side. Bend your legs one on top of the other, put both arms long in front of you on the floor, so your head is on the floor. And now place the left leg, the left knee and leg, in front of the right leg, so the legs are still bent, but you slide the left leg onto the floor in front of the right one.

And now, very gently, begin lifting ... You have your left arm long too, both arms,

Anat Baniel Method Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 TML TML #2:


one on top of the other, in front of you, just shoulder height more or less.

And now lift the left hand up, and begin lifting the arm and follow it with your eyes and your head. So as you lift the arm up, your head and eyes, go slow, go slow, the fact that you can’t do it, don’t do it fast. And start going around, and around, and twist around yourself. To bring your arm, you will might touch your neighbor a little bit, but to bring the behind you toward the floor or towards the floor. And to the extent that you need at this point for the arm to go all the way to the left, allow your left knee, not your foot, but the left knee to lift off the floor. And then come back.

So let the left knee lift to make the twisting and lowering of the left arm behind you like that easy and comfortable. information.

And now twist like that with your arm around you, however far down it went, it doesn’t matter, but you know. And allowing the left … but have the palm up, the palm up, there you go.

2a. And now keep the arm there, and very gently begin bringing the left knee back to the floor. It will lift ... Don’t lift the arm intentionally. But it will lift the arm a little bit. And then lift the knee a little bit.

[TO STUDENT] Is there a reason you don’t let the arm go further down? Does it hurt your shoulder? Protect yourself. So you … Are you OK? Huh? Yeh, OK, just take lots of rests.

2b. And now stay like that twisted, with the knee lifted, wherever it is, but with the arm as low down as you can.

And now pull the belly in and expand your chest. So the arm is behind you, the left knee is for most of you probably a bit off the floor, or however much. And now, in this position, pull the belly in and heave up the chest. And then, go slowly gently so you don’t get a spasm or something in your ribs, and then let go. And then let go.

So we’re not even doing the expansion of the belly, but at this point, pull in the belly and expand the chest and let it go.

And do it again and again.

2c. And do it a few times fast. So you pull fast.

2d. And now, stop, and then bring gently the left knee back towards the floor and see if it lifts the arm a little bit less.

And slowly roll onto your back and rest for a moment.

Now do you see how that might be useful for the lesson you saw I gave Mike? Yes/no? So to the question of going into the specifics in terms of the ability to twist the spine, to turn the spine. But it’s not like working the spine as if the spine was an independent standing part of the self, but finding another way to include and invite the nervous system to figure out that it needs to twist the spine and how to do it.



And then go back to the other positions, see if’s been you know, moved over basically, or not moved over.

3. And now roll to lie on your left side, with one foot on top of the other. Put the right leg bent in front of the left one, on the floor.

And begin slowly, don’t do the full twist right away, but begin lifting the right arm, and following it with your head and eyes. And coming back, and then going again, until you further and further back, gradually further and further back.

And by the way, when you do that, notice how soon does your chest begin participating in the movement? Does the chest, sternum, spine begin participating from the very beginning? Or do you move, move, move, and then at a certain moment when you can’t go any further, all of a sudden, then the chest moves a little bit.

And you’ll see that with most people, the distribution of movement is not even throughout the spine, and the hips and so on. And just improving that a little bit makes a huge difference in many, many ways. So now, and you’ve learned, anyway.

3a. Just twist around, stay there however you figure it out in terms of your spacing.

[TO STUDENT] You have room to go forward here. I won’t step on you. I haven’t stepped yet on a student. So maybe I will start now.

And now in this position, you know lift the knee a little more to allow the arm to go more towards the floor. And then gently bring the knee a little closer to the floor.

[TO STUDENT] But, Joanna – leg is in front on the floor, the right leg is in front of the left leg, and there you go, then the instructions will make more sense.

So the foot stays on the floor. And have the arm shoulder height, not above the head, shoulder height. There you go. And stay twisted, and then just lift the knee a bit more. And then take the knee a little back towards the floor. And lift the knee a little more. And take it back toward the floor.

3b. And now, stay like that with the knee off the floor and the arm and chest twisted.

And again, pull the belly in and heave the chest, and then let go. And just do it a number of times. Pull the belly in and lift the chest, and expand it.

3c. And now, stop this movement with the chest and just bring the knee a little back to the floor, and see if the arm lifts a little bit less. Still lifts, but maybe not as much.

And slowly lie to roll on your back and rest please.



4. And now roll again to lie on your right side. And again, place the left leg bent in front of the right one on the floor.

[TO STUDENT] In front. The leg. In front. That’s good. Not a problem. I’m happy to help. Not a problem. I’m happy to help. That’s part of the grand plan is to be helpful.

And now, first of all, I want to tell you what I, the movement that you’re about to do, you have a magnificent opportunity to experiment with the power of delicacy. The essentials of slow and gentle and attentive and scanning you know the length of your spine and so on, as a mechanism to really bring about, you know, organization, improvement very quickly. So listen first to the instructions

What you’re going to be doing. You’re going to be lifting the hand, the arm, the left one toward the ceiling. And rolling the head so the back of the head is on the floor. So don’t twist past the mid-line. Really what we are bringing is the head to looking toward the ceiling.

The left knee and leg are in front of the right one if you can. But the face is looking toward the ceiling. Right. The face is looking to the ceiling.

And now bend your elbow and put the back of your hand on your forehead. The elbows open to the side as much as you can. So the fingers are to the right, and the palms are to the left.

In this position, very gently, begin rolling the head with the help of the left hand, and back again.

So you can imagine that you are giving you a lesson, or you can imagine that someone else is giving you a lesson, it doesn’t matter, but roll your head like this to the left and back.

4a. And now as you turn your head to the left, also look with the eyes to the left.

4b. And now, roll the head, let the left elbow go the left like that. And let the left knee begin lifting until the left elbow if you can touches the floor. And when it does, or as close as you get to, you can lift the knee a lot, it doesn’t matter, look at the elbow at the moment it touches the floor or is as far as it will go. And then come back. But not all the way. The head stays to the middle and the knee comes back to the floor.

[TO CAMERA CREW] Do you do any swiping movement of the class, in the filming or do you stop doing this? Are you doing it? It’s a nice movement. Oh, I mean, the time to swipe is during movement. Rest is the least interesting to swipe because nothing happens. Slow swiping during movement.

4c. And now go as far as you can like that with your eyes looking like this to the side.

And now resume pulling in the belly and expanding the chest. And then letting it go. And pulling in the belly, expanding the chest. And letting it go.

And notice how the movement of the chest impacts, it moves the elbow.



4d. And now, touch, keep the elbow you know hanging to the left, but touch the left knee to the floor so the elbow comes back to the middle some.

And now in this position, again pull the belly in and expand the chest.

And now leave it alone. Roll on your back, and rest for a minute.

And feel of course changes in the contact with the floor.

5. And roll to lie on the left side. Bend the legs, put the right one in front of the left. Put the arms one on top of the other. And now slowly lift the right arm, follow it with the eyes toward the ceiling so that the back of your head lies on the floor. And then place your right hand on your forehead. Bend the elbow. Place the right hand on the forehead.

And now gently first of all rolling the head to the right.

And feel, if you had a magic wand and if you could just move the wand over a certain part of yourself and get it to move more or differently, and which part, just feel internally, which part would you like to have the magic wand shine on. Where could you get more movement, more differentiation, more distribution of the movement?

5a. And now go to the right like that as far as you can and stay there.

And now slowly begin lifting the right knee more so that the right elbow goes toward the floor. And each time the elbow either touches the floor or is as far as you go, move your eyes to look at the right elbow, and then come back.

[TO CAMERA] And try now to get some of the swiping. Every variation, either one of you, that would be great.

5b. And now stay there, with the elbow touching the floor and the knee in the air a bit or whatever, and pull the belly in, expand the chest.

5c. And now do this movement faster, so it’s not connected to your breathing. Fast, fast, fast. So it’s really not like breathing in or breathing out. It’s just over the breathing.

5d. That’s good, and now bring your knee to the floor, and the elbow stays as far to the side you it can, but the knee is toward the floor.

And in this position, first slowly expand the chest and let it go.

Excellent. And roll onto your back and rest.

Do you get the sense of, or I’d like you to pay attention and notice or try to understand or feel or get a sense of how if you work with somebody in standing and did a few of those movements, and you’ll see in a minute with the next variation. And then they had difficulty or got tired or they’re not ready. Can you see how maybe putting them on the



table and then continuing the lesson doing some variations of this, either with your hands or as a TML, whichever way, but in this case I’m thinking more like an FS. Can you see how it’s seamlessly, functionally, intertwined? Can you see that? So maybe for someone who doesn’t understand, most likely for someone who hasn’t worked, or studied here, it would be like they’re doing two very different things. And then, let’s say when you put the person back to standing after a few variations lying down, the change will feel miraculous. Now it is miraculous in the sense that we can change. Once you accept that we can change, it’s actually very logical. It’s predictable.

6. As you’re lying like that, put your arms to the side, shoulder height, palms up.

I’ll give you a moment to arrange yourself. So everybody gets their arms all the way to the side, including the tall, long-armed people. We have to put a short person next to a tall person, next to a short person. Excellent.

And now, lift your right leg up toward the ceiling, more or less straight, but it doesn’t have to be, for most of you it can’t be straight, the leg is toward the ceiling, and hold it there.

And now in this position, start with a small movements because you don’t normally do it. Begin taking the leg to the left, and back to the ceiling.

And do you feel now how it is pretty much doing the movement that was done in standing. Except you’re lying. It’s not the final crossing of the feet, but it’s the bringing the leg over. Can you see, feel that.

And when you lie like that with your weight is on to the floor, what needs to twist of course is the spine. And the chest. And the sternum needs to get mobile. And the clavicle, and the base of the head.

6a. And now follow the foot, the leg with your eyes. Keep your head in the middle, but follow, you can turn the head, but follow the foot with your eyes.

6b. And now when your left [TN: right] foot, heel comes as close to the floor, closer to the floor, almost as far as you go, begin pushing the heel as if it you want, you’re trying to push a little light box away from you.

So you’re not just going to the left, but you’re also lengthening the leg over through the heel, that means you flex the foot. And then come back, and then do it again, until your right shoulder blade will start lifting off the floor. A little bit. Don’t roll to lie on the side. But you’ll feel that your right shoulder blade starts lifting off the floor. And come back.

6c. And now stay with your leg to the left, as far to the left as you can, and in this position again pull your belly in and expand your chest.

And let it go. And rest for a minute.



7. And now, again, put your arms to the side, and lift the right leg again to the ceiling, and twist the leg over to the left, and lengthen it also to the left, and let the shoulder blade lift to the extent that you need until your foot is on the floor and extended like this to the floor. And bring your head back. But lean the foot on the floor, twist your pelvis.

And now bring your face to look to the ceiling, and take your right hand arm from above your head and catch your left temple. So your forearm is above your head. You’re catching your left temple. And let the right elbow be to the right, to the side. But the right hand, the left temple ... Yeh, that’s it. And now, and the right elbow open as far as it can to the side.

And now in this position, begin bending your head to the right, but let the whole spine bend to the right.

So that means the elbow is moving in the direction of your right, your left foot, your right hip or whatever you want to think of it.

And you let your sternum move, but don’t turn your nose. The nose stays up to the ceiling. You just bend. The hand catches the left temple, and see if you can let, feel the length of your spine.

7a. And now bend like that. Shorten your whole right side like that and stay there.

And in that position, pull your belly in and expand your chest and let it go.

And that’s good. Leave it alone. And slowly unfold yourself here. Untwist yourself. And rest for a moment.

And feel changes in your contact you have with the floor. Feel which parts for you are in more intimate contact, flatter, wider.

8. Have the arms to the sides again, not above the head. Sides ... If your fingertips are above your head or the level of your head, it’s not the side. Shoulder height …

And now lift your left leg up to the ceiling and very gently first of all simply start taking the left leg to the right and back, twisting yourself to the right like that.

8a. And now each time you take the leg like this to the right, flex the ankle and extend the foot, like you’re trying to lengthen the leg or push something away with your leg. And come back.

8b. And now stay like that to the right with your foot, your leg, and twist yourself so that the foot can touch the floor.

And slide the heel, to make the leg longer to the right. A few times like that.



8c. And now stay like this with the leg long, bring the face back to look at the ceiling.

And then take with your left hand your right temple, and gently begin bending your head to the left. You can at the same time lengthen the leg a bit and let the whole spine participate.

It’s a tiny little movement, but at that moment, have the whole spine participate.

8d. And now stay with the head bent, and the leg long.

And pull the belly in and expand the chest.

And let go. And leave this alone. Slowly unwind and rest for a moment. And notice the changes.

9. And now roll to lie on your belly. Put your left ear on the floor. That means the head is turned to the right. Both arms sideways long shoulder height. Now put your legs together, knees feet.

And now, begin bending the knees, bringing the heels closer to your buttocks, and at the same time, bend your toes so they go up, towards the up, not down, up, up toward the top of your foot.

So you bend the knees to heels, toes, and tush, at the same time. If you were standing, you’d say lift the toes, and at the same time bend your toes, towards the top of your foot.

9a. And now a few times do it and bend them towards the sole of the foot. But each time, you flex the ankle so that the heel moves towards the buttocks and this time, one time bend the toes one way when you do it and next time bend them the other way.

9b. And now, do the same thing. And this time, only bend the toes towards the sole of the foot, but do it only with the right leg a few times. The left leg is bent.

But do, do, so you keep the left leg bent, and you straighten and bend the right leg. And you bring the ankle toward the tush, you flex it, and you bend, you flex the ankle but

you bend the toes towards the soles of the foot. You don’t point the toes toward the ceiling. You flex the ankle and then the toes bend toward the sole of the foot.

Hunh. Nya, nya, nya. Nya, nya, nya. You see, for many of you, the toes and the ankle and the sole of the foot are one nerve cell. Take your time.

9c. And now, keep the right... You know, and now, how about... How about straighten the legs. Straighten the legs. And how about you bend, bend the right knee, and now bend the toes toward the sole of the foot.

Keep them like that and flex the ankle.



That’s what I’m talking about. You see, it’s doable. The question now is whether now you can flex the ankle and bend the toes toward the sole of the foot at the same time. For most of you, when you start bending the toes toward the sole of the foot, you point your toes to the ceiling. It’s a different thing.

9d. And now, keep the left leg bent and do the same thing. Bend and straighten the right leg, and each time you straighten the right leg, have the idea, the heel towards the buttocks and bend the toes toward the sole of the left foot.

[TO STUDENT] Right one, whichever one you’re moving. I don’t know, you’ll have to figure it out. You’re doing it with the left leg now. You’re keeping the right leg bent and doing it with your left leg. You’re keeping the right leg bent and doing it with the left.

9e. And now put the legs together again. Bend the knees, keep them bent. And now keep the knees together, and move the feet away from each other.

That means to the right and the left. You open the legs. You keep the knees together and move the lower legs sideways. You create like a triangle and move the lower legs apart. And keep them like that apart. Not less and not more.

And begin moving them as they are apart left and right so the pelvis twists right and left.

And feel, whether you can sense how your ribs and spine are actually twisting moving. Same story.

9f. And now slowly move your head the other way. Turn your head the other way.

And roll to lie on your back.

[TO STUDENT] Any treasures I should be aware of. Oh, your phone. I see. You’re fine. I promise you you’re fine.

And first of all just feel how you’re lying and how you’re breathing.

10. And now roll to lie on your left side. Put the right leg bent in front of the left. The arms are to in front of you, shoulder height.

And simply lift the right hand and follow it with your eyes and your head. And gently twist like that over to the right.

And feel if you’re twisting a lot easier. Yes? No? Feeling a difference there? You’re so accustomed to feel differences, what’s the big deal. You expect it. But can you feel the huge difference.

10a. Roll over to the other side and check on the other side.

10b. And now, before you get up, stop the movement of the arm. Come back to lying on your side.



You’re going to get up. And think of using what you’ve learned to bring the pelvis up, so you don’t push on the legs and push on knees, and on the thighs to get up.

So bring yourself up to standing. Take your time, bring yourself up to standing.

And feel what it’s like to stand up. Do you feel more on your bones? What does that mean for you? Do you feel more forward, more back, taller, shorter, whatever? And walk around.

And, thank you very much for your attentiveness and participation. I choked on that one, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

[END OF LESSON]



TML 3: Stepping with Use of Lower Back (#1 of Series)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2)

Notes:

1. You know how we scan in lying; I want you to scan in standing. So just stand there for a moment and scan yourself. Scanning for instance, the feeling of the bottoms of your feet, the toes, the spread of the toes. Where do you feel the pressure? How is the pressure distributed on the right sole of the foot and then the other one? Because people don’t usually think in those terms. So just see if you can feel that. And then compare one to the other basically.

1a. And then notice the sense of the two lines, the two legs, you know? You can go from heels to the hips or the hips to the heels. Your spine, how much can you feel? Where do you think of your spine from, by the way when you stand, by the way? From the back or from the inside or from where or both or you didn’t even think about it that way?

1b. And if you were to guess the relationship between your shoulders and your hips and thinking of your hip joints inside your pelvis, not anywhere else. You know where the actually joints are. What would you think or what would you say, or how do you perceive the relationship? Are your shoulders behind your hips, over your hips, you know in front of your hips?

1c. And right now as you stand, listen to your breathing. And feel, can you notice, where/what participates in the breathing? Can you feel your breathing in standing? Do the floating ribs in the back move? Most people, not, but perhaps with what we’re doing, for some of you, already is.

1d. And your belly, are you holding your lower abdomen in or is it free? Of course, when I say that, some of you might just let it go.

1e. And the neck/head, what would you say? Would you say, before you try anything is there some excess tension in your neck? Are you shortening the back of your neck, or not? Maybe move the chin a tiny

Anat Baniel Method Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 3


bit up and a tiny bit down so you could tell whether it was shortened or not.

1f. And very, very gently, shift the weight a little bit over to one foot and see to which one do you chose to shift the weight to first? Is it to your right or to your left? And then the other way. And notice the readiness with which you could move and shift the weight to one leg, one foot, one side and then the other. And see if you have a preference? And how do you shift that weight? What do you move in yourself to shift the weight? Do you move your pelvis/hips, do move more your head, do you move your shoulders?

Have both of the knees straight unless you can’t have them straight.

2. And lie on your back please. Put your two legs and feet together. Not an easy thing to do by the way, but hold your legs together long including the feet. And start bending your feet towards your head. That means that you flex the ankles and then let it go. And see to the extent that you can do it with your knees straight. Can you put your heels together too?

Some of you, if you can’t, you can’t. If you can you can, but it shows some stuff that needs to be done. Isn’t it amazing?

2a. And now, so you flex, you bend the ankles, so the feet move up toward your face and you also flex the toes so also the toes come up a little bit. So you move also the feet and the toes. Then extend the two feet and point the toes down. And go back and forth like that slowly and feel how not simple.

And you’ll see some people, the ankles, and I see some of you, just one ankle that is bent out to the side, so that the heel is away from the other heel.

You know, with such a minor little movement, one could identify old injuries. It’s like a dynamic x-rays, or something, functional x-rays. And what people have ….what we all as humans have had things happen to us or lack of opportunity to develop certain things properly and we grew around it. We figured out how to stand, how to walk, but doing it all the time with this thing that we sort of are going around.

2b. Now when you bend the feet toward you, inhale, just a little bit. You don’t have to do a huge inhalation and exhale when you lengthen and extend down the toes and the feet.



You can always take a few seconds rest. You’ll see that just a few seconds, usually do it.

2c. And now when you flex, when you bring the feet up, inhale at the same time and at the same rate, bend the two knees a little bit.

So as you flex the……slowly, slowly. Don’t rush it Sharon, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. That’s way too fast. You haven’t thought of doing this movement probably for at least 20 years. Right? It’s a novel thing.

2d. And feel, because most of you work one leg very differently than the other. That means that you work one hip very differently than the other, which means that you work one side of your lower back very differently than the other, which also means that your neck, eyes and so on are different, working differently. And give yourself a chance to feel what you’re doing.

Also will give you enormous amount of things to do with people that come to you.

And of course, the exhalation and inhalation.

2e. Now do a few quick movements like that and don’t worry about the breathing. That means whether you exhale or inhale, but do quick, you have to do small ones. Tiny, tiny, you know with the knees and the ankles. But bend the knees too. So you intentionally flex the ankles and bend the knees and then intentionally straighten the knees and point your feet down.

2f. And feel, by the way, what happens. Do you feel like it goes through the spine? Most of you are saying, “Yes, yes, yes, yes” with your head. A few of you still do the work primarily with the muscles of the legs in such a way that it doesn’t transfer through the spine.

Leave it alone and rest for a second.

In other words, some of you, when you bend the knees as you flex the feet, slide the heels up towards your pelvis quite a bit. Whereas others plant the heels in and use the floor to help do the movement.

3. So now, put your legs again together and flex the feet and bend the knees a tiny bit and just feel whether you can do it in such a way that the rest of you begins being informed that you’re doing it. So it’s not just thigh muscles working hard.

3a. And now, combine; reverse the relationship to the breathing. That means you inhale when you point your toes down and you exhale when you flex your ankles, when you flex your toes up towards the face;



that’s when you exhale. Right? Did I say it correctly? Good. Slowly, slowly.

3b. And see if reversing the breathing relationship does something; changes how you do the movement? Are other things also popping into your awareness in your rib cage, in your…..

Lou, you are bending your knees way too much, way too much. I mean, just a tiny bit. The rate of movement…the ankles can’t move that far. So it you move it at the same rate, the knees cannot bend that much; will not, they can but they will not.

Now leave that alone and rest for a moment.

Feel just for a few seconds, whether just those few movements, and of course, it’s those few movements in the context of what you did this morning, which is in the context of what you did yesterday, which is in the context of what you did the past two and a half years; so, but just right now, what changes do you feel? Is there something new, else, clearly, more clear, different?

4. Roll to your side and stand up. Stand comfortably, simply with your feet spread, arms hanging. Now what you’re going to be doing is you’re going to use your back muscles. That means you are going to arch your back muscles to take your pelvis backwards, but you’re not going to lean forward. You are going to use on purpose…and normally we would do that…. Don’t drive your top forward, but use your back muscles to take your pelvis back. So you arch your back, like your tail comes up a little bit. Create a lordosis, the thing that everybody says you’re not supposed to do that. So the knees are straight. You don’t bend and with the knees straight, arch your back and take your tush backwards. Arch your back, take your tush backwards.

So you’re using your back muscles to move your pelvis a bit more behind you. And after you take it back a few times, just stop making the effort and feel how the pelvis falls down, goes down, goes back to place. So you arch it and then you just leave it. Arch it and just leave it, but don’t drop the shoulders.

You see, and that by the way, will tell you that you’ve lifted the chest when you did it, you see? You really just work the back and don’t counter it by going like this, “I’m not going to lift my chest.” Ok? If you do you do, these are the mistakes or variations and mistakes we learn from. But you arch your back and then you let it go. Then you arch your back and then you can let it go. Not quite so abruptly anymore because you felt what it means. But you just arch your back and you see I look at some people.

1[WHAT IS ARCHING THE BACK]



[AFTER DISCUSSION] So stand up again. And take, arch, use your back muscles to take your pelvis, it will be the bottom of the pelvis, back and then let it gently come back down. And within yourself, notice, don’t force yourself to not do something, but within yourself observe what it is that you are doing. And the feeling. Can you actually visualize the back of your pelvis? And which part of it goes backwards? And then letting it go.

2[DEMO]

[AFTER DEMO] Stand up.

I have to stop showing and explaining or you will never do the movement lesson. Here we go. Yes, of course it is very useful, but I’m trying to ……. I have a curriculum that I’ve got to get through. Anyway. (laughs)

Stand up. Go ahead and do a few more of those movements again. Feel yourself.

Remember, it’s not doing it right or wrong. It’s becoming aware of what you do and gradually sorting out what you’re doing and getting by approximations more and more to where it is what you’re trying and thinking that you’re doing. Excellent. Very nice.

4a. And feel how the shoulders let go, the arms let go because you’re using something that has nothing to do but you get taller. It’s very nice.

Some of you are still arching and driving the shoulders a little back. See if you’re doing it. Some of you are leaning backwards. Some of you are leaning forwards. Don’t worry about doing it perfect. Just look to know what you’re doing.

4b. All of you bend the knees a little bit. Just a touch and continue doing it. It will make it a little easier to do. Just bend the knees a little bit and continue doing. And when you drop it, focus on the feeling; accentuate your focus.

See for Virginia because she cannot arch the back, she needs to bend the knees.

Your knees are not bent John. They are? Ah ha! My mistake.

4c. And focus, notice, accentuate the movement of letting go. But you don’t have to drop it terribly abruptly, but the gradual letting go.

3[DEMO]

[AFTER DEMO] The rest of you stand up Go ahead and bend your knees a little bit. Arch, show your tail, now that seeing has made it clear to you. It’s not the shoulders, it’s not lifting the chest, its not



tightening the neck, it’s just not anything except that movement and then gently let go.

4d. And now, make sure that you stand at the, that the spreading of the feet is not too big, because you will see why in a second. You’re going to arch your back like that. Take your pelvis backwards and then as you let go, you begin to lift the right leg, foot off the floor as if you’re going to step forward, but you don’t step forward. Then put the foot back down and take the pelvis back again. And then let it go and lift the right leg in front of you, you can bend the knee of course a little bit if you’re going to step. So you coordinate.

You coordinate. You arch your lower back. You’re standing equally on both legs, with the knees a little bent. And then as you let go of the pelvis, you begin lifting your leg a little in front of you. Slowly, slowly but you cor….. As you put the foot back down, you keep the knees bent and you arch the back. You see, but….. Can I demonstrate on you a second, Sharon? Are you comfortable with that? Yes? No? You have to tell me. Because you said yes and no at the same time. So what have we voted for? Yes.

4[DEMO]

[AFTER DEMO] So everybody in their own specific configuration, but pretty much every human being unless they……

REST FOR A SECOND 5[COMMENTS ABOUT WALKING]

Slowly, slowly, do it.

There you go. So you arch your back, just to remind you. You’re standing on both …. but you don’t step yet. You just lift and you balance like that. So you have let go of your back when your right leg comes forward and then you arch your back as you put the foot back down, right foot.

4e. And now, do it and as you put the right foot down, put it a little in front of you and let go of the pelvis and bring some weight onto the right foot.

You have both legs bent, you arch your back, you lift the leg, you put it down, you let go and then you arch your back, you bring it back up and then you step on it forward, then you bring it back up. So you do just this little step, but you coordinate it with the pelvis, the lower back, the whole thing. Yes, every time you take the foot off the floor….

So it’s like you take it off with the pull. You see it’s the back that helps lift the leg. It’s the back that lifts the leg, rather than getting thigh muscles like you know some people with thighs like the Empire State Building. Because they don’t use the lower back enough.



And that’s when people tend to get injuries in the knees. You bend your knees a little, you arch your back. No, no, let me see what we’re doing. Have I said it wrong? You arch your back as you let go of the pelvis. Well after you do it one time, you lift it by arching and you bring it back down by letting go. You lift it by arching and you….by letting go. Yah. Because you don’t bring it symmetrical anymore. Yah. It’s ok, it’s ok. You lift it and let it go. You lift it. The other way around. You arch when you lift it. But not the shoulders. You’re taking especially the right shoulder, you’re taking it back. Did that confuse all of you well enough?

Lie on your back and rest. Feel the kind of impact changes this has on you.

5. Roll through the other side. Come up to standing. Now bend both knees a little bit and as you take, as you arch your back, lift your left leg off the floor and then as you put your left foot with a tiny step in front of you, do it as you let go of the pelvis. So you pull the pelvis backwards, you arch your back, you lift the leg off the floor, you put the leg down and let go of the pelvis.

But that is so undifferentiated.

Please go really, really slow and coordinate those two things. So you arch your back, you lift your left leg off a little bit and then you touch with the toes a little in front of you, because when the knees bent, the foot is a little in front of you. Do you realize that? And then you just place your toes. You touch the floor and then you begin letting go of the pelvis until the foot is fully on the floor. So it’s a very soft movement. Then you arch your back again. You start arching your back until the foot detaches from the floor and the knee bends a little bit and again and again like that. Yah, a little bit. You put weight onto the foot, but you don’t get off the other leg, other foot. You just have both feet down like that. Slow, slow, slow, slow, slow.

5a. And listen to your breathing. Make sure your chest is hanging, the best you can and each time.

And what, when would you be able to that with the chest really hanging and all the rest? When you find out how to support yourself through the skeleton!

Slowly, slowly. Each time you arch your back, you let the leg lift, the foot is in the air, and the left ankle is free, then you start letting go of the pelvis and put the foot down until both legs are down, then you take the pelvis back, arch it, arch it, arch it until, until, until you can bring the foot off the floor. And do that…..

John your elbows are tight. The upper part. There you go. That’s it. That’s better. You see it’s funny how those things we’re just…. We don’t know it. It just does itself. You feel like you’re slouching. Well finally! It’s time. This is an aging course. (Anat laughs.)



5b. And listen are you shortening the back of the neck? And gradually make sure you don’t shorten the back of the neck. There you go.

And you see, when you learn to use your back muscles, these are very powerful muscles, and you can regulate it, you can pull the pelvis back and coordinate it with the leg lifting off and then the moment you bring the toes back down as you let go of the tail and the letting go of the pelvis, puts the weight on the foot in front. Remember I probably told you more than once that we walk with our back we don’t walk with our legs? Well there you go. Some of you are starting to get an inkling of what that means. And let me tell you, anyone that walks like that, can walk like that perfectly well when they’re ninety, when they are one hundred. There’s no reason not to do that well at any age unless we went to sleep on ourselves and we do it poorly.

And lie on your back and rest for a moment. And feel how you are breathing now. 6[COMMENTS ON BREATHING AND THE WORK WITH THE BACK AND PELVIS]

6. Roll to your side, stand up. We’re going to do one more thing and then we will continue after lunch.

Probably some of you are already thinking lunch. Let’s do one more thing.

So you’re going to bend your knees and we are going to continue with basically the same thing. You’re going to arch, take your back backwards using the back muscles, lifting your right leg, bending it forward as you free your pelvis, you place the right foot in front and shift the weight so your left heel gets off and then come back. Arch the back, lift the leg, remember to arch the back. Go slow, slow, slow so you have time to think about everything.

Don’t lean forward too much. There we go. So it’s the back muscles that pull, help pick up the leg. So gradually you start thinking or feeling or both that it’s your pelvis that does eighty, ninety percent of the work of lifting the leg.

7[DEMO]

All of you. Go ahead. That’s an excellent neutral position to start from. Bend the leg a little more. You’re moving it like a wooden leg. Really feel how arching the back gets…… Don’t lift it way up, but enough that you really get it that you’ve lifted the leg. And let the knee bend and then come back. You start with the knee slightly bent so the knee is not rigid. And then arch the back to lift the leg. Until you really organize yourself, the arching of the back, really lifts the leg. That’s nice.

But Marlena, you bend the knee in front of you. You wanted that sensation, ok, ok, ok. That’s alright, ok. Then eventually connect it to the movement of the leg. You don’t want the leg behind you. Because the leg behind you will arch



the back. It’s arching the back and bringing the leg forward. That’s right, it’s a very different movement. There you go.

6a. And now do it the other way. That means stand on the two legs, the knees bent and then arch and lift the left leg and then when you let go of the arch, you bring the leg a little forward, you let go of the pelvis and the right heel lifts off the floor and then you come back by arching the back. That’s right.

6b. And now do it once one way and once the other. That means you arch the back, lift the right knee in front of you, let go of the pelvis and put the right foot forward. Then you move forward like that and then arch the back and lift the left leg and put the left leg forward and arch the back and lift the leg from behind and you bring it forward, let go of the pelvis, etcetera, etcetera.

Lisa, lean a little less, you’re maintaining balance by doing this. See if you can be a little more just up. Good. That’s right. That’s very good.

This is beautiful. Nice.

Then, it’s a little confusing because what you’re doing is you let go of your pelvis, you arch you back and bring the leg from behind forward.

Yah, yah, yah, I caught you. (Anat laughs.)

So each time the foot touches the floor, the pelvis lets go, you step on that foot, you arch the back to bring the other foot in front and let go of the pelvis.

That’s nice Charlie. You start looking like a big cat. Do you feel it? Arch the back, arch the back, but not the shoulder, not so much the shoulder. The back. You see, you’re twisting, you’re rotating especially on this leg. You see to come on this leg you rotate this shoulder a lot. See if you can just do it with the back. Because you’re going so slow you don’t need to…… Arch the back, arch it, arch it and bring the foot and bend it first (the knee).

You take the tush back, and you bring the leg forward. You don’t take the tush under to take the leg forward. You take the tush back to bring the leg forward.

6c. All of you stand for a moment. And simply do this movement. Take the tush back and lift the leg, take the tush back and lift the leg, tush back, lift the leg. Take the tush back. You see, and that’s what we’re doing.

Except we’re doing it slower and we’re doing with propelling ourselves forward, but do you feel? Many of you do this. (Anat demonstrates on herself that some are pulling the abdomen in to bring the leg forward.) Or whatever you do. Take the tush and let go. Take the tush….. So it’s really…. The leg feels very light. It’s doesn’t take much work to lift the leg, but not sideways, no. Not can-can. In front. Oh Dar… you can do can-can if you like. Your husband would appreciate that. There we go.

8[DEMO]



Now do just a few of those movements. You know it’s so interesting because for me it is just so obvious to do it and I don’t know what’s so hard. And then draw…. That’s it! And take…

6d. Use your back muscles to bring the leg forward and then when you step, let go of the back.

Time to rest.

John, got ya, got ya, got ya. First of all you have to be standing somewhere that I can feel that I can lean on you. Because you feel like you’re going to collapse if I lean on you. Maybe slouching is where you’re strong. Don’t do other things. There you go. Now I can lean on you. Now do it. Take the back backwards, the tush back. That’s it and step forward. I’ll walk with you. Don’t worry. Let go of the back when you put the foot down.

No, you see, that’s not your back. Let go of the pelvis. Now do the other side and step forward. You’re going to fall? Ok, we’ll fall together. Now do it. Now you see, let go. And now do it. There and then when you put it down, let go. And then do it again and let go. Do it again and let go. Better. I don’t think you’re going to get any further differentiation until you get some food.

So go and come back here at three o’clock.

GOOD BYE, THANK YOU.

1 [WHAT IS ARCHING THE BACK]

Some people are still taking the shoulders back. When you will do this with people one on one and you’ll have a student and you’ll put them standing and you’ll say, “Ok, arch your back.” You will see what they think that arching the back means. What they do in their brain. Where, how they hook things together and what things are stuck with what that maybe it shouldn’t be stuck, until they get differentiated, it’s not a possibility to do it. So it’s a little hard to see me when I’m walking between you. It’s kind of like I’m in the middle of a forest here, but if I can get to the camera. Here we go. So you see, someone….. Can you see me? I’m right here, so here we go. So you look at the… Who is the one who is going to take the picture? Cheryl. Ok. So, so some of you do this. (Anat arches her back and throws her shoulders back too.) And let me tell you, the people that do it like that, don’t know they’re doing it like that. Now you can look at them and it’s so obvious, you would think there’s no way in the world that they don’t know they’re doing it. Well, let me tell you, this is the way that they don’t know that they’re doing. Had they known, they would do something different.

It’s one of the things about awareness and the lack of …. I came up with this sentence. I don’t remember exactly, but I just wrote it last week, that one of the most stunning things about awareness is the lack of it. Don’t you think that’s brilliant? Isn’t it brilliant? I mean, I’m sorry, but it’s like it’s really stunning. You see somebody going like (Anat makes gyrations) and they don’t know they’re doing it. I mean, it’s like a metaphor. It can be the way they talk or the way they treat their child, or the way they…..we all have that. And to the outside observer, it’s just so obvious. You know, we can also get upset with them because we think they have to stop that, right? It’s ridiculous. Don’t they know? Well the answer is, no they don’t. So, so and it is very important as a teacher, that if goes and does this (Anat gyrates with her arms and legs.), I don’t know, does something extreme, just know they have no idea and that’s where you become useful. Like on the spot, that’s your point of entry of making yourself useful to them. Not by telling them that, “you



don’t know, but you’re doing this.” But by creating conditions and another variation and another until they realize it; they make the choice. It comes from them out, not from the out in. Because if from the out in, it worked well, we would all be perfect.

Here we go, so, people do that (Anat arches her back and elevates her shoulders) and people do that (Anat arches her back and leans her shoulders backward). That means that in their nervous system, there is no distinction between the shoulders or the pelvis, or the back of the pelvis or worse than that, there is no back of pelvis. We saw it yesterday. So when you tell someone to, “Take your pelvis back.” They take the shoulders back and something vague that they know the pelvis to be. Ok?

2 [DEMO]

Now this is a moment of perfection that I want to utilize. So turn around and look at Ginny. Ginny. How far down is your spine fused? (Ginny answers.) All the way down to the sacrum. So she has a fused spine. All the way down to the sacrum. From T2. So will we agree that she can’t really arch her back this way? No, no really, she can’t. But you will see, and that’s what I say and taking, going from the holographic picture and letting the details sort themselves out then going to the details, helping the hologram a bit and then going back to the…. So we’re doing the holographic thing. So go ahead and do it. Ginny, take the pelvis back and let go and take it back. You’re doing it a little different then when people….. You completely changed. Forget the audience and get connected internally. That’s not quite what you did before, but you see something is starting to happen. So you see within their restrictions, the system is looking how to get that relationship between the pelvis and the head, between the pelvis and space, between the pelvis and the lower back. Which means….. Look it, this is a person that should barely have walked and she’s skiing because of doing this work. She has to show the DVD to me so that I believe her. But you see, keep going. Now let me do it as if I’m doing a private lesson. Stand for me in neutral. Just stand. Stand. Do you normally stand with your knees bent? “More or less.” Ok, that’s fine. So however you stand. Now I’m going to put my hands here and you’re not going to be pressing into this and you’re not going to run away from it. Ok? And now, and think of taking your pelvis back a little bit. That’s it! There you go. You see? That’s what you did before when I watched you. Again. Don’t change here. Take your pelvis back. No, now you started back here (back/shoulder blades) again. You feel? So stand in your neutral. Stand in your neutral. Don’t change anything in my fingers. I’m not going to change anything. That’s it! And now take the tush back a little bit. A little bit and let go and a little bit again. It’s like something, awwwakkkkaa. But the system is looking how to get in touch with her hip joints actually. Because the hips still have those muscles in there. She can still move it a tiny bit. You see all of you take the pelvis, all of it with the hips without distinction because you can do it. Then we will create for you a few things in a minute where that will, but for, you see your hips are inside. They are right in here. (Anat places the top of her head into Ginny’s upper back) Don’t press into my head and don’t run away from my head. But take this back. You see this. (Anat grabs Ginny’s buttocks cheeks and pulls back and up at the same time.) There you go. Feel that? And now let it drop. And now that. There you see? You see that, and there you go.

So with a fused spine that cannot do the movement, the function is still essential for the system to have access to and doing it gets her benefit that is tremendous. You see? So it’s not about the detail necessarily working the way it works in other people, but taking the whole system and saying the function still needs to be there. Let’s see what else we will kick in to make that happen. Do you understand? It’s the function, it’s the search. It’s what you did by the wall this morning. It’s the search for doing the thing and figuring out what parts are going to kick in and which fashion.



There isn’t a right way to do it. There is the way that is optimal for you, given who you are and what you have available to your size and so on. And the process of looking to get there; that means differentiating and putting it together; is the process that gets us rid of pain, gives us the vitality, strengthens us and do everything better because we use our brain on a much higher level. We stop using it as if we were little, I don’t know, amoebas or something.

3 [DEMO]

Ya! Sorry, sorry what? Show, show, show me what are you doing? Ha! That maybe because you are British. That’s very interesting. (Anat is placing her hand on Chris Norris’s low back.) Let me just. Don’t do anything. Stand in neutral. Your neutral. Stand in neutral. Now take the pelvis back. Do you feel that you are doing something? Ok, so stay there and go further back. And now, let go. Let go more. Let go more. Does it still feel like letting go? Ah ha! Ok, and now leave it alone. Leave it alone. Stop doing that. Oh! I see what you do! You use inside your front muscles to bring the pelvis back down. (Anat points to the lower right quadrant of the abdomen just above the hip crease.) Very interesting! You use these muscles in here to bring yourself forward. (Anat places her finger tips on the left side of the spine in the low back region and her other hand is touching the lower abdomen in front.) You see? You use these muscles. You don’t just let go here, you actually do something actively in front. That’s why it feels this way. Go again. You see he doesn’t let go. He continues doing like this and then pulling in the other direction at the same time. You have a problem. Go down on all fours. (Anat points at Chris’s girlfriend, Doreen) You are not allowed to say anything. Seriously, you have to inhibit that. This is his moment sweetheart. It’s like having your mother in the training with you. (Chris is down on all fours on the floor.) Now, pull your belly in and tuck your thing under your tail. There you go. (Chris back gets very rounded.) And now, let go, let go, let go and then arch, arch, show me your tail. Show me your tail. No, no, no. Did you bend the elbows? No? Ok. Show me your tail. (Neil drops his belly and lifts his tailbone up toward the ceiling.) Now stop showing the tail so much. Just stop showing the tail so much. It’s a little….. You know, it will be better on the side. Gravity is doing too much work here. Lie on your side. Whichever side, I don’t care. And now, this is your neutral, you are doing nothing. You’re right in line and doing nothing, right? Now, show me your tail. Show me your tail. Show, show, show. And now, let go. That’s it, that’s the movement. Do it again. Arch. Show your tail. This is where your tail is. (Anat touches the top of Neil’s tailbone with the tip of her toes.) There you go. And now let go. And now, show your tail. Push my foot. Push my foot. There you go. And let go. Now, you feel its letting go. Do it again. See, because lying on the side. Ohhhh! Now you used the muscles in the front. Don’t use the muscles in the front. Arch. Now use the muscles in the front to bring you. Do it slower. Do it again and now use the muscles…. That it, that’s right, that’s exactly, right in here. That’s what you do. Now arch, arch. Show the tail. Show, show, show, be proud of your tail. And now, do nothing, just let go. No, now you used this. So arch, arch, arch. No, not the shoulder. Push this back. Now stop. Just drop it. That’s the letting go. Do it again. It’s very novel to you so it’ll take a little bit. There you go. And let go. No you didn’t let go, you pulled forward. Do you feel the difference? Are you starting to feel the difference? Ok, work with it.

[To Chris:] and you can lie down anytime you need to. All right! Bend your knees a little bit. Isn’t that interesting? Would you have ever guessed that such a handsome, wonderful, lovely, successful, intelligent man wouldn’t know how to just let go of his back muscles. But you see, you’re posture is already different. You see? Just from the exploration, there’s a transformation. That’s probably something from a very young age. It’s like buried in somewhere, God knows what.

4 [DEMO]



Ok, so turn a little bit. So just go ahead and do the movement and I’ll show you because I’ve seen it in a few of you. Look at Sharon. See when she does, that’s it and there you go and then she comes, you see the shoulders move back to place. So when you arch your back, you’re also doing this a bit. You see? So aside from taking the pelvis forward, you’re doing this and this. (Anat rocks Sharon’s shoulders forward and backward. So now decide where it is that you’re standing. Where it is up for you, but just take the pelvis back. There you go! Now you’re using the back muscles only, you see? Not that going forward is wrong; it’s just not what were doing now. So what doesn’t work is not knowing that you’re doing it. And now slowly bring the….drop the pelvis and now that’s what you’re going to be working on. So once you do it and you know that there is a smoothness that comes when you coordinate the letting go and the lifting the leg. And you put the leg back down and as you put it down, as the toes start….that’s when you start arching the back again. But not stiffening this…..Aghcheecha! (Anat touches Sharon’s upper chest. That’s it!!!! Now do it. Aaahh! You see, that’s the huge differentiation for you, also for a lot of other people. That’s perfect!!! But feel how much better you’re doing it. How immediately, aaahhheep! You just tightened the chest you see? So for you and it’s very intense. Because for you the idea of stepping comes with a rigidifying of the chest. True for …. That’s what we started working on yesterday. Right? There’s that thing where people what to ugh, bubhuh, move the arm, move right, everything, bang the chest, the belly. All of you go work on it. You see, that’s where you step in, you catch a short leash on your student. And then there is, also like Chris said, there is no choice, but to…..

There you see now you’re stopping doing it too. (Anat noticed Neil Sharp not stiffening his chest.) But with the pelvis, with the pelvis, with the lower back. Otherwise it doesn’t matter. Otherwise there is nothing to the lesson. The whole point is you….. But again it’s not rounding actively. It’s not like the pelvic clock where you to six, you go to twelve. Here you arch the back and then you start shifting the weight and letting go. It’s a big difference ….. You bend the knees.

When does somebody walk with straight knees? Sweetheart bend the….. What are you doing? This is so interesting Rebecca. This is so different from what I thought I was saying. Very interesting. I do love you. (laughs) It’s very cute. Bend your knees first of all. Both knees a little bent. Save that little bent thing. Have that little thingy….tha…..tha…..tha. (Anat is bouncing up and down using her knees.) Ok, that’s right. Now arch your back. Arch your back. And now begin lifting your right leg, your right foot knee as you let go of the pelvis. But you don’t straighten the other leg. Then as you put it back, you take the pelvis back. That’s only, that’s the movement, off and on the floor. There you go. And now, get a little lazy, get a little sloppy. (Anat places her finger tips on Rebecca’s back and on her upper chest.)There, that’s a girl. That’s a girl. Still free. There you go. And let go of the pelvis, let go, let go. That’s it! You see?

5 [COMMENTS ABOUT WALKING]

Unless there was a process by which you did this. Most people have learned to stand and walk and stopped developing it too soon. Right? And were influenced by schooling, sitting, fear, ideas of what’s right and wrong, too forceful gymnastics in school and what not, and the chest is over working and there is not the differentiation, the complexity of the configuration between the parts that allows for a true real panther like, you know, like you could walk. A ballerina can walk on one toe, right? When she is in the right kind of shoes. That’s how far the system can make it delicate and we have two full feet under us and we still act….. Anyway, you get it? It is very important to differentiate. This is an opportunity for a lifetime and this is so central to the sense of aging and to the typical injuries and the kind of trouble…and when somebody had a stoke, they had a stroke and on top of that they probably never stood well, never walked well, never had a high level of awareness, their brain is not ready to do things, so you have to do both at the same time. And very often, people that come to us with trouble, as a result of being with us feel better than they felt ever in their life. Right? Even if they’re not perfect yet, but there is some kind of vitality growth that happens that is so life giving.



6 [COMMENTS ON BREATHING AND THE WORK WITH THE BACK AND PELVIS]

Many of you will feel that the breath is, the movement of the breath is so much more evenly distributed and much easier and fuller. Another good criteria; for a sense of well being and vitality. And look how superior, this is a way to get people to improve their breathing rather than giving them and exercise where you say, “We count to ten, 1,2,3, 4 breathe in, breathe in harder, try harder, try harder.” And you have somebody sitting or standing completely crooked. They can’t breathe fully because the muscles are engaged too much in keeping them up. “Breathe out, breathe out, do exercise ooooyyyyybgh.” And you take somebody and you say, “Ah! Let’s not even talk about breathing right now. Let’s talk about being able to coordinate your pelvis with your leg movement.” Which requires people to start feeling what their doing with their bones and their relationship to gravity. At which time when it improves, the breathing spontaneously gets better. Then you can go into a breathing lesson to maximize it. But until people do that better, or if the breathing lesson itself does not improve the relationship between the head, the shoulders, the spine, pelvis and the ground, it’s a loss of time as far as I’m concerned.

7 [DEMO]

Let me just lean on you here for a second. (Anat wraps her arms around Jackie’s shoulders.) Let me exaggerate the pull of gravity. You’re doing the opposite sweetheart. Oh, no, no, no, no, I think you did the right thing. Now pick up the leg. I want to see what you’re doing. Ah, ha! Not quite there. Again. Arch, arch your back. OoooooooK. Bring back the leg. Bend the knees a little bit and now take the pelvis backwards to lift the leg. That’s it! You feel that? You’re really now working your……but you’re doing something funny. You arch the back to lift the leg, but you see, once you lifted the leg, you stopped arching. So again. Arch, it’s like… Let me, I’ll pull you from here. (Anat grabs Jackie’s pants from the sacral area with her left hand and pushes the back of Jackie’s thigh with her right hand finger tips.) You’re lifting the leg. (Anat pulls Jackie’s sacral area up at the same time as the right leg is lifted off the floor.) Lifting. You see that? That’s it. You see how that helps lift the leg? There you go. You see she doesn’t stiffen the chest and you see she gets taller. Just like when you sit on the side and you do this movement of turning around, you always get taller. You do the pelvic clock and go sideways or in the middle, you always get taller. It lengthens the spine. There you go girl. Now stay there and drop the chest. No, don’t do anything else, just drop the chest. Ah ha!!! You see? Now lift the chest. That’s the extra you don’t need. Drop the chest, let it go. Now lift the chest. That’s it, now drop the chest. You see, because you can work your back muscles, you don’t know it, but you think you need help it by doing that. And now, let’s do it one more time. (Anat holds the occiput of Jackie’s skull with both hands from behind and moves Jackie’s head about to get her to let go of tension in her neck. Once Jackie is relaxed and over her skeleton Anat says..There, there and now do it. Put it down. A little less on the chest. A little less on the chest. Here we go. Don’t want to feel anything in the chest. Lower back, lower back. That’s right! You feel how calm this can stay? How free this can stay? (Anat points to Jackie’s chest and neck.) You see, there you go. Look at it. And now when you come down, you let go and put it a little in front (Jackie’s right toes)and you go like that. (Jackie steps fully on her right foot and moves forward and then rocks back onto her left foot.) Back up, back up. (Anat cues Jackie to use her back and arch it as she rocks back onto her left foot and lifts her right foot, bends, her right knee.) There you go. That’s it.

8 [DEMO]

Linda looks at me like, “Oh my God, this woman is too much, yes?” It’s exciting. That’s ok. Take your time, take your time. Tush back, leg forward. Back, back more, more, take your tush….. You see Linda. Oh I’m looking at you with an evil eye. Now take the tush backwards, but bend the knee at the same time. You see, you took it ahead of time. Yah, and then you tend to lean like this. (Anat shows Linda how her shoulders go back.) You see, your shoulders are way behind.



That’s it, don’t get too relaxed on me sweetheart. You’re suppose to be standing. Here we go. Now take the tush and arch the back and lift… What you see you do is arch your back and stiffen the knee, straighten the knee. Arch the back and bend the knee. Arch the back and bend the knee. That’s it! And now, do the other side. Arch the back....arch, arch, arch, arch. Not the neck, the back. (Anat reaches behind Linda and cues her low back to arch by gathering the back muscles on Linda’s left low back.) But bend the knee. You see the arching of the back helps lift the leg. It’s like this. (Anat demonstrates on her self how lifting her tail, brings up the right knee.) But you can’t lean on the shoulders behind you, because you can’t arch the back. No you’re doing sideways. Can you stand in front of her? (Anat motions to Rebecca the stand in front of Linda.) Put one hand on her chest and you stand so she can lean into you. Lean into her a little bit. That’s right. (Rebecca has her hand on Linda’s chest and Linda is leaning into Rebecca’s right hand and bent right elbow. Rebecca is directly in front of Linda.) Now arch you back and bend the knee at the same time. Ah! Do again the same leg. That! (Anat grabs onto Linda’s left buttock cheek and helps her to lift it.) That! No, don’t throw the head back. Lift the leg. No, lift the leg. I only have two hands sweetheart. Lift the leg. This, this, this. That’s it! You’re starting to put the knee forward. You see, she gets confused. She takes the pelvis back, she takes the leg back. She takes the leg forward, she takes the pelvis forward. It’s called, “We need to differentiate.”

Go ahead. Here’s that tush again. Here’s that brain again. You know, oh darn. But do you feel? It’s so new to you. And it’s not by chance that you have troubles with your hips and part of the troubles is because it wasn’t differentiated. Part of the non-differentiated is because you have troubles. You know, we don’t know if the egg or the chicken but we have a big omelet there. Scrambled eggs with some chicken meat.



TML 4: Standing on Knees to Standing (#2 of Series)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) Notes:

1. On your knees. By the way feel how you are standing on your knees, like you’ve been on your knees forever. No wobbliness, nothing.

What happened to you? Have you eaten some cement? Do you feel how when the brain gets more refined differentiation, it can go to where it needs to go. So it’s not the stiffness that gets us to stand, it’s actually the other way around, except it looks like you’re just there, solid. How do you like that?

Put your right foot standing, see how that goes. Put it back down.

Remember we worked on that like crazy?

Put it back down and do it again and see if you can do it in a way……

1a. Are you stiffening your chest, are you holding your breath? How about you remember all that stuff and think it through.

That was pretty cool, John. I saw that. That’s much better. You feel? It’s still not perfect, but I’m glad so we still have something to do.

1b. Now keep the foot there. Keep the foot there and put the left hand on the floor, lean on the left hand. And now, put the toes of the left foot for running. Don’t lean on both hands. You can put the other hand on your other knee or foot or whatever works for you. And now, very gently, do the movement that will get the left knee to start coming off the floor a little bit.

And make sure first of all that you remember the pressure as much as you can is between the big toe and the second toe.

It’s just remarkable to see how different you are now than 2 days ago. So between the TML’s and the FS, I’m sure the FS has made a huge difference for all of you.

1c. Let the head be free, let the head hang down. Do not shorten the neck at this point. Do not look up.

Anat Baniel Method Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 4: Standing On knees to Standing (#2 in Series)


And feel that really the movement, the brunt of the movement is in the hip joints. That means that you do not shorten the neck, you do not arch your lower back.

Heidi, now is my answer to what your comment yesterday. You could do it, but you do not arch the lower back here. You keep the back, the spine as one unit that moves a bit in space.

Victoria, you just shortened your neck, but I think you became aware of it.

So you see its one unit.

Press on the toes a bit in the back.

You make sure you also press ….. The pelvis lifts up a bit, the head goes down a bit and you come down and do it eventually so that you do not fall when you come back down. So the pelvis up and the head down.

1d. Now take your right hand and get hold, if you have any hair at the top of your head like…. Not the top, top, but you know where the hair there is always a circle for everybody, the hair kind of parts. Kind of the back of the top of the head. Crown. Crown, thank you. And now lean on your left hand and gently pull on your hair and it’s as if you’re pulling…... But the head down, the head down, don’t shorten the neck. It’s as if the pulling of the hair brings the pelvis up and straightens a bit the left knee. And make sure that you do not interrupt with the breathing.

Excellent, lie on your back and rest.

Just notice of course changes, reorganization, compare side to side, five lines, breathing, general feeling of self, sense of quite, reduced agitation. Usually not, but sometimes people feel more agitated for some reason. Just notice yourself in different dimensions.

1[comments]

2. Now roll to your side and stand on your knees and maybe each time roll through the other side; you know once right or once left or whatever you’re doing. And stand on your knees and place your left foot standing again; do it once or twice, bringing it standing and taking it down.

And see if you can do it in a way where your chest is really free, that your breathing is uninterrupted, your neck does not get short, your arms stay free.

And if you don’t do it like that, if you do hold your breath or if you do tighten something, or you do lose balance a little bit, so be it, do it again. It’s not like you’re going far.



2a. And now stay with the left foot where it is, put your right hand on the floor. Right away get hold of your hair where your crown is. Now I know where the crown is. Try to find some hair there. That’s a mean comment on my part. And now very gently, make sure the back of your neck is free and very, very gently begin pulling a bit on the hair like that, to bring yourself to lift a bit the right knee. The head actually goes down, a little forward, but mostly down and the pelvis goes up. Make sure you also press a bit on the toes and don’t have the pressure towards the little toe. Put the foot where the pressure can be, between the big toe and the second toe. Neck down, neck down.

Victoria, Victoria aaaaah, that’s it. Every time you shorten the neck, whether you want it or not, you’re interrupting the breath and stiffening your chest. You know it, you don’t know it, it doesn’t matter, you’re doing that.

Lie on your back an rest.

3. Roll to your other side and come onto your knees. Put the right foot standing.

And this time, put your right hand on the floor in between the two legs; inside of the right leg. You can hold the hair of the crown if you like with the other hand, and feel and put the toes like for running and resume doing this movement and feel how different it is. Like a whole other world, can you feel…..oooopah! Take your time.

3a. Can you feel how different, hugely different?

And it’s only a slight change, one arm, then the other one, but look what a demand it puts on your system to figure out now how to work in relation to gravity and without getting thigh’s of an elephant, without ruining your knees. Slowly, take your time.

Don’t succeed in doing it, but succeed in keeping the chest free, in breathing without interruption. That’s much more valuable.

3b. Now put the other hand close to the right hand; put the left hand, the two hands very close to each other and do it this way and see if it becomes a bit easier, but take your time.

Some of you immediately tighten the neck.

No, the hands are next to each other. Next, next, next to each other. Close, touching, touching, touching, touching. There you go. Close to each other.

So the base is still small, but a little bigger. Do you see what happens here?

3c. And feel how much, just increasing the base a tiny bit.



But it’s not bending the right knee a whole lot and then coming up.

Doreen, it’s not that. It’s taking the head down and the tush up. It’s not driving the body a lot forward. There you go. Slowly, slowly.

The elbows can I hope so, but they’re not suppose to. Why bend the elbows? You’re coming up.

3d. And now one time lift one hand and do it, one time lift the other hand and do it, but keep the hands where they are. Just one time take one hand away and do it and one time take the other hand away and do it.

3e. And one time with both hands. How about that?

3f. And gradually feel that you’re moving your two hip joints. Your hip joints are just behind where those dimples are.

Remember the two hip joints, the whole spine, the rib cage, moving it in space, so the head goes down, the tush comes up and that’s why the knee comes up.


Let me tell you there is a way to do it so it is very easy and that’s what we’re looking for. So if you want to learn how to work with people that need you for vitality and anti-aging, right now I need to bring you to the level where you feel like you need anti-aging. Some of you think it is somebody else’s problem, not yours. But once I take away your hand and put the other hand in, all of a sudden, all of you need anti-aging. Or in other words, upgrading the demand, and creating the process of improving the relationship between the person and the gravitational field, or the ability of the person to negotiate their own body and the gravitational field, to be awake, to be able to differentiate, to be able to breathe, etc. etc. So it’s no different whether you do this or something that for you is easy to do. It’s once you encounter difficulty, what do you do? So you have to bring the people to the point of difficulty and then you can learn what to do with difficulty. If you feel it is easy, even if you do it poorly you wouldn’t know.

4. Roll to your side, the other side. Put your left foot standing. Put your left hand from inside close to the left foot. Get hold of your hair so you don’t lean on the other hand, let the head drop down and take your time. Take your time to figure out a way to organize yourself so that you will be able to easily press a little bit on the toes of the right foot and lift the pelvis up and the head down.

And enjoy the time right now that it feels difficult, because that’s the time where you can most learn. When you get wobbly, say “Oh my God, all it is, is just the other arm and the base became different. The base is now on a diagonal rather than a square or a triangle.

It’s one line. You have the knee, the foot and the hand. So you’re sort of running a line. You don’t have the triangle anymore. So that’s very



much less in stability. But the less the stability the more you have the opportunity to do things.

4a. And now, put the other hand next to this hand and do a few movements and feel that just this little bit makes a huge difference or does it?

4b. And now one time lift one hand and one time lift the other hand and then one time do with both hands. And feel.


5. Come back on your knees please. Roll through the side. Come back on your knees.

By the way, it is nice to see you guys getting into the position easier, faster. Do you feel your pelvis and head know better what to do? So you are getting other benefits that are not even focused directly on the lesson.

Put the right foot to stand and put your right hand inside and what you’re going to do…. The left hand is not on the floor. The left hand is somewhere behind your back, holding your hair, whatever you want. And now, you’re going to, in a second, do the same movement, put the toes of the left foot for running. And first of all, just do the movement and feel the quality now, if it became a little easier and a little less wobbly already? It looks better to me, am I correct? For most of you it is.

5a. Now move the right hand in front of the right foot, so more to the right and do the movement. And see if it becomes a little more wobbly again?

5b. And now, move it to the right of the right foot and do it.

Free the neck. Free the neck.

5c. And then take it a little more to the right and lean on it, but maybe not so much so where you can still get up and start moving the hand a little closer to the right foot and then in front of the right foot and then inside the right foot and then more to the left, but still the right hand. Do you understand what I’m saying?

So you check out all those different places, to lean on the right hand as you do the movement and remember what the movement is and gradually looking to make it as easy no matter where…….



That’s excellent Ellen except that you came down with a smack. That was very good. You see. Look here for a second. Just let go of the neck. You see when she did it, go ahead. You see she figured she has to twist the pelvis. You see when she puts the right hand over to the left; she does something very different than when she puts the right hand on the other side, maybe, oh you can’t do it yet. Ok, but you see there needs to be an enormous amount of freedom between the hip, the foot, the shoulder and the arm to re-negotiate as you change around the leaning point. The reason all of you all of a sudden fell when you leaned on the right hand close to the foot initially is because you kept the chest the same way as you had it as it was before. But it has to adjust. Once you figure out how. But to adjust, you have to contort yourself in a good sense, you have to contort yourself.

So go ahead and explore.

You see in one direction, Ellen doesn’t know how to do it yet, and in the other direction, she does it very well. She somehow knows how to move the pelvis relative to the chest. It is not an intellectual thing, it’s a feeling thing. But gradually look to make it as easy…..

It’s the right hand you’re leaning on. You’re making your life easy there. No wonder it became so easy. I thought, “God I have improved so much so fast.” Well maybe you can learn from that.

There you go. Put the right hand in different positions. So you know how to direct yourself so you know how the weight will be carried by your bones.

Remember I told you that people who age, they lose that feeling and they can’t move freely, they’re not swift; it’s harder to manage unexpected events, so there’s more falls. But it’s not like it has to be.

5d. Now change the hands and put the left one down and put the left one close to the right foot. Put the left hand close the right foot and then more to the left, more to the right, put the left hand in different places where the right hand was.

That’s basically what I’m trying to tell you. Don’t lean on the other hand.

There you go.

But also bring the hand close to the right foot, past the right foot, perhaps to the right.

Oh, nice, Sejun put the left hand behind the right foot. Interesting, why not?

Feel if you want to take the left hand past the right foot to the right. What do you need to do with your chest? Feel how much more mobility and let the head still hand down. You see all of a sudden your chest and pelvis are too much like one little lump.

Lie on your back and rest. Sure makes the initial movement seem like nothing.

I think that really the best thing in life for all of us, if there were summer every two and a half months, we could go for nine days, we could give it a name; do



the process for the rest of our life. It’s really, truly talk about life giving. It’s like have you taken your vitamins today? Four times a year. Yes, give me another year and a half and we might start doing it. Maybe we won’t do it nine days, maybe four or five. It’s a little much. Until such time…..

6. Roll to your side and come on your knees. Put the left foot standing and

lean on the left hand close to the left foot. You can hold the hair if you want with the other hand or just take your right hand away from the floor, however you wish to do it. And now, put the toes like for running of the left foot and start lifting the knee like that and then start taking the left hand next time in front of the toes and then over to the left even and take your time.

It’s a marvelous opportunity each time when it doesn’t work quite well, or you’re not sure, reduce the effort, soften the chest, let go in the chest, reduce the effort in the neck. Let yourself breathe in an uninterrupted fashion and guess what? You’ll probably figure out how to do it.

So don’t struggle with it. Don’t muscle your way through. Excellent! Excellent! Very nice. But the neck, Sejun. The back of the neck let it go. That’s it, that’s much better.

6a. Switch the arms, switch the hands and gradually try to put our right hand where your left hand was, in the different places your left hand was.

6b. And you can always check whether your right foot is where you really want it to be. The fact that you put your toes somewhere doesn’t mean they have to stay there forever. You can check which is the best place for them. And see maybe it’s a certain direction you want to move where your toes are. It might help you.

Done. Enough. Roll on your back and rest.

7. Roll to your side. Stand on your knees please and have your toes flat and

the toenails are touching the floor and legs spread comfortably. And slowly simply take your pelvis back and sit on your heels. Go down to sit if you can on your heels. Excellent. Or the closest that you can, that’s good enough. Without pushing on your hands, come back to standing on the knees and put the right foot standing. So you know that you are doing it with the idea that you’ll have your right foot standing. And then bring the leg back to place and sit and then come back to standing on the knees and put your left foot standing.



And now, of course, go back the next time you do it you’re going to alternate the legs.

7a. But the next time you do it, maybe get a hold with both of your hands, the hair on top of your head, let the head hang down, at least a little bit, it doesn’t have to be extreme and pull your head and feel which trajectory do you need to pull your head.

So you see you will take your head forward and down to bring the leg to standing all in one movement.

So between the… From the hip joints to the top of the head, the chest doesn’t change. The movement is in the hip joints. And moving the whole upper part in space in a certain way.

You can hold with only one hand if it is too hard to do two hands.

But just do it, one movement and back.

So why don’t you put a soft foam roller between your legs and your tush so you don’t go so low. Because it’s not about going all the way to your heels. It’s about the rest of it. Maybe you’ll want the bigger one or two of them. Ok, good.

And lie on your back and rest actually. 2[DEMO]

8. Ok (everyone) so now; let’s say we start with the right foot. Be on the toes of

your right foot and start sliding the right leg back until you come down on your right knee.

8a. And feel, where do you take your head? And where do you take your shoulders and everything so you don’t fall like you did and bumped on your knee?

8b. And come back up and then do it the other way. So slide back.

That’s excellent Sandy. You see, keep sliding back until the back leg…. Here I have an idea for you. Ok, I have an idea. Look at me. Let’s make my life a little more complicated so that it comes easier. When you start taking your leg back, make sure that you can do this (leg sliding back wobbles loosely) with the back leg as you go down. That means that the back leg doesn’t stiffen. You don’t tighten it. You don’t have to do it the whole time, but every so often, make sure your leg is free. Because that’s not what makes it go. What makes it go is the way you balance the weights. That means you have to take the head down. The head drops. The head goes way down.

You see, Alice, you stopped at a certain point. You felt? And then your thigh muscles kicked in like there’s no tomorrow. Auup! You don’t let yourself go more down and forward. There you go. The tush then comes up.



You see, the tush has to come up.

8c. And do it once with one leg and once with the other.

You see, so when you go down or you come up, the head goes almost half way down to the floor from the standing position or even a little more. So in order to go up, the head has to go down half way and in order to go down the head has to go down half way. But the part where it is most confusing to people is the going up. When they go up, people try to have the head up, but that’s the last thing that comes up is the head.

There you go. Nice, you’re doing a good job.

And if you need to help yourself with a hand here and there a little bit, do! Until you feel, it doesn’t matter.

Assist with the hand whenever you need to so everything is soft, soft, soft, soft, soft.

Kind of like a breath. It’s like an exhalation. You exhale and you are on your knee and foot and you exhale and you are back up. Or inhale and you are back up if you want to do it that way.

8d. And now take the head low enough that you can put the foot down. You know go down with the knee and then all the way, so that you feel you can take the leg behind and sit on both legs. So you go all the way to sitting, you understand? And then you come back.

We are combining the two movements…..no, no you take….you bend the knee back, like we did before. You see, you remember we did that?

Then you bring back, you put the same foot up and come to standing.

Then you start taking the other leg behind you all the way to sitting on both knees and vice versa.

8e. And see if you can do it without bringing the head up in the middle. So when you are on one knee and one foot, stay with the head down. All the way up; and then you stand all the way up, you bring the head up and then you go all the way down with the head half way down to the floor until you sit. And then you can sit up if you like, or not, it doesn’t matter and then you bring the leg back up and you keep the head down so the tush can go up all the way until you stand up.

Go down like that and roll on your back and rest for a minute or if you are already down, don’t come back up.

Do you feel how nice that is?

3[COMMENTS ABOUT A WORKSHOP IN CHICAGO]



9. So now come on your knees. Yah, its ok, stop complaining, come on your

knees. Spread them and now put your toes standing and do it so that the heels are closer than the toes. So the toes are a bit apart and the heels are more or less touching. Spread you knees a little wider for those of you who don’t have them spread. And now put your hands on the floor somewhere close to your knees, you’ll see in a minute. And now, lift your right knee off the floor. The right knee off the floor and put it back and then lift your left knee off the floor and put it back.

9a. Now, what’s the easiest way to do it? Do it the easiest way. That’s right, let the knee go sideways. I don’t know why some of you are not doing that.

So it’s almost like you sit on the other………But stand on your toes, Jackie. Stand on your toes and the heels are close to one another.

So it’s like the tush goes toward one heel, then the tush goes toward another heel, right? There you go.

9b. Now, lean only on your left hand and do both knees.

But the heels a little closer to each other if you can. You need to spread the knees in order for the heels to come close.

And where would you put that hand? Where would you put that hand to help you? Yah, but not everybody’s doing it! So where is your brain?

9c. Now put the hand in such a place that you lift the knee and go backwards towards sitting on your heels.

So you lift the knee and you go back with the tush towards your heels. It will already will decide where you sit don’t worry.

9d. And lift the other knee. You see when you lift your left knee you realize that you need your left hand somewhere towards the middle. So how about you just keep it there. Or at least move it when you need to.

9e. Do both knees at the same time.

Now you really know where you need your hand.

Both knees at the same time.

9f. You see how all of you are correcting your hand? Well how come you need to correct it? Why don’t you have it there all of the time? If that’s



the place you need it for the hardest demand, you could certainly use if for the lesser demand.

Lie on you back and rest. 4[COMMENTS AND STORY]

10. Come on your knees. But that’s great. His learning switch is on, that’s for

sure. Put your toes like for running, the heels together. We are going to take a break in a second. Heels together, the toes a little apart. And now lean on which ever hand you didn’t lean on before. Your right hand, right? And bring it close enough to the knee so that you can lift one knee and the other knee, but where you feel you can use the arm.

So don’t listen to my instruction, believe me, do what works for you. Don’t go from belief.

Move the hand one way, place the hand further, closer, more to the right, more to the left until you feel and that will reduce the spasticity or tightness in your chest and that will train you to have the freedom to move in different ways. There you go. And mostly have an awake being.

10a. See which shoulder blade gets in the way. In which direction does your shoulder blade get in the way of your movement?

10b. And now, put both hands down and then do one knee and then the other, but spread your knees.

Victoria, do never let the furniture decide your life. So why don’t you take another green thing, so that the size of the pad is not deciding how much you spread your knees. Unless you’re stuck, you know somewhere and you have no choice, but otherwise if you have a choice, the only limitation is inside your brain.

You have one knee and then the other, not together yet.

One knee, feel how the pelvis goes one way.

10c. Feel which shoulder blade needs to get free each time you do one knee. Which shoulder blade tends to limit you?

Don’t move the hand.

How about you just cut off the arm and it will be really easy. That’s the whole point.

But you’ll see, very often your clients can’t do something with their legs because of their shoulder blades and you won’t even know that, or you wouldn’t think about it.



10d. And now do both knees at the same time. Do both knees at the same time.

That’s magnificent.

Take the pelvis back. So you bring both knees as if you’re going to sit. There you go. As if you come to bring the weight onto your feet, the soles of your feet.

10e. Come to this position and hop onto your feet and stand up.

There you go.

11. And just feel what it means to stand up now. Probably a little different than it was an hour or so ago.

And you see the process, it never ends, the next stage, the next stage, the next approximation.

11a. See how you are breathing now. More of you will be breathing in standing now.

That’s fantastic for you.

11b. Ok, walk around. Soon you will feel that you signed up for some kind of prison camp or something program. You will get vital if you want to or not. Dead or alive you’re going to get vital.

11c. Lift one arm, lift the other arm. Feel how the arms are coming up with this. You feel? It’s as if you worked on your arms, even though you haven’t.

11d. And turn around to look to the right, and turn around to look to the left. Thank you very much. Thank you.

END OF LESSON

1 [COMENTS]

Who was it? Yah, it was in the groups, this one hour classes that we’re doing. We had at the end of Thursday, a woman came up to me, it was her second week. The first week was the week before and she said that after the lesson and for a few days her thinking was so clear, she said she just couldn’t believe it. So her big impact that she was thinking of was actually the awareness that she got of the shift in the clarity in her thinking. It is very important that you scan it in yourself and you realize that, as you well know, but that you remember. It’s very easy to stay focused on the so called body movement and forget all the other dimensions that are as important.

One of you here, that will stay unnamed, because they asked me to do it so, has come up to me and said that doing this work over time has really impacted his ability to feel gratitude, to experience joy. I don’t know why he doesn’t want to share it with everybody because it’s such



good stuff, but it doesn’t matter. The relationship with his family. You know, so, so even though there is no question that also the breathing, the standing, all that is also extremely important and has also been influenced, but that was sort of in the foreground of again that person’s awareness’s, the value to the work first of all for yourself, but then also as a teacher you need to stay very open to the different dimensions that what you will do with people can have.

2 [DEMO]

Now, are you supposed to be able to do that? So I want all of you to look at Linda. Come on. Go do it. Show. Just take it, reconnect. So here is Linda and she has been told by this one physician if not more. Take your time, take your time. One physician if not more that she has to do a hip replacement and this and that and whatever. I forgot all the details. And look at the superiority, the hologram, the function, that when the brain knows what it’s suppose to be doing and gets the time to figure it out, look what she can do. There you go. Look at that. And now go back. And you see, when you go back, let yourself go as low down as you let yourself go when you come up. You see. There you go. How about that? And how about that? And that? And that? And how about down. See all of you are stingy about letting your…. And now the other leg. There you go. You see you actually guide the whole movement through the…… There you go. There, you see the other leg. There you go. Do it yourself without me now.

Ah! No! You see she stiffened the neck, but I help her feel you see that’s where it goes. Sorry I got in your way. You see, it’s a daring thing to do because you go way forward. But look. But you make room for the leg, you see that’s the movement. And that’s what happens with little children. They do it when they do it well, but when they can’t, people make them stand up and they’re… I talked to you about it in the children’s mastery. The same thing. How many of them walk like this? Too many, right? Now so the thing is that you go over and you go down. But you use the weights, you see you use the weights of the body so it’s all in the hip joint. Right now when I do it on my left leg it’s all in the left hip joint. Now if I bend the knee, I can fold myself different ways so I come to different positions. But the fundamental thing is the same. So you take way weight forward and then you don’t have to work much because you go weight, weight, it is like a seesaw. And that’s what I talk about a brain that’s awake because when you go straight like that and the knees and everything right? And that’s what happens; either when you need to learn to do it growing up or have difficulty with that or when you’re older and you’re starting to lose it or you have difficulty or injury. But you see how well you do it, hip joint or no hip joint, it becomes a detail. Now if it gets to the point where it’s so rubbing and inflamed and even then you got out of pain. I know you have bone on bone, so even, but that takes a lot of work, you have put a lot of time, effort, you come to the trainings, so on. So some people might chose to do the hip replacement, but then they’ll need to do this work anyway. You get that? So stand up. Stand up. You feel? You did it quite well, but then I realized you’re doing it and still stiffening the chest. That means you’re not feeling safe doing what you’re about to do. You superimpose it on yourself. And then you try to do it against yourself, which is what we all do, stiffen the chest, we hold the breath and we muscle through it and life is no fun. We deaden our sensitivity; we deaden that thing that is required for vitality. So we try to get better but we do it in a way that makes us worse. Makes sense?

3 [COMMENTS ABOUT A WORKSHOP IN CHICAGO]

I taught a workshop a bunch of years back in Chicago and one of the persons that actually worked with me and got quite remarkable outcome. He was then I think probably in his early or mid forty’s and he was just about the following week to get surgery on his shoulder for rotator cuff this or that and he’s been in pain for a long time and his wife managed to convince him to take the workshop and by the second day he was pain free and he cancelled the surgery. So then I came back to Chicago, whenever it was and he brings with him his 85 or something like that year old mother. And she just had hip replacement surgery apropos. Very lovely woman, very sweet lady and had a really, really, you know very precarious just standing, just walking and she had none of this work



before the surgery, she had trouble before, so after the surgery she was almost fully toasted. You know, it was like didn’t many….. She didn’t have a very good outlook, let’s put it this way.

My father happened to be in the US and as you know my father, then he was probably maybe her age or a few years younger than her or something, but a contemporary, right? And she was so poorly off. I mean, two-three people had to help her down to the floor; and at the end of the lesson, two-three people had to pick her up, bring her up. So I decided I’m going to build the workshop so she and everybody else can get up and down from the floor easily. Cause what else did she need? And of course the going down has in it all the elements of everything else, right? The going down and up. So I didn’t say to her or anybody else that I was going to do it, because if I told her she was going to be able to do it she would have probably frozen and left the room; got fearful. I started doing and then I did a couple of lessons that lead to it and I plunked my father next to her and I said to my father in Hebrew so she didn’t know what I say. I said, “Would you mind lying next to this lady, because she had an idea of how she’s suppose to be because of her age?” He said, “OK”. And then I started teaching a specific way of learning to come up from sitting to standing and back down. And I on purpose looked away from her. I didn’t want to know, I didn’t want to get involved. I handled my own issues there and at a certain point, because I had a big room so I had plenty of people to focus on, and I made comments and I just put my father next to her and he knew, he is very smart, very quick and he knew what his job was, right? So he said nothing to her, but he just did things slowly and he has white hair, right? So she could identify with him. And at a certain point, from the corner of my eye, I see her getting up, going down, getting up, going down. I went and I kicked her son. I said, “Look at your mother.” He almost fainted. That was on the second day of the workshop. Eighty-five years old, after surgery. Just to show you what is possible.

4 [COMMENTS AND STORY]

Actually, look at me. See, it’s not just for anti-aging. It’s so much for anti-aging and vitality. I think I told you the story, if I have I’ll do it brief and if I haven’t you’ll hear it for the first time. So….but I’m almost certain I told you the story in the Children Mastery. So when I was observing Moshe work and they brought this girl from Germany and she had an accident. She fell on the lawnmower or handle or something, went in through the eye to the brain. So there was brain damage and complete blindness in one eye. She was of course a sweet girl, five years old or something. She was in direct need for the work. Something very interesting occurred. It all happened in German so I didn’t understand what they were saying, but there were the two parents and there was Moshe and he put the child on her back and he just looked at her and stared and stared and he wouldn’t touch her and he just did a little something then stopped and stared and stared. He had the parents, one sit here and one sit there on either side of the table and then he moved both parents to one side and then he moved both parents to the other side and he never ever touched her. So here they are for that lesson, they flew all the way from Germany and he doesn’t work on her. You know, they are going to be paying for the time and it’s very peculiar.

But talk about integrity and talk about purpose. You know his purpose is to help the girl. His purpose is not to impress somebody or to do the right thing that they think is right or any of that nonsense. And then there was German talk back and forth and I didn’t understand anything, that was the end of the morning and he and I went to have lunch at his brother’s across the courtyard. His brother used to cook the lunches. And I said to him, “What happened?” And he said, “She has one eye that’s completely blind and when she lay on the back, she had the blind eye in the middle.” He said, “Either her brain is good for nothing and I can’t help her or I needed to understand how her brain made the selection to put the blind eye in the middle? Because with a healthy nervous system all of you will do it in two seconds. I’ve had you do this before. Cover one eye and look around and then bring the head to what would be the middle and see where do you put your head? After you move the head, look around a little bit. Look one way and then another way and then stop and just be somewhere. Where would you keep…..? You see the eye comes to the middle.



So in ten seconds, you bring your eye to the middle. And here she’s blind and …. Close one eye and move it to the middle and see what the world becomes like. You see? Cover one eye with the hand and then put your hand, that eye in the middle. It’s terrible, you see half the world. It’s very disorienting, very difficult. So she did that. So if there is a brain that is so out of touch with itself, that doesn’t have, and the system that is so out of capacity to take care of its needs, his work wasn’t going to be helpful anyway. You need a brain that says yes to good stuff. Right? So he wanted to know what happened and that’s why he asked all those questions in German which I didn’t understand, but then he told me that what happened was that they did the brain surgery and they needed to immobilize her head for a couple, three, four months, two, three months. So they put a cast, right, around? So she really couldn’t move the head and the person who did it had no idea about function and when they did it, they just put it so that the blind eye was in the middle. And she is a little child, she grows very fast, so her bones, skeleton, everything grew to match where the head was. So when they took off the cast, that’s where the head was. Once he knew how it occurred…. But you see the understanding, the thinking, that’s what I call the hologram. You can start doing detail and he wouldn’t even give her lessons until he was convinced that there was a brain there that could and should get lessons.

And of course you could say maybe if I work her brain would get better, but that’s a whole other conversation. So he did that and when he found that out, first of all he was so upset. It was like so stupid, but it’s not malicious, just ignorance on the part of the people, but he found it to be barbaric. (Rob asked Anat a question but it was not picked up on the microphone.) Anat answered: Well what he did was…. She grew a certain way, there was the habit there and even in a five year old, the bones grew to support the configuration with the blind eye in the middle. Once he knew what it was, he just went after it like a missile, a heat seeking missile. And I remember he had her in a position where she was on her belly and she turned the blind eye up, because the skeleton…. Boy, first of all he made it so it would easier for her to turn the head the other way, but because of the casting, it wasn’t easy for her to do. But once it got easy she still didn’t get it and he just like yanked on the arm and he created a situation that called upon the head to turn the other way, but he did not turn the head. He did not turn her head until she felt it and turned it herself. I would never forget it the rest of my life. It was like I have never seen a movie that kept me more in suspense like that. Because I knew what was happening and you know, he always worked so gently and so carefully and especially with a child like that, just so God like, his work was just so God like. But then with this kid he first did the God like thing where the spine could go easy here and easy there and one shoulder, but she still had the blind eye up.

So then he started yanking on the arm and twisting her in ways that you really want to turn that head the other way and yanked her. And you could see that it caught her attention because she was used to his work being so …just puts you in such a great state of being and then he yanked her and he didn’t hurt her, it was abrupt and he yanked and made it less comfortable and less comfortable and less comfortable and I was like I must not have breathed for ten minutes or something. And finally she hesitated for a moment and she turned the head the other way. And the moment she turned the head, he just pounced on her and did everything he could to make it comfortable, but he never turned her head for her. She had to feel the necessity to do it herself. I remember the story, because I see people like here, trying to lift their knees and having one hand to lean on and putting it here (Anat places her hand to the right, but she is indicating that the practical strategy would be to put it in the middle.) And I think, why would you put your hand here (to the right of the knees) when you have two knees that you are moving. It’s just like the eye, why don’t you bring it to the middle. You see, probably because the chest is a little stiff and because you’re used to doing things on one side, one way and another way on the other side, you know, symmetrical, kind of like that. That’s the aging. You’re young when you wake up and say wait a minute, where’s my hand? I’d rather have it here. You feel it, you know it, you wake up to it. So do it again with the other hand down. Rob asked this question: “Didn’t they bring her because she didn’t speak or she didn’t see?” Anat answered: She didn’t speak, she had spasticity, her tongue was spastic and that is a whole other conversation. He worked on the tongue. They didn’t realize that her tongue was all the way spastic and back so he just directly worked on the tongue and she



could start talking. You just make sure that I fill in all the elements of the story. You are like a little kid reading them the story; you are trying to read the kid a story and the parent is trying to skip a paragraph or a page because they are tired and the kid goes, “but what about the princess having tea?” Anat laughs.



TML 5: Hands Behind Back

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) NOTES:

1. Please lie on your back. Scan the way you are lying on the floor.

1a. Roll to lie on your belly please. And now, place the back of your right hand behind you somewhere at the level of your lower back. So you bring the arm down. And now, just as the arm is lying there, the elbow is in the air, feel in which direction it is more comfortable for you to turn the head, where you want the other arm to be - that would be, the left arm. Very slowly, begin bending the wrist on that hand so that the back of the hand detaches a bit from the lower back.

You don’t lift the elbow, you lift the hand. Keep the wrist lying on the back, and you bend the wrist so that the fingers go a little bit more toward the ceiling. But you bend the wrist, not just the fingers. Wow. Ha.

1b. Ok, sit up a second. Roll around and sit up. You never know until you find out. Put your hand on the thigh and simply bend the wrist. So you simply lift the back of the hand and put it back. You can either move the fingers or not move the fingers, but the movement is in the wrist. Is that clear?

1c. So lie on your belly. Put your right hand behind you on your lower back and do this movement.

1d. And now, stop the movement and create the same bending in the elbow. You don’t understand the question.

1e. So sit up. Put the back of your hand just on the side of the pelvis, just like that, straighten the wrist and bend it a little, like that. And now bend the elbow.

See, but when you are on your back, you are actually lifting. So take your elbow behind you and bend your wrist.

Now take the elbow and don’t move the hand. Understood?

Anat Baniel Method Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 5: Hands behind back (2004)


1f. On your belly. See how clever you are. So again, put the back of the right hand on the lower back and this time, lift the elbow and also bend the wrist. Right? Good.

1g. And now, once do it from the elbow end and once do it from the hand end.

It looks like a fun movement. It looks like palabalus or something. They can do things like this with their bodies. They can do peculiar things, peculiar ways from opposing directions. You don’t know who they are?

So lie on your back and rest.

There are troupe of performers, dancers and they wear these outfits so you don’t know where the top and bottom is, or the front and the back. And then they do stuff with their bodies, and they do it in conjunction with each other and they do quite amazing things.

Just from those few movements, does anybody feel any different between the right and the left? Yes?

Isn’t it incredible? Just one, two variations and movements. And of course you are so trained to look, your nervous system is trained to look for meaning, so to speak. To make sense out of every experience. You turn stimulation into information very readily. And that’s a central part of vitality.

2. So roll on your belly and roll to the other side from where you were before. And put the hand behind you. First just lift the hand, the wrist from the hand end. Do it gently and slowly. And of course, feel if it’s different than the other side.

2a. Now do the elbow.

And now, knowing what you know, and what you’ve been doing these last few days, and what you’ve been doing these last 2 ½ years and what you’ve seen me demonstrate yesterday on Sue Ellen and on Barbara.

What are you doing with the front of your shoulder and the upper ribs from the front?

2b. Turn your head the other way and see if it makes it easier, harder or the same when you do the movement. Start with the elbow first. And now do the hand, wrist, something.

2c. And now do once one and once the other.

2d. And now, do it at the same time. One toward the other.



Gently, don’t hurt your wrist. You have to let the elbow go down a little bit and then you can lift the elbow and the hand at the same time. That’s nice.

Lie on your back and rest please.

Yeah? It’s been 3 ½ years. Where have I missed a year? Ok. If we could just drop a year off our computation every so often, we would just get younger.

But I don’t want to take away from the credit and the seriousness and the commitment - extra year, it’s a lot. But of course it’s an extra year. Just the basic training was 2+years, so it has to be 3 ½ years.

3. Bend your knees, put your feet standing. Lift your pelvis a bit off the floor and put your right hand, palm down below your lower back. Rotate the fingers a little bit in the direction of the head. Whatever you can, you know that. And get hold with your left hand perhaps your right wrist and help slide the arm with the fingers in such a way that the arm is going to rotate in such a way that the fingers are going to go toward the head, in the direction of the head. You can help with the left hand to slide the fingers of the right hand up toward your head. The left one will be underneath too because it gets hold of the right one. Does that make sense? Ok. Gently, back and forth of course. Slide the hand up, up.

That’s different, isn’t it?

So rest.

And feel, from just doing this movement a few times – can you feel how there’s a dramatic and immediate reorganization in the back? Can you feel that – yes yes, yes no?

Do you feel how hard it is to talk when you go internal with yourself and you say, oh don’t make me Anat, please?

4. Bend your knees, put your feet standing. Lift your tush up. Slide your left hand, palm down, get hold of your right hand with your left wrist, or whatever you may.

Gently, because you can really give yourself some bursitis or some tendonitis, either in the shoulder or the elbow. I mean, this is really a great way to hurt yourself if you like. So go slow. Just as much as you are organized. If you should ever feel, am I organized to do this, is right now. If you can be it with the pelvis down ok, or you can do it in the air. You can actually, if you arch the back a lot.



Gently take your arms out, straighten your legs and rest for a moment.

5. Roll on your belly please. And again, put the palm [TN: Anat meant to say ‘back’] of your hand on your lower back. And help with the other hand.

Those of you who can go further might be able to stretch a little bit down in the forearm towards the elbow, but help slide your right hand gently toward the head, the direction between the shoulder blades. Very interesting to watch.

5a. And feel, do you have any inclination, do you have any sense you might want to roll a bit to one side or the other, or not? Well then, do it. But help with the other hand. Hold the right arm somewhere with the left arm and let yourself roll, the side that you feel you’d like to roll to. Hum, interesting.

That’s why they have to make rules in the world. Because if you had left it to the inner inclinations of people and connection, it probably wouldn’t have worked that well with a lot of the time.

It really depends how people do the movement, whether they roll to the right or roll to the left.

5b. All of you, try rolling once or twice one way and one or twice the other way. And see which way you would like to choose.

Yes? Turn the head to facilitate, but roll the head, roll yourself using your arm one way or the other. Get your head going which ever way makes it easiest. And see, which way is it better for the movement of the arm, if you can feel a difference or not.

5c. And now, all of you do it in the direction you prefer.

5d. By the way, see if rolling has already helped your arm move a bit better. At least for some of you.

Leave it alone and rest for a second.

6. Turn your head to the right. Place the left hand on the lower back; get hold of the hand, wrist, forearm, elbow – whatever works for you. And begin pulling the right arm up with the fingers toward your head in between the shoulder blades and at the same time, roll your pelvis to the left and roll up the right knee.



You’re pulling on the right arm, with the left hand. And you pull up the right knee, that means you roll a little to the left. As you do that.

There you go, toward the arm that goes up.

You guys, rightly so, are not trusting my instructions this morning. You are very right not to trust them. So check as often as you feel necessary.

6b. And now, each time you do the movement, add to that lifting the head a bit, taking it behind you. See if that helps a little bit. Does that help? That was a very resounding response.

Lie on your back and rest a minute.

But do you see how suffering is good for you? You can notice that when you rest. How come the movements behind the back are so difficult? Anyone might want to say something short?

The chest is rigid… Well, move the arms in front. Cross your arms and rock. The chest is not rigid. How come it’s so hard to do from behind?

7. Well, put your feet standing and arch your back. Do the pelvic clock down to the tailbone – no problem, right? So the arching is not the problem.

1[COMMENTS MINI LECTURE]

So bend your knees. Let’s do something here. Put the feet standing. Now again, lift the tush in the air, put the palm of the right hand on the floor and get hold of your right hand with your left elbow, as comfortably as you can get to it. Now pull your right hand to the left, with the help of the left hand. You slide it to the left back and forth.

7a. But notice, is your pelvis going together with your arm?

Many of you, the pelvis is driving on top of the arm, right? The pelvis goes with the arm. Many people it is. See if you can gradually start having some relative movement between the pelvis and the arm. Don’t do a big one; in the beginning do a gentle one. Remember. That you really can start figuring it out, not just be in survival mode.

Gently slide the arm behind the back and now take the arm together as if the arm and the tush are glued. Like many of you are doing. But it’s fine, as a variation, it’s perfect.

7b. And now do one or two movements where the pelvis is in space, but the arm moves relative to the back, relative to the pelvis.



The arm? Goes more to the left than the pelvis. You see, some of you are not able to do that yet, but it’s ok, that’s why you are here.

Put your tush down, straighten your legs and rest.

Feel the changes, the very dramatic changes, the breathing. Can you feel that, how different it is? And feel the length of the spine, whether the neck is becoming longer and longer. The back of your neck, can you feel that?

8. Bend you knees, lift your tush up in the air and slide your left hand under you. Get a hold of your elbow, your forearm or your wrist if you need to – as close to the elbow as you can. Lift the tush high up in the air and start sliding your left arm to the right and the left shoulder goes down. One side of your chest gets longer a bit, one side gets shorter.

8a. Again, see if you get the get arm to move relative to the back, relative to the pelvis. Rather than having the pelvis move completely if it’s glued to the arm.

The whole body bends to the left, the left side gets shorter, the right side gets longer. But still, perhaps the arm can move relative to the pelvis. Even a little bit.

Leave it alone and rest please.

9. And now, roll on your belly please and take the right hand, right palm and put it behind your head in the direction of your shoulder blades. So you bring the elbow in the air and the arm in the direction of the shoulder blades. That’s right. Get hold of your right elbow with you left hand, or anything close to it that you can. But your left shoulder blade has to come off the floor too. And start exploring, gently start helping to slide the right hand a little down, a little toward the right shoulder blade, a little toward the left shoulder blade

Now it’s your hand that slides. You can do whatever you want. You move your shoulders, roll your chest, do whatever you want. But move the hand relative to the back. That means it slides ever so little, a little up, a little down. Explore, explore with the palm of your hand the shoulder blade, the back of your neck, in between your shoulder blades, the s pine a little bit.

9a. Feel those ribs in front…

that go like “what, are you kidding me? I’ve spent a lifetime settling in. I’m too old for this. This is nonsense. This is children’s stuff.”

There you go.




2[MINI LECTURE]

10. So roll on your belly and do the other side. That’s it. So you have the left hand between your shoulder blades, or behind your neck, or behind your head. How about all of you start behind your head

[CONTINUATION OF MINI LECTURE TOPIC] Just a second, the reason I’m saying this, it sounds very general, very abstract. But this is the context that for me, the whole subject of vitality and anti-aging lives.

Because I’m not going to judge people like, “you should know more”. But I’m going to see the opportunity – where am I going to take someone who is thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety. And say, where can I go now and resume the process that will be most potent for them, most useful for them now. and when I do that, people come to life, immediately. Do you agree with that? You’re coming to life. Others will.

So it’s not a question of judgment, it’s a question of wisdom; it’s a question of perspective.

So put your left hand behind your head. You see that will be easier for you. Then you start moving from there, you feel that your arm can actually move in this position.

Excellent. Lie on your back and rest for a moment. 3[CONTINUATION OF MINI LECTURE]

11. Roll on your belly. Put the back of your right hand behind you on the lower back. Slide the right hand up toward your shoulder blades and roll to your right and bend the left knee. And stay like that. And lean on your right elbow. You see, leaning on the floor like that can at least help you hold the arm like it is. Don’t hurt yourself. Now, put your left hand from above in between your shoulder blades. Very gently, start sliding the hand from above to the arm down below. Don’t kill yourself. Let it go. And do it again.

11a. Now what might be a good idea while you do that? Breathe? Excellent idea.

What else? Arch the back? Wow! Pray? Very good idea. Maybe take the head behind you? Maybe roll the ribs on the top leg side so they can fan, get long? Marvelous.



Nice, the tush, show it, very good move there. Don’t overdo it. Excellent.

11b. Those of you who can touch the fingers and those of you who can’t, imagine that you are touching the fingers.

11c. And now, move both hands to the right and both hands to the left. Slide them on the back. You’re doing good actually.

Leave it alone. Roll on your back and rest. 4[COMMENTS ABOUT CLIENTS 60 YRS+]

12. Roll onto your belly.

And then from time to time, be compulsive intentionally. So you know the difference.

Now put whatever hand it was, the left one on the back and slide it towards your shoulder blades. Roll to your left, bend your right knee, put your right hand above and slowly start sliding that right hand toward your left one. There you go. And roll a bit more onto your left elbow.

But there again, be careful because in this position if you do it abruptly and get stuck, you can dislocate your shoulder, so don’t. Be gentle. Behind you where you can twist your spine more. And now, and now wherever your hands are, move them a little to the right and a little to the left, so you feel your back like that when you do that.

Leave that alone and lie on your back and rest please.

13. Now, roll to your left side so your left leg is bent towards you and the right leg is bent behind you. You’re going to side-sit with the right leg bent backwards. Maybe face me.

And now, place the back of the right hand on your lower back and first of all, do some movements and you can use the other arm, sliding your up in between the shoulder blades and back down.

13a. And what could you do with the rest of you to help this happen? Can you feel some movement, especially in your right hip? Is the pelvis going anywhere? So what movement, what function would be helped by doing this? Doing this, what would it help directly? In terms of something we teach people to do?



Looking up, and believe it or not, twisting around yourself. Anything that being able to roll the one side, arch the one side helps, will help do it, ok? So when we twist around ourselves, the lower back has to work. Most people don’t how to do that. So you can do twisting one lesson, a few weeks later you come back and do this and at the end of the lesson, you say, now let’s do the lesson we did four weeks ago – and bang, it will be better.

Stay sitting, let go of the arm for a second. And rest.

You know how when some people get older, their upper back looks ugly. Well, that makes it beautiful again.

14. Put the right arm behind your back and now this time, put the left arm from above and start sliding the hands one towards the other. See if you can hook the fingers or not. Don’t worry if you can’t. You’re not alone.

14a. Leave the legs alone, switch the arms over and take the left hand below on the lower back and first do a few movements of sliding the arm up towards your neck.

14b. And feel that as you slide up, it would be very helpful if you arched your back. Now take the other arm from above and take each arm toward each other, the fingers toward each other, from behind. Nice, lovely.

Lie and on your back and rest please.

15. Bend your knees, put your feet standing, bring your pelvis up in the air. Get a hold of your right elbow with your left hand and your left elbow with your right hand, or anything that you can get close to it that you can. Get hold of the elbow or forearms. And very slowly, lower your pelvis so you can get the tip of your pelvis on the floor. Then arch your back more and pull your belly in and you’ll feel the pressure coming on the hands. And lift the tailbone a little bit.

Do the pelvic clock like that, 6 o’clock and 12 o’clock. And see if gradually, the ribs and sternum can slide up and down relative to your arms because your arms are going nowhere in this position.

Now usually we move the arms relative to the center of the body. Here it’s exactly the other way around.

15a. Now lift the pelvis high up and switch the holding. Now, slowly, slowly, lower your tush to the floor. And again, do the 6 o’clock, 12 o’clock.



Leave that alone, undo your arms slowly and rest.

16. Roll to your side and sit. And now, sit up and bring your right leg behind you. And bring your right hand behind you, from above your head. Get hold of your left hand with your right wrist from above like that. And now, very gently start sliding the arm toward the cheek and back. Keep going very delicately until your hand and your chin will start meeting each other – or as close to it as you can.

16a. Now, gently put down the left hand on the floor in front of you. Now very gently, start lowering your head and your chest, so you lower your elbow toward the floor and back down. And the left hand is behind you so it can support you, so you feel safe.

You can regulate the speed. Hold at least your ear, if not your cheek. The head is behind you, not from above the head.

Sit up and now turn your head to your hand. Turn your head toward you hand – there you go. As if you were getting to your cheek. It doesn’t matter if you touch. Stay as low as you can. Move the elbow right and left – either you touch the floor or not, but the projection of the elbow moves right and left on the floor. Right to your right knee, and then also left. What would it take for you to go more to the left? There you go, don’t force it – slow, slow, go slow.

Leave it alone, lie on your back and rest.

17. Roll to your right, so your right leg is toward you and your left leg is behind you. This time, put your left hand behind your head and get hold of the wrist with your right hand. And very gently, resume doing this movement of sliding your hand to the right and your head to the right so that the hand starts caressing the right ear, the right cheek. And slowly, slowly, the arm is behind - if you can put the hand above the head it is makes it kind of impossible to do. And then until you get more and more toward your chin and back and forth. Whatever you can do is amazing, it is not about going as far as you



anatomically could, but it’s about opening all those new doors and possibilities.

17a. Take whatever you are holding now, cheek, chin, bring your right arm in front of you very gently. And first, lower your left elbow to the floor and come back. Just go as far as you do and slide the elbow with the head like this, right and left.

Excellent. Lie on your back and rest please.

18. As you are lying, put your right hand behind your head. Get hold of your right wrist with your left hand and resume doing this movement. So you’re going to slide the right hand behind the head and turn your head towards the right hand. So you touch the ear, you touch the cheek, back and forth. Then you move towards the chin more and more. You slide the right hand to the left and the head to the left, so that the hand goes toward the chin. You take the right hand toward the chin; the chin has to come toward the hand, not run away from it. There you go.

Now stay wherever you are. Free your left arm and now bring your left arm from above your head and take it over to the right to roll to your side, so you can sit up like this, crooked. Slowly, when was the last time you did that? So treat it like something new, not like something you know. And the left leg will bend backward spontaneously. Put your left hand down somewhere on the floor and gently melt into the floor – don’t bang into it. Soften the chest, you can use the other hand on the floor if you want, but make it easy. And then start from scratch.

No Victoria, you pushed, you roll and then you push with your left arm and then you come up in a straight line. And that’s exactly where you bang the floor when you go down. You see, you just bang the floor – you feel that? So it’s not until you wake up to that and you don’t push with the hand that you can come up. Use the weight of the hand, but don’t push with the hand. And feel, what is it you need to do? Ah, you see you need to do something different, with the chest. So you see, that’s our internal feedback system that if you’re awake to it, will inform you, but if you’re not awake to it, then you’ll just keep banging yourself. And it’s called aging.

That’s very lovely. There you go. Lie on your back and rest.

And you see, for the chin and the hand to reach each, there has to be so much organization and differentiation in the spine and chest in a new ways. And rolling like that actually brings everything in the body around it. So instead of trying to move the head and the arm more, you move the body around the head and the arm. You flip it.



19. Put the left arm behind you. Get hold of the left wrist with the right hand and do a few movements like that, of taking the hand toward the chin and the chin toward the hand.

19a. Slow, back and forth. Feel how much for instance; the ribs on your left side need to separate one from each other, to distance. And the armpit, many people have a lot of tension around the armpit. And the clavicles, what they need to do. And the shoulder and the shoulder blade – not only are they flexible; they move one relative to the other in novel ways.

19b. Now, stay however far you can, comfortably, safely. And take your right arm above your head and over to the left, until you start rolling over to your left. And then you roll, roll, roll, roll, roll, until all of a sudden the weight, the front will pick you up.

You don’t push yourself up. It’s your weight in space that takes you up. Remember I told you about getting better at using the gravitational field, the gravitational force, that your brain uses it, it computes it.

19c. And are you tightening the other arm? Maybe you don’t need a lot of tension in the other arm.


20. Lie on your belly. And now, put the back of your right hand on your lower back and slide (you can help with the other hand if you want), and slide your hand up to your shoulder blades and roll up to right as you do it. Bend the left knee. Then take the other arm, the left arm from above and see if you are closer to the other hand – or perhaps start touching… don’t kill yourself. Take the head way back, straighten, lift your head way back. Straighten your left leg as you do it and roll to lie on the other side. Roll to lie on the other side, with the arms the same way but bend the other knee. And take the head back and straighten your right leg and roll over to the other side. Take the head way back, way back. Have the head move you from side to side.

But don’t have legs like you’ve just gotten cerebral palsy.



And each time, take the head back, lift it up, and bring yourself the other way.

And see, but the leg, the leg – whose leg is so CP? Is it Janet? You straighten and bend the other, but you don’t get rigid.

It’s the head. No, no, no. Look what Janet is doing. Don’t change what you’re doing. Look, see she’s accelerating. See, she’s using the head some, but she’s using the legs to turn. Now stay on your belly and now very slowly, take your head up and over to the right. And take your head more and more and more. And then see, your knee bends. It wouldn’t be in the air. And the other one will bend a little probably too.

21a. Now go the other way. Belly, belly, now head up, up, up, up and the other way – and leave the knee alone.

There you go. But not the lower back and the head. Ha, when she works her lower back, her legs get stiff. So take your time. It’s a wonderful opportunity to learn to have the power with the back that you have free legs – not the other way around. Ah, gentle, why are you falling?

Lift the head, push the belly out and slow, slow, so you never fall. Keep going.

Aaah, better. See now she’s bending the knee and that’s it, you see. All of you, do it.

You don’t have to hold the arms. You all can do it, you all can do it. The arms are where they are, however close or far, but you all can do it.

Let me tell you, if I didn’t think you could all do it, I wouldn’t be teaching it.

Bend the knee, bend the knee, and the head but don’t go further than you need to.

22b. And the take the head behind you in space and take it behind you the other way. And have the other leg bent.

But no, you pushed yourself with the top leg; you even have it behind you. You see, it should be in the front. That’s instead of using the back.

Marlena, for you it’s the ankles. You know how I know. I heard this faint whimper. Your ankles are whimpering and crying. You have to be nice to them.

Leave it alone. Lie on your back for a second.

23. Bend your knees; interlace your fingers behind your head. Lift the legs bent in the air. Lift your head and rock yourself a little to the right, a little to the left.



So make yourself into a little ball – but the legs spread, the knees spread and just rock a little to the right and a little to the left. Not much, if you’re all the way to one side it’s a lot. Just around the spine. A little to the left of the spine, a little to the right of the spine.

Good enough. Roll on your back for a second. Keep your feet standing and rest.

You’re being very good. No, really. You’ve surrendered to a very intense, profound process. And that’s quite remarkable.

24. Roll on your belly. This time, have the left hand behind you. Bring it up towards your shoulder blades and roll to have your right knee bent. Bring the other hand from above. Arch your back. Get the hands as close as you can to each other.

Isn’t it funny when it works on one side and not the other? Like - la, lala, la lala. It’s so weird. When we just have no say in something.

And then take the head slow and try to make it so you don’t fall.

That means that even though the back is working so hard, the chest is soft. It can still modify itself. It’s not like the back is working and you’re become like a piece of wood.

The head behind you. It never comes on the floor. You just move your head one way and the other way. It takes the whole body one way and the other way.

That’s much better. The whole self, side to side like that. Magnificent.

Lie on your back and rest. 5[COMMENTS]

25. So put or legs to standing. Lift your pelvis up and feel by the way, is your pelvis lifting easier? Lift it up, what are you being, modest? Put your right hand behind and slide it up and see how does it slide up? Is it easier, better than before?

25a. Now put the other hand behind and see if you are getting better. There you go. And now some of you can start scratching between your shoulder blades. See if you can while you are lying on your back. If you want to do something fun and not hurt too much in your shoulders this I like extra curricular, extra credit. So don’t do it if you are too tired. But if you can hold your elbows. Lift your pelvis way up in the air and very slowly, with the pelvis way up, start bringing the pelvis over to the left, past the left elbow until you can



put yourself like that on the floor. Take the head back, take the other leg behind you. There you go.

Remember what I did with Sue Ellen when I took her leg back. There you go.

25b. And now, put that leg back. And do it the other way. Take the other leg behind you and roll on your side. That’s it, from side to side. The head actually stays on the floor. Eventually you can go all the way to the belly like that. And then back to your back.

But when you’re on your belly, your knees are bent and your feet on off the floor. The head is off the floor. You don’t let go of it. You use the head to navigate. Now go back. There you go. And put the feet standing. Talk about learning to find the ground. Not bad, huh? Peculiar reptile or something.

That’s good enough.

26. Get up on your feet if you can.

I thought this was going to make you feel so much better. And take care of your vestibular system and all that nonsense that has been going on. Can you feel how much better that is? Amazing.

26a. Walk around. Feel what it is to stand and walk, if you can. If I haven’t killed you yet. Do you feel the power you have now if you want to lift weights or something? Effortless power.

And look at you Linda. Who needs hips joints anyway, right Linda?

Magnificent. You guys are real troupers. Give yourselves a hand.

END OF LESSON

1 [COMMENTS MINI LECTURE]

That’s right, we’re not used to it. Most of the functions are in front of us. What does that mean? Not organized – what does that mean? Good, take it further… There’s no recognition, it doesn’t exist. You can’t do it because it doesn’t have the path to go there. Should it be more difficult to have the arms behind than in front? Nooo. Is it like, are we born to have it more difficult? No. It’s just that it’s been very neglected. All of our awareness, all of our consciousness is in front.

This is what I mean, it’s another example of what I mean about going from the holographic to the details. So I could have predicted that this would be difficult for most people. First of all, I’ve taught before so I know, but I could also predict it because of the way that most of us grow. And what we learn to master, the skills we develop. So the behind us barely exists for us. Really, but if we were to do more things behind us, we would learn to move as least as well as forward. Right? So the issue is that even though it feels as if the chest is stiff and the lower back doesn’t arch. It’s not like the chest is a thing – like I have a stiff chest. The chest is stiff in relation to these movements. Now, you could have a chest that is stiff in relation to every movement. Then you



could say, this person has a chest that is stiff, like outside of their consciousness in all directions. But for you, the chest is not stiff in many directions. But the fact that the chest is free in the directions that you have learned to use it to associate with … it’s not the relaxation of the chest that makes it work. Does that make sense to you what I’m saying?

So you can get a completely relaxed chest and I tell you to put your arms behind your back and guess what? You can call it a stiff chest or you can call it a stupid chest.

Marlena – This is just an anatomical question. I’m just curious, with the way the scapula is in the back, would that have anything to do with the functional … it just came to mind because it’s back there.

Anat - Let’s just say it this way. Some of the movements that we can do from in front, we might not be able to do the same movements in back because of the structure. But what we can do in the back is a whole lot different than what we don’t do there. And if you’ve seen Marcel Marceau, what he could do behind him – quite remarkable. Right? And the pro…. They can take the arms behind and seem like it’s in front. Ok? So, I’m not saying we can do things we’re not structured to do. Right? So we cannot bend the knees in the opposite direction we normally bend them. They’re not built to do that. But now, he could easily put his elbow behind him, cross elbows behind him. He could do one arm this, one arm that. And also the ability to do things with the fingers and wrists behind. The dexterity, most people don’t have that simply because they haven’t developed it. We haven’t developed it. And as a result when we try to do it, two things happen. First, the chest is stiff because we don’t know what to do with it. It’s undifferentiated, it’s primitive, it’s not intelligent in this respect. When I say intelligence, I see intelligence as something that we develop. Intelligence in psychology for the most part as I’ve learned it is a thing, it’s like the property of your personality. So you have a level of intelligence, and it’s one of the most ridiculous and unfortunate ideas ever. At any given moment, you can check somebody’s intelligence (however they check it, the Binet have their own whatever questions), but you see how a person performs. But that’s not the intelligence of the person on how they could perform.

So if I took you and put you on your belly and told you to put your arm behind your back and slide the fingers towards the base of your head between your shoulder blades, and say, oh these people don’t have body intelligence. Look at how they are doing it. Well, the person who has no intelligence is me, if I say that. But if I have an understanding what it takes, you already have the intelligence; you can have it in two minutes. Same thing with children who are not intelligent with math in school. Same story. Intelligence is not a given thing, it’s a thing you develop and a thing you generate. It’s an action, it’s proactive.

2 [MINI LECTURE]

You know, a way to think of ourselves and our maturation and our personal evolution, is to think of all the possibilities we could have developed to be able to do. Right?

So let’s just take one dimension, the dimension of movement. Smaller than that, we can take one area in the dimension of functioning, right? One function, one thing like balance or like whatever. Of course, it doesn’t develop on it’s own. And then we look and say, how many ways can we do, how many ways can we stand, and on the knee, the foot, the shoulders, on the head, on the hands, on one hand and on…. then on moving things, on ropes and I don’t know, whatever. And then, we can look and say, how much of this have I developed? And we can look at the percentage of what could be versus what has been done to date. And then we can scan, if we don’t want to get



depressed, too many of those things, we can scan a whole bunch of functions like that. And then we can look at ourselves in terms of what we could do. Now of course, we have limitation of time, so we have to look at how long things take. If we look at the degree of refinement, complexity and variety we have developed, let’s say, in the area that we function in. Not other, like I’m not a violin player, so let’s not talk about that. But in the things that we do, and let’s just minimize it, let’s just look at things we do on a daily basis – washing dishes, talking to our friends and family, communicating, you know, speaking, things like that.

It’s remarkable how little we have developed. Most people are not skillful, simply not skillful. Now some people are lucky enough to have developed one skill to a great extent and then we do that, by the way, we tend to organize our whole life around it because it’s the most satisfying part for us, the most life-giving part for ourselves.

People might say, you are a workaholic. Not necessarily, I’m just doing what works best, what is most life giving to me and to others. So when we look at relationships, when we look at the way we move, I don’t know. Whatever you want to think. Most people, and Moshe used to say; humanity is in its infancy. Most people have not developed past age two or three.

Now how do you know past age two or three? Well you look at the possibilities in life. You look at two or three years old functions, and you see the actions of most adults don’t function past age two or three. From the point of view of differentiation and evolution. Not from a judgmental point of view or whatever.

And most of use, when we move our arms, we haven’t gone past age zero. I don’t know, very little. And we pay a high price for that, a very high price.

3 [CONTINUATION OF MINI LECTURE]

So you see, when people are trying to stay young and going against aging and so on. Pretty everyone knows, that part of it is staying active. People say, stay active - true. Do crossword puzzles, great idea. Learn Italian, wonderful idea. You know, but all those things, it’s a detail in the picture. It’s not the source. It’s a detail.

And the source is what you are doing here. The source is the nine essentials. That is, bring in those qualities into what you do and you will resume the process of differentiation and evolution – that is the process of life, the process of vitality. Now you can do that, and doing a crossword can be more effective or less effective. Now you don’t have to do that, you can do anything. Once you bring the essentials in, it doesn’t matter what you do. So it’s the how you do it, it’s the bringing the essentials in. Then you start differentiating, you bring in the complexity in your system. And that’s your youthfulness.

Also you become more skillful. Because you have to do the differentiating and integrating process to develop a skill and we have to continue doing it to refine the skill, to improve the skill. And doing that, it gives us two things at a time, the process itself is energizing, life-giving and the outcome is also life-giving because we get more skillful, and successful and capable. So if you think about it by being able to match, that we are the tool, we are it, right? So I walk on the ground and there is a little shift, a little hole in the pavement. How much can I, how much can my system rearrange itself to absorb that blip, right? And maybe what I do is an idea I will use later on. Or, how much I go down the road, and how much there is a change in the level of the pavement, and I don’t even pick it up and I don’t feel it. Or even if I feel it, I can not responsive, I don’t have the freedom, I don’t have enough pieces to move around, to reform myself, to reshape myself – to fit the need. I fall down.



It’s true in thinking. And by the way, the more rigid people are, the more life is a bother. Do you get that? Life becomes very bothersome when you’re rigid because things keep bumping in your way. Does that make sense? And what’s the most rigid thing of aging is rigidity. And the more we become rigid, the more we become rigid because we feel safe and so we can’t do anything anymore. I always say, the safest thing to do is to die. It’s very safe. They put you in the ground, they cover you, you know. You didn’t like that idea? Jan didn’t think it was funny. Can’t I have dark humor a little bit? Ok

4 [COMMENTS ABOUT CLIENTS 60 YRS +]

Now, you get somebody who comes to you for the very first time and they’re fifty, sixty something. Or somebody had a stroke or whatnot – less extreme, more extreme, you are probably not going to do this for the first time. However, it wouldn’t hurt that you had it in your mind.

You see, when I see people I do something funny the very first time. I see them and then, right with it, I see them into the future. I don’t tell people what I see because it won’t work very well, but I see them into the future. So when you came in, I saw you into the future.

I don’t get rigid about it because usually, the future is more interesting, more surprising, very often better than I know to think it. But, it’s a whole lot better than the present that I think. So I look and I think, oh no, this person doesn’t have an idea this arm could go behind them. Probably would be a good thing for them to include in their vocabulary.

Or I see by the way that somebody goes about something. It could be anywhere from their emotional attitudes and ideas to belief systems, to the kind of force they bring into it. It can be in any dimension and usually it is in a number of dimensions. And then also recognize the areas of greatest compulsivity because these are the areas that stop everything else. You need to start differentiating there. So compulsion doesn’t get resolved by inhibiting it, compulsion gets resolved by doing other things. When you can do things not just what you’re compulsive about, you’re not compulsive anymore.

5 [COMMENTS]

That’s what they should teach in kindergarten. Not to read and write. You see, in kindergarten, they teach first grade curriculum and in first grade, they teach third grade curriculum and in high school, they teach college curriculum and nobody ever gets to be where they need to go. They’re always hopping the part that would have given them their life. It’s ridiculous. I went through this big shift. Talked to my daughter. So first of all, she went to college, I signed a contract with her. We went into a business together and the business is her getting a college degree and me paying for it. So we wrote an agreement. So she’s supposed to finish college in four years and I said she’s supposed to get grades, all A’s and B’s. Because otherwise, if she just wants to have a social life, we don’t have to pay a lot of money for that. She signed the contract, she wasn’t too happy about it – and then she chose the college that has no grades. She’s going to Reed. She’s very much my daughter. She’s wonderful – actually really, really wonderful. She’s incredibly intelligent and also very connected, very differentiated emotionally. So nothing gets by her, and she has a hard time not getting that everybody doesn’t perceive the level of distinctions she does, including her mother. Sometimes I have to ask her to be kind with me. Anyway, so they can get the transcript if they ask for it. So a month, a month and a half ago, she said that they when she comes home over the summer, she will want to re-negociate the grades in the contract. So I said fine, do the best you can, we’ll talk when you come home. It’s interesting, I talked to her a couple of nights ago – she’s coming home soon, she’s done and I said, have you passed all of the? And she said I think so, I guess they’ll tell me if me haven’t. But this is a college where you’re not



supposed to know about grades, so I haven’t asked about my transcripts. And I asked her, what’s the rate of acceptance into grad school? Because the only reason to get good grades is to get into grad school, because otherwise, who cares? And she said they are the third in the nation. And I said, I guess that will work. And she said Mom, only 2 to 3% of students at Reed get a perfect 4.0. It’s almost not done. She said, I think I’m two levels below that Mom. Then all of sudden, I had this thing. I don’t care, I really don’t care. It’s her life and I want her to live it. I don’t want her to get attached to grades and then wake up twenty years later and say, maybe in twenty years I’ll live my life.

Now you have to get through nursery school because you have first grade curriculum, then in first grade you have to get through middle school, then in high school you’re already doing college. So none of them feel good in school, they hate it. Then you go to college, you do college to get a job, you get a job to make money. And it rolls forward. Then by the time you’re seventy, maybe you get permission to live.



TML 6: In Lying, Legs Pushing Through to Head and Arms – Rocking the Back

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel)

NOTES: 1. Lie on your back please.

So we are continuing, we are continuing, with informing you and your brain in different ways to organize yourself and experience being in the gravitational field. Which we have been doing all along but this is very, very important when we deal with vitality, anti-aging and with pain relief. This is like very important.

And bend your knees and put your feet standing. Now press on your feet in the direction so it will press through the pelvis up towards your head. So it’s not arching the back anything like that, it’s just straight through you to generate a bit of force through your tailbone up to your head. You don’t have to do it very abrupt but that’s you, and let go.

Do it lightly, do it many times and maybe do it a little faster, like boom, boom, boom, so you can feel, but it’s not doing 6, 12, 6, 12. It’s not that. It’s having the force … I mean there’s a tiny, maybe little movement there, but the force goes from the feet to the top of the head, and you let go. Boop, boop.

And when you press up the chin tends to move a little away from the chest and when you come down it lets it go back down. But don’t do it intentionally, let it be if it happens. Make it a pleasant movement back and forth.

1a. And now do the movement the fastest you can. And by the way, feel if you press through one foot as equally as the other.

And I can see just watching you, some of you it’s clearly not the same.

And now straighten your legs and rest for a moment.

2. And now bend your right leg only, spread. Your left arm above your head, to the best of your ability. And if you need to put something under the hand or arm do so.

Anat Baniel Method Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 7: Standing on Knees to Standing (#3 in Series)


And now resume doing the movement, but just with the right foot. And in the beginning do it slowly until you can really feel it is organized well.

So you press on the right foot, slowly in the beginning, slowly, slowly, slowly. Slow is like slow, not the fast one it’s the slow one. So make sure to make sure you are going slow. Make it even slower than you are going.

2a. So feel how, the movement or the pressure on the leg pushes the pelvis up and rocks it a little bit so that the left hip goes slightly lower to the ground and the left side gets closer in contact with the floor something happens there and then that can, or when it’s done, also gets the left arm to elongate a bit without trying to elongate the arm. You do nothing in the upper muscles. There we go.

2b. And now accelerate the speed of the movement so that you could possibly …

But don’t lift the right hip. It has nothing to do with lifting. Make sure your foot is under your knee some of you have the leg, I mean that it’s bent, that you are really standing on that foot.

And press straight up into the leg and do it faster

2c. And now do it with the accent up. You know you accentuate the movement going up and then you let go.

But it’s not stretching the arm with the muscles of the neck and the shoulder. It’s just from the leg and pelvis.

2d. And now do it faster and clearer.

[TO STUDENT] You push the leg up to extend the pelvis, but because it is only one leg it will also tend to elongate the arm.

And now leave that alone and rest for a moment. And of course compare one side to the other.

3. And now bend your left knee put your left foot standing. Bring your right arm long above your head. And now begin pressing on the left foot.

But it’s not lifting the hip up some of you are doing the movement we’ve done many times which is to lift the left side and roll the pelvis to the right and arch the back. That’s not what we are doing. You are pressing, directing the force straight up. See that is like what we talked about before part of youthfulness, part of vitality is the ability to do something different. So even if we are used to



always doing something one way or very often we can actually do something near it close to it that’s different.

3a. And now each time you do it, accentuate the movement up.

And feel if the chin moves away from the chest and if the arm starts getting a little longer.

3b. And then do it faster.

And slowly bring your arm down, bring the leg down and rest for a minute.

4. And now the legs as they are, you are going to anchor your heels a little bit more into the ground. And start moving you know, flexing the ankles so that it will push you up a little bit through the spine and then extend which will pull you a little down. And use the movement of your heels, your feet to rock you like this up and down.

But don’t lift the whole pelvis off the floor. It has nothing to do with that.

Don’t pull your belly in, don’t arch your lower back. Use your ankles only, your heels, your ankles.

4a. Now if you go slow enough you can start helping yourself a little bit with the hands too. So as you, when you bring up you can push on the hands and then pull yourself down with the feet going down and the hands. The hands too, slow down.

4b. And now do it but accentuate the movement up. So each time you go up and then down, up and then down.

And now leave that alone and rest for a minute.

5. And now put the … Bend the knees put your feet on the floor and lift your pelvis in the air to a place that is comfortable for you and stay there. And now do the same thing with the pelvis in the air. Press on the feet and push through, up. Push yourself up and then let go. But keep the pelvis where it is. You, don’t lift and lower the pelvis. Once the pelvis is wherever it is, you use your feet to press yourself, move like this, up and down.



[COMMENT] You see that we use this quite a bit with the small children, with the babies, to help them feel that sense of bearing weight through the spine and also moving in space before they can do it in other ways. Or also when they can.

So you keep the pelvis where it is and the spine goes up and it moves up between the shoulder blades. The shoulder blades stay where they are because the weight is on them and of course the head moves. So the neck gets longer and the head goes from in between the shoulders. The shoulders are pulled downwards while you do it.

5a. And now accentuate the movement upward so you can feel the neck coming out from in between your shoulders.

And leave that alone and rest for a moment.

6. And now bend your right knee, put your left arm above your head. Roll yourself to the left to lie on your left side and your arm on … but keep the foot, the right knee and foot standing that’s the whole point. And the head is on the left arm. And now the knee, as much as you can, above the foot. That means you do need to arch your back to do that. If your belly is in you, you keep the … anyway, you need to do that. And now in this position begin pressing on the right foot so it goes, pushes through the pelvis and lengthens the head on the arm. So the pressure on the foot rolls the head up and lengthens the head through the spine, of course, the left side of your belt you know where the waist goes down to the floor.

6a. And now get hold with your right hand from above your head your left temple. And each time you press on the right foot and lengthen your head like that, at the end of the movement lift the head up like this. Holding it like this.

So you press with the foot and you lengthen and then you lift your head. You lengthen and then at the end of the lengthening you lift your head.

So at the end of the lengthening you lift it and the right ear comes closer to the right shoulder and the spine gets longer.

6b. And now increase a bit the speed. And each time at the end of the movement lift the head.

But don’t, you don’t need to accentuate the head now. Just press, lift, stop. Press, lift, stop. But don’t roll the pelvis backwards and forwards. It’s not rolling



the pelvis, rolling the hip forward and backwards. You get yourself on the side the best you can and then you are there.

And now from there the pelvis moves up not forward and backwards. You see, it is interesting doing this kind of work. It’s like x-rays, functional x-rays. We can find the little elements. Each person has their own idiosyncratic places where they have all the sudden a little Swiss cheese hole.

6c. And now do the movement a little quicker with an accentuation towards the top.

And leave that alone, lie on your back and rest.

And feel the difference at this moment between the right and left side.

7. Put your left foot standing. Put your right arm above your head. Roll to lie on your right side. And first, just on your right side, make sure your left foot is standing. The knee is over the left foot, but don’t bring the foot all the way in front of you. The whole point is you start on your back.

All of you start again. Lie on your back. You know there is this kind of like unconscious shifting that completely changes what it is. Spread your feet, spread your feet. Bend your left knee, put your left foot standing. That is where it is, standing.

Some of you move the left foot to the right because you don’t know how to use your left hip joint and lower back and if you do that you will never learn.

7a. And now put your right arm above your head and now use your foot to roll yourself over to the right. Up.

[TO STUDENT] You see Betsy now you found another solution to you. See?

1[DEMO/LECTURE]

[REPEATING INSTRUCTIONS AFTER DEMO/LECTURE] Lie on your back bend your, you know, your left leg. Have your leg spread. The right arm above your head. Roll to lie on your right side, the left leg bent standing. Roll to lie on your right side. And now begin pushing on the left foot and feel the pelvis going up.

But one of the ways to define perhaps aging is that no matter what, you are not going to change. That could also be the definition of aging. You make it green, you make it blue, you make it hot, you make it cold, doesn’t make a difference you stay the same.



7b. And now take your left arm, put it above your head. And each time that you press like that straight up—make sure that you are on your side— lift the head. If you’re not on your side, it is a different movement.

[TO STUDENT] Chris you are not on your side. You are half on your back. Be on your side.

7c. And maybe exhale, each time that you push up, or just make sure you don’t interfere with the breathing.

7d. And feel whether the pressing on the foot gets your spine longer, gets the head up, gets you, helps you to lift the head up.

That’s excellent leave it alone and lie on your back and rest for a moment.

8. Bend your knees put your feet standing, cross your right leg, right knee over the left, and keep your legs standing like that crossed. There we go. And now turn your head like that to the right, put your left hand behind your right ear, so the nose is to the right. And now, press your left foot straight up. And at the end of, you know, pushing your head up like that, lift the head on its side, in the direction that it is. But don’t lift exactly the same time you press. You press first. Do it slowly in the beginning.

So you press and you feel yourself growing taller. So whatever is on the floor stays lying. Just the spine is pushed up through the pelvis, and you lift the head. You lift the head, you can do it gradually you don’t have to do it abruptly. You don’t want to hurt yourself. And make sure that the breathing is free.

8a. And do a few quicker movements.

8b. And leave that alone and change over. Bring your head to the middle, change over the crossing of the legs. And this time turn your head to the left. Put your right hand behind the left ear.

8c. And feel by the way which foot do you get a clear sense of the pressure straight up?

Leave that alone, straighten your legs and rest for a moment.

9. And please roll to lie on your belly, put your hands on either side of your head on the floor. You can do it with the elbows up, if you like, or down. You decide. And put your forehead … Put your toes like for running, clearly. And now put your forehead in the middle and lift the head just a tiny bit off the



floor so it doesn’t … But put the hands on either side of your shoulders, not above your head, so you can use your hands too. And now, lift the head a tiny bit off the floor and now begin pressing on the toes to push up, through the hips, through the spine so you get a little taller and let go. And do it a little bit, and do it again and let go. You can use the hands to help you move yourself up like that.

9a. And now do a few quicker movements.

Quicker back and forth and see, and again which foot you are able to use better the other. There you go.

And just rest on your belly like this for a second.

10. And now bring your left arm above your head long on the floor. Put your left ear on your left arm. You need to, you need to roll a bit the upper part of the body, of course. And you can have the right hand next to the right shoulder, somewhere. You can put the elbow down or not. Just make yourself comfortable. But the left ear on the left arm. And now put the toes of only the right foot, only the right foot, like for running. And now use the right foot now to press thorough the hip through the spine to your head to lengthen your head. And when you do it feel that your arm pit your left arm pit gets flatter and flatter to the floor.

10a. And now get a hold with your right hand, your head from above, to the left ear. But the elbow up in the air, not on the floor. And now … the left ear, not the back of the head.

[TO STUDENT] The left ear, not the back, Chris, the side of the head, no that’s the back.

10b. And now each time you lengthen, you push through the toes and you lengthen, push the spine up, lift the head.

So at the end of the push … Bend of course, your toes, where there’s room to push. If the toes are away from the leg then you can’t really push much.

Push and lift the head and see if gradually you can get the feeling of the connection from the foot, to the spine, to the head.

10c. And now organize yourself do small movements. Organize yourself so you can do some quicker movements.



And leave that alone for just a second here.

11. And now put your right arm above your head, bring your right ear on your right upper arm, put the toes of your left foot like for running. And now, resume doing the movement. Push on the toes, to lengthen the head, to push through … And gradually, start slow, until you feel that there is a real connection from the pressure in the foot to the erection of the spine. That there is something … The force goes and connects to the head and lengthens the head up in space.

11a. And now get hold with your right, I’m so sorry, your left hand from over above your head your left temple [TN: right temple] or ear or whatever and now, each time you lengthen yourself like that, but with moving the toes, lift at the end of the movement, lift the head.

And leave that alone and roll to lie on your back and rest for a moment.

And notice how you are lying on the floor. Feel if it is different, a new way that you have contact with the floor. And feel if your breathing is different if there is a sense of calm, if there is more movement in your upper chest and clavicles if that helped get some to that area.

12. And now bend your knees. And first of all, simply do the initial movement of the lesson, where you pressed on the feet and lengthened the head up and see if it’s any different than in the beginning of the lesson.

You feel whether it is clear it’s more solid.

That means that all these variations in this one theme really helped educate and helped the brain find how to do it. This is a demonstration of the essentials in the very, very clear way.

12a. And now get a hold of your hair from on either side of your head, near your ears. The hair, the hair. Actually catch the hair close to the skull. And then do the movement.

But you don’t catch one or two hairs. You’re going to catch a whole group of hairs. And you’ll in a minute know how to catch it. You will probably want your elbows up, not to the sides.

[TO STUDENT] Judy you would want to catch so the elbows are up.

12b. And now each time you press up, at the end of the elongation of the spine like that, help lengthen the head with the hair and lift it up a bit in



the air, a little bit off the floor. And then let go and put the head back down.

So you lengthen. You don’t just lift the head, you lengthen by pushing through the feet and by pulling the head on the hair. Up and then lift it a little bit. But the movement is first up, taller. There you go.

And when you pull on the head and press on the feet, do it until you can feel that you are really pulling throughout the whole spine, your whole spine is getting pulled. Just like what we do with our hands on people.

12c. And now do five of these movements, accentuating, putting the accent on the up. So you press and you pull and you lift a little bit.

And let it go. Put the legs down and simply lie there.

13. Feel how you are lying and listen to your breath. Listen to your breathing and listen to the exhalation. And just very quiet, very calm, breathe quietly and just let the air each time slowly, very gradually, come out of the lungs, longer and longer. Feel how awakening and helping improve the organization of the anti-gravitational mechanisms, which is what, you know, the ability to be upright. The ability to catch the weight through the bones is associated with the freedom to breathe and of course those things are intimately connected with vitality and with well being and with calm. Sense of quiet.

13a Roll to your side--many of you don’t feel like it--and slowly get up to standing.

And feel how it is to stand up on your feet.

See for some of you, is very different. Tall with a lot less effort in the chest. You feel that?

END OF LESSON

1 [DEMO /LECTURE]

So look at Betsy, it’s just remarkable the number of ways in which we can just make sure that we don’t do anything different. So first of all, when Betsy rolled … Do what you did before. Do you know what you did before? Roll over to your right. And you see, she did this and then she moved the right, left foot, closer to the right leg. You moved your left foot. Foot. The foot is the bottom of your leg. And you moved it closer, even closer. And you see why she did, because she doesn’t know how to put the knee over the foot. Because in order to put the knee over the foot, she has to



do something very different in the relationship between the lower back, the hip and in between the shoulder blades. So unconsciously, she slid the foot. So I put a whole group back on the back. So go back on your back, because I tried not to do it with her. Straighten your leg because you see … Spread your feet. You see, she makes sure not too much. Now bend your left knee and put your left foot standing. You see she already put the foot closer to the left leg [TN: right leg], unbeknown to her. And now I said, put your right arm above your head. and roll yourself to the right. What did you do? What did you do? Do it. [Student hops pelvis up and over] Aha. So she is very intelligent and uses her intelligence to not change. And have you known somebody like that in your life? Have you been that person sometimes in your life?

Okay but you see there’s, like I am sitting here and I’m just watching this happen. And of course, as a teacher there’s always the question, do I just let the person just go bang their head against the wall as long as they want or do I actually intervene? And there’s no answer to it. You know some people have the philosophy that you just leave people alone, and they just do what they do until perhaps one day they will wake up. Some say, you’ve got to bang on people, on their head, hard enough until they will wake up, like EST used to do, right? And then maybe in between the two sometimes you do sometimes you don’t do it, but really what I look for is how much does the person, pick up and run with it themselves. So you wake somebody up once and they go like, ooh okay. And then next thing you have to wake them up again. And if you have to wake them up a third or fourth time maybe that’s the time to stop waking them up, because they don’t take on the being awake, the seeking to be awake. And it’s a very interesting thing. Is Neil here at all? Is he working now or? Rehearsal, that’s what I thought .

[TUMMY TIME] Now I’m not sure, I haven’t read it, but it’s very interesting because I still want to write the stop tummy time article. I have a lot of it ready, and he found a bunch of research that shows that children that reach the milestone—large big numbers like 6,000 something 500 kids in Finland and another country, also large number, and I don’t remember it very accurately, I scanned through it very quickly I have to read it through and really absorb it—but they did research showing that on the average children who reach milestones sooner on the average reach further in life. So the person that put that research on their website did it to show that it is good to do tummy time. Now the link here is because tummy time … the only thing that one found is that tummy time tends to get kids to crawl a little sooner, like a month on the average, I think, or a couple weeks. I don’t remember, but then by the time they’re one or one and half the kids are all more or less the same. So first of all, the total mistake in the logic is the confusion between statistical correlation and causal relationship. So people very often say you know, I don’t know, there are many examples of that, as many … research … I will have to find that Amos Tversky [article]. He showed the absurdity sometimes, how people take statistical correlation and give it a causal relationship. So a causal relationship is because of the weight of the paper, and the fact that there is the gravitational force when I’m going to let my fingers go, I can actually say at what speed this will reach the floor, right. That’s Newton, so we can say that it’s the ... because of the gravitational force, this is going to hit the ground. And because of the size and the volume or what not, the shape of this, it will reach at a certain moment at a certain speed. But people make a causal relationship if they see ... like you have a mother and you have adult children and the adult child is, let’s say, has a nervous tic. And you say, because they have the mother they have, if you have a mother you will have a nervous tic. Or because you have a mother, you have a nervous tic. That’s a lot of the mistake by the way of Freudian psychology. It’s a big mistake. Also, with, I don’t know today what they say, but earlier on, Doma Delicato, they saw the mothers and children with special needs, especially more like the, you know, the autistic, or what not, there was issues with nursing. So they saw a correlation between difficulties for babies to nurse and having special needs. So they made a causal relationship, the child has special needs because the mother is



rejecting them at the breast. That’s a typical, classic and mean, nasty interpretation that is absolutely absurd, actually. But you can look if there is also a causal relationship is that these men, this case it were men who were raised in a culture where all the stories, the Disney movies that everything, either has no mother, the good mother gets killed—have you noticed that?—and the step mother is a beautiful mean, jealous, nasty mother. And if you happen to have your good mother and she’s not dead, then she’s fat and sexless and amorphous. But really you don’t get a great, wonderful mother. You don’t have it. Women are really portrayed in that very, very malevolent, frightening way, culturally. I don’t know if you have noticed that. Some of you have. So, so they made this interpretation. I remember reading that twenty some years ago, and I was ready to go shoot them, because a) it was mean, b) it was stupid, and c) it was wrong. So not only did those mothers happen to have a child who couldn’t handle nursing and they were freaked out because they didn’t know what to do with this child and they didn’t know how to make it work, now they were the cause of that disturbance. Charming, right?

The same thing with the research. We don’t know, we see … They saw a statistical relationship, which is accurate and undeniable. I have to read it, but the cause we don’t know. Now my thinking, if I were to interpret, first of all, if they take pretty much the whole population, they are also taking children that are very delayed in development. So they took the extremes out, but I don’t know what they call extremes: kids that have unidentifiable, delayed development. But if there is anything that I would gather from that is that there are some brains that kind of like the heart that works stronger. People are born with stronger hearts, or better skin, or you know the constitutionally, maybe the brain is more alert and interested and awake. That’s one thing. And it keeps being that way when they are a little older, right? So they study more, they get further. Another one we don’t know the conditions in which the children are raised. So we don’t know whether they had more of the essentials that got them to develop a little.

Because you know my work, our work. Not just mine, but our work. I was invited to be a consultant, many years ago, on a set of videos that this woman developed. She approached me in a workshop, and said, “Could you be my consultant on doing infant exercise video?” I said, “Oh yeah, I’ll be your consultant. And I won’t charge you. And it will take exactly one second.” I said, “Don’t do it.” I said, “Infants don’t need an exercise video.” So then she hired me to do … So she changed completely the path and she would bring babies. I said, “Okay. I want babies that are still not quite rolling on their belly, or not sitting.” And I would just show the mothers how to be with the child. And bang, they started rolling. I actually accelerated the evolution. Right there, boom, boom, boom. It was really weird. Just giving those kids a slightly different contact and a sense of themselves pushed them to the next level. I didn’t push them, but it gave them the access to the next thing.

So we don’t know how that correlation is interpreted. But to throw in the tummy time … Thus tummy time is a good idea because kids start crawling a little sooner. There’s no question asked about the quality with which they move, and nobody did research, how kids that were tummy time do later in life. So I’m going to attack that too in my article. But, so that all came from saying maybe there are brains that have somehow a greater inclination to be awake and do brain job in general more. I don’t know. Now is there … I really don’t know. This is just like an idea. This is how I operate; this is how I have been operating for 30 years. What I teach you is more of the stuff that I have been asking those questions and reached certain conclusions, but I have a lot of open ended questions. I don’t know. I would assume that some brains are better than others originally, constitutionally. Then they are fed better food. They will work better, you know? You know there is a lot. We are so complex. There are so many factors. But then, if a brain is a little sluggish, sluggier, sluggishier, and we do our thing with that person, does the brain wake up and gets less sluggish? Yes, I have worked with that. Then there is this dividing line. The brain gets less sluggish but some people take that and run with it to keep their brain less and less sluggish, right? And other people just wait until it gets sluggish again. And that’s where I think we have nothing



more to offer, except perhaps tell a person, observe that your brain is now getting sluggish. Now if you are interested, do something so that it doesn’t … You see it’s this weirdo stuff. How far do you support and push a person? When do you just let them do their thinking?

[DEMO CONTINUED] But you see that the movement that Betsy did … do it again, Betsy. Put your foot standing, and you see … and spread the legs a little bit, spread. No, spread, also when you bend. You see, you spread it when it’s long, spread it when it’s long. And don’t drag the foot to the right. Where would you stand it? Just bend the knee and okay. Now do the movement again the way you did it. Roll to, yeah last time. You see so she brought the pelvis towards the foot, instead of bringing the foot towards the pelvis. Hello, she ended up in the same place. Now if I wasn’t sitting in the back and seeing it and taking this long time to make comments about it she wouldn’t have known.

That’s the whole point and now this is not a minor movement but she wouldn’t have known. That’s true for all of us. We do things and we absolutely are clueless we are doing them. Absolutely zero and it’s very hard to imagine because sometimes you know you can sit with somebody at dinner and they are chewing and they make sound you think the ceiling is going to fall down. And you’d think they would hear themselves chewing really loud. But somehow that does not come through, right. And there are an infinite number of examples of that.

I mean this is the whole point. And this is what Moshe kept saying, poor man. I don’t envy him. I mean he, he was really the pioneer of all this stuff and the inventor of all this stuff and he used to say, “If you don’t know what you are doing, you can’t do what you want. If you don’t know what you are doing, you can’t do what you want.” But he sort of just stayed with that sentence but he would look at a room of 100 people not knowing what they are doing … “If you don’t know what you are doing, you can’t do what you want.” And that relates right back to what Brendan said. That when you start knowing more what you do then you all the sudden have the tools to do something with it. And you can know more of what you do all the time, not just that one time. And that kind of waking up and that kind of being interested in it … And then you know, people say to me things like, “You are a perfectionist,” whatever that means. Well I notice things. I notice differences. And if I notice it, sometimes I can decide to ignore certain things, but sometimes I say I would rather it be the better way than the not better way. So, then you start looking for people that have the same and then you call it sensibility, the kind of sensibilities that people have.



TML 7: Standing on Knees to Standing (#3 in series)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2) NOTES:

1. Stand on your knees joyfully and put your right foot standing. If you have

shoes take them off. That’s right. And the toes of your left foot like for running. And place your hands on either side of your right foot on the floor. The knee in between the arms if you can. And now let the head, neck be long, the head hang down and then press on the toes and let the force from the toes, from the foot, lifting the left knee and bringing the tush a little up and back down.

That means there is no relative movement between the head and the spine and the lower back.

It’s all like one structure.

1a. And notice as you bring the left knee to straighten more, and more, if you straighten the knee, it rotates a bit inwards.

If you have the pressure between the big toe and the second toe. If you have the pressure on the little toe, it’s different.

1b. And then when you bring the knee out it tends to rotate a little bit out. See if you can feel that. The rotation is when you are close to straightening the knee. But don’t force to straighten. It doesn’t matter if you don’t.

There you go.

1c. And leave it alone and do the same thing, switching the legs, putting the left foot standing. And slowly press on the toes and rotate the knee as you straighten the leg.

1d. Feel how that when you do the movement the heel goes a bit out and the knee rotates in. And that allows the leg to straighten fully and the force to drive through the leg to the hip, to the spine much clearer.

1e. Stand up for a moment and I’d like you to feel something. Stand up for a moment. You can do it with the right leg or the left leg, which ever leg it is easier for you to balance and then bend the knee and then flex the



foot and straighten the leg and see whether the knee tends to rotate inside. So if you were to kick powerfully….. There you go, see that the heel goes a little out, then the knee rotates in.

And people who do marshal arts actually exaggerate it and take the whole leg to the side like that.

But the movement of straightening…… You feel that? If you bend, the knee goes a little out and as you go, you go, you go and towards the end it’s like voom it locks and rotates and straightens. Not locks, but do you feel that? So if you want to kick really hard, do it slow, but keep the leg straight or the knee out. Keep the knee out when you straighten. You can do that. Ballerinas do that. You wouldn’t want to kick like that. Do you feel that? That you really wouldn’t want to do, you could really hurt your knee. That way it’s safe. That way it’s safe. There you go.

1f. So come back down. Put your left foot standing. Kneel on your right knee. And now put your hands on either side of your left foot. Put the toes like for running. Have the weight between the big toe and the second toe. And begin pressing on the toes and lifting the knee and the whole thing.

1g. And by the way, feel if it is much easier than it was the first day of the training? Can you feel that? It’s a whole other thing. I forgot to think about that.

Leave that alone. Lie on your back and rest.

You have anti-aged yourself.

2. Come back on your knees. Put the right foot standing. And lean on both hands on the floor like you did and this time try to get up by straightening the right knee. So up until now you pushed on the toes of the back leg, right? Start coming up by straightening the right knee. The right knee, very different. You’ll move differently. You’ll take the pelvis differently a little. Slow, slow.

The left knee picks up too when you get up. That’s right, I see one person clearly doing it.

2a. The pelvis moves in space very differently than when you do it from the back leg.

[DEMO] Can I demonstrate on you? I’m looking at Rebecca. All right, let yourself focus in and watch Rebecca for a moment. You see what happens? And then go back down, sweetheart. There you go. And now again, do it. You see she has to take the pelvis, you see here. (Rebecca’s pelvis moved back.)



If you really do it and you can keep the arms down. If you don’t keep the arms down, then at a certain point something else will happen. But you see she’s……… There you go. Now do it from the back leg. You see when you do it from the back leg, it (the pelvis) comes this way (forward). If you do it from the front leg it’s this way (the pelvis moves forward). If you do from the back leg, it’s this way, (pelvis moves backward).

Ok, go ahead. Carefully, gently. Very gradual. Find gradually a way how to use, to straighten the front leg, the right leg in this case and start bringing you up. Eventually the weight will be on the other leg behind also comes up and so on but just…….

2b. And switch the legs and do the same thing the other way.

Yes? Not yet, not yet. The other leg. Now try the other leg.

This is all right as long as you go gently. As long as we know that you’re not gonna hurt yourself or disrupt yourself, you’re exploring.

Michelle, the first lesson, couldn’t lift the back knee. She just thought that it was just an impossibility. Like you couldn’t fly machines in the sky. You couldn’t lift the knee off the floor, right? And once you pick it up, once you figure it out, that’s why we do more lessons and more variations.

Excellent.

You see it gets gradually more clear to more people. You’re like a pot full of popcorn. Everybody pops at their own moment. Not everybody pops at the same time.


3. Come back on your knees. Stand on your left knee, put your right foot standing. And now lean on your hands like you were just doing and slide; put the left toes like for running, slide your left leg backwards, so it will also lift the left knee a bit and then also straighten, come up, straighten the right leg.

Yes, so first you take the left leg behind you as far as you can, until you are standing as much as you can on both legs. Right, evenly distributed between both legs. And now, in this position, move your right heel a little to the right and a little to the left. The heel. You have to lift the heel a touch off the floor. The right heel, you rotate it, you move it.

Both, once to the right, once to the left. That’s ok. I made a mistake, relative to your mistake. You move the right heel. The left knee is off the floor. The left knee is off the floor.

No, no, no, no somebody’s totally not understanding here.



Who am I looking at here? Yah, she really doesn’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s not a joke. Maralee, do you mind trying to help her a little bit? She’s very confused. Is that all right? Thank you.

The left heel is wherever people can have it.

You’re leaning on the toes. If you put the full weight on both……. Which ever way, it doesn’t matter. Depends……. Most people will have the heel off the floor.

And you move the right heel, right and left. So you lean on the toes behind. There you go.

3a. See if you can breathe. That would be fantastic and you can let go of the back of your neck it would be even more thrilling. The chest free, breathing uninterrupted.

The right heel, Looan, not the left heel. The right heel, the one on the right side. The one in front.

That’s good.

Stop it and lie on your back and rest for a moment.

Feel how demanding that is. And once you figure out how to do it the movement by itself is not difficult. It’s the lack of knowledge of how to do it. But once you figure it out, it will be as easy as any other easy movement. And you notice that in the Vitality and Anti-Aging I’ve selected a set of lessons that one would might think I should select for the high performers, right? Maybe I got confused.

4. Come back on your knees. Put the left foot standing. Slide your right leg way back on the toes of the right foot so that the right knee comes off the floor and then Straighten also the left knee. You can move your hands wherever you need to until you have the weight more or less distributed as equally as you can between the two legs. And now, slide your left heel this time in and out.

And look, all of you senior citizens, or baby boomers, or getting ready to age, people, look how well you are doing.


Because everybody’s heading towards being old. We start aging the day we are born.

And by the way, feel…. I don’t know if you felt, when you were in this position, how much some of the difficulty or limitation has to do with how you are organized or disorganized, or undifferentiated or whatever between the shoulder blades, you know the area of the shoulder blades, upper spine, neck,



clavicles; that when that is not mobile and able to change it’s relationships to the hips then all of a sudden we can’t use the legs the way we would like to. So very often, you know, that’s the part that needs to change before you can dream of anything happening elsewhere.

5. Come back on your knees, put the right foot standing. Put the toes of the left

foot like for running. Slide the left foot way back on the toes like that so that most of the weight is on your right foot from in front. So slide the left foot way back. There you go. And now, reduce the pressure you have on your hands.

That means either just lean on the tips of your fingers or take away the hands if you can.

Which ever, you’ll see. Probably, most of you at this point can’t take the hands away, but don’t lean so much on the hands.

And now you might have to lift your back a little bit. There you go.

And now start moving your right heel and then your toes, your right heel and then your toes. So you move the right heel to the left, then move the toes to the left and then the heel to the left. So you’re sort of moving your foot around like that.

Around the other leg, what? Yah, you straighten a bit the right leg. You’re standing and straightening some the right leg and you move the foot and the heel.

So the foot…… No, one after the other. Sticky’s, yah, for the back leg.

If you have more weight on the front leg, the back leg won’t slide so much, by the way. And then travel the foot, heel, toes, heel, toes the other way.

So you walk your leg like that, one way and then you walk your right leg like that the other way; heel, toes, heel, toes.

Well, figure out the way that works for you.

5b. Lean on the hands to the extent you can. The idea is to reduce the reliance on the hands. Figure out how to do it.

Well, I don’t know, whatever works for you for now. If you need the hands a little bit……

You see, SeJuen, if you’re shaking, then its not a good thing. Taking away the hands is not like a….God is not going to come down and give us a prize, you know. So if taking away the hands makes you shake and hold your breath. Might as well either not do it all together or put back down the hands.



Do something, do what you can.

You could go like that, but that’s not what we’re asking. (Anat laughs) That was cute.

Lie on your back and rest since you’re doing it anyway.

I might as well ask you to do what you’re doing. Pretend that I’m in charge. I’m giving you life here. You’re giving yourself life. The fact that it’s a little challenging and you can’t really do it; you can only do two movements, perfect. There is nothing wrong with it. All these lessons working with people and what people need to come back to life; I do a couple, two, three variations and rest, couple three variations get them to rest. It’s not about doing it a long time and being fine. It’s just introducing the idea to the brain; “Hey, look, how about you think of doing this? How about you think of doing this,” and before you know anything you go right through all limitations in minutes.

5c. Come back on your knees. Put your left foot in front. Start by leaning on

your hands. Slide the right leg way back. And by the way, see how easy it is for you not to lean on your hands on either side. Remember back when you couldn’t do?

Slide your leg back, far, and then straighten the left leg to where it’s comfortable for you and lighten, if possible, the reliance on the arms, but just where it’s easy for you.

And then start taking the heel out, the toes out, the heel out, the toes one way and then the heel in, the toes in, the heel in, the toes in. So you walk your leg around, but don’t make the arm the decision where the leg stops.

No lean on the arms, but just switch places with the foot. You understand? No, no just…..you come here, it goes, you put it back, you lift it, you put it back. How about that? My Stanford graduates.

That’s right.

Isn’t it surprising to encounter our limitations? Silly limitations, I’m not talking serious ones.

That’s it you see, on this leg it’s so much easier for most people, it becomes a possibility. It started by people saying, “What?”

And look at this Linda, look at this Linda. She’s crossing her legs. She looks like a Go-Go Girl. Look at that, she’s just traveling the universe. She’s just sort of changed what she does with the arms, but the next thing is to keep the arms where they were as you do it, Linda. Keep the arms in front and the chest will start reorganizing. That’s it, but look at the elegance, look at the ease. The woman who was suppose to replace her hip. Well, until she does, that’s it and look what she does.




She puts you all to shame. She can do it. No, no, don’t go there. I didn’t mean it. Yah, you really believe me; I’m convincing. I’m only happy for Linda, that’s all. That’s like when parents raise more than one child, right and they compare one to the sibling? Easy, done all the time, terrible, it devastates children all the time. “Well your brother could get an “A” in math, you got a “B” then……

6. Ok, come back to your knees. Put the right foot standing. Ha! Ok, again left leg way back and all the weight on the right foot, right? All the weight or practically all the weight on the right foot. However that goes. Put your arms behind your back. Put your arms behind your back, breathe and now a little, you’re going to think, dream imagine doing a little hop with your right foot to the right.

The whole foot thing, yes.

6a. Now if you need to put the one hand on the floor, do it and put one hand behind. Put the hands down, put one arm up, hand’s down, put the other arm up, put both hands off, both hands down, until you can actually hop, hop. A tiny little hop with your right foot.

Lean on something if you need to.

6b. Put the hand down, take it away, put…..

And by the way, if you’re holding your breath….If I’m holding my breath.

1[LECTURE - EXPLINATION]

So all of you go back and find whatever it is that you’re ready to do, but think of yourself as a skeleton that’s just moving a little bit to the right, hopping a little bit to the right.

What? Still the right one, yah, because I didn’t give you much time.

There you go, in the neck. That’s right. You see, once people see; they realize it’s possible, they can think it through and if you can’t do it yet, that’s ok too.

You can have the arms behind, front, one behind, one in front until……

Jerry, just your neck, just your neck. There you go. Your neck, the chest, your neck, the chest needs to be really free.

6c. Now put both hands on your right knee and do a few movements and

see that will be easier, I think. Both hands leaning on the right knee and hop. But the head down, the head down, the head down.

And lie on your back.



Feel the kind of calm that actually comes down or merges and the breathing…..It sounds like you’re breathing heavily because of effort but just the freedom.

7. Roll through the other side than before. Come up on your knees. Put your

left foot standing. And now you can put the hands behind you. One behind, one the bottom and one on the knee or whatever, but organize yourself, slide the knee way back and hop. Find a way eventually to hop your left foot.

Your left foot, the one in front.

7a. And gradually see if you can let go of your neck. Free your neck, free your chest.

Neck, Doreen, neck, neck. That’s different, there you go. Don’t do many movements. If you do two or three like that, Doreen for you, it’s so big. I wouldn’t push it. Yah, stop, yah. And anybody who needs a little rest here and there.

7b. Put the arms one way, put the arms the other way; just experiment a little. Arms on the knee, whatever.

Those of you who are not doing it, visualize yourself doing it or watch really closely somebody else. That’s also a way of taking it in.

Lie on your back and rest. Lie back and rest.

8. Roll to your side and come onto your knees again. Put the right foot standing. Put your hands on your hips this time, on either side, with your palms down like that. Again slide your left leg back a lot. Be on your toes. And lift the right leg a bit, the right knee, the left toes a lot back and the hands on the hips. And now, in this position, make sure that your breathing is free and hop again your right foot a little to the right, a little to the left and feel that the only reason that it’s difficult is if the relationships between the parts is not properly organized and that the force is not traveling, from the left leg behind and the right leg in front, through the spine. So make sure to lengthen your spine. Think you have a long spine and free chest.

There you go.

And let go of your neck. There you go.



8a. Change over the legs and do the same thing.

You see, it’s the organization that gives us, it’s the quality, it’s the organization in our bodies, in our lives that gives us our power. It’s not force, it’s really the organization. The quality of how we put things together, that makes it that they can happen or not.

8b. So think long spine, free neck, free chest.

You can be a little higher with your whole back, a little lower, whatever you can, that works well for you.

That’s excellent.


9. Roll to your side and come on your knees. Again put your right foot standing. You can do it from standing, by the way, if you want. You can do it from the knees or you can do it from standing. But you put the right foot in front, you slide the left foot, way, way, way back, so you have a really large split like that. That’s excellent. And now, put your hands on your hips again, let your head look up this time. The head looks up and the spine is sort of a continuation from the hip. And now hop the right foot and look forward and see if it’s easier.

There you go. Look forward. Forward is where I am. Well you’re hopping, it must be a little easier.

9a. Change over the legs again, big spread, big spread, big spread. The left knee is bent, you have your weight on it, but the left knee is bent. If it’s harder…..but you’re almost standing up.

9b. Ok, now come on your knees, come on your knees put your right foot standing. Put your right foot standing. Lean your right forearm on your right knee. Put the toes of the left foot like for running and simply lift the left knee off the floor and see if that is easier to do? And feel how now it’s one line from the left heel through the spine, the neck… Don’t shorten the neck anymore. Start with a round back.

Start, start, go down, go down. Yah, that’s it. No movement. No relative movement between the head, the spine, the pelvis and feel how whether ……

Head down! Down, down, all down! Down, down, down, down!



There you go.

Sometimes the ambition to perform gets us to do something that builds in the mistake and you don’t even know it. So it has to be down when you start and then you can notice if you bring it up and not that the head has to be down anytime that you do this movement in regular life, but so you can feel the transition of the force from the toes…… It’s like effortless. Don’t do anything with the muscles between the toes and the top of the head.

Try it again. It’s easier, but now that it’s easier now we can go to the next level of refinement.

9c. Change over the legs and try that.

Take your time, take your time, no rushing. If you can do it well, you can do it slow. That’s it.

9d. And the breath, is the breathing interrupted? If it is that means that you are not quite directing the force through the bones.


10. Come back on your knees.

The speed at which you are responding, your enthusiasm for the next variation is actually overwhelmingly inspiring.

Anyway, spread your knees, put the toes of both feet like for running and put the heels close to one another, but not the knees. The toes are separated the knees are separated and put your hands close, in between your knees. And now lift the two knees, driving the pelvis down back toward sitting on the heels. And back down and bring the knees back down. And feel whether the knees move at the same time or different times and gradually try to lift the knees simultaneously and reduce the effort in the shoulders….

The pelvis down, not up. You drive the pelvis towards the heels, like you’re going to squat.

10a. But you see, some of you before you move the knees, you lift the upper spine and you round the spine and you put enormous work in your shoulders and in between your shoulder blades. See next time when you do it if you can just leave your chest alone.

The hands closer to each other, between the legs. There you go.



10b. Now stay there. Now go back there and stay and now lift one arm and put it back down and you can look at it when you lift it. And put it down.

10c. Lift the other arm and put it down. Do this a few times like this and you rest as often as you need because just doing this movement, getting into this position for so many people is such a big deal. It’s a big revolution.

10d. Don’t over do it and see now if you can do one arm and add the other one to it. And then put them down and then lift the other arm and add the other one to it.

10c. Marvelous, come back down on your knees. Stay on your knees, the feet the same way, the heels together; lean on the hands between the legs and now lift the right knee and let it rotate a bit to the right which is what it would want to do, but not the hands. Not the hands.

When you move the hands, it’s because you don’t let the ribs move.

10d. And bring the knee back. And lift the other knee.

Soften the chest, soften the chest.

Do it slow and just soften….. The arms are straight, they don’t need to bend and they’re close to one another. The hands are close to one another; in between the knees. In between the knees. Close to the knees. Close to one another.

10e. And now one knee.

10f. Use the opportunity, it’s a marvelous opportunity to feel whether you’re putting force in your shoulder, in your chest, in your neck, in your jaw, and less and less. And if your head is not down, you’re putting effort into the back of your neck. Can you move your pelvis when you move your leg or do you just want to move the leg alone?

There you go.

10g. All of you move the leg alone once or twice. See a few people are just using the leg muscles. See if you’d like that. And then let the pelvis do whatever it needs to do to make it easier.

Lovely.

In other words, there needs to be a relationship between the knee, your heel and your brain.



But, Rebecca, you don’t put the other foot down. You stay on the toes all the time. The heels are together, it’s a very different movement. There you go. There you go.

Lie on you back and rest.

11. Come back on your knees. Spread the knees, put the toes apart, the heels closer, standing on the toes. That means the same position. Bring the hands between your knees and now lift both knees off toward putting your tush on your heels and see if that has become easier to do?

11a. And now, bring down only the right knee in between the hands, where the hands are or were. You can take one hand away to make space for the knee.

Lift one arm each time; the one that you think you can lift and that it will make it easier to put the knee down. Lift an arm and put the knee down.

So replace. When you put the left knee down, take the left hand away. When you put the right and then come back on the heels. And when you put the right knee down, take the right hand away. The right hand away. The right hand away.

Start from scratch. You have to feel it. If I have to say it verbally; yell it, it won’t work. You have to slow down and feel which hand to take away.

Ok, lets say it that way. Which hand to take away, one knee at a time, one knee at a time, one knee at a time.

Your other knee is almost on the floor. Your other knee is away from the floor. Away. There you go.

11b. Now put both hands in front and see if you can take one knee down and come back with the arms in front of you. So you sit a little taller. Both arms off the floor, you’re on your heels, one knee…….

Why have you become a CP child? One arm…. You see, but you see if you try to keep the legs together, you did it before…. The other knee goes sideways to give you balance.

You see now you are starting to do something…..

There you go, slowly. Easy, easy, easy. Bahhhhh!

See what it means to have some say in the relationship between your legs, your pelvis, your head and your brain?



Lie on your back and rest you aging people.

No more. No more aging people. The next movement is an extra curricular movement. So if you want to kill yourself I want you to first of all to sign a disclaimer. Otherwise do it only if it’s really easy for you and you feel you are up to it. If you’re not, don’t.

12. Come back on your knees. Come closer to the front of your mat.

Linda gives me the look. You do not have to do it. Don’t give me the look, Linda. You don’t want to discourage your teacher. Not to worry, I’m not very easily stoppable. Or in other words, I’m pretty unstoppable. If you’ve not noticed yet, in three and a half years.

Put the toes like for running, heels towards each other, the toes apart, the knees apart. And now, hands between the legs, close, you know in between the knees. Now start lifting your knees, driving the pelvis, but not toward sitting on the heels, but gradually towards putting the pelvis on the floor. On the floor. Don’t have to do it all at once, and come back.

Ah ha! You see it really is the chest. Look at me for a minute, Rebecca stay there. Rebecca spread your toes again and put the heels together. There you go. And now, look before she goes down, look how far the head is forward. Look how far the head is forward to do that. Ninety-five percent of doing this movement is the head actually going forward. Because that’s what balances it and she can let go of the work of the muscles. Bring the head more up. You see, it’s much harder. You feel that? Now let go and put the head forward. You see then the chest can let go, the chest can let go and she balances the tush with the head literally. So then the rest has little to do. And coming back up is a minor movement in the ankles. You see, she starts the ankles, she drives the tush forward. There we go. Now, you’re not going to start her, by the way, she’s sinking lower and lower. She started about 5 inches higher about three minutes ago. Because my description gives her clear awareness and she’s more and more through her bones and the muscles kind of like have hardly anything to do. That’s ok. There you go. Maybe that’s enough for now for you Rebecca.

But for the rest of you, don’t try to push yourself there, because if you try to push yourself, you’ll stiffen your chest and you’ll get away from there.

In just thinking of the head balancing you forward, the tush goes backwards toward the floor, the arms balance you forward.

As you do it again and again, you’ll see that relative to yourself, you’ll start sinking. That means that excessive work is going to let go because it won’t be necessary.



12a. And if you feel all of a sudden you feel some tension in your shoulders or your neck, stop. Stop the tension. You have a say in it and yourself.

12b. And now come more to the front of the mat so that your toes are at the

front of the mat.

Maybe. You’ve been around for a while, huh.

Get into the same position, put the heels together, the toes apart, the toes apart, the heels together and go down to place your tush and stay as you are and roll on your back and that is your extra curricular activity and then come back.

If you stay the same way, you’ll be able to come back. If you can’t, undo yourself and come back. Don’t straighten the knees. See if you can roll and stay that way. Doesn’t matter.

Come more to the front of the mat. Rebecca, come more to the front of the mat so you don’t smack you neighbor’s face. Your up hill neighbor.

Leave that alone, lie on your back and rest.

Isn’t this fun. Is this fun yet?!!!!! You better. No one else in the world is going to provide you with this. If you are say you are coming especially to be more vitality and anti-aging, they will give you an easy chair and hearing aides and tell you to do word cross puzzle, crossword puzzle. Or they will tell you to do things like when you were young and you will break your back. This is the process that gets you beyond where you were when you were young.

13. Come on your knees, one more movement promise, not more. Put your right

foot standing. Just regular, you know like that the toes like for running. Have your hands anywhere you want. It doesn’t matter. You can have them on the floor, you can lean with the forearm on the leg, however you want. And simply now, press on the toes behind and lift the left knee and see what it’s like now. Any different?

Piece of English cake. Five o’clock tea. All right.

13a. And now, do this, come up to standing, change the legs, go down, come up, change the legs. And slide the foot back and see if you can do it now without a smack to the knee at all.

It’s like you’re kissing delicately the floor. There you go without holding your breath, but by finding the trajectory how to do that. There you go.

Change, stand up. Stand, stand up.



That means, there’s a moment in a body that’s organized to do least effort you don’t have the legs straight and the head between the legs before you’re up.

Now come back up. You see, it’s the same movement, going down and coming up the same. You see, so when you bend your leg, you put your knee, you see that’s when you should start coming up. You don’t want to come all the way with the legs. It’s not ballet, it’s not yoga, it’s not exercise, it’s life.

There you go. And life in the sense that you feel how to move yourself so it’s easiest.

The back leg is on the floor. There is no reason to do it in the air. You slide it so it helps you balance. We can do air another time. Then do high performers.

13b. And now do it easier quicker.

Go down, change your mind, go the other way.

You are still shortening your neck galore.

Then you’re smacking your knee. You have to slow down if you are smacking your knee. Slow down. Smacking your knee means that there are efforts there that make you lose control.

13c. Now put one knee down, whichever and stay down like that and one foot up. Lean on both hands, on either, you know both hands in front. And now simply straighten the knee, flip, switch the legs in the air.

But don’t smack the back knee, land gentle.

Michelle, you’re not standing on your knee. You’re not standing on your knee. There you go.

You can do it now without the toes standing so you land your foot before you land your knee. The top of your foot lands first.

Don’t smack your knee.

13d. Control the speed at which the pelvis goes down.

There you go.

14. Do it one more time and come up to standing.

And feel how you’re standing, how you’re breathing.

It’s a short day, you can rest now. Make sure not to do anything much today. No big hiking, or running or biking. No biking John!!! You promise? Yes. All you high something activity people, let the brain integrate. Give yourself time. There’s a lot of change. A lot of demand on the system. If you do a big thing you probably will revert and you could hurt yourself. Ok?



14a. So walk around and feel, feel, feel.

Pretty good ahhh? Feel those arms. Feel your arms, they are the kind of arms you want to have when you work with people. They are free, they can be strong, just like the legs-free, can be strong.

Are we feeling? Anyone wants to say anything, we have a few minutes. Anybody wants to share anything right at the end of the lesson about any thought, any experience, observation? You do? Microphone, microphone. Ok how about you just settle somewhere, Michelle is going to say something.

“I just feel that this work is so amazing and after listening to your chapter, I imagine you teaching Opra a movement lesson where every body on every continent is listening.”

Hey you guys, just gave me shivers!! I like that. How about giving a shared image and a shared vision? That is very powerful, let me tell you. Everybody’s willing to have that vision all at the same time, full heartedly? Yes? Ok wow, oooo! And doing a lesson with her and having everybody, I didn’t think about it that way. That’s very nice.

Anyone else has anything you want to share? I’d like to hear. Mia, microphone.

“This segment has really transformed how I work. Just the quality of what I’m able to do right now and with my hands, I just have all this lightness that’s really just shifted everything. It’s fantastic. Thank you.”

Look how you’re standing, and your shoulders, you’re becoming who you were born to be. All of those extra things, the pain and the history, just slowly kind of differentiating away. Very nice, very nice.

Any one else? It’s very powerful when it’s personal like that it’s wonderful.

END OF LESSON

1 [LECTURE-EXPLINATION]

Ok, let me explain something to you so it’s not just this weird thing I’m asking you to do. If you keep studying with me, you don’t even know what I’m going to ask you to do. But, in this position. Anyone feel they can do it more or less already? Sorry, I didn’t see you. Jackie, so let’s first of all see what Jackie is doing. Pretty good, now Jackie stay there. Now let go. (Jackie’s right knee is bent, her left leg back and Anat has her release the tension in her neck so that the head goes down.) Let go, let go, let go. I mean you can lift the back a little bit if you want, wherever you want, but the head free. The head free. Take your time, take your time, take your time, take your time. It’s a big deal. Now the thing is that all those movement require that, but this movement requires it even more. That the force coming from the leg goes through the back clearly, nothing is lost and the force coming from the other leg goes through the back, nothing gets lost. The moment something gets lost, the jumping either won’t happen, you certainly will hold your breath. So the interruption in breathing, that people have while they move, especially the movements with the legs, means that there isn’t this absolute transmission of the force through the bones. Anytime it interrupts the breathing, interrupts the chest, interrupts the freedom, interrupts the mobility of the head, and that’s what I told you a few days ago, that we’re working on waking up the brain to manage the gravitational field, to improve on it. One of you said, Lisa, here you are, said about



yesterday, she said that she thought never in her life she could do this movement. And here she is, she can do it now. And so it’s really taking most human beings, actually all that I’ve met, I won’t go into the details now how and why I think this happens or how it comes about, but the development of how we organize in the gravitational field is faulty to some degree and stops too soon. So even if there weren’t big falls, the fact that it doesn’t continue and I’ll talk to you maybe tomorrow a little bit of how to think about what it is when it’s not faulty and what are the conditions. The essentials support that, but there is another piece to it and then people simply stop and then people do grind on the body and age and get worse and worse habits and the sensitivity reduces and there is no more the process of seeking to re-adjust, the process of the system of searching for new possibilities has stopped. That’s the aging, that’s the loss of vitality and that by the way is where the essentials come in very powerfully.

And by doing this movement that I’m asking you to do, from the beginning it requires immediate negotiation of that or you can’t even lift the back knee at all. And then we do more and more and more and it gets more and more demanding and more and more complex and it either becomes an impossibility or you find again that you stiffen the chest.

[DEMO CONTINUED] So lets just go back and just think of yourself…... Do a little bit what I tell in the chapter; think of yourself as a skeleton. Visualize yourself as a skeleton. Take the back leg backwards. A little more or whatever, the way you did it before or that works for you. And now If the forces go through the skeleton it doesn’t take much power to hop. It’s just a little bit….. There you go.

Now her neck is almost free. There you go. It’s ok, there’s no problem. Look it, what is the last time you did it, in what previous lifetime, you know? So it’s fine to discover what works and what doesn’t. That’s it. There you go. The neck, the neck, the neck. Ha, ha see, when you let go of the neck, you lose balance because it’s still not quite as accurate. So work on that. You see, you let go of the neck, you look up, you go, until there is nothing about doing it that stops you. Actually, when you organize the force through the bones, you will let go of your chest and the back of your neck. Ok, but it’s really good.



TML 8: Lying on Back and on Side: Rotating to Standing on one Knee and one Foot

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; V&AA Segment 2) NOTES:

1. Roll to lie on your right side. Bend your right leg quite a bit, with your heel

close to tush. Right hand, palm down and lower down. Not above your head, have your right arm below your shoulder. Close to your body. Not the usual thing. (A little different!) Left leg long. Lift your left leg in the air a little, use your right arm and left leg to bring yourself up to sitting, very easily. right elbow on the floor. Then come back down on your right elbow, straighten your left leg, and lie back down. Slowly, many times. How are you going to put the different parts into space. Which trajectory?

1a. How are you going to bring yourself up to sitting using the weight of your left leg and pushing on the right elbow?

1b. What do you do with your head? If you bring your head lots forward, that should help you. Experiment, where do you take your left leg? Behind? Forward? Straight down?

1c. You can start with the leg a little bent and then straighten the left leg to come up. Put the right arm in such a place where the elbow needs to be. Reduce the effort, continuous movement, reduce effort in your toes. Come up with the weight of your left leg. Do it so it is a continuous movement.

1[DEMO]

1d. Now go to the other side. That means roll to lie on your Left side, bend the left leg a lot, left arm a bit down with palm down, arm long. Bend

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 8: Lying on Back: Rotating to Standing on one Knee and one Foot


the right leg a little. Begin lifting the head and straightening the right leg and use the left elbow to bring yourself up in one continuous movement. Find the trajectory.

Your head moves in the direction of your left elbow, and your left knee, and gradually your left hand will be somewhere close to your left knee.

Your head moves forward in the direction of the left elbow, knee, and gradually left hand will be close to your left knee so you can lean on your left elbow when you come down and when you up.

1e. Come to sitting, not just swiveling around your hip joint. See if you can straighten leg straight down to use the weight of the leg. Don’t swivel at the hip. Moving the head and leg in space is enough to bring you up to sitting, see if you can do the movement without pushing from the elbow.

Rest.

2. As you’re lying, lift your legs in the air, spread, knees bent. Arms at your side. Now, roll in a smooth circular movement to the Right. Right leg is going to lie on the floor with your heel close to your tush. Bring the left arm over to the right but you are going to keep right arm close to you. Bring head forward, straighten left leg to sitting. From your back, roll; straighten the left leg straight down to help you sit.

2a. Feel the weight of the left leg, go back to lying on your back with bent legs. Bring the head lots forward. Feel as you begin to straighten the left leg to bring you up as your head goes way forward.

2b. Now do this movement to your left side.

Slowly. Be aware of your neighbor. Go back to your Left, on your back, legs bent, roll to your Left, straighten your right leg, bring your head way forward. Way Forward! Bring head way forward as you lengthen the leg. No pushing on the elbows. You’ll be so happy in the next step if you bring your head way forward as you lengthen the leg.

You’re still pushing! Rick Sweetheart! It is not about sitting up. It’s about the way you do it, take this opportunity, you can sit up, I can throw you out of a dishwasher and you can figure out how to sit up, it’s about inhibiting the ambition to accomplish the outcome, a big, big deal.



Rick is not the only one. The ambition, the ability to inhibit the ambition or compulsion, the feeling we have to accomplish the goal in a way that we think is the right way, it is one of the essentials.

This way of sitting up is not better than any other way of sitting up, but the inability of not being able to sit this way, is a problem. Your clients need to be able to organize the chest, head and pelvis.

Rest.

3. On your back, feet in the air with knees bent, go from side to side. 2[DEMO]

Back to the movement of rolling side to side the side… free your chest, every time we stiffen our chest it gets in our way. Sink. Use the leg. Slow. Using the weight of the leg. Freeing the chest. Don’t have your hand near your face. Straighten the top leg, feel the leg getting you up.

Lie on your back and Rest.

Isn’t it amazing what rolling on the ground can do to us.

4. Bend your knees, legs up in the air, first only to the right side. Roll to the right put the right heel close to your tush, head forward, come over the right elbow, straighten the left leg, when you are sitting up, bend the left leg and put the left foot standing in front of your right leg, right ankle. Go back down. Straighten the left leg, put head way forward, come back on your back. Before you fully sit, gather your left leg that is now long, bend it again and put it to stand in front of your right leg.

Just to the Right. Not two separate movements but one movement. First straighten the left leg to help you sit up, then before you are fully sat up, you bend the left leg again and put left foot standing.

Find the timing. Go slow.

Come back on your back with both legs bent and spread. Do this a number of times.




You get a God like quality, smooth, perfection…internal sense of well being.

5. Now, bend the knees, same thing to the left side. Rolling to the Left, left leg will be bent, left foot close to the tush, right leg forward, head way forward, not an abrupt kick with your right leg, a gradual movement, before you are fully up you bend that right leg and put the foot standing in front of Left.

Only to the Left.

Remember to put the right foot standing.

You end up sitting with the left heel close to you and the right foot standing.


6. Bend the knees the same, again go to the right now. Same thing, roll over bring the head forward, straighten the leg then bring foot to standing at such a place that you can actually continue the movement and come up to your right knee and left foot.

Right knee and left foot.

6a. Where do you need to place your left foot?

See how far forward the head has to be.

Put the foot a little more forward, let go of your chest. See that your foot is not so close to the other leg.

The key is to not stop the movement of the pelvis and bring the head enough forward.

It is one movement.

6b. Specifically stand on the knee and the left foot; left foot flat.

You don’t have to be upright on your back but you don’t sit with your tush on your heel.



Roll back down to your back and start again.

Keep going, you put the foot where you can stand on it. The heel doesn’t come off the floor. The foot goes away from you.

Right knee under your pelvis. You have to know where you are going to step. Like walking, know where you are heading.

All of you, stand on your right knee and left foot Stand. Slowly start rounding yourself, make yourself into a ball, bring down your tush and roll until you are on your back.

6c. Reverse this now. Only to the Right. Now go back and forth from your back to standing on your right knee and left foot. If you were to really stand, where would you put that foot?

Go slowly down, head down, let go of the chest, lean on your elbow.

6d. See if you can do the movement without a fall. Make sure you bring the head forward, it should be one fluid movement.

Once you’re on your back, roll back up to standing on knee and foot. Once you tighten the ankles, I know it is not going to work well.

Turn the pelvis, bringing the head forward, keep the pelvis moving. You’ve got to know if the pelvis if moving or not.

Don’t lean on your toes.

Anat talks about a woman who she said “not yet” to. “Not yet” changed her life.

6e. Do it to the other side. Using the top leg to go towards sitting, before you fully sit, you keep moving the pelvis, you don’t freeze the pelvis.

The pelvis goes in a circle.

6f. The right hip draws an arc in space, not a straight line. Feel the arc with the right hip.



Back and forth to the left side.

Keep swiveling the pelvis, facing the opposite direction more or less.

At the moment you put the foot standing, at that moment, many of you stop the circular movement of the pelvis, so you end up doing in a straight line and movement is compromised.

You know you are going to put the foot down but what is the rush? You want to get the pelvis up to the point where you can put the weight there because you’re there not because its time to put the foot down.

You’ll understand something about walking that is amazing.

Leave it alone and rest, please.

7. On your back, bend your knees, bring legs up to the air. Doing the same movement to the right, you roll to the right, straighten your left leg and bring it around, swivel the pelvis until you are on your right knee and left foot. Keep your right hand or both hands on the floor, have your toes of right foot like for running and bring your weight forward so you can bring the right knee off the floor until you come to standing. Then… slide the right foot back, bend the knee, go down, sit all the way to your back. So, you are going all the way from lying on your back to standing in one continuous movement.

Swivel the pelvis so you are standing and facing the opposite direction from when you were lying.

Keep right hand on the floor. Come all the way to standing. Slide the toes back. Put the right hand down on the floor.

Right knee back on the floor.

Swivel your pelvis until you come back down on your back. One continuous movement, back and forth. Remember to swivel the pelvis.

Feel how you can teach people to come all the way to standing.



Leave that alone.

8. Reverse and go to the other side. Remember to bring the head forward. Swivel your pelvis. Bring your foot a little more forward.

Most of the movement comes from the back and the head.

8a. Put the toes like for running before you get up.

8b. Fold yourself, be a ball as much as you can, bring the head forward.

Rest, see how you’re lying, see what it means to be reorganized profoundly.

Children take a year or two to do this; we are doing it in an hour, a lot of work for your nervous system. A lot of work but well worth it.

The main thing for me about loss of vitality and aging is the loss of self. People are there, they’re eating, they’re breathing and talking but nobody is home. You can turn the computer on and went for eternal sleep and nobody would no the difference.

You’re doing the same thing, saying the same thing, you don’t know what you’re doing, nobody is home. That is not vital.

Vitality is when you start showing up and feeling what you are dong, noticing the things about you, your brain.

9. Choose one way or the other and get up like this. Bend both knees and use what you just learned, be aware of your neighbor. Don’t do your old habitual thing.

9a. Feel how you are standing, walking, feel your hips and shoulders.

9b. Feel yourself over your hips, not leaning back.

Most people come to me and they are leaning back, way behind themselves, there is a moment where all of the sudden is doesn’t occur to you to do it.

9c. Try to do it, try to lean the way you used to, stand behind you.



END OF LESSON

1 [DEMO]

May I demo on you? (Rick). He has to yank. He has to use muscular force. He is not using the weight of the leg much. He is only using the leg to counter. What could he do to help to get up? He is not bringing the head forward. Don’t force it. Bend the head a little bit. Straighten the leg, don’t force it, where would the elbow go? Where would the elbow really go in order not to fall on the elbow? To go smoothly down, where does the elbow need to go? It needs to go further forward with the head. Soften, soften, soften. There is still a lot of room to allow for the process of discovery. What can I do to get myself to wake up? Do it again.

Rick-You see, now for the life of you, you wouldn’t choose the old way. You have to have a mental illness to go back to the old way. If a person does not choose the smoother option, the option with less effort, safer, there is nothing I can do for them. Nothing. I rely on their ability to grab the new way. If you are given a choice of a horrible bed that stinks or a nice comfortable bed, what do you do if that person chooses the old, stinky bed? There is nothing left to do. The same thing with children, we continuously do what works best for us. This work helps us find that and creates that for us.

2 [DEMO]

(Looking at Michelle,) You pushed, you did not push head forward enough.

That’s when you are worth your weight in gold. When you can feel and perceive that on behave of your student.

Do the “aaah” thing with your voice or with your hands, and then help guide them thru your words or encouragement or with your hands to help them. So, if someone has a stroke, or Parkinson’s, scoliosis, someone is simply “fucked Up.” What you help the person learn is not just to do the movement, you help them learn to become aware of the discrepancy and quality of functioning. Anything we do can be at a lesser or higher quality. Or with excessive force, lack of refinement or with true skill and capability. That capacity to gauge yourself, not that your wrong or a bad person, but that you are aware and that you notice the quality in which you act as you act. And that of course includes movement. If you were a singer, you would gauge for the pitch, the expression, the quality, the volume, there are a million dimensions. This work should teach, to allow for people to start to gauge themselves for quality of action all the time. Your singing, your life, movement, talking to your child, how you talk to a store manager, how you send an email. What is the quality? You’re teaching your students to increase the quality of movement but you are also teaching them how to improve their quality of life. It goes hand in hand. This is vitality.



TML 9: From Sitting to Standing in Three Ways (Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel V&AA Seg 2)

NOTES:

1. Sit, please. Ready to move some? Ready to anti-age yourself?

Put the soles of your feet touching. Bring your arms in a circle, kind of nice and free, shoulder height with the tips of the fingers pointing towards each other. So you have like you are hugging a tree, but gently. And so, you know enough. . . The fingers free, everything.

And after what we did yesterday, hopefully you can take the knowledge from organizing the arms doing what we did yesterday . . .

So you can hold the arms like that in front of you and comfortably. . . Of course you need to be able to arch your back, and bring the weight a little bit forward and what not.

And now look at the tips of your fingers and begin turning that circle together with the head, right and left. So you go slowly to the right, and then you go to the left.

1a. And feel. Organize yourself so it’ll be a smooth movement. And gradually, what happens in terms of the weight on the buttocks? What happens with the legs? And soften the legs in such a way that you could really have a smooth movement from side to side.

And as you do this movement, just as a little exercise here, what could possibly this movement develop into? So it’s again we go. . .

We work with the person. We start somewhere, wherever they are. But we have the vision for a bigger possibility.

Lie on your back and rest for a moment.

2. And roll to your side and sit up again. The soles of the feet together, the arms again in a circle. And see if you can have the elbow. . . Some of you had the elbows leaning down. It’d be kind of hard to hug the tree, you know, if you came with the arms likes that.

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 9: From Sitting to Standing in Three Ways


And now, resume doing this movement of, you know, taking the arms and the shoulders like this right and left allowing the hips to rock—that means shifting the weight, and at the same time, move the head in the opposite direction.

2a. And see whether the. . . a few things. . . First of all, whether when you turn your head in the opposite direction, you stop moving your hips.

2b. And notice if you can continue rocking on your hips. That means using your lower back even though your head is going, or moving, in the opposite direction.

2c. And notice if you can hold your elbows to the sides. Unless the tree has a dent there on both sides you probably would need the arms to be in a circle.

But turn the head. Don’t just peak with your eyes. Actually turn the. . . Doesn’t mean you have to turn a lot, but just do the action of turning, and turn the shoulders.

Some of you started translating the shoulders right and left instead of turning. You stopped turning. So you turn the arms and the shoulders. But you see. . .

1[DEMO AND COMMENTS ON ESSENTIALS SLOW & SMALL MOVEMENTS]

So now, put again your hands in front of you. And all of you start with a small movement, and a slow movement, and in that, you will have the chance to gauge yourself.

And, you see, some of you are holding. . . But your thumbs are stuck up to the ceiling. What do you think your brain is doing when your thumbs are like that? It goes “Voo, voo,voo!” Even though the thumbs are little, look again in the anatomy or physiology book at the homunculus, and see how the thumbs take more space than your whole torso and pelvis. So when your thumbs are active like that, let me tell you, what dominates your brain at that moment, which also means that you’re doing greater efforts, that you are not comfortable. And when you work with somebody and their thumbs go like this, or their jaw clenches, or their tongue starts traveling around in their mouth, or whatever, you just know that their brain is busy doing nonsense.

2d. There you go. And then you can feel whether you’re shifting weight—when you’re shifting weight, when you’re not able to shift weight. And then you don’t push through it.

2[COMMENTS/LECTURE]

Sit, and if you need to lift your tush up. . . (we’ll just go another 10 minutes and then we’ll do a lunch break). I want to get a little bit of movement.



Do you feel value of what I’ve talked to you about now in the last 30-40 minutes? [students reply yes] You’re very welcome. It’s up to you to listen. It’s up to you to take it seriously. It’s up to you to have the courage of your own knowledge, to have the courage of your own knowledge. These things that I say and that I tell you now, and now research shows, I’ve been saying some of them 25 years ago, 30 years ago. And it was like weird. Because nobody even knew. . . It was like weird. I was very young so people were forgiving on some level, and I was giving them outcomes so they came to me because they got outcomes. And for a lot of people, I also, by my courage and by my temperament, I gave permission for people to have courage about themselves and their own lives. I didn’t quite understand all that then, I just did it.

But now it’s very different. But even now, you go and those doctors, pompous idiots that don’t read about the brain and don’t listen, and when she tries to tell them (the mother) what I say, they are not interested in listening because I don’t have a degree that they think is relevant, which tells you they have very, very low level in their own capacities, because really brilliant, intelligent, creative people listen to anything that is interesting because they have their own inner guide. They don’t lean on their degree or on something else.

[in sitting] Ok. So put the soles of the feet together. Makes a circle of your arms.

And it’s not like I don’t have a degree, but I don’t have the right degree.

And now, begin turning your shoulders, and your arms, and your head, and do a tiny little movement, and stop the moment—the shoulders, or the arms, or the whatever, and eventually the pelvis.

You see right now we’re waiting to wake up the pelvis.

Remember, when showing on Michelle, how the pelvis was sort of in that position. For that moment it was a bit dormant.

And do you feel already the difference Elizabeth? Yes. Ah. You see. So an inch or two inches up, and bang it makes a difference. It’s a question of connection to self and knowing the difference between yes comfortable and no comfortable.

I do sometimes lessons at home and I have one little pillow. I don’t remember when or where I brought it. And it’s a small pillow. And it has just the right consistency if I need to elevate my pelvis, you know, if I do certain movement. And I go through this experience where I start doing the movements and then I realize and then I say uh-huh. I probably will do better if I elevate my pelvis. And then I elevate my pelvis. And then I look and it means that I have to get up and walk, like four steps to get it. And I go into this internal debate: do I need to get up and get that? Don’t I need? And usually I go like, “Anat this is more work than getting the pillow.” Laughter. But I have to talk myself out of like oh I don’t want to get up and get the pillow again.

What? Get a dog? Yeah. That’s a whole lot more work.

And now, turn the head in opposite direction, opposite direction, but listen that you are still turning the shoulders and the arms. And you’re



still rocking the hips the way you did when you took the head with. You see. Notice when you stop rocking your pelvis but still turning, continuing. You’re continuing to turn the shoulders and arms. And see whether you can.

3[DEMO – COMMENTS ON EFFORING IN THE HANDS]

2e. So do it one more time. Take it in the same direction all of you. And if you find that your hands are stiff.

It’s not like you’re a bad person or you should feel embarrassed, but you should look and say, “Oh, oh, I need to find a way that I can actually do it, and not need to do that,” and of course as teachers working with other people that’s a huge indicator. . .

2f. And see if you can rock the pelvis from side to side. And now you see, you’re going everything in the same directions.

4 [DEMO COMMENTS]

So we’re going to take a break. Now when we come back, you really pay attention to yourself, and you work with yourself with that level of attentiveness, and refinement, and sophistication.

And it’s very, very different from you know barely touching—you know all that slow, small mythology in the Feldenkrais way. One of the thing that happened to me going to teach in other people’s training is I wanted to just go and just hit people on the head. You know it was like hard, hard, fast. They are like lying all smeared on the ground, you know, and it’s like wake up! You know, here we are! Because, it’s not about falling asleep on yourself, it’s about waking up even more, but by doing that listening so closely and that’s what we did.

LUNCH BREAK ------- TML CONTINED AFTER LUNCH BREAK

3. Sit with the soles of your feet together and get ready to move. Circle with your

arms. And now begin moving. Let’s just go the right now. And look with your head to the right. And if you were to keep moving, what will your legs do or at least one of your legs?

Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going. If you were to really keep going, keep going, keep going…do I have to say keep going? Keep going. Keep going. No, you don’t get on your belly. Well what will happen with



the leg? Well, see. Do it then. One leg will flip. Yeah. Well then do it. And come back. ‘Just do it’. Do it a few times. Just to your right. And do it in such a way that the flipping of the leg will not…if I just saw just your arms, I wouldn’t know you flipped your leg. Until the leg drops inward. You’re like the queen of England. You need a very special invitation. And come back.

3a. And now, put your feet standing. Spread. And continue doing the same thing.

This is what? What about it? Where you…yeah. You said it with this expression I thought “what is she saying?”.

3b. And feel. When do you round your spine and when do you arch your spine and which side?

You see when you come back it’s actually very helpful to, you know, roll the pelvis back and pull the hip back to place. That the head comes forward. That’s right.

3c. And now do it to the other side. The feet stay just standing.

Skipping a step. Some of you your circle has gotten sharp points to it all of a sudden so make sure that your arm…

3d. And see if you can reduce tension in your wrists and thumbs.

3e. And now go from side to side. And see if you can let the legs go all the way to the floor when you turn like this.

Just keep swiveling the pelvis. Turning the shoulders.

3f. And now, this is terrific. Keep doing it, just look with the head in the opposite direction.

Chris, you’re doing the legs separately. You’re doing the arms separately. You’re moving the shoulders and the arms. Then you let the pelvis swivel and the legs. You don’t slide and then, you know, mooch with the legs and then move the arms. It’s the movement of the shoulders and the arms that coordinates with the pelvis and the lower back.

3g. And now take the head in the same direction and see if it got a little easier.

The feet do not slide. The feet do not slide. The feet stay where they are otherwise you are not doing the movement that we are asking. The feet do not slide to adjust to the pelvis. The feet…the legs simply respond to the movement of the legs so the legs don’t matter in that sense.

3h. And do the movement just a few times quicker. Easier. Simpler. Turn yourself like that side to side. There you go.




4. Roll through the side and sit up the same way please. Put your feet standing. Make a circle with your hands like that. Like before. Or better. And now turn yourself to the right. Let the knees flip to the right like that and then continue swiveling, twisting, swiveling the pelvis so you come up on the knees. If you need to put a hand down on the floor initially to help you, that’s fine, but if you just keep your back rounded.

Remember the way we did it and the head sort of shoots. It’s the relationship of the pelvis and the head and it sort of shoots it in the space. Turning the pelvis. But come on the knees. To stand on the knees. Up on the knees and then go back down. Go the other way. Bring the knees up and do it so you push as little as possible on the legs and as much just the inertia of the movement. So the back is rounded. The head is down when you come up as you start coming up and when you go down, again, you round and see if you can do it gradually until there is no stop. Many of you turn, put the knees down, then you stop and then you push yourself up.

4a. See if you can turn it into one continuous movement.

4b. And keep the circle now. Don’t lean on the floor. Keep the circle. Keep swiveling the pelvis to bring you up. Round your back. Lower your head both up and down. Round and go the other way. Round until you’re up and then you straighten yourself up and then round the back again and go down and then you can go down soft and come up continuously.

John. Slow down. You’re going so fast. I see but you do not perceive the points where…slower. Much, much slower. You see, you’re sliding the foot. I don’t know if you noticed.


And notice that you can do movements like this that are pretty large and pretty fast and you’re not like out of breath and your heart is not racing. So when movements get organized you can do more and more and you don’t get that, you know. I know that in aerobic training they want you to intensify, speed up the heart rate, but actually when we move really well the better we can do the movement the less that happens, even when we move bigger and stronger. Another one of those things that…



5. Roll through your side and sit up. Put your feet standing like that. And now, hold your hands in a circle. Tilt your knees to the right. [TN: Anat corrects herself] I mean turn yourself to the right. And let the knees drop to the right and then continue like that like you did to come up on your knees. Keep turning.

No. You see you’re about to push yourself in a straight line. It is not about pushing. It’s like, you turn and you simply continue turning the pelvis more to bring you up.

5a. And next time you come up to the right, when you’re on your knees, then continue to bring the left leg up to standing. Remember? You’ve done it once or twice this week?

There you go.

And if you need to put an arm down on the floor to help you that’s when you can put an arm down.

And then…but if you’re not leaning on the arm then be in a circle. Then bring down the leg back enough so that you go back to side sitting. You go first back to side sitting. And then you lift the knees and come back. Do it a few times to the right. Until it becomes one continuous movement.

And then you take the leg back, but back to where it was. That’s right. To side sitting. You round your back. You come back on your tush and then you put the feet like standing up. And keep doing that.

5b. And now do the same thing to the other side. Just to the other side. Just to the left and then back to the middle.

So you turn your arms and your shoulders and you go like that. And you come back.


And of course feel changes. I can see just looking at you how you are lying on the floor. The way you breathe. The length of your neck now. That the contact of the head is closer to the base of the head. Feel if your lower abdomen is breathing better.

6. And now roll to your side and sit up. And now do this movement from side to side. That means that you make a circle with your arms. You put your feet standing. You go to whatever side you want. You continue putting one foot



standing. Then you bring it back to place and you lift the knees and you go the other way.

6a. And now stop that and sit in the middle. The same way. And now we’re going to go to one side first.

Why don’t you lie on your back first?

You look at me like aren’t we going to get our usually rest? What happened?

7. Roll to your side. Sit up. Put your feet standing. Make circle with your hands. And now what you’re going to do is you’re going to do the same thing. You’re going to turn yourself to the right. You’re going to tilt your legs to the right. You’re going to continue to come on your knees and you’re going to put the left leg standing. And then you’re going to continue. You can put your right hand down. Whatever the hand down that you need to put down and you will lift the other leg up. It’s the movement you’re been doing all week long. Put the hand down.

[TO A STUDENT] Steve, you’re totally ready. Right now. Don’t’ move. Don’t change. Look at Steve. Clear as a bell that he is ready to yank on his right leg and his left leg to get himself up and absolutely not with the pelvis in space. That’s the moment that you need to catch yourself. So you go right back. This is done. Now you’re organized to do that and if you don’t’ want to do that you have to simply get out of it. And then go again and find the way. So you back off from the ambition to stand up.

[REITERATION OF INSTRUCTION] All of you go ahead. You don’t’ have to watch him. Go ahead and do it. Watch yourself. So you bring the foot to standing and then keep twisting the pelvis but the idea is to come so that the weight is much on both. So you don’t stand on one leg and the other one is just behind. You want to organize the pelvis. That’s it. So when you come up, you come up as much, equally distribute the weight between the two legs. And then you just reverse the whole thing. And if you go down, round your back. Lower your head. That will actually help you. Take the other leg behind. That’s it. And do it just to the right a number of times. The arms in the circle. The arms in the circle. Keep twisting the pelvis. Keep twisting the pelvis. Bring the leg. Keep twisting the pelvis. You can put your toes like for running. There you go and you come up so that you are on both legs. And look at that. Many of you are doing it.

And can you imagine how many people could you take off the street and ask them to do this movement? And they’d be able to do something remotely like it. Pretty much probably one out of 1,000 or 10,000. So now that you’re doing it, because it’s been built piece by piece over a week, it looks like oh you know it’s nice to be able to do it but like it feels pretty doable, right? Because it is doable. But it’s only doable under certain conditions.

No Rosalie, bad. That was like bad. So if you catch yourself doing it, don’t. You see. It’s kind of like if you catch yourself like you’re about to hit somebody, even



by mistake, on the head, are you keep letting your arm move or are you going to try and stop it and take your arm somewhere else? Treat it the same way. You know. That’s what I was preaching about earlier. I was doing my Saturday sermon. Since I’m Jewish I do my sermons on Saturday. And gradually, of course you’re in a learning, but gradually it becomes just one….ah. Rosalie you’re still doing it. No it’s not the wrong or the right. You’re pushing off your left thigh. Rather than swiveling your pelvis. You’re using the power; you’re so use to doing it that you don’t feel that you are doing it. You can’t…there you go. You feel. It’s a totally different world. Now if you don’t feel it in yourself you can’t help other people learn it. Because it s really the relationship between the head and the pelvis that brings the legs up. It’s not the legs. The legs are like a minor detail. Of course when one of them is broken then it becomes a major detail. You see and because you have to go back down that means that you went up too soon. You see. You go up and then you go back down half way. That’s it. And now go back up. Swivel the pelvis. There you go. That’s…do you understand what’ I’m trying to…yeah. Because otherwise you still do your old thing then you remembered to go down. Anyway.


It’s not about doing it perfectly but it’s not about doing it poorly over and over again not knowing that you’re doing it poorly. At least experiment. Oops, I pushed off my thigh. Oops, I stopped moving my pelvis. Oops, I tightened my neck. Oops, I held my breath. At least that there is something there.

Someone told me about his mother. She’s in ‘today’s terms’, she’s not a very old person. But she’s 80 years old. She’s had a heart attack or stroke. And she’s, you know, she’s not in good shape and healthy and so on. But it’s like she described a person that has no connection to life and a lot of limitation and no interest in getting better. And she keeps asking her son “why am I alive?”. I said to him gently. I said “ well, that is a legitimate question”. I mean, it’s like if you don’t do something interesting, you’ve moved forward, you grow, you provide, you contribute, you just create a carbon foot print that’s all. I mean one can think about that. People are creating enormous amount of garbage literally a lot of pollution. We are very polluting animals.

8. Ok, roll to your side. Put your feet standing. And now, make circles of your arms and tilt [TN: Anat made a mistake she means TURN] your knees to the left. I means it’s not…sorry, it’s my mistake. Turn yourself to the left. Let the knees follow. Let the pelvis follow and keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Steve your hands look like they’re Frankenstein. ‘Stein’, that’s the important part [laughter].)

And keep going. That always, always reminds me of the joke that you must have heard me tell you at least two times. She already laughs. The idea is funny that I’m going to tell it yet a third time. Yeah. That’s joke number 6. Keep going. You’re not off the hook. And when you come up, you want to organize the pelvis so that the weight is as evenly distributed on both feet as possible because that’s the easiest. Keep swiveling the pelvis. It’s when you stop moving your pelvis that you get stuck and your legs go ‘picker packer’ and when you start aging.



8a. And now do this from side to side. A few of you still need to help with the arm which is fine but most of you do it with the arms in a circle. Let me tell you. It’s just because we’ve done all that we’ve done.

[TO ONE STUDENT] You see you find it difficult, Liz, at this point because you stop swiveling the pelvis. You kind of like thought ‘Ok, now it’s time to push off the legs’.

If you do it, don’t do it, but if you did it really fast you can do it without with the basically with the legs in the air. Right? You can go down, roll and jump like this on your feet. It’s really the pelvis and the head that dictate the movement. Round your back. Round your back. Soften your chest. Go down. There you go. Keep going. Take the other leg backwards. Don’t lean on the elbow. The one thing you really don’t want to train yourself going down is to lean on the elbow. Trust me. Because you never ever want to land on your elbow. Not a good thing. If you need to put down a hand, put down a hand. But do not and if you fall down put down a hand instead of banging the floor with your tush. Not your elbow. [T o one student: But Jerry you forget to take the leg backwards. It’s you go back to side sitting. What? You knew there was something missing. Well I’m glad I’m here to help.]


And feel your breath. Feel if more of your diaphragm…all around now. I see some of you. Look at here. Your diaphragm is working more fully all around which is a very, very nice feeling and kind of good for vitality.

9. Roll to your side and sit. And cross your legs simply in a…have the legs crossed. You probably want to sit on the floor this time. Cross your legs. You’ll see why. Cross them. Cross, cross them. Put your right hand smack in front of you. Swivel your pelvis and come up to standing. Swivel your pelvis and come. You might want to change the crossing. Yeah, well then change the crossing to the crossing that works. Swivel your pelvis and come up to standing. Keep the hand on the floor.

Not a…no. Swivel your pelvis. Turn your pelvis and come up to standing. Keep the hand on the floor. Right hand. So to which direction do you swivel your pelvis? To get up? No. No. No. Swivel the pelvis so you can stand up and still have the hand on the floor. It’s easy. You see. You keep trying to do it in a way that’s the same mistake. You’re trying to stand up straight. Swivel you pelvis. Turn your pelvis. Roll your pelvis. Rotate your pelvis. I don’t know what else to say. There you go.

9a. Now put the right hand behind you. Swivel the pelvis and come up to standing. On the feet. Swivel the pelvis to your feet not knees, hands,

No. No. We’re doing something different. Swivel your pelvis. There you go. That’s easier. That’s much easier. Keep the hand on the floor. Yeah. Ok. So you lean on your right hand behind you and you swivel the pelvis to your left. Turn your pelvis to your left. There we go. And come on both.

Put both feet you know on both feet and come back down. Mike, the hand behind. Behind you. Behind you this time. Behind you. I mean next to you



behind you kind of thing. There you go. That’s right. And do. Skip the hand on the floor. I don’t know how many times to say it but maybe I should stop. Yeah.

And lie on your back. Rest for a moment.

10 Now, stand up. Roll to your side and stand up. Maybe use one of the ways you’ve learned.

Who knows? That might happen. Who knows? There you go, Steve. That was it. Did you like it? Loved it. Excellent. Put down your left hand on the floor in between your legs. Swivel your pelvis and sit down. To which direction do you need to swivel your pelvis? No. Swivel the pelvis to the direction that when you swivel you sit down and the hand is behind you. Next to you. Just the same thing except with the left hand.

10a. And now swivel your pelvis. Come back up to standing. Put down your left hand. Swivel the pelvis to the left. Let the legs. The legs will cross. Just swivel the pelvis.

Swivel. Swivel. Swivel. Twist the damn thing. You see.

The difference in maturity, in intelligence, between doing that and telling you to hold your belly in to be strong. You see. This is about getting the pelvis into the mapping in your brain in relation to movement including very powerful movement like going down and up to the floor. And what you need to do is you need to round your back, soften the chest bring the head plenty forward and continue swiveling the pelvis and you’re up. No. No. No. Michael. It’s not about doing it…that’s another movement, but you’re supposed to reverse it. We’re doing this other movement. You always reverse. We’re doing this movement now. We’re not getting up one way and then getting down the other way. You have the left hand behind you because that was the hand that you were doing to put down on the floor. You swivel the pelvis and you stand up.

But you stopped swiveling the pelvis, Rosalee, before you were done with the movement that’s why one leg climbed over the other. What are you doing? You’re doing yoga. It’s not about this. It’s about standing so when you swivel your legs cross not over cross. Not. I don’t know what you call that other thing. Just swivel. There you go. That’s it. There you go. That’s right. The legs find their place once you move…it’s all about the relationship and the movement between the head and the pelvis. 100%. Lie on your back and rest. And that’s what your aging population, paying population will all have completely messed up. Guaranteed. And when you help organize it and come bring it to life and make it work better, guess what? People get stronger, better, more vital, hopefully more intelligent with less pain.

10b. And now, roll to your side. Stand up again. Put your right hand down. Swivel the pelvis to sitting. Right hand between the two legs. Swivel the pelvis to sitting. So you’re looking in the opposite direction. And now. Listen to me. You’re going to come back not all the way to standing. Change the arms. Swivel and sit the other way. So you swivel from side to side like that and the pelvis makes a big arc in space.



Don’t’ push on the front leg. Do not come all the way up. You just go enough to shift direction and swivel the other way.

[TO STUDENT] Peggy. Not with both hands on the floor.

5[DEMO]

Sit. By the way this is something you can work on at home

Steve and everybody else. It’s something that as you improve, and improve and improve, you’ll see other things improve with it. For instance, put your feet in standing. Feel by the way if your feet stand easier clearer and closer to your tush than before. Make a circle with your hands. Spread your feet so there’s room for the knees to, you know, do it. Turn yourself to the right. Continue going up. Bring the foot up. Continue swiveling the pelvis. Come up to standing and then go the other way.

You see? You feel Jerry how much better that was? Both feet! Michelle. You come on both feet then take the front leg behind. Side sit. And lift the knees. And then do it to the other side. No. You’re reversing. You’re reversing. Liz, the pelvis. You stopped swiveling it. Up again. Do it again to the same side. Do the same side. Put the foot standing. She’s doing it very well. Put the foot standing. Swivel. There you go. Yeah. So from now on you’re in charge. The reason I caught you like that is because such a waste of opportunity. You have it all there and then you just throw it all away. Unfortunately. We don’t want to miss that opportunity. There you go. And you’re really also training yourself in quality movement.

11. And now, do it one more time and come up to standing. Whichever direction you want. And stay standing. And still use what you learned. There you go. And put your arms down.

11a. And just stand.

11b. And walk around.

And feel what it means to stand up and be you at this moment. Is it a slightly different you?

END OF LESSON

1 [DEMO]

Steve, stop. Stop where you are. And look, Steve has moved the arms to the left—to his left—but he barely turned the shoulders to the left. No. it’s too late. It’s way, way, way too late. You can only become aware of what you did.



Come back and do differently. You can’t superimpose the correct action on top of the disorganized action, because you always have the disorganized part. You’re sitting on it. It’s impossible. You see?

And what’s the trick? It’s again and again the same thing. It’s unbelievable how much it tends to be said over and over again. [Anat asks the question to Steve but his answers are not audible]. But why small? Small for what purpose? [Steve speaks.] Give me another reason. [Steve speaks.] Awareness. Smoothness. Brain. Love. Oxygen. And give me another reason—a practical reason. No. he needs to answer. [Steve speaks.] Well, but why would you get it? What about it, gets you to get it? Do it not small and feel what happens. No, you don’t have to do it fast, just do it not small and see what happens. [Steve speaks.] Yeah, but we know that. But what would the small give you an advantage. You can do incorrectly small. You can do incorrectly large. [Steve speaks.] So? [Steve speaks.] So you learn it more? No you’re not quite there yet. You see. I know he should have had the microphone but what about small?

So I’m moving from you. You see, it’s so interesting because at a certain point if you don’t think it, try it, you’ll never ever get it, or do it right. We start with experiential, because if you don’t’ have experiential, forget thinking. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about or thinking. But once you start doing experiential if you keep it experiential, it stays about. . . you know between. . .you’re like on the back stairwell between the first and second floor and you’re never going to get to the 100th floor.

What about it? So now you guys, or you, whoever, jump in. What about the small? [To Steve:] You were almost there and you fell off? So what about the small makes it work so that you don’t just do small because it’s a religion?

I’ve taught in Feldenkrais trainings where there were all kinds of religions. One religion is you don’t correct. You don’t tell a student anything because you don’t correct students. That was one religion. Now we don’t’ correct the way that you’re not supposed to correct, but how about there’s other ways to talk to students to make a positive difference?

So then there’s the religion of the small and the slow. So I’m: “so what for?” Now we’re just taking the small. What about the small? Where is the advantage? Who cares? What’s small for? I have a few hands. Who raised hands? I’ll start with you in the back. Wait. Microphone. Now we’re self-correcting that mistake.

[Student:] It allows you to feel what you’re doing.

[Anat:] Well? What about slow and big? You see I’m taking now. . . it’s true that small. . . maybe, maybe more because you have to pay attention because it’s small. But slow allows you to feel. Slow, small; slow, big. What the hell the difference is? You see, I do that with myself. I keep. . . I drive my co-writer crazy but I do that. I mean, I decide on something and then I go “says who?” And well I say, I said it. “OK. So?” And then I keep asking, “So?”

[Student:] So to do the movement well, a whole variety of parts need to contribute to the movement and some of the parts may have less available movement so by doing it slow, or small, everything has the opportunity to participate in the movement whereas, if you do it not small, then a certain part may not do anything because it’s not available.

[Anat:] I completely agree with you. I would suggest to say it from a different direction. It’d make it clearer to people. Totally agree. Interesting how you came into it. So let’s see what other people have to say and then I’ll work with it.



[Student:] So, with the small you’re able to perceive, like in this particular case for instance, when the shoulders are, you know he spoke to it, aren’t able to go anymore because you’re learning your experience of what you can’t do.

[Anat:] Ok between the two of you, you said it. You see. She said it. So assuming you’re moving your shoulders some ,or if you’re not moving them at all, then you start and you stop because you. . . You see with the small movement you have a much better chance that you’re doing it well or as you said the different parts are able to kick in, within a very small range of the movement.

[TO STEVE] You keep going. You keep going, but then the shoulders. . . You don’t know how to move the shoulders. You don’t know you’re not moving the shoulders, and you keep moving the arms. You see that your arms are over here so your brain checks off, “Well, I’m doing it”. And that’s the. . . ”I’m asleep on myself. I don’t’ know what the hell I’m doing kind of level,” and then you get a loss piled on a loss.

First of all you’re not doing the movement which has value for this lesson. I can also tell you to move the arms and not move your shoulders. It doesn’t mean that moving the arms without moving the shoulders is a “bad” movement. It’s a movement; it’s a movement we can do. And my other reason to do it that way for whatever reason, I don’t know. But when you are asked, and you intend, and you believe that you move your arms with your shoulders—and it’s not just you, it’s everybody else—and you just go for getting the movement, then not only are you not doing that movement which is part of the input that we are doing, which is to prepare you for the rest of the lesson, but you’re also training your “unawareness” and that’s where the biggest part is.

Who cares the shoulders? I mean, it’s good when the shoulders can move, and it makes a big difference. But in comparison, the part that’s really the biggest prize is being unaware and training yourself into “unawareness.” It’s almost like an active training to not know. Active training against the opposite training which is to be aware, to feel, to notice, to think, to change and so on and so forth.

So we have all those religions over here called essentials. But there is a reason. A very concrete reason is that when you do it small, you stand a better chance to learn to do it well in the small. And then, as you organize it in the small, the parts, like you said, then can kick in that need to kick in. You do it also slow. You also reduce the demand on the system so you can pay attention more. And you can feel that when you sit here [Anat leans behind herself] it’s harder to move the shoulders. But if I can bring my lower back to work it’s easier to move the shoulders. You have a chance to pick up to figure things out. You have a chance to figure things out. You have a change to become more intelligent.

And it’s not like you’re not an intelligent man. Of course you’re intelligent, successful and all that stuff. It’s a different kind of intelligent. It’s a different kind. It’s this you know biological, kinesthetic, fused with feelings, and emotions, and ideas and everything kind of intelligence. And that’s the intelligence that’s associated with vitality. It’s associated with the ability to self-correct, to get past pain, to get past limitation. OK? And it’s a 100% dependent on you.

So when somebody works on you and gives you an FS, or you work on someone, you’re responsible for generating that small. . . And we do move from small to large. I mean look at this whole segment. That’s what I’ve been doing with you this whole segment. Really large movements and we’re going into large movements again today and tomorrow. But if you don’t really understand the opportunity and value of going small and getting the details you want in there in the small, then you will not be able to either abide by it and certainly use it for its maximum potency.

So we can learn to perfection to do the things small. Then we can start expanding it bigger because once the brain knows to do it really well small, you have the map. You have the—what do you call the like the architects do—you have the blueprint. You have the blueprint for the action.



You have the blueprint for the action, and then when you start doing it bigger and it’s not quite right you say “oh, oh, not that” and you go back to small.

This is another part of this range of motion exercise idiocy. You take a paralyzed or semi-paralyzed arm. I don’t know whatever the cause is, brachial plexus or whatever the cause is, and you give it range of motion. you know. And you do it big, and you do it fast, and the system. . .and it’s done poorly, and it’s not properly mapped and differentiated and integrated relative to the rest of the body, and it has very tangential value, if any, and it has a big value of disorder. So you get some benefit perhaps. It’s not totally paralyzed or you have some whatever. But you also get the price that’s paid that that arm will never move well if it will move. And it’s not negotiable. There’s no room to be nice about it. Now you can say it in a way that you don’t blame people, because people that do range of motion or that do large movement when they come to you, we know everybody else is good people (I don’t know that everybody is a good person) but you know, on the whole, people are trying to do well and the best. . . And certainly the therapists that do it, they don’t mean any harm. They are working really, really, really hard with profound commitment to try and help people except that it’s not going to work. Just like the earth is not flat and the sun is not circling around the earth. And lots of people didn’t like it at the time and some people even today don’t like it. OK. But it’s not going to change the fact.

2 [COMMENTS/LECTURE]

You don’t plough through it. You go back and then you go again and you look at what you can do slightly different with yourself so you will shift the weight. Because it’s not like we are not after you eventually being able to shift the weight and all that, but that’s the way to be able to learn.

And you feel, like Elizabeth, you’re pulling your belly in. And if you can’t do it, what do you do to make it easier? What do you do to make it easier to arch your back? What do we do? You get up. You pick up a mat you bring it down.

You see, when you work with people. . . Stop for a moment. You know the potency, the current level of potency roughly that I have in my work, right? So usually when I work with people its like ping, ping, ping happens. Right? Stuff happens. It’s amazing. One of the things behind it is that you cannot. . .the less you’re. . .On one hand we say variation. . .We start with the person where they are. We have the goal. We throw it into the future. We might even change the goal as we go along.

You know I talked to somebody a couple nights ago, and—what was it? I’m trying to remember. And that person said he had a goal to learn a certain number of languages a certain way, and one of the languages from a certain area. . . But one of the languages would be preferable to learn from a certain area. And I said, “Just change your goal, and just throw in that one of the languages will be from a different area”. And fully seriously this person said to me, “Can you change? Once you have a life goal, can you change it?” I said, “I can. Just watch me. Bang, bang, I’ll just change my goals in a nanosecond.”

So also when we have a goal, we don’t’ get stuck on the goal. We check to see if that goal is what we still want. We don’t give up because we have a bad day or because we had a slight disappointment or even a bigger disappointment. That’s not what we do. But we’re also not rigid about the goal because maybe we put the goals when we were 20 or 15 and now we are 40, and maybe that is not exactly the goal we want anymore. Or maybe it is our life dream and we go for it. But once you accomplish it, you need a new goal by the way, or a new dream—very, very important. So I’m saying all that to you so you don’t get. . .

I’m trying to not let you get stuck anywhere. So if you think, “Oh, here, this is how it’s supposed to be”. I bounce you out of that slot. So you’re bouncing from slot to slot. So on one hand, I’m not



attached to a specific outcome, certainly not at a specific time. First, because I’m not. Second, because I know it’s not going to work anyway. If anything, it’s going to interfere with the ability to accomplish the change. So I’m trained to not do that right? But at the same time, I am so intentional and so. . . I’m like a perfectionist.

So if I’m going to sit somebody down, and say it was an FS and I had you in my office, and I said, “Sit down. Let’s start doing this lesson.” And I would watch you and I would watch you arching and, you know, pulling your belly and I would put my hand gently on your back to see if I could guide you. And it wouldn’t work. I’d stop you at that moment and put something under your pelvis to elevate it, and then I’ll see if that’s the right amount. I could take 5, 10. . . I’d take the whole lesson to figure it out. Because I know that until you have the conditions that are favorable for learning, it’s a waste of your time, my time, and your money. And your hopes.

People come to you with hopes. That doesn’t mean that I guarantee an outcome. But if I know that something could be done better, I am not, not going to do that.

Yesterday by the way it went well with the little girl. It was a very unusual. I sat there and I thought, “All plans are a basis for a change.” And the person who suffered was, of course, Marcy, because I was supposed to meet with her and I couldn’t make it. I’ll tell you in a minute what happened. But she looks like she’s doing fine.

But the way I worked with her—it’s so far away from what I would have done if I had her in my office. But she’s tied up to things, and she’s in a hospital bed, and I went the other side where the nurse is sort of less likely to see me, and, you know, there’s all those things. It still was very valuable. So I optimized it for that situation. But if I had my freedom, I would have done it differently. But in each given situation I go for it to optimize, and if it’s not good enough, I will then back off, or back out, or whatever you call it. And that’s the level. That’s why you hear me talking like that right now— because I want you going out of here not frozen saying, “Oh, I’ve got to do it perfectly.” I say, “No.” Because you don’t know what perfect is. I don’t know what perfect is. Even when I give the best lesson with the best outcomes I don’t know if someone couldn’t have done better. There’s nowhere to compare it to. It is what it is.

So it’s not about being frozen because maybe it’s not going to be good enough. But it’s about being attuned. The word I would say is attuned. And when you have a thought, you wonder, and you take a moment, and you wonder. And then you try it this way, and you try it that way. And if I were say giving you, Liz, a lesson, the act of lifting your pelvis a little, seeing how it works. Taking the pelvis a little down, seeing how it works. Making that one buttock is higher than the other. Perhaps. I mean I have no idea what I would do. I have to interact with you. But that process by itself is invaluable to the system. So even if I thought I was going to teach you to do this and do that and whatever comes next, what we are saying now is going to end up being the most valuable part of this lesson that I never thought I was going to talk about this. Because this is adjusting you a little higher and a little lower right now. So that you will wake up.

And when you work, you do your best. Not as if, ‘Oh, I’m doing my best, please, or something.” But you go in. You see what you see. You feel what you feel. You work with that, but then you work with that. You don’t go like, “Oh it’s not quite right, and we’re supposed to turn”. No. You’re supposed to get people connected to themselves, feeling themselves, awake to themselves, available to change. The turning is neither here nor there. It’s just the content we work with which is also useful in life.

And that’s what I do, and I do it to the point that sometimes I piss off people. But when I work with people. . . Look, I’m usually, you know, I’m kind, and I care, and I have very good relationships pretty much with all my clients. But there are times where I will not go along with something that I know is really, is going to be, detrimental. I just won’t do it. I mean people can do what they want, and I can say you know I’m not going to stop appreciating you or what not, or I’ll do my best to



continue appreciating you, but I’m not going to go along. I’m not going to pretend with everybody else that what I know doesn’t exist.

I won’t mention names. but a little baby that was started. . . Marcy actually started working with him. Then I started working with him. Very, very severe condition. First of all through the work with Marcy then a combination of working with me and Marcy, then a few other practitioners, that child went from complete devastation in ability to sleep, in ability to learn and ability to move—the whole bit—to actually waking up and within the constraints of his condition, actually was able to use the arms and then eventually extend them fully and then bring himself up to sitting and then hop in sitting, you know. He couldn’t crawl, not because of the brain, but because of structural issues. But he learned how to hop. Happy, happy, little person. We all just like gaga over him. He became like awake, and alert, and happy, and interested one-year old.

I asked that they go to the doctors to check something medically, because I needed to know in order to know where to harp. I mean if I should I continue to harp the same way, or should I back off and look for alternative things. And I can’t do it. I don’t do x-rays and all that stuff. So I sent them to get it looked at in that way. What I didn’t know to predict is that once they went to that specialized group of doctors specializing with this child’s condition, it was like a [Anat makes a sucking noise]—you know like those scary movies where somebody goes and there’s like a suction and it sucks it and just goes down into a deep very far down something. That’s kind of like what happened.

So before you know anything, fast forward a couple months or so. They want to do surgery. They’re going to break bones, put bones, put things, and so on. And I heard that. . . Now that boy would have needed surgeries at a certain point. He would have needed it to completely stand up, but that was not the time to do it. He just learned to move. They would confine him in a half body cast. You know the legs that. . . First of all, he’d be in pain. He’d been devastated. He’s just blossoming for six months. And they’re literally going to go and break him. Literally. And let’s say that that alone is not too bad. Let’s say that I’m just overly whatever.

They would put casts on him. He is so tiny, so teeny tiny that the weights of the cast will make it so he couldn’t move the legs. Even if they cast each leg separately, it will inhibit the movement of the legs. He’s figured out how to move despite a lot of structural distortion. So his brain was brilliant enough through the help of the lessons to figure it out. Now they’ll put the cast on. Then he won’t be able to move the legs, and he’ll forget how to move. He will be in pain, and he will feel a profound sense of betrayal.

Infants and babies feel that. People don’t realize that. They think if you can’t say the word betrayal that you can’t feel the feeling of betrayal, but we feel the feeling of betrayal just like we feel the feeling of love or anger long before we can say it, or write it, or explain it. So. . . And I talked like I talk now.

So then I hear retroactively from Marcy that the mother was really upset because I actually worked with the boy—like did the move like push pull—only 20 minutes. Even if I worked a minute, I mean, Marcy and me and my work brought her child to life. It doesn’t matter how long I work. I mean, hello. People are so stupid. People so don’t look at the right places. It’s unbelievable. We see it every time we turn on the news, turn on CNN and go, “Aagh!”. You know, everybody looking in the wrong place and lying about what they are dong.

Anyway she wasn’t lying. She was just not…and she was pissed because I was yelling at her. Now I wasn’t yelling. I was just being very intense. Let me tell you. No, it is different. It’s very different. Because I was trying to help her protect her child from her and the doctors, and I was giving her information. So she didn’t like what I had to say and what’s behind it? What’s behind the rejection? It’s not my tone of voice trust me? What’s behind it? What motivated her that she wasn’t aware?



If you want to talk, sit up. I don’t call on people lying down. So, go ahead Nicole. Talk.

[Nicole:] It’s her child, and so in a lot of ways I can see that she would feel that she knows what’s best for her child, and you’re telling her what she feels, what is the best for her child.

[Anat:] That could be the case, of course, but that wasn’t the case. I mean she was very helpless. We really helped her, and she was very grateful. I don’t believe that was the case. She didn’t NOT feel she knows best. But it’s something else. Something else. It could very well be at times the case, and when that happens, you cannot work with that parent, because if they go into competition with you. . . But this actually happens very rarely, except if you tell parents how to parent. Usually they just walk away and never want to talk to you again. But in terms of the movement and the actual stuff, they treat us like experts. Ok, so go ahead.

[Student:] That she felt that there was a problem with it. That she was feeling concerns, issues, fears that are grounded.

[Anat:] Problem with what?

[Student:] With doing the surgery, doing the thing with the casting.

[Anat:] I mean she was concerned about doing the surgery but what motivated her to up. . . Look, my method, my work, manifested through Marcy and through me and a few other practitioners worked with him, gave her child life. She knew it as clearly as a bell. I’m the representative of what gave her child life. I’m telling her, “Wait a year or two. Let him first be able to stand on his knees and things,” and telling her exactly how it’s going to go if she does this surgery. And instead of listening, or taking more consideration, she just decides that I’m mean and she doesn’t like me anymore. So what motivated her? Which will motivate people over and over again and I see it a lot of course with parents.

[Student:] Thinking that maybe you wanted more lessons, more money.

[Anat:] No and I wasn’t giving hardly any lessons because I didn’t have time. Nowadays it’s a little hard to blame me for that. So, could happen. All that you’re saying could happen. Let me tell you what it is. Oh, you wanted to say something? No. No. No. I just didn’t want to try and fish from you guys.

[Student:] Possibly the doctors, their level of expertise, and also may be they could have threatened. Sometimes they threatened the parents.

[Anat:] They also threaten. They did threaten. And you know, you can give them more authority. . . All that I believe is probably in the mix too. But what is there is the unconscious hope that surgery and the doctor will make the child perfect. That’s what it is. We’ll break his bones. We’ll cut this, and we’ll do that, and then we’ll put it in a cast. And the doctors present it as if that will be the outcome. We’ll cut the adductors, we will lengthen the cord, we will move the rotator cuff, you know, like surgeries for brachial plexus—they are a disaster. They pretty much do not work. There’s also research that shows it. They’re still being done plenty because it’s going to fix the deformity. It’ll make my child perfect. That’s the motivation.

Now to want to make your child perfect, by all means. . . I mean to want to have a healthy, happy, successful, but to not and that’s a question of personal evolution. To be able. . . and that’s the part where I don’t know if there was another way to talk with her and to bring her to some awareness that that’s what she desires, and then to redefine perfection. And that’s a big, big, big piece—to redefine perfection, and say this child, unless something completely unknown to us, something that changes the genes, your child is not going to be as if he wasn’t born with whatever he’s born with.



But let’s define perfection really. Happy? Part of perfection? Yes. Brilliant? Yes. Moves? Yes. Loves to move? Yes. Will eventually be able to stand and walk? Yes. Blah. Blah. Will have maybe a back that stands like this and ankles that will look a little like that? But who says that the person who doesn’t have perfect looking ankles cannot have a full life? What defines a full life, perfect looking ankles, or a great relationship? Having a family, having the work you like, making money? I don’t know. Whatever, right? And, especially, the inner feeling of self. So she went and did the surgery, or had it done on it him.

I get one email from Marcy. She forwards it to me. She shares in the misery with me, so she forwards it to me. She mostly forwards me the good ones. She calls it bragging 1, bragging 2, bragging 3, bragging 4. I love it. I told her to keep bragging. I love getting those emails. She’s not the only one, but whenever you have successes, just email me. I love hearing from you. And if you have questions and problems only, perfectly fine. It’s not like only tell me about the good things, I don’t want to know about bad things, or challenges. So the first one is they did the surgery and by mistake they cut one of the nerves in the legs, and they reattached it and they hope it’s going to work. It’s kind of like, it’s like the wrath of God, the poor child. [Anat speaking the wrath: You’re not going to do this surgery or you’re going to fail.] It’s like, aagh! Now this leg is going to be in a cast. He just learned how to move it. Now the nerve is gone. He’s supposed to reconnect it to his brain. How? When the legs is months. . . You know they keep them for months in the things. I think I just emailed back and said idiots. Yuk!. Send that email back to Marcy.

So, then I get an email I think last week. The mother. . . so the kid had a rash so bad under the cast that they had to take it off, and when they took the cast off, he’s not moving and he’s not doing what he did before. He refuses to sit up. He will not sit himself up. He doesn’t want to move. He forgot how to move. You know. It’s like. I visualize, you know never mind. I won’t tell you what I visualize. It’s very aggressive. But he deserves aggression, because he deserves the desire to initiate such action and such stupidity, and such permission for lack of consciousness of self of the mother.

In the book that I’m writing I have a section, “Who am I doing this for?” When I drill my kid 8 hours a day to crawl, the child, who am I doing it for? Now maybe we’re doing it purely for the child and I’m just sacrificing myself. Look it, your kid is sick and you’re not sleeping nights and you’re in the hospital. Of course, you’re doing it for the child. You’re also doing it for yourself because you love the child. But of course you’re doing it for the child. But when you drill the child, or you cut and you break bones, who are you doing it for?

How did I get to talk about that though? I was going from something? Oh, yeah. It’s all your fault. It’s Liz’s fault; this sweet person. It’s her fault. So there are. . . It’s not for negotiation. You understand. Now there’s a lot of ways to do things. And there’s a lot of ways to get to something, but it’s not negotiable. This is not negotiable. It’s going to go down to the floor. Now, I can either hold it or not hold it or it can go down to the floor and on the way down I can do that and move it somewhere else and bring it back it. There are a lot of possibilities and directions, but the fundamentals of the biology and physics, they’re not negotiable. And when you take a little child who just learned to move. . . He’s going to be in pain. It’s not negotiable. And you put him in a cast and when the body is in pain, it reverses connections. It disconnected from the painful area. So we just connected him, and now they’re going to disconnect him. But nobody thinks about the brain that way. Except the people who do research about the brain but they don’t do the surgery.

So all this stuff is not negotiable. So when you work with somebody and they sit and they sit too low down right now and they cannot…you know the hip joints are not free enough they cannot roll the pelvis forward and they cannot activate the back. Let me tell you something. The outcome of that lesson is going to be a fraction of what you’d get otherwise and at the same time you’re training that person to try and improve in the state of discomfort and disassociation from themselves. And that’s not what we are trying to do. We are trying to do the exact opposite. So you put higher. You put lower. You change the way of the lesson. To the best of your ability you



accommodate, and if you can’t accommodate at that moment and it’s not comfortable enough, do something else.

I’ve started lesson and 10 minutes in the lesson I’ve said I’m sorry I think this is premature to do this, let’s do something else, and we’ll come back to it later. Do you know what a profound learning that is for someone? That they lie on the table and you go 10 minutes into it, and you don’t feel embarrassed, and you don’t feel you. . . or you don’t feel that you’ve done anything wrong. And you say, “It’s not going well enough”. Just be able to admit that this is not going well enough. Let’s go back to zero; let’s go back to zero. And then on top of that try to move the shoulders. No it hasn’t’ worked. It’s a very important distinction. You know. You befriend each other.

I’m befriending Brendon, and he says “let’s go eat”. And I say “fine” and I forget to tell him something important. And we go to a restaurant and it’s a restaurant that has tons of cilantro in the food and I go “Brendon I am so, so sorry. I forgot to tell you I’m very allergic to cilantro” So we do something about it. But the next time if he chooses another restaurant with tons of cilantro, or if he invites me to his house and he cooks for me dinner with cilantro, I go like, “I don’t know about this person. I’m not so sure I’m interested in having spending any time with him.” Because what about not getting it and self correcting? We adjust. We learn about what works and doesn’t work, and we adjust. It’s ok to go back and say ok, that doesn’t work. Let’s do it another way. Right? Yeah, but I’m driving so automatic we don’t think about it. Because people start doing something and they get compulsive and they get uncomfortable that they “make a mistake”.

So let’s do something. . . oh, last night. Yeah. We adjusted. We did good. Without even talking to each other, right? What did we do? I followed her, and it was rush hour. So, first of all, she kept quite a lot of distance in front to her from the car so if anybody wanted to cut into the lane. . . and I went pretty close to her, which you probably noticed, so people would prefer to change lanes that way. But then there was one time on the bridge where she blinked and went over to the left lane, and then the car behind me there wasn’t enough space for me to go so it took quite a while for me to do a little kamikaze Israeli driving style and I got back behind her and then that never happened again because what she did the next time she needed to change lanes she blinked to left, and she waited for me to take the left, and then I could reserve the space for her. And then she moved to the left. So, you know, you adjust. You mess it up once. You figure it out, and you adjust. You see? And that’s fun. Doesn’t that feel good? Like, oh, it works. Oh, it doesn’t work. We’ll figure it out.

3 [DEMO – COMMENTS ON EFFORTING IN THE HANDS]

Uh, and don’t change a thing, Liz, just stay as you are. Stay as you are. And now, I don’t know if the camera can catch her hands. Quickly. No, don’t change. Oh. That’s not good. Put them back to where they were. They were tighter—the thumbs up, up. You see. So look at the wrists, and look at the thumbs, and look at the fingers. And when somebody’s hands are like that, you know they are not using the center of the body the way it needs to be used. That’s when the periphery takes over. The excitation, the effort, and the things that’s more innervated are the wrists, the fingers and the hands. So, the effort of doing goes to where it is absolutely useless. You know when you want to turn around, I mean the fingers and wrists are not taking you anywhere.

And you can look at the athletes. For instance, before they are like gymnasts and stuff, before they are about to do a routine, if they’re….by the way, some of them are trained to stand like this—like it is pretty to do that—but you can see because they have seen that with a bunch of them and so they associate that this is part of being a gymnast. So people are idiots. They don’t know they are training them into disorder by training them to do that.

If you look at ballerinas, the hands, the wrists are supposed to be really soft. Now. you can do expressive stuff with the hands, but otherwise you want it because when the. . .now you could do it



that means the powerful the distribution of effort is properly organized, the hands always stay free, the head always stays free on top of the spine. You could move it if you wanted it to. You are not clenching the teeth and so on. So, the clenching of the teeth, the mouth, this whole thing has again same thing—the innervations—you have an overflow of effort in the brain and the parts that aren’t suppose to work, work and the parts that are supposed to work, are not working enough.

4 [DEMO COMMENTS]

You see Peggy? That’s very, very nice. You see if you look at Peggy for a second, this—you move the arm a little bit to the other shoulder. But if you look at Peggy, she’s doing a delicate movement. You see, here she has a little something going on there, probably something in her past or the past in the hip or something. But you see it’s a small movement but it’s really well coordinated. You see, this is really kind of like different parts know about. . . Here she has a little bit of an issue. So don’t go past the issue, and go less to the other side. Go as much to the other side. And you see here she can rock the pelvis. But don’t go any further, and then you see here, oops, you stopped moving the pelvis going to the right. Did you have an injury on the right side? Oh, yes. You see. Hello. It’s like x-rays. When you really watch it closely, the function. . . I don’t know if you broke something. Ankle? Something? What did you do?

[Student:] I had a fall backwards landing here [indicates her right hip] from about 3 feet up.

[Anat:] How long ago?

[Student:] Hmmm, I can’t remember. It’s been at least 6 or 8 years.

[Anat:] And what was the result of that fall?

[Student:] Uh, by x-rays that night, nothing, but I’m sure I had a hairline fracture and I think all the work that I have done saved me from a really damaged pelvis.

[Anat:] But you see you can still find that. And if you go more and more delicate, and if you really learn to look, and I’m taking you through the movements so that you recognize how it needs to be done.

See. I look at her, and I know it because I felt it in myself. Now I can also know things that I can work with the musician, and I don’t do what they do because I have so. . . I know things from so many directions that I can, I guess, extrapolate it. I don’t know how I do it or how we do it.

But when you look like that. Do it again. Go first to your left a little bit. Gentle. Take your time. Focus. You see. So as she starts going to the left, you see, her pelvis participates. Right? There’s a tiny. . . you feel that? There’s a tiny shift of weight. It’s a tiny shift of weight, but it’s a shift of weight. And don’t worry if you don’t’ see it. You will in the future. Here she doesn’t shift the weight. So she has in her brain still the pattern protecting her from putting weight onto that side, into that hip which tells me that somewhere along the line, something happened that inhibited her from doing it, and the inhibition is still there.

Now if you’re aware of it and you feel now. . . so let me show now with you and then. . . yeah. If you, if you’re aware of it, do it again to the left. And feel what. . . You see, right away she’s moving her belly and her pelvis, and come back. And do it again to the left. No, come back first. Come back to the middle, and now do it again to the left. Slow. Excellent. And feel it. And now when you come back to the middle you’re actually moving your pelvis to the right.



So go again to the left, and now when you come back, feel it as if you’re moving to the right, which you are, and continue moving to the right. That’s it, and enough. And go back.

And now go the left and feel. You see, going to the left has become clearer. And now when you come back, slow, slow. You see, so you’re already moving to the right. You just need to. . . what you did on the left side, do it here. There you go. You see, and that can help her change things that happened 7-8 years ago that she’s already got help a lot, but this moment, this lesson, at this. . . and you can say well she’s been her for 8 years, and this is the first time you’re doing it? What’s wrong with this Method? Right? That’s one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it. . . is there homeopathy to get me to think more like that? Anyway, but the. . . and it can be true, you know if you want to think that way. The other side is she’s done the work. It prevented her from much greater disorder which she would have had, but this little hair fracture disorder is stopping her and aging her. And making it. . . and the balance. . . because if your brain does not want to shift the weight over so you kind of like walk and you don’t know it. . . but it’s not as. . . because we do age. And the systems do. . . are used longer. Right? And the healing rate, unless we know how to hypnotize or something, is much longer. The cell exchange rate is slower. So if we just keep going like that a long time, it accelerates the deterioration. And look this very delicate. . . this is like a. . . you know 100 out of 100 FS demonstrations. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t touch her with my hands. I used my x-ray vision and had her feel it and had her do it on herself. It’s the same thing. It doesn’t’ matter where it comes from. So do you understand?

[STORY] I think I probably told you this story, but I tell it from this. . .

So, I started working on Moshe. The first time I gave him a lesson, I think it was in Amherst. I remember every lesson I gave Moshe, but the first lesson I think I gave him was at Amherst, and the only reason I had the courage and the desire to do that. . .

It was extremely hot. You know east coast summer time. And he had clients after he finished teaching us, and the air conditioning wasn’t working well, and it’s the kind of heat, brutal because it’s also very humid. Even though Tel Aviv can get plenty humid, but it’s something about it was shocking for me. I was never in hot weather like that in my life. It was like breathing water. And he didn’t do well. He wasn’t doing very well, and I could see he’s not well. And he had some lessons scheduled. So I had Jerry. . . Actually, I took a couple of the clients. I said, he’s not going to work. I just took charge. I thought, that’s it. Enough is enough. I said, “Moshe, you’re not going to work. You need a lesson. You need to rest. I’ll give you a lesson.” He kind of looked at me and he said “OK,” you know.

So I was like gung ho and ready to do it. You know it was year or a year and a half after graduation, and I was a little baby in my early twenties, and I go like, “OK. Now lie down.” Panic attack! Right? Total panic attack! So I just watched him, and I thought, “Where would I be the furthest away from him?” I just wanted to be as far away from him. . . I mean, if I could just leave the room and run out. . . but there was nobody to take my place. So I sat at his feet, and I started working (we’ll actually do something like that a bit later today) on his feet.

And I just touched him so…big toe…gentle and slow. And all of a sudden I hear. . . And when he was on his back he was like. . . [Anat speaks pinching the bridge of her nose.] His sinuses sounded like that. And he says, “Oh, Anat, you are so delicate.” [laughter] And I was sitting there thinking, uh huh. You’re not going to get me to do anything more or any faster. Not taking any risks. I didn’t say it to him. I was thinking I just kept going like that. So that was my kind of like, you know, getting me through the fire. But then I gave him a lesson because you know. . .

Whatever time passed. . .I gave him a few lessons in Israel. It was the second summer in Amherst. And Gabby use to give him lessons. She, you know, passed away a bunch of years back, but she was from his first group that he trained and she used to give him lessons. And I’ve seen her do lessons and he would correct her and he would guide. So at that point I wanted also to give him



lessons because I also wanted to get the feedback. I didn’t want to give him lessons at all, but I wanted the feedback, so I said, “I want to give you a lesson too. Gabby gives you lessons. I want to give you lessons.” He said, “Fine, not a problem.”

And I give him lessons, and he gives me no feedback. And I said, “Why am I not getting feedback?” And I have no idea. He just. . . He didn’t want to touch what I was doing. He was leaving me alone. I remember I was really disappointed. I mean. . .I really. . .it’s not that I felt he loved me less, but I felt really short-changed or something. And today I have a guess that he just let me. . . He just. . .

And so he was sitting and I, you know, I lifted one arm, and I started, you know, pulling on it. So that’s was when he gave me. . . so then he gave me feedback. He said, “You don’t know what you’re doing. You have no clue.” I mean that was the feedback I was asking for. I wanted him to tell me, “Hold like this,” “Do like that.” So, I think the reason, one of the reasons, he gave me as much as he did, he loved me so much. Don’t think he didn’t see my reaction. But I would just sort of like. . . get over it. You know, like those sea animals that have this poison that they take a fish and they sort of disintegrate the fish and digest it. I would sort of disintegrate the comment, digest the comment, and move forward.

And I said, “So, show me how I should do it.” I said, “So what should I know. What is it that I don’t know?” So, then he talked to me about. . . He showed me how to hold the arm and how to pull. And it changed. It completely. . . you know. . . It’s like you walk, and then all of a sudden you just go in a completely new direction in your whole career. Right? So, I did that, and when I did that and really was able to listen, I pulled on one arm and it connected you know through the hip and the other leg, and I did the other arm and it didn’t.

He injured one knee. That’s the whole Method started around his injured knee. And all those years, and all those lessons from Gabby that you know got corrected, and other teachers, and his own lessons. And of course, he did really, really well. That’s apropos Peggy, you know, it’s much better, but still there’s something to do. And I could feel it. And at that point, he could feel it. And I said, “After all these years, you still have a bit of your knee injury.”

You see, once I went to that level, it was like it was what it was. And he was like there and I was there. It was a remarkable experience, by the way, when I worked on him. I started feeling like I was levitating. Because I had to organize myself so acutely to match him. He was so aware. He was so refined in his perceptions and in his thinking and everything, that anything more than just pristine was already crude. I guess I internalized. . . I was like. . . [Anat mimics floating] OK?. It was interesting. Anyway, so. . . and I could feel it. And then he. . . and then I took charge.

And I really lead him and guided until. . . because he had all kinds of mechanisms to go around. He had all kind of ways to do it, but it wasn’t just simple like the other side. It was wonderful. The next day, that was where he didn’t know how to deal with groups. He created a sense of competitiveness. I don’t think he intended it. He comes to this 220 people. He sits down and says, “Some of the young people here, the young ones, are by far better than my old timers.” He didn’t say my name, thank God. And I was sitting there kind of like, don’t do this. Don’t. It’s not necessary. Anyway, he was actually excited. But he was also a little mean that way, so. Not mean, mean, but he was not smart. Anyway it wasn’t productive. It didn’t make them better.

5 [DEMO]

That’s right and you see. There are two things that you could do. Look what Michelle is doing. Do it again just the way you did it. See you can go so low down that you really all you have to do you just keep turning the pelvis. Twirling dervish. Now go the other way. You see. Let you feet just find the ground but don’t tighten them in preparation. There you go. You see. So all of you. First go and



see if you can do something like that. Slow. Slow. Carole, so you can really soften the chest because you’re still holding a lot of tension. Go slow enough so you can feel that you’re really melting. So you do it but you do the minimum so you become like a ball. It’s really just the pelvis and the head and the rest of it kind of changes position.

One hand at a time John otherwise you don’t swivel all the way. See one hand at a time so your back is to me when you sit. That’s right. Not your side. Now when you do it like that I’ll use you John. Look at John for a minute. So go slow. First you see there’s a moment where the two hands are on the floor and then he leaves the other one.

So, do it now so that when the two hands are on the floor you really just switch over the legs, twist and sit. So the legs leave the floor. The feet now leave the floor. Leave. Bye, bye and then come back. Yeah, I would think so. A little hop. Twist the pelvis and bring yourself…your legs up. Lift the legs off the floor. See what you can do. That’s it. There you go. That’s it. Now it’s really the pelvis and the head. You see purely the pelvis and the head. There we go. Now it looks difficult. It’s not difficult.

Go ahead. Go for it. Come on you guys. Come one. One two three. One two three. You can do it. You can do it. Try harder. But if you take your pelvis high up, please don’t do it if you take your pelvis high up. Start low. Start low, please. You see Michelle, you tighten your legs and you…you see…you feel…you know. Start with going really low like Michelle. That’s the way to get to the hopping. There you go. We go the tatoo girl. If you put the tatoo why do you cover it? If you have a tattoo it’s to be seen. No? It’s like jewelry. What? Well they have to fall down for us to see it. Come on. Try it. Start going really low without the jump. Mike, you keep the neck tight. Let the head. Soft. I mean really like soft. Soft. Soft. Melt. Then when you do it really soft you can bring in the hop. Otherwise it’s not going to work very well. There you go. That’s it.

And you see, the superiority, excuse me for using this word, but the superiority of looking to (but don’t go so high up unnecessarily John. You know, compact. Compact. Because the idea to do it is to make it fast. If you start making it big, why hop?) I’m sure, but do it on purpose small. That way you can take a big person like you and get you to move really quick because you pull the weights close together. You wanted to train football players, baseball players, soccer players. Magnificent. The whole sequence is magnificent. It’s a magnificent lesson to teach them because then you go do stuff with your legs, its’ really coordination in space. So that’s the superiority over telling people ‘you know your core strength is by pulling your belly in’. What nonsense. It’s really how you put the pieces together and get the relationship and coordination more and more evolved sometimes the belly is in and sometimes the belly is out, depending. It’s like telling somebody if you really, really want to be a good musician always, always play the ‘doe’ note. That’s to be a good musician…doe, doe, doe…anyway that was not a very good metaphor. No I didn’t. I thought it was going to be good but it didn’t work out. It worked for somebody? Good, thank god, I didn’t just waste it.



TML10: Hopping

(Taught by Anat Baniel)

NOTES: 1. So what I am going to ask you to do is stand up, and I’m going to ask you to

do something very not old …

[TO STUDENT] What did you say? That’s right. You don’t see lots of older people hopping or jumping around.

So stand on your comfortable … not too wide, because if you are going to jump, you probably don’t want to have the force get lost sideways. And just start hopping. Easy. Hop, hop, hop.

1a. And notice what your right foot …

And you don’t jump very high. It’s not important to do high. And maybe now … Look. it’s very interesting. Now look at M.

[DEMO ] I’m so sorry M, She knew it was coming. Look at what she is doing. She is not only landing on straight legs, she stops. And landing on straight legs … So when you land on straight legs, you wouldn’t want to jump too much.

So try and do that differently. How about we do it differently? But she still stops. We don’t say better. It was different. I don’t know if it was better. Maybe it’s worse. Who knows? Maybe she is doing it with bending, just a lot of worse. Who knows why she keeps the legs straight? Maybe something will happen if she bends them. We don’t know. I wonder? That’s right. We started the training with this; we end the training with this, and we continue throughout life with this.

1b. So, see if you can just do it easy. There you go. All of you, hop, hop.

And now … and stop for a second. Stop for a second. And you’re going to hop in a second again, and look to do it in the most “natural” way. That means the easiest way you can do it. Don’t decide how you should do it, but just really simple, easy, and count so that you will see what’s the ... without going into the huh huh (short of breath, gasping sound) and almost dying. But what you can do before you feel like really would rather stop?

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 10: Hopping


So just have a number in your head before … for later, later. It’s good. Keep going. Keep going. It’s his number. Everybody has their number. Now it’s social pressure. It’s no … OK.

Lie on your back all of you and rest.

2. And roll to your side and stand up. Spread your legs comfortably. And now, gently, just collapse both knees as if, you know, somebody went and hit, hit you behind the knees, and you didn’t expect it kind of thing.

So you don’t have to do it like abruptly, but just let the knees collapse a bit. Bend a bit like that. Collapse, but it’s not like you force them. You just let them collapse a bit and stop. Collapse the knees and stop.

2a. And notice what do you do with your head? And your … What do you do with yourself—back, shoulders—when you collapse the knees?

2b. Now collapse them slowly like that. Not like extremely slowly, but collapse them, and see, what could you do with yourself if you … And where would you want to, for instance, to guide your pelvis if you wanted to collapse them more?

It’s not taking the head to the floor; it’s collapsing the knees. It’s not taking the head to the floor; it’s not … huh … It’s not going forward, forward, forward with the head, and then collapsing the knee.

You stand up. You can go slower, but collapse the knees, and see what could you do, or what do you need to do, so you could collapse them more.

2c. And for a moment just stand there. Stand and pay attention to your breath. Pay attention to your chest, your abdomen. And do nothing special, but just feel where do you sense movement as you breathe?

2d. And now maintain that feel, you know, that awareness, and without interrupting your breath, gently, gradually collapse your knees. And see if you sort of look about 5 - 6 feet in front of you as you collapse, see if that’ll help collapsing the knees. If you look with your eyes, do it gradual.

The image of somebody hitting behind the knees got you to go abruptly. Now you can just collapse the knees.

2e. Now next time, as you collapse the knees, take your head backwards, and collapse the knees, and see what happens. Does that help? No? So don’t. Some of you are shortening the neck.



[TO STUDENT] But N., at a certain point you don’t collapse the knees anymore, you simply take the shoulders and hands to the floor. The question is collapsing the knees, collapsing the knees. You see, here you are stopping to really … to collapse the knees. You’re starting to do something else that eventually makes you go a little lower, but the movement is collapsing the knees. It’s like … But it’s not leaning backwards. It’s neither going all the way forward, nor leaning the shoulders. It’s standing up, starting to collapse the knees, and feel what do you need to do with the pelvis. There you go.


And lying down, don’t do anything specific to impact your breath. Just listen to the movement of breathing. What is moving while you breathe?

3. And now roll to your side and stand up please. Again the legs slightly spread.

[COMMENT] That was an interesting movement. You look like a dog. You know how dogs … You circled your territory and then ... We’re awakening your dog brain this segment. We do the monkey brain. We do the reptile brain, but I’ve never seen somebody’s dog brain wake up doing this work. Maybe it’s more the wolf brain. Yeah, the wolf. The dog is a too new, but the wolf brain, yeah. That might … That will make your life very interesting the next few months until you integrate. That’s a new awakening. It’s not just a variation. It’s a transformation. Honey, be careful. Yeah your family … oooh (howl) that’s Mom. Mom is calling us for lunch.

So now what’re going to do is you’re going to shift your weight to your right heel, right foot—more and more to the right heel. Right? So the weight is more … and lift the front, the right foot.

So you stay on the heel and you lift the right foot off the floor. The whole foot not just the big toe. Ha, ha. And put it back down and continue lifting.

OK. Stand back in the middle. And first of all, feel yourself standing. Bring yourself to the place that you feel yourself, the best you can at this moment, over your skeleton.

3a. Let go of your shoulders. Some of you, when I say stand up, still do what you were told as a child to pull your shoulders back.

[TO STUDENT] Do you feel J? You just pulled your shoulders back. It’s funny, funny stuff. You know the power of progression of the brain are amazing; the power of regression are in big competition. Actually regression is more, more available and potent than progression. That’s why it’s a challenge to get rid of all bad patterns.

3b. So stand up and just feel the … you know, your breath. Don’t do anything about it just feel and do nothing extracurricular with the head, with the shoulders, with the chest with anything else.



Simply shift your weight over to the right. Put more weight on the right heel, and over there begin lifting the foot off, the right foot off the floor and back.

3c. And notice many of you lift more the inside part of the foot than the outside part of the foot.

And that is very, very common because people’s muscles on the outer side of the lower leg are not nearly as organized and available for use as the inside. And that is one of the reasons that people sprain their ankles in one direction and not the other.

So you can ... But don’t bring the weight fully back to the whole foot. You have the weight more on the right heel all the time. And then you lift it, and you lower it; and you lift it, and you lower it. And feel if you sense … but you don’t lift it,

3d. Stick your tush back on the right and stay stuck with your tush back. You stand more on the right heel and then whatever needs to move moves when you lift but don’t then stay stuck.

[TO STUDENT] You see your wrist, your right wrist. You see all that stuff. Don’t bend the other leg. Don’t do all kinds of weirdo stuff. Simply lift the right foot and lower it. Gently, gently again and again until something will start waking up in you to feel more and more how to do it, and …

But you know it’s not dovening. It’s Sunday, it’s not Saturday anymore. So for those of you who are not Jewish, dovening is the way Jews pray where they go and do the bowing. Not what we are doing here.

3e. And soften the chest. If there’s anything in the chest, in the shoulder, upper spine, jaw, anything that interferes with the movement, let it go. And make sure the weight is on the right heel—that you don’t lose that. The other knees straight if you can.

Leave it alone. Lie on your back and rest for a minute.

And of course feel your organization, the contact with the floor through the right side, left side. And again check your breathing. Don’t do anything to, you know, increase, correct … but just check in. What and how you are breathing now?

4. And now roll through the side. Stand up.

[COMMENT] Did I show you how to work with a roller behind a chair? So it must be High Performers. I love it how eager to learn you are.

So now shift your weight over to the left leg. Put the weight mostly on the left heel, and now lift the left foot like that and lower. Keep doing it, gradually allowing that sense from the inside allowing things to shift to make it simpler, easier.



4a. Again if you are throwing the head back, notice if that’s a good idea or not.

And leave it alone. Lie on your back and rest for a minute.

And again listen to your breath, to the flow of air in and out. No effort, no trying to do it one way or another, just allowing it to take care of itself and follow it with your attention.

5. Roll to your side and stand up. The legs slightly spread, the feet parallel to one another so the inside lines of the feet are parallel to one another. And now shift your weight. Keep the left foot on the floor, but shift the weight 100% to the right foot. Now if you need, while you do the movement, to lift the left heel, that’s OK. Right now you don’t need to do it, I don’t believe so.

5a. And now begin collapsing, bending, collapsing your right knee only, and back.

And when you do that, don’t do any efforts, any unnecessary efforts, any efforts in any rib, in the chest, in the …

But it’s not a question of twisting around, and it’s not collapsing the shoulder, and it’s not collapsing the head, and it’s not collapsing anything.

It’s collapsing the knee forward, bending; letting it drive forward. It’s a little bit different. And in order to be able to bend it more … If you let the lower part on the right side of your pelvis drive backwards, backwards, backwards … I don’t know about any other backwards for you than your backwards. But you know at moments of great distress we might redefine backwards. Who knows? See whether you can …

But it’s not ... Do you keep bending your … like this, now [TN: demonstrates having head bent way forward and down].

It’s the pelvis, the right side of the pelvis, going backwards. It’s not taking the arms to the floor, backwards.

You see that’s the whole relationship—that if you keep doing something else, you’ll keep doing something else. That’s always the challenge of paving a new path because you keep going to the existing path.

Backwards, backwards, backwards. Somebody put a rope on the button on your pant. and just gently as you bend the knee forward, just taking the right side of your pelvis backwards. And when you take the right side of the pelvis backwards, if you were to turn, you wouldn’t be turning to the left. If you were to turn, which you don’t have to, you would be turning to the right.

But you don’t bend the other leg. You can lift the other heel. It’ll bend a little bit, maybe, but take it backwards. You lift the heel, if you need to, of the other side.



5b. Free the shoulders. Free the arms. There you go.

Leave that alone. Lie on your back, and rest for a moment.

And see, observe, notice, how as you do this movement, and attempt to figure a way to do these movements, how much change there is, and reorganization.

1[MINI-LECTURE]

6. Roll to your side and stand up. Put your feet parallel to one another, spread a little bit, and this time shift the weight 100% to the left foot.

So the right foot is still there, but your weight is really on the left foot. So you could take the right one, put it back, it wouldn’t make a difference. Then you know you’re really not leaning you’re just touching.

And now, stay like that. Pay attention to your breath. Notice what you are doing, and slowly begin bending your left knee letting it bend and come back. Start with a tiny, little movement.

[TO STUDENT] Now C,. you are already twisted to your right. Why are you not … Why aren’t you facing squarely forward? Have it forward and have that be your forward.

And now bend the knee and come back, and gradually look to bend the knee more and more. And feel, what can you do with your hip to allow for the knee to be able to bend the knee more?

But it’s not dropping your shoulders forward and down. You keep everything effortless. The head on top of the spine, and you can pull, pull your left hip backwards so that you can bend the knee more. And make sure that you do not ... but don’t keep the heel up in the air with effort.

6a. Notice if you are holding your breath at any point, and then make sure you don’t that. You keep breathing freely.

6b. And now do it one time with the right knee and one time with the left knee.

[TO STUDENT] But don’t you see N., you keep twisting. You see, you do ... the last segment, you know in the other … and here you keep doing that. So there’s a moment where you’re either going to stop doing it and then find an alternative or just keep doing that. You understand? It’s OK to twist to turn, but it’s a different movement. But don’t drop a shoulder. It’s not about dropping a shoulder. It’s really about finding a way to bend one knee and then the other, and using the pelvis to allow for you to do that. And the weight is 100% on one knee, I mean one foot, and then it’s 100% on another foot.

6c. And now bend both knees at the same time. Keep the breathing free, uninterrupted. If you find yourself when you come up … Look at me. If you find yourself when you come up doing this thing [TN: Anat



demonstrates coming up and back with head & shoulders]. Just know that if you had to do this, you had to do that. [TN: Anat demonstrates bending the head forward and down]. It’s very simple. Then maybe don’t. That’s nice.

You feel … and I see more and more of you, it’s very different. You keep bending the knee, but you’re not losing your uprightness. It’s not like you’re straight up, but you’re still upright. You see, and you drop the lower abdomen. There you go. That’s it. Excellent!

Lie on your back and rest for a moment.

7. And roll to your side and stand up. Put your feet parallel, and now shift the weight onto your right foot. And now lift a little bit the right foot off the floor, and imagine that you’re standing.

What? [TN: question from student about instructions. The answer is foot, foot] … on the right foot, the whole thing, the heel, and then you lift the right foot, a little bit the foot—the toes, the front, the foot, the whole thing, but you stay standing on it, so it means you’re on the heel. Right?

And then you start moving. You imagine that there is a dial of a clock under your foot, and you gently start moving it from one hour to the other as far as you can, and then you move it back, and you take it to the left. Take it clockwise, and then you take it counter-clockwise. But you don’t turn your shoulders, you don’t turn your head. You use your foot to turn. You use your foot to …

[TO STUDENT].Are you with both knees, bent or is it your pants? OK. Whatever.

7a. And then move the dial in the opposite, counter-clockwise with your, you know, with the toe, the big toe. Take it … You see, maybe you can go till 9 o’clock; maybe you can go till 8 o’clock. I don’t know, maybe further.

7b. And then back clockwise. So you leave the rest of yourself quiet. You’re standing quietly on the right foot. Actually the weight is on the right foot. You’re quiet except that at the bottom there you’re moving the dial.

[TO STUDENT] But the other leg is straight. Why are you bending it? What are you ... Oh, OK. You are moving it sideways. I was trying to see what you are doing.

7c. And now bring the foot, the right foot, back to the middle, and now put a small clock facing your foot, in front of your foot. So like somebody put a little clock in front of your right foot, and with your big toe move the dial around so it goes in a circle in front of you. Do it clockwise.



[TO STUDENT] Well, the weight is mostly on the heel because you have to lift. It’s on the right; it’s on the right. The weight is on the right, and the right big toe moves the dial around. I mean … Yeh, exactly.

Clockwise. Imagine the clock in front of you, and figure out what clockwise is going to be. It’s a small clock. If your foot goes all the way to the side, like in a ballerina in a full opening, this is actually a huge clock. Oh your still doing the other thing, now we’re doing … The clock is in front of you like that.

[TO STUDENT] It’s OK. You don’t have to be sorry. I just couldn’t see a circle in that, so …

7d. And feel whether … Stand completely quiet except this movement, and feel what you sense. What is your hip doing?

[TO STUDENT] J you are leaning way forward. What for? Be tall. Be tall. Have the weight on the leg. You’re standing up on the leg, and then, you see, in order to have some freedom, there actually needs to be a little bit of freedom in the pelvis, in the right hip. But aside from that stay upright.

7e. And now do a few movements counter-clockwise.

Some of you do … You rotate the foot in and out. You literally … Imagine an actual handle on the clock that you’re contacting, and moving around. It’s standing up. We changed it. We did two things—changed this. We’re on the second.

[TO STUDENT] You can do this sitting, by the way. It is …

7f. And feel how challenging it is in terms of balance. Can you feel?

So then all the little mistakes that you cover by, you know, moving fast, or by having chronic contractions are actually revealed so that’s the next level of improvement. That’s the next level of … Yeh. And as I said to J., she can do it in sitting. Move the clock with your right foot in sitting. You still will get value.

Lie on your back and rest please. 2[MINI-LECTURE]

8. Roll to your side and stand up.

But that is how I work. It’s do-able Try. It works. We change. We move on.

And now, first of all, shift the weight to your left foot and then have the clock on the ground, yes, and start moving the dial. When you go to the left with the little toe and to the right with the big toe, move it, you know, as far to the left as you can, but stay standing.

Stay up so that you can sustain the up as you do stuff with your foot. It’s a much higher degree of freedom and control. The other leg is straight, or more



… The other leg is on the floor. I mean, don’t tighten the other leg in whichever ways. Breathe freely, and maybe don’t look at the foot all the time. Just look. Bring the head up enough to look forward. There we go.

8a. And now take another clock. Put it in front of the left foot, and start, first of all, moving the clock again clockwise, which will be … You’ll see. You’ll figure out which direction.

So you put the weight on the left foot, and you lift enough foot, not just the toes, not just the toes, the foot. Mean it goes down and then it has to come back up and around. So you put the weight … You see, when you fall backwards, that means the whole time you’re too far backwards. You see you’re leaning the weight, and when you get a certain point on the clock, it throws you back. So that’s an opportunity to correct that. There we go.

[TO STUDENT] R. you’re doing everything. Why? Stand quiet. R., stand up. Stand up, look forward and that’s it, and now move your foot. Don’t start moving everything. You can also, I don’t know, bring … I don’t know. You’re doing so much. Just look if you can quiet everything.

8b. And move it now, move it counter-clockwise, counter-clockwise.

8c. And feel where you have the ability to move the foot, and where you absolutely feel you lose balance if you will, and then maybe … I don’t know, internal, minor little shifts. Let go of certain efforts, and maybe, all the sudden, you’ll have that capacity. And you see, this is something you can work with for awhile. It’s not just, it’s not just like this one hour. No.

But you think … You think of the toe as the thing that comes in contact. No. Something has to come in contact with the dial, with the handle of the clock. So it’s not the side of your foot that comes in. It’s not. It’s the toe, but then you move the whole foot to get it going. It’s not just a little toe, you know, you are not just doing circles with your big toe. That will be interesting. I’m sure your big toe came to full life. I mean this could be a variation we should do I don’t know, obviously.


See how much hard work little movements can be. Gets you to think and feel.

9. And roll to your side and stand up. And now put the feet parallel to one another. Shift the weights more toward the heels. Imagine two clocks now, one in front of the right foot.

We are getting more and more into the Dali experience here. Yeah there’ll be all those clocks, and they get all those weird shapes, and then it becomes like a nightmare. It’s a great way to send you off.



And now so there are two clocks in front of the feet, and then shift the weight, and start lifting the feet and moving the clocks simultaneously. Well you … You see, you can either do them one clockwise and one counterclockwise, or you can do them both clockwise. You see what works easier for you right now. We’ll do all variations.

[RESPONSE TO STUDENT QUESTION].Well yes. More or less straight. Not like they’re not locked. Yeah, well, I know what we were doing at the beginning.

You actually have the feet have to do a circle in space otherwise you are not doing it. They actually have to move in space. Keep the chest free, the breathing free, neck free, and do circles with both feet moving the clock handles. And what are you doing? Are you doing the feet in the same direction or in opposite directions? Half opposite, half same. OK. Well do what you’re doing.

9a. And soften the chest, and have the pelvis free to move a little bit forwards and backwards to allow for the movement.

But see here, all the sudden it’s not as simple [as] if you keep the chest rigid or if you are leaning too far backwards or if you don’t let the pelvis move a little bit. It becomes ... Don't bend the knees. Don’t bend the shoulders down to the floor to do it. Those poor clocks.

9b. Now do it in the opposite direction—whichever your direction is, the opposite direction.

9c. See if you organize the lower back, the pelvis, and the relationship to the head well enough, it’s almost like you are hanging from the ceiling. And then the legs, the feet are free to move underneath. But if you’re too reliant on the work of your quads, and the hamstrings, and your stiffening the chest, then the legs are not free to move. The Frankenstein effect yeah.

[TO STUDENT] You’re not doing the movement. M. just found a marvelous solution. He’s standing on the clock, instead of the clock is in front of you. You’re supposed to lift and move the clock that is in front of your foot. It’s just … Do something different, and then you don’t have a problem.

9d. And now those of you that took the feet together, in same direction I mean, take them in the opposite directions. So, one foot goes clockwise and the other goes counter. And those of you who did that, take them in the same direction both either clockwise or counterclockwise which ever way you want to start.

9e. And now change direction.

9f. Soften the sternum; soften the chest




10. Roll to your side and stand up please. Again, put your feet, little bit apart. And now, simply let your knees bend forward and feel how you are doing it now.

And feel whether you can go lower, and you don’t now take your shoulders down, but you take your knees forward. And feel what the pelvis is doing, and feel the smoothness.

10a. And now stop that and simply, what you’re going to do … Don’t hop any higher than before, more or less as you did before keeping everything free and just count, and see what it’s like now for you to hop, if it’s any different than before.

10b. Keep your neck long.

One of you is shortening the neck, which is unfortunate. Well you guys we know already,

10c. But did you feel like you were hopping differently, and did the number go up?

So once again, not worried about the number. Just hop a little bit and feel what it’s like to hop, and the effortlessness. The breath is no issue.

10d. Can hop a little, turn right, turn left, hop backwards, but don’t shorten the neck. Don’t shorten the neck even when you go backwards. It’s not the head that takes you backwards, least I hope not. That was pretty nice swivels. There we go. Very, very nice.

11. Ok. So just walk around. Feel what it’s like to walk. Feel if you’re walking much more like in a smooth, straight forward, line.

END OF LESSON

1 [MINI LECTURE]

So it’s over and over again, terribly important to remember that it is the participation in the process, under the constraints or the way that we do it—which means the 9 essentials and everything else you have learned here—will create change and progress in people. So when you take somebody, you’ll see … can you feel how when you are lying down there’s big change in the feeling, in the length ... Yes, yes or yes, no? When … and the breathing is hugely different and ...



Now when you work with your clients be it pain, or anti-aging, or whatever, and the topic of this training section, you need to know where to look. Of course, the outcomes, eventually, when somebody can balance on one leg, can swivel, can go down to the floor and up, all that is very important, but where I look is not there. I look to the process as it happens second by second. I look to the shifts. I look to open the opportunity and the ... I call upon my students to do all that ... to pay attention, to do those variations, and for the brain to wake up and to start doing this exploration and creation, basically, of new possibilities. When the person is in that process, and that process can have different degrees of potency … So I am looking to get it more and more potent. And when the student is in that process, I know they are going to do better. And the specifics of how they will discover the solutions, I don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know, oh this nerve has to go here ... You know one of the reasons, aside from really not knowing, because there isn’t only one way to get there. There’s infinite number of ways to pull it together. We just have to create the opportunity so it’s recognized by the system and pulled together.

So if I work with someone and they can’t touch the floor and I do a lesson and they cannot touch or ... I do not get discouraged. On the contrary, I am the person that knows where to look, so I guide them to look through my eyes, more and more, to pay attention to their own changes and finer changes … not … I don’t invalidate their desire to be pain free, but this is ... and we’ll talk about it. This is something I want to talk today with you a little bit about working, especially when people are getting older or had a lot of trauma—the potency goes down, the potency of learning goes down, and that is one of those things we need to work on is the learning switch and the potency.

2 [MINI LECTURE]

Because if you can’t do it standing, you start in sitting. Everything else we are doing, you will be able to do it in standing. It’s always the same thing. You go to where you can. You start working with it. You vary. You move back and forth. You add what you need. Eventually you can do it.

Look it, if you can go to the ski slope and see one legged skiers, then you can learn to do this. It’s not a question of whether it’s possible, it’s just a question of how to get there. And that is what I’m hoping you really are getting more and more in your bones.

And if you don’t know how to help somebody to get there because, maybe, you don’t have enough experience yet, or you are a little stuck on something, then bring in another teacher. Go to somebody more experienced. Take your client. Send them over to California or New York or somewhere, and then find out how to do it. Travel with the person to an experienced practitioner. Watch it work. I mean, it’s your level of interest and commitment, but the underlying thing is, it’s possible. So it’s not a question of whether it’s possible, it’s just a question of how do we get there, if we want to. It’s a very different presupposition.



TML 10: Hopping (different version)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel; Segment 2)

NOTES:

1. [In standing] Spread your feet comfortably. Not too much – you’ll see in a minute why. And what you’re gonna do – don’t do it yet – you’re gonna hop, hop, repeatedly until you feel like you need to rest. I mean you’re gonna hop, a group of hops, on both feet for now. Oh, I thought hopping is a small jump. No, hopping is when you jump on one foot. Okay, I made a different thing in my mind. We will resolve this debate next segment.

Small jumps – little hops on two feet, whichever way you want – but count: do a group of them, quick little hops, and count, until you feel like you’ve got to stop.

Those of you who don’t have a loose attitude to goals might kill yourself, but that’s Okay (laughs).

1a. And then after you’ve rested for a few seconds, do another cluster; and just count, and see how much you get per cluster.

Look how well you’re doing! The boobs are jumping!

Lie on your back and rest for a second.

But did you notice how well you are doing? You really hop easily, after three and a half years and these eight days, you guys are pretty well over your skeletons – do you feel that?

2. Roll to your side and stand up, feet spread comfortably. First of all, pay attention to your breathing. Don’t do anything about it, but just listen to your breathing, listen to the air coming in through your nostrils or mouth, or both, and going out through your nostrils, and get to the place of feeling no interruption in your breathing; the air comes in and goes out, chest is free, abdomen is free.

2a. Now, collapse your knees a little, and then come back. And collapse – you don’t have to do it abruptly, but let your knees collapse, and come back. Collapse your knees and come back.

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 10: Hopping (2008)


2b. And notice – most of you don’t, which is wonderful, shows that this works – notice: do you lift your chin up when you do it? And if you do, is it necessary? Or can you let the neck stay long and collapse your knees, and make sure that your breath is uninterrupted.

Not that you should do it more, but what stops you from collapsing more? Where do you need to move yourself, how do you need to organize yourself, that you could possibly collapse more?

Collapse means, like somebody pushed you behind your knees, and you buckle, you know, your knees buckle some.

Means you soften your legs, you don’t tighten your legs, you soften your legs. So you soften the upper back, you soften the chest, you reduce the effort. It’s not about bending yourself forward to touch the floor with the hands; it’s collapsing the knees.

Lie on your back and rest. 1[COMMENTS ABOUT DOING FS AND TEACHING TMLS NOT SPECIFIC TO THIS LESSON]:

3. Roll to your side and stand up. Stand comfortably. Keep both feet on the floor, but shift your weight primarily to your right foot; stay there. So you shift the weight primarily to the right foot and stand over the right foot. Make sure again your chest is free, your abdomen is free, your spine is long, you are standing on both legs, you don’t bend the left knee. You stand on both legs, but most of your weight is on the right foot.

Now, you’re breathing freely. Begin lifting the front of the foot – that means the right heel stays on the floor and you lift the right toes off the floor.

You have more weight on the right foot; you plant the right heel on the floor, and you lift the front of the foot – that means the toes and the foot – off the floor, and keep the heel [on the floor].

3a. What can you do with yourself so that it becomes easier to do? No, that’s not easier,

Jan. It’s a good experimentation, but don’t believe it’s easier. The answer never changes, just the specific configuration changes. Some of you are starting to figure it out. Feel anything happening in the pelvis to make it, even though you have the weight on the leg, that you can still lift the foot easily? Linda, the left foot fully on the floor, what are you doing with your left foot? Stop all grimaces with your body, quit. Stop being neurotic. Now. It is easy, “I’m stopping all my twitches and nonsense. I’m just gonna look for the easiest way to lift the front of the foot.” There you go. Differentiate yourself; leave your thumbs alone. And



feel – what is necessary to make that movement easy and light? Make it a little easier? And what’s not necessary? Clenching your teeth – necessary? Dropping your head down – necessary? Bending your other knee – necessary? No.

3b. Do a few faster movements. Easier.

There you go.

3c. And what can you do so it can be faster? Left foot flat on the floor, the left foot flat on the floor.

Walk around. Check your breathing. Check the ease in your chest, the hips, feel how one foot feels on the floor, how the other foot feels on the floor.

4. And stand again on your mat. The legs spread. Now both soles of feet on the floor. Shift the weight primarily to the left foot this time. Listen that your breathing is uninterrupted. The chest has – don’t collapse your back, but let go of all unnecessary efforts in the chest. The arms hanging, if you can.

4a. And now start gently lifting the left foot off the floor. And again, feel what can you do with yourself that can make it easier, and what are you doing that you don’t need to that is just what I call like tics or twitches or grimaces.

4b. Do you feel any movement in your pelvis? What movement do you feel; do you get taller when you do the movement, do you get shorter?

4c. And if your shoulders – if you lift the foot, if you come forward enough like that, and when you put down the foot, you feel your shoulders driving way back and you lean on them – maybe you don’t have to drive your shoulders behind you each time.

How about you keep your shoulders where they are anyway? Where they need to be? How about you wake up to the fact that – you see, some of you stand like that, and then of course in order to lift the leg and use the pelvis you have to bring the shoulders over the hips, and then you put it down and you drive right back. Now how many times are you gonna drive right back before you wake up and say, “Why am I driving my shoulders back”? Do the shoulders have to move in space at all? Or hardly? That means when you walk, are you doing this? Like a duck, you know? That’s good for life (laughs). He loves me, I inspire him.

Leave that alone and walk around.



5. Come back. Stand on your feet, and one time, collapse the right knee, and one time the left knee. And feel if the pelvis now is doing something that maybe it didn’t do before.

5a. And feel that when you collapse the knee it grows longer, forward, longer. It goes down – don’t lift - you stand on the feet, you don’t lift the heels. You stand on the feet and you collapse the knee.

It wouldn’t occur to you now, most of you wouldn’t dream of not moving the pelvis. Can you feel that? And when you do that, the shoulders stay in space where they were. There you go. Excellent.

5b. And now, collapse both knees, and see how you are doing it now. Is it any different than before?

Lie on your back and rest, please. Listen to the breath, to the ease of the air coming in and out.

6. Roll to your side and stand up again. Spread your feet comfortably. Stand on both feet. Shift the weight over to the right foot. And now, imagine that there’s a tiny little clock in front of your left foot, big toe if you like, and you’re going to be moving the hand of the clock, clockwise with your foot. So you have to lift the foot, and you are moving so the front of the foot comes up, right? In the right foot that you are standing on, and slowly you are moving the hour hand of the clock around the clock clockwise. It’s your right foot, it’s in front of the right foot. [TN: The clock is in the vertical plane, directly in front of the foot. The clock is not resting on the floor.] You are moving the clock all around. Do it very slowly. Your foot has to go up and then move to the right in a circle, and then down and to the left.

Move only what you have to move in yourself to do it. Some of you move all the way behind you. Keep facing forward. Have some differentiation between your tush and your shoulders. Remember, you have a spine in between. Weight [is] more on the right. There you go. Find how to do that, and keep the chest hanging, the shoulders hanging, the spine long, the wrists free. There you go.

You can have a tiny little Lilliput clock. You don’t know Lilliputian? The story about the Lilliput? Don’t you know about Lilliput? Gulliver. I read it in Hebrew when I was a child. Lilliput is right, Lilliputian clock. Thank you. It means tiny, eency, weency. For those of you who haven’t read Gulliver’s Travels.

Walk around.

American childhood – terrible. In Israel we read everything. We read Victor Hugo, we read French, we read Spanish, we read British, we read Americans,



because there wasn’t that much in Hebrew. Because the contemporary Hebrew - it was before the formation of Israel, but it was around the time that the Jews started going back to Israel, Palestine at the time, that they decided to speak Hebrew as the spoken language. For a long time Hebrew became the sacred language. So you jut read the Bible, you did religious studies with Hebrew but you didn’t speak the language. They spoke Yiddish or they spoke other local – wherever they lived. Actually my grandfather who was an accountant, but he was a linguist – and he was one of the people that helped revive the Hebrew language, believe it or not. That’s why we got our unusual last name, because he made it up (laughs). The genes! We were genetically independent. Children of God. Once Moshe looked at me and said, “Anat Baniel – where can you go from there?” Because Anat is the name of a goddess. I said, “Only down, only down, Moshe.” (Laughs.) Only up.

7. Now, you lean on your left foot and you do another Lilliputian clock. Move the handles of the Lilliputian clock counter-clockwise. Slow, slow. And put the weight on that foot.

And walk around. 2 [COMMENTS ON LANGUAGES]

8. Put your feet parallel to each other. Bring the weight to both heels, and start moving the Lilliputian hands of the clock with both feet simultaneously. Opposite directions, but simultaneously, so one is going clockwise, the right one, and the left one counterclockwise. All the way around. So the legs open sideways, and come forward. And see you have to stay leaning…

Ah ha, now, you see, all those grimaces that you had all your life, all of a sudden they get in your way, so you have to do something different. Those of you who lean with your shoulders backwards are toast. It’s over for you. Tricks, tricks, tricks to make sure that you wake up. But Marlena, it’s not rolling the feet into the inside, it’s the whole foot. No, no, the whole foot comes off and moves the clock. It’s very weird with the feet. Extremely interesting and inappropriate. (Laughs). You just leave those feet, and think that there is a handle [hand] start moving that handle, and you start doing funny things with the feet. Both feet together.

Some of you take the foot all the way to the side. What kind of clock do you have? Is it like a Dali clock that has like a curve and it goes to the side? The clock is in front of the foot. If you take your toes all the way to the side, where’s your clock? Your clock is right here. You detach yourself from the… you have to move the little handle. The clock is right here – the clock is right here. No, no, with your toes. There’s a circle here. Move this. It’s a vertical clock. Here! The clock is like this (indicating with a sheet of paper held vertically in front of the toes). You move it like this. What kind of clocks are these people having? Standing up, you move it! You had a Dali thing-y. Some of you had clocks, the clock stands like this and you move your foot here, under them… but then you have to move your heel to do that.



Go ahead. That’s a very, very successful last lesson. Go ahead. (Laughter) You are moving it, you have a Lilliput clock in front of you, little tiny Lilliput. I start – all of you start looking like Charlie Chaplin. I say, “What’s wrong with these people?” What kind of clock – clock goes to the side, it comes back. There you go, now you are doing it. But still, why do you go? No - the clock is right here, it’s a tiny clock in front, you move it right here, little circle, right in front. Yeah – the clock is like this. And you move the thing around. But you don’t lift the heel! Perpendicular to the ground.

8a. Now do one [foot] a few times and the other [foot] a few times, because it is a different instruction. Hang your shoulders, hang your chest. BE TALL – the whole time, you guys! Be tall – there you go, that’s tall. Now do the Lilliput thing.

You see, what does it? It’s the lower back, and the tush and the hip joint! The shoulders have nothing to do with it, the jaw has nothing to do with it, the chest – let it go.

8b. Do one [foot] first and then the other [foot]. Visualize the clock in front. Spread the feet and do the right foot a few times and put the weight on the right leg.

8c. And feel what a revolution it does in your spine, and in your rib cage, and in your chest, and in everything! And in your brain, that brain of yours.

8d. Now do the same thing, counter-clockwise, Lilliputian clock on front of the left foot. The left foot. That’s right.

You see how you can refine the work on what people would call balance and posture and relationship to gravity. Isn’t that fun? And of course all this originates from Moshe. Remarkable genius. But it takes us developing ourselves and becoming brilliant ourselves to be able to use this work effectively.

8e. Now, do it both feet together. Now you understand what I was talking about, that the shoulders cannot go behind you. Try to lean with the shoulders behind you, especially those of you who like to do this “banker” posture. Yeah – fun, isn’t it? So don’t. You can kill your knees.

The most common surgery? Knee surgery. I read about it yesterday in the paper. Of course people bang into their knees because of the way they stand and the way their shoulders are – kill the knees. Don’t have to do that.

You see, now the tush comes into play. Once the tush comes into play the lower back comes into play, then the legs can do things, the knees are happy, no big deal.

And now, just walk around for a moment. Feel the softness of the stepping, and the relationship between your heel, your hip and the top of your head. Can you



feel that?

9. So stand on your mat. Knees spread comfortably. And now, collapse both knees again, and feel what it means to collapse now. The shoulders stay hanging, the chest stays hanging, feel what the pelvis does, and feel how you can bend, collapse those knees a lot easier, and you don’t have to change anything about your neck or anything because you stand there to begin with. So when you come back up don’t lean back, don’t take your shoulders behind you.

Now, stop that for a second. Stand there. Feel the breath, feel the chest, feel the length of your spine.

10. Now hop and count. Lightly hop.

Ah – you shortened your neck, Doreen! You can’t go to England and shorten your neck when you hop. You see – you took the arms behind you. Do this, and then hop from here. There you go. Now. And feel – you’re not even trying, and hopping higher, and just count.

10a. Now hop a few hops again, and quickly. Tiny, small, but not rigid.

10b. Feel how elastic your knees are, the knees are cushion-y. Doing what they are supposed to do.

Now hop into a circle – all of us are going to sit in a circle. By the way, pretty anti-aging, to hop!

END OF LESSON

1 [COMMENTS ON FS AND TML NOT IN RELATION TO THIS LESSON]

One of you asked me yesterday about working with a child and so on, and what to do and how to have more of a richer repertoire and I thought today I’d like to say to the whole group: first of all you have lots and lots of notes and lessons and FS and so on, and it’s really I think a very useful thing to read through them, to do a lesson once in a while, but to read through them, to remind yourself. At least I don’t know that my way needs to be your way, but I skim through – now I do it a lot when I build curriculum and stuff – but for years I have skimmed through lessons because I’ve done them and I know them, and if you have Alexander Yanai books you can also skim through lessons you haven’t done before and do them and read them. So that by the time you are with your client you have this background repertory, very rich field of possible things. And mind you, once you have that and you work with someone, when you work with that person, it’s not like there is a plan ahead of time. There can be an idea of what I might want to do, or some thing I’d like that person to learn or accomplish or feel, but again the immediacy of what I will or won’t do – I don’t know ahead of time.



I have to – it’s the interaction with the person that decides on the spot my selection of what to do or not to do. But I have a very rich selection, and over time when you review lessons like that and you have a lot of background richness, you will spontaneously select, you’ll get ideas, and then you’ll make new connections between the different things that you have in your mind that you’ve learned. And because the commitment is to fit the person you work with, to create an opportunity for the person the way they show themselves to you at that moment. The other way of learning and getting much better at what you do is almost the opposite: you take a technique and you do it with everybody for a week. Now you don’t force it, so if it really doesn’t fit for somebody you skip that person or you modify it. But everyone that you could do it with, just do it with. I used to do it both with the hands on and with my TMLs. I would have three groups, one after the other, and I would decide which lesson I’m gonna teach, and I taught it three times. One after the other. I told you that before. Without exception, the third group always was the best. And it took me a while to realize that the third group was the best because I got better. So I started learning, getting distinctions about my own teaching and what it is to get better. Because if you don’t do it, you don’t know. Up to a point you can learn, but then you have to go out and do it. By the way, would recommend for everybody, the assistants, everyone, now we’ve reopened the weekly groups here, I remembered I haven’t done it for a long time; I’ve been busy. I haven’t taught weekly classes for a long, long time. I think it is one of the most important, powerful ways to learn this work: to teach the TMLs to a group. You have people for one hour, there’s something different for them in their life between when they came in and when they left. Enough that they would care to come back. Okay? So it is not like you force it, but you have to present the lesson, you have to bring the enthusiasm, the differentiation, all that stuff, and make that lesson transformational. Now you guys know how to do it because you’ve experienced it so often, but you need to become the ones doing it. And that is extremely valuable, I think important for everyone to do and one of the most potent ways to really learn this work. So even if your group is a two people group, or a four people group, I mean it’s not just about having huge groups. Of course have huge groups eventually if you like or right away, it doesn’t matter; but do it. Try to do it with more than one person, because with one person you’ll be tempted to help a lot with your hands and it becomes different dynamics. But if you have two or more people – so if you don’t want to rent a hall, you don’t want to commit to paying the money to somebody every week, but you have a living room where you can put three people on the floor – do it in your living room. I taught in my room as a student; then I rented a space, but – and I taught in living rooms for quite a while. Other people’s living rooms because they had them. I didn’t have them. I was a student, I just had a room.

2 [COMMENTS ON LANGUAGES]

So, in Hebrew, by now there are tons of books and of course lots and lots of writers and children’s books and everything. But the brunt of what we read was translated to Hebrew – books by authors from other countries. Lots of French, some Spanish, lots of English, some American. So it has its advantages. It was very unfortunate. First of all, my father’s parents were from Poland, my mother’s from Russia. I don’t think my father ever – because his father was the linguist, right – so they spoke Hebrew. My father speaks about five or seven languages, I have to recount them. He does understand Yiddish, but it was an identity issue, so he spoke Hebrew. My mother spoke Russian – I didn’t even know that until I was grown up and one day she spoke Russian with Sasha’s nanny. I said, “You speak Russian?” It was like I didn’t even know! Because they didn’t speak Yiddish. They spoke Yiddish with their parents because they learned Yiddish, you know, not Hebrew. And the grandparents spoke also Hebrew. They didn’t speak Yiddish to us, and they didn’t speak Russian to us, because they wanted us to speak Hebrew. Of course that was a huge mistake, because we would have spoken Hebrew anyway. I mean, what’s the big deal, right? When Sasha was born, I thought it through, and I decided, “I’m speaking only Hebrew to her, so that her brain will have…” I didn’t worry that she wouldn’t speak English – she grew up in an English speaking society. But I wanted the sounds and the habits and all that stuff to be right there in her brain. So I spoke to her



in Hebrew. Once she got older I had to speak English around English speaking people or it would have been impolite. And she speaks Hebrew in a sense very well, she understands. It’s a bit clunky because she has not used it much. But anytime she wants she can get really fluent Hebrew within a few months. So that’s – no, we didn’t do it. They did, they spoke all those languages. It’s ridiculous. And they were in the habit of speaking many languages. So everybody grew up knowing many languages. So I didn’t learn Yiddish, or Russian. But I speak French and English, and hopefully I’ll pick up a few more languages once I’m done with the book. Anyway, (laughs) that’s going to become my excuse for everything.



TML 11: Hopping Continued

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel V&AA S2) NOTES

1. Stand up. Pop. Okay, so just stand with your legs comfortably spread. And now, what you’re going to do is you’re going to again hop, lightly, not high, and count. So hop for as long as you’re comfortable and count however many hops you get in there.

Okay, and first of all the experience of hopping - was it any different than the beginning yesterday? Yes, yes? Yes, no? Yes. The number gone up? For some of you? Okay.

1b. So, now resume hopping and just feel while you hop, pay attention first to your right foot and how, you know, what works, what you push off and then the left foot. So now you’re not counting, but you’re hopping and paying attention to your feet and how each one of them works as you hop.

And just lie down for a second and rest.

And notice how different you’re doing it today than yesterday. You know, again, perceiving the changes and marking them as real and bringing in the enthusiasm is an extremely important part of the process. And you’ll see that oftentimes what our little minds, so to speak, tend to do is say, “Yes, but.” How many of you do the, “Yes, but?” “Yes, but I’m not this yet. Yes, but…” The “Yes but.” [many hands raised] Yes. So after you “yes but” it, say to yourself, “that’s right.” And it really takes intentional…

1[MINI-LECTURE]

2. Stand with your feet more or less parallel. Shift the weight over to your right, mostly. Free, collapse, you know, the left knee, so you’re on the toes. Just touch the floor with the toes of the left foot, but the weight is really on the right. And you’re going to maintain it like that. So the left foot continues touching the floor, but you’re going to hop off your right leg. Exactly.

But don’t lift the left leg off the floor. You see? But, Billy, you’re leaning on the left in order to not lift it. You’re actually standing on the right, and the left one is just dangling. You see, that’s a differentiation that for most of you is new, so take your time. Ah, ah. You’re tightening your left foot; you’re tightening your left ankle. No, no. Can you let the toes just bend and just be? Bend, bend your toes, bend. There you go. Just let it bend. Funny stuff. But you’re still lifting your left leg. If you let the left leg be

ABMPT Vitalithy and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson TML 11: Hopping Continued


really free when you jump, it’ll straighten a little and then when you come down it’ll bend a little. [laughing] Are you having challenges? You’re having regression? That’s a good one, it’s a good place from which to…What?

Leave it alone. Stand for a moment and rest. You see? Every time there’s more there to go. It’s a never ending west. But it’s important to look… It’s the good news actually. Important to look at the east and then see the gap. See how far you’ve come.

2b. Now shift the weight over to the left. Let the right knee bend, the right heel a little in the air, the toes are touching. And just feel how free your right leg is right now, so when you jump on the left leg, when you go a little in the air, the right knee will simply straighten a little. To lift the right leg you have to tighten it. There you go.

Ah, ah. Donna, you’re lifting the right leg. You see? So you’re working one leg and keeping the other one free.

And you see, what you’re doing now, you’re actually learning to attend to your movement and feel what you’re doing and be able to gauge in a much more demanding, that means you see, you’re activating the large muscle groups and you’re still able to do the refined movement at the same time. That’s a much higher level of functioning. And for that you need to keep the chest free, the arms free, the neck free. That means that you don’t over recruit the nervous system. That means you don’t act in an undifferentiated way. And that’s what really good martial art training does, that’s what really powerful but evolved people can do, which is they can be very powerful, they can be very effective, they can be, you know, if they need to fight they will fight, but they do it in a differentiated way. They don’t, not like, “Uh, let’s kill everybody, let’s bomb everything”, you know, and so on.


And now, pay attention to your breathing. And just pay attention to the air coming in and out. So don’t do any movement with your chest or your belly. So the breathing gets to the point where you barely breathe.

There you go. It takes care of itself.

3. And now, roll to your side, continue breathing like that. Stand up - feet more or less parallel to each other. And now, gently collapse the two knees, like you know, what we did yesterday, and let go. And feel. Just collapse. You feel? Is the collapse clearer, easier? And come back. Collapse, and then come back.

3a. Now there are two ways to do that. You can let the pelvis go backwards by arching the back, but you can also collapse by letting the lower back, the top of the pelvis go backwards. Experiment with both ways. You feel that? It can be done both ways. So you just, the tailbone sort of drives forward, or you can do it and let the tailbone drive backwards. Both ways, you can collapse the knees.



And walk around and rest. I mean rest by walking and just feel yourself walking.

4. Ok, now stand. Come stand on your mat. And, you know, feel that the chest is hanging and recreate that kind of breathing where you feel like you are doing nothing and you are breathing. Really easy, really nothing, you are not moving the chest on purpose; you are not moving the belly on purpose. Excellent.

4a. And now, put the feet more or less parallel to each other, and now shift the weight over to the right leg, but keep standing on both feet, on both feet. But the weight is on the right. And now, collapse the left knee and you can let the heel come off a little bit, but now what you’re going to do is you’re going to, as you stand on the right leg, collapse the right knee, but keep the foot on the floor. So the weight is on the right. The right foot is on the floor, the left knee is free, you know, the way we described, and you collapse, collapse the right knee and come back. That’s right.

4b. And now, place back the left foot on the floor; keep the weight on the right foot, we don’t change that. And now, don’t lift the left heel off the floor, and collapse the left knee. You’ll need to do something with your pelvis to…

You’re not collapsing the right knee any more. You’re collapsing the left knee while the weight is on the right foot, but you’re not lifting the foot off the floor. So I’m giving a number of constraints here, so then, feel that the pelvis actually needs to rotate to the left to allow the left knee to go forward without lifting the foot.

[Student asks something.] No, no, you start with both legs straight. With just sort of a secondary instruction, the weight is on the right leg, and now you’re collapsing, but in order to collapse and stay on the right leg, the pelvis has to rotate. [Student asks which way to rotate.] Well, you figure that one out. Try both ways and decide. And I think that you probably figured out that it needs to rotate to the left. [Some students discuss about rotation and which way.] Yeah, but it’s rotating to the left. Oh no, yeah, ok, ok, yeah. I guess you can, that’s it, it rotates to the right, that’s what I said, except I used a different word. [laughing]

And notice that in order to do that, the freedom in the chest, the freedom in the spine, the freedom for the pelvis to do that. There you go. Excellent. But keep the shoulders front, don’t take the shoulders. That means that there needs to be a twist in the spine, there needs to be movement in the rib cage, in the sternum. There we go.

And now just stop and walk around, just a little a bit and come back to your mat.

But just feel the feeling, if you start sensing shifts and changes in whatever… You decide.

And now come back and stand on your mat. By the way, I’m looking. Do you feel? More and more of you start looking like planted redwoods. Voom. Voom, like that. Can you feel that? Yes, yes? Yes, no? No. Yes. Yes.



5. And now, shift your weight over to your left leg, left leg. Shift your weight to the left leg and then collapse the right knee without lifting the foot off the floor.

Slowly, find how to do, and feel, all of you lean a little bit backwards with your shoulders and try to do it and feel what happens. Terribly difficult, do you feel that? Makes it difficult, that means makes it difficult to jump, makes it difficult to walk, makes it difficult to initiate movement in space, initiate action.

5a. So now from that place, don’t run away from it too quickly, go to where you feel is the middle and then just take maybe two degrees more forward, but from the ankles. That means don’t drop the chest forward, but from where you took the shoulders back, bring them back and then just move your whole self just a bit more forward than where your usual up is. And now do that same movement, that means… anyway, you know what I am saying. Does that make it a little easier to do? That means that for those of you that it makes it easier to do, it’s very possible that you were still a little bit too far behind yourself.

5b. So now try to go even a little bit more forward from the ankles and do it and see if it makes it even easier. If it doesn’t, then go a little back. Find that place where it becomes easy to do. That’s a way to know where to be, because where it’s easy to do is the place to be. So you don’t have to somehow know it ahead of time. We don’t have a way of knowing it until we feel it.

And now lie on the floor and rest for a minute.

And now on the floor again, listen to your breathing. Don’t have any intentional inhalation or exhalation.

6. And now, bend your knees, put your feet standing while the breath is going on the way, you know, I mentioned. And now make fists of your two hands. Put them behind your pelvis, so your pelvis is lifted a little bit. You’ve done it in other lessons before. And now, lift the legs in the air and direct the feet towards the ceiling. So it doesn’t matter; the legs don’t have to be completely straight, but the feet towards the ceiling, the legs spread a bit. So you can stay like this for a while.

6a. And now begin flexing the right ankle, so the toes, the feet come closer to the face, and back. And look to do the tiniest movement, the most delicate movement, but a very, very clear movement. So you sort of get really connected to your ankle, connected to your foot, and really feel this movement.

And you see, when your feet are like that, parallel to the ceiling, the front of the foot is heavier than the ankle, so if it were just skeletal the foot would be actually flexed, right? Because the weight of the foot…I mean if the muscles were in neutral. The weight of the foot would have made it to bend, but for pretty much all of us, or most people, the muscles of the back of the leg are too short. So that when we put the feet



like that, the feet still point a little to the ceiling. So see if you can do a really delicate movement and feel how you can allow, you know, maybe those muscles to let go a little bit. And again continue making sure that the breathing is easy, and do the movement of the foot slower and slower and slower.

And now leave it alone, put your legs down, take your arms out, rest for a moment.

And feel the difference between the legs.

7. And bend your knees, put your feet standing, put your fists behind your tush. And now lift your legs, and do the same thing with the left foot.

And leave that alone. Put the legs down, and rest.

By the way, this is an example, I know, you know, the practice today, and I heard that it was empowering for you guys, even though challenging. When you look at a person, and we talk here about vitality, you know, and anti-aging, and you see either the lack of or the loss of certain functions, and you are looking for ways to help recreate that, the person recreate that. And we start and we look at hopping. I mean you can take, unless there’s really some medical reason or something not to do it, you can take a seventy or eighty year old person and ask them to put their hands behind [on] the chair and hop once, right? Or even without a chair, you stand right there to make sure they’re safe. And then you can, or once or two times, and then you can back it off. Have them lie on a table. You don’t have to have the leg to all the way to the ceiling; you can maybe do some work on the ankle lying down. Get them to stand up again. Ask them to hop one more time. See if it’s a little easier. You go back. You do it on the other foot. You ask, patiently, one little bit of information to the nervous system in the context of an action so that it provides often times a much bigger outcome. And then their chest is stiff, so you get them to hop maybe three times instead of one time and you touch their chest, and you say, “Feel. And now tighten your chest, and let it go.” And then you put them back on the table, or you have them sit, and you do some movement with their shoulders, and you know how to work with the chest. You know how to do so much already. Then you get them to stand up again and hop a few more times. And you do this for half an hour; it’s huge. And I can guarantee you with 99.9% of people, unless there’s a reason why they totally can’t do it, they will hop better, breathe better, walk better, and feel better, and have less pain. And they will have less pain, not because you worked on their pain, it’s because when they get better organized, the pain is irrelevant, it’s just not there.

8. Roll to your sides. Stand up.

Feel, you know, move your shoulders from the ankles a little bit back, a little bit forward, and decide where it is that you want to stand. You know, because now after this, you can be more delicate about that, you see, and decide where that is. And very often it’s the place where the arms are really hanging and the palms end up being a little bit in front of the thighs. There you go. And now in this position, feel that the chest is free, the breath is free, and now hop. And feel - is the hop a little different still? You see? Just don’t do this with your head. Don’t lift and lower the chin.

Patty, you’re lifting and lowering the chin. Keep the head tall. There you go, that’s right. You feel how that can make a difference? Marvelous.

Walk around. Walk around.



1 1[MINI-LECTURE] Sit up for a second and I’ll mention to you something. It actually takes intentionality to shift that and, you know, I’ve said that to you in your training and I’ve said it in the past, you know, a number of times, that the brain is geared to be more alert to danger and risk and the loss of safety than to the good… So when everything is good, it’s like we enjoy ourselves, but when we look at our childhood, look how much most people remember all the bad stuff. It’s like a marker. That’s when my dad yelled at me. That’s when my mom forgot me in kindergarten. That’s when, you know, that’s when this, that’s when that happened. That’s when this boy said this to me. That’s when those kids did this to me. I mean, we have a tendency to have the markers of all the traumas and psychotherapy is definitely built around that trying to get us out of reliving it and recreating it and so on. And that is really the nature of the system. The brain is built to look for that first because the job is to stay alive. So it’s not like, there isn’t a part of the brain says, “We want to improve the quality of life,” you know. We want people… It’s survival. Now there’s the capacity to do it, but it’s not like the very first thing. The lower parts of the brain, vavoom, not safe. Then it gets very powerfully [to one particular student] and that’s probably part of what you’re dealing with, it gets very powerfully grooved in. And then the smallest little thing tends to trigger it. Now the question is can we do something about it? And at least the theoretical answer and some research starts showing that, yeah, if we start… and that’s my enthusiasm.

So now I took a course with Rick Hanson. He did an experiment, and he’s writing a book, and right now it’s called Taking in the Good. And he’s looking for a good title, so… I don’t think it will stick, but maybe that will stay the title. And he invited a few of us, and he did the course with us to, you know, run it to see how it works. I loved it, because just taking two hours or two and a half hours for six weeks for me to just go and try to study to take in the good. Just that alone is a big deal, because I don’t take two and a half hours to do lots of courses; I don’t have the time. And the idea is, and he’s looking for different mechanisms, and it’s both cognitive and based on, you know, more like meditation techniques and things like that, but to taking in the good. That’s the enthusiasm, that’s the noticing the differences, the difference that moves in a positive direction and amplifying that, not denying other things, but amplifying. And I find myself like… It’s really kind of an internal kind of observation and intentional shifting. So you lie down and you say, “Yeah, it’s good, but… But my right shoulder still started hurting.” Or, ”But my breathing got...” You go like, you can say, “Thanks for sharing.” But you go like, “Oh, here I’m doing it again.” Not like, “Oh my god, I’m doing it again, I’m a bad person.” And you shift your attention and you say, “Yeah, but I want to really take in the good.” Or amplify and experience the shift and take delight in it. You know, choose to be delighted; choose to be enthusiastic. And thousands of little ones like that over a period of time apparently does make a difference. Or as I call it, “Anat will finally become a Pollyanna.” Stand up. [laughing] My goal is to be more like Pollyanna. She did it so good, she drove everybody crazy.



Bonus: FS Coaching Translating TML into FS and Languaging Clarity

(Taught by Anat Baniel) Length of lesson: 89 min

NOTES [Anat] Ok, let’s take … Let’s have a chair here also, a good chair. Where’s the wooden chair that I

like to work on? No. No. No. I don’t like this one at all. It’s too soft, too low, too wide, and has handles. For FS, for FS. Cause I want people to know that they have whatever… And where is the second? And how about we bring in a high table too … So you have all the … And we’ll put the high table here. We’ll put the chair here. So you have the floor. You have a table. You’ll have a chair. And you’ll have a high table. So you can decide whatever you might come up with. So I think they’re bringing in a hight table from Neil, slash Marcy’s slash,Sylvia’s room. And if they’re using that high table then it’s ok. Great. Thank you guys. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it. Let’s just leave it over there so we can do it if necessary.

Ok. So the let’s take the initial lesson where the kneeling, standing on both knees, and bringing one foot to standing and then bringing it back. So now you have somebody. I don’t know, they had a stroke, a car accident, or they are a baseball player that has some issues. I don’t know, you name it … I’m now talking about an adult, or an older person that their balance is not as good, and whatnot. And you’re going to give them an FS.

Actually how about anyone wants to give it a try. And then after you did that [TN: Anat gestures moving her leg across in front] I don’t want to tell you where to start, but after you did that [TN: Same gesture with her foot] you leaned on the thing [Anat gestures putting her elbow on a fictional table or floor] ... You put one hand down. At the beginning you didn’t then you did … Then you pressed on the toes to lift the knee off the table. Anybody would like to be the teacher? Anybody has an idea? It’s not like you’re supposed to know. It’s that you’re supposed to get in the water and do like this [TN: Anat gestures with her hands like dog paddling]. First approximation.

Ok. You want to be the teacher? I would like you to have a student. I think it would be easier. So who is willing to be the student? Ok, come on. Ok, so he’s your student. So go ahead and start doing it. Don’t tell us why you’re doing it. Just let’s see what you’re doing, then I’ll interrupt whenever I feel it’s necessary.

[TN: Student is laying on side with knees bent, Teacher, Michael, is moving student’s upper leg briskly].

[Anat] Michael, slowly, slowly. He’s still a human being, even if it’s a demo and I talk to you. Put the leg back. It’s already there, but in the future stay connected to your client until you disconnect from him. Do it intentionally. That’s just for everybody. So you know, it’s a person. It’s not like you go “Oh my god, I forgot something” and you just drop the leg and go. You really remember there’s a person there experiencing themselves all the time.

Ok, so very briefly tell me the idea, and then I’m going to pop it forward, ok?

ABMPT Vitalithy and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson Bonus TML : TML into FS


[Michael] The idea is that he is uncomfortable in his hips and I’m going to do a reduced motion of bringing the foot on either side with some hip motion.

[Anat] Ok, so that is very good, because what I am trying to get us to do here … Let’s assume you already did these lessons. You already did lying down four, five, six, ten, twelve, eighteen lessons. Ok, time to pop, literally pop the person off the table. But also pop the demand. One of the things that happens is, that when you start with somebody that has pain in their hip or this or that, you need to take away the gravitational force. [Anat has Michael and student sit back down]

So absolutely. And get enormous improvement and a lot of translation from the lying position to the person’s standing, to the person’s walking. There is a moment that that is not going to be enough for continued progress. So it was very good. And actually the best way to get better to begin with. But I call it upping the ante. So you don’t up the ante arbitrarily and make it way ahead of what the person can do because then you’re right back into the usual traps of typical therapy, rehab, and so on. And the mechanisms that don’t work very well. But there needs to be moving the person if they can. I mean if the person still can’t hold themselves up at all or you know, of course you’re not going to put them up. But you up the ante and start putting a greater demand on the system when you go from lying … Take any part of that person away from being supported by the ground, you up the ante.

You look at how children develop and you see how it works, right? They’re flat on their back unless somebody thinks they’re supposed to do belly time. And then they start rolling to the sides and then eventually they roll to the belly. But as long as they’re doing that, they’re pretty much fully supported by the ground. They pick their head off, they pick the leg off when they’re on their belly … Later, a few months into … But they’re still like supported. Rolling is the easiest. And it’s a safe movement. You can’t fall when you roll. This is the inoculation against falling, is rolling. That’s what they do in martial arts, right? They roll and they get up.

So anyway, getting off the floor immediately puts demand, even if it's a little bit more demand of organizing the self, it’s more complex, and so on. So I’m asking you, short of just asking people to be there and do everything you did in TML, how would you take some of the elements in this lesson and translate it to an FS? So you move it from TML.

[TN: Anat gestures to a student] You want to give it a try? Ok. Is he ok to be your student? You accept him? Ok. [TN: inaudible question from student] Excellent assumption, and happily it’s also true. He’s been here for a long time.

So tell him what you want from him. Oh, you don’t have to kneel with him, just tell him what to do. [Teacher has student on knees with hands on table, Anat has Teacher miked] While she’s bringing and miking him, one of the things to consider is whether you want to put some padding under the knees or not. Ok? Because many many people, have issues, as you know, being on the knees. So normally you want to put at least a little bit of padding just to be on the safe side. And even safer is to first ask him … So why don’t you sit again [TN: Anat gestures to student to sit on table]. And ask him … You can say, “I’m going to ask you in a minute to be on your knees, but before I do, I want to know if you have any issues.”

[Teacher] Hi Billy. I just wanted to know, do you have any difficulties kneeling down?

[Billy] No, but I’d like some padding.

[Teacher] Thank you for letting me know.

[Anat] Now I’m going to be…

[Teacher] Now how much padding do you think you’re going to need?

[Anat, putting her arm around Teacher] Oh no, no, no, no, no.

[Teacher] Don’t ask him that?



[Anat] So I’m going to … before you start doing the thing … I wouldn’t say “Do you have any trouble kneeling down.” First of all who knows the last time he kneeled. Maybe he hasn’t tried kneeling since he was eight. But also, I wouldn’t use the word “trouble”, ok. You just say, “Do you have any issues with your knees.” You just ask him.

[Teacher] Do you have any issues with your knees?

[Billy] No.

[Anat] Fabulous. So you say great. And then you put some padding. If he had issues with his knees, you would ask him some questions. What are the issues? Have you tried kneeling on them any time recently? Then you say … You have to decide not to do it and do something different. Or, you say, “I’m going to pad the floor, and let me know if it works for you, and if it’s painful at all we’ll shift what we’re doing.” You see you take more leadership. He doesn’t know how much padding he needs. How can he answer.

So if you don’t mind standing up she’ll put the padding [TN: Anat addresses student on table, Anat then speaks to Student giving the lesson, showing her how to put the pad down for his knees]. And the way to do it, I usually put it with the part, that’s it, with the not open part out, and close enough so that it doesn’t get in the way of other things. It’s really just where he kneels. Ok.

[Teacher] Would you be, how do I ask this? Would you be comfortable leaning on your chest against the table?

[Anat] He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. The way to do it, the way to take care of that … You say “I’m going to ask you to do something and I would like you to let me know if that’s comfortable to you or not.” And get a promise from the person that it’s comfortable. He doesn’t know if it’s going to be comfortable.

[Teacher] I would like to have you lean your chest against the table, but please tell me if it will be comfortable for you or not once you try it.

[Anat] For a person he doesn’t lean his chest to the table, you say touch your thighs to the table and lie down. That’s the action. You see you think of it in terms of leaning and gravity. He doesn’t think that way. People think in terms … I’m going out. I’m coming in. I’m getting taller. I’m getting shorter. So for your client make it very simple, very direct. Ok. What’s the next thing?

[Teacher] Are you comfortable?

[Billy] Yes.

[Teacher] Next thing I would do would be the lesson [TN: Teacher moves behind Billy and puts hands on either side of his sacrum/hips]

[Anat] Ok, so we’re not going to do the lesson. Now this is perfectly a great thing to do. Let’s say that that was lesson number 8. So it’s already done. [TN: Anat speaks to Billy] Ok, come back up. And now what would you do that’s closer, that takes some of the function.

[Teacher] I would have him sit on the table.

[Anat] Ok, tell him … Have him do it.

[Teacher] Please sit on the table Billy.

[Anat] Is he going to come down on his knee or not?

[Teacher] Yes.

[Anat] So don’t take away the padding.

[Teacher] Now what we are going to work on is having you

[Anat] Wait, wait, wait. Are you going to have him come down on the knee or not?



[Teacher] Yeah, I wanted to ask him first if it’s ok.

[Anat] We already asked. Don’t take away the padding [TN: Anat speaks to Billy] Come up, come up. Just make room for her to put the padding back. There you go. Excellent, and just remember, there you go, excellent, so because of what you want to do, we want to make sure his feet have room [TN: Anat adjusts the pad so the folded part is close to where his toes are]. And then just tell him what to do. Don’t ask him if he’s going to like it, or if it’s going to be comfortable. He has no idea, and neither do you. That’s what the lesson is for, to do it, and then to try to make it comfortable.

[Teacher] What I will ask you to do Billy is to face the door with your hips, with both knees heading there, if you could do that please.

[Billy] Kneel on both knees?

[Teacher] No, no, while you’re sitting, if you can swing your knees. Keep your bum on the table.

[Anat] He can’t do that sweetheart. How can he face his knees … table is going to … so what are you trying to do?

[Teacher] What I’m trying to do is have him be here, and then do this, but very slowly. [TN: Teacher demonstrates sitting on the edge of table and swiveling.]

[Anat] Ok, so the instruction is actually, doesn’t describe what you’re trying to have him do. So let me just take that [TN: Anat takes a stool and brings it around in front of Billy, has her sit on it]. Sit down here. He’s just making himself comfortable, that’s perfect. And now what could be a movement that you could do that starts getting it in that direction that you think you’re heading with him?

[TN: Teacher lifts each knee of student]

[Anat] You’re doing a great job, but it’s more like marking. I’m hoping to get five, ten, fifteen ideas, you know, so, otherwise we do the lesson and it’s going to take a half an hour.

[Teacher] Ok, so if I check this and everything’s ok, and he’s ok to bend, and then I would check the hips from the back …

[Anat] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I would suggest if you want him to do that. What would help, is of course, let’s say if you’re going to be taking his left knee first towards the floor, that if he leaned on actually both hands would be even better.

[Teacher] Then I would ask him to face there [TN: Teacher points to the wall at right angle to where he’s facing]

[Anat] No. No. You don’t ask him to face. You describe an action. You don’t say how to execute the action. You’re confusing the details you know should be in the action with the instruction of the action for the person. So you’re not going to tell the person “Your shoulders are going to end up turning to the right, and your chest is going to twist, and your pelvis is going to … The analysis of the details is in your head, not in his. He needs to have an action, and the action is for instance, start sliding the knee forward, and come back. [TN: Anat does action on Billy] Excellent. And then of course look, what I did was very good for the beginning of the movement, but if he is to bring the knee down, what does he need to do to be able to do, which all of you had to learn to do with those lessons on the knees? That’s right. Some of you are showing. Is be able to … No. Is the relationship … to be able to bring the weight way forward, and keep that relationship constant. But his arm is behind. So if you drop the hand here [TN: Anat moves his back (left) hand to rest on the table in front of his right knee] then [TN: Anat has her left hand on his right hip, guiding it forward]… but don’t let him go all the way and come back. So for instance, this is an excellent way … you thought the right thing, but it gives an opportunity to refine the execution. So you say “Begin sliding the knee down and bring the hand to lean on it, and just go as far as you feel you can really do it. And come back.” Because the coming back is as important as the going down. So he’s really safe. He’s not going to



fall on his knee. That’s excellent. So that’s a very good way to begin to do that. Excellent. Thank you.

[Teacher] Thank you.

[Anat] Thank you. Thank you Billy. I don’t know if you want to be the ongoing demonstration, or other people to demonstrate on probably better, so you don’t over do it. Are you a student in the course or support? You’re a Student. Come up student. Anyone wants to be a student for Ginny. Ok. Nobody does? Ok. Thank you. You need to be miked. [To Ginny] So why don’t you tell him what you’d like him to do.

[Ginny] I’m the …

[Anat] Teacher.

[Ginny] No.

[Anat] Oh, you volunteered to be the student.

[Ginny] I did.

[Anat] No no no. I’m looking for a teacher. Mistake. Oh, you’re willing to be the teacher? Ok.

[Student] I’ll give it a shot.

[Anat] You’re doing anything you want. You can take off from this or you can do something else. Any ideas. How … Because you see once you start doing this you can have ideas how to proceed from that. Right? But you can start a totally different thread. I don’t care.

[Student] Somebody that has problems swinging the leg around. Are we still going for that?

[Anat] Yeah, go for that. Go for that. Bringing the leg. The whole thing. Absolutely. Whatever you might have in mind. As if they’re not challenged enough just having to think it through. So yeah. Ok.

[Student] Have a seat. So we’re going for the same scenario?

[Anat] No. You’re going for the scenario of doing whatever you thought of doing this movement. Whatever. Just do it.

[Student] Right. Ok. [To Anat] So we’ve already done the lesson? We’re already half-way into this? Or we’re just starting from scratch?

[Anat] Sweetheart, you decide what you want. Just tell us what it is. You can even do something completely new that wasn’t done yet. You can continue from what you just saw. Anything you want. Ok.

[Student] Ok. So we’re continuing. [To Ginny] So you did a great movement. It was awesome. And you changed completely. Look at that.

[Anat] Sweetheart. See if you can stay and really allow it to be serious and not defuse it with a joke. See if you can just let it be what it is. This is extremely important. This another thirty minutes that I’m going to do with you can change the trajectory of all of your careers. So let’s not … I understand that there can be anxiety or discomfort and stuff like that. Trust me. Not a problem. But you can even say “I feel a little anxious.”

[Student] I feel a little anxious.

[Anat] You can even feel a lot anxious.

[Student] I feel a lot anxious.

[Anat] Yes. So … But you see the moment you connect to the authentic feeling … First of all it liberates you usually to move on. But it also liberates everyone around you. But when you joke it defuses the tension, but it doesn’t take care of the issue. Ok.

[Student] Ok. Yep.



[Anat] Stay with it, cause it’s a big deal. People come to you for private lessons … by the way you and Mike, we put out your cards as local, and people took your cards. The reason I’m saying it, you’ll get parents with a child with autism … You know it from your own life. I mean this is darn serious. When you have a really good relationship and already it’s going, there might be a time occasionally to joke a little bit … But let me tell you, I would wait a very, very long time before I joked, if ever.

[Student] All three-and-a-half years with you. [TN: laughter] Alright, let’s begin.

[Anat] But you see you did it again.

[Student] I know.

[Anat] And you see it is very, very seductive because it’s funny and humor. And look, I get you to laugh a lot when I teach, but it’s a very different thing when I’m with someone and they have … they’re in pain. They have a challenge. They don’t know. They’re not sure they’re in the right place. They don’t know if it’s going to help. Because the joking in a certain way takes care of you, not of them. Ok? So just going into the future, you’ll do it again. It’s not like you’re not going to do it, because it’s such a strong habit, but start catching yourself immediately after. And find out what were you taking care of for yourself. And then gradually find alternative ways of doing it. Because you know I sometimes sit with my clients and I cry with them. It took me years to feel like I can do that. But then one day I decided, to hell with it. It’s worth a cry. So, go ahead. Not worth a cry, deserves a cry.

[Student] So I would say, can you put your right hand on the table. And then I would like to see you lift your left hip off of the table. Ok, come back. Now this time I just want you to lift you left hip off the table without sliding your knee forward. Ok?

[Anat] Now very gentle. Which I don’t know if you know, is she has a massive spinal fusion. So if she were your client I would gather the information. And then giving Ginny this instruction I would say “Ginny do this very easily and carefully, the closest that you can, put some pressure on the foot, and lift the hip. [To Ginny] No. You’re lifting the heel. That’s it. There you go. And back. So that we are … no … [seems like Anat has an interaction with a bug, then turns back to Student]

You see, doing it that way, you first of all I connect with her. You didn’t know it, but she has a spinal fusion. [To Ginny] Put the hip back down. She’s holding it up. And when she does it, it’s a lot safer. I don’t know how much she can do. I don’t know what’s safe for her. But that is a big shift from the concrete imitation of the doing, of what was done. Like doing this movement for instance [TN: Anat turns hips side to side], versus the functional delivery. The functional delivery is that someone, who might not be able to do the movement or just have barely the ability, because it’s fused … [To Ginny] Is your lower back fused?

[Ginny] Yes. Fifteen levels from T2 to the sacrum.

[Anat] Ok. So in principle, she cannot do this movement. But she is sitting up. She is doing a lot of the movement. The brain can do even the most minimal … And I can see even that you are actually having a little bit of contraction in the back muscles. So here we are ushering in the functional aspect of it that will facilitate for her to figure her way of doing this and coming up. Because I believe that she could. Especially in this movement, because we’re keeping the spine actualy not moving. We’re keeping the head and pelvis balanced, right? So go ahead with her. And another thing … It’s so funny, we should do an additional segment after the high performance … Use of language. It’s so important. What am I actually saying, and how am I saying it. I would like to see you doing X. Who cares what you would like. It’s not about I would like to see you … And I have no idea at all the specifics of your history, but I bet you someone important in your life, a teacher or a parent, talked to you like that. [TN: Anat mimicking] “I’d like to see you doing this and that.” You had people talking to you like that.

[Student] Yeah, sure.



[Anat] So now it comes out of your brain as a way of asking for something. First of all, obviously, if I say “I would like, I would love to see you being able to get off the floor and down to the floor easily. I know you want it. And it would make me so happy. It would make my year if we can get to that.” So that is like I’m building … But I rarely would say anything. Of course I want people to do it or I wouldn’t be asking them to do it. It’s like please, just ask it. Make sure it’s comfortable. It’s about her. It’s about her. It’s about her. Turn it around. You’re the deliverer. It’s about her. Not easy to learn. So say to her, give her the instruction again.

[Student] So please put your right hand on the table in a comfortable position, and then

[Anat] Say to her “I know you have a spinal fusion.”

[Student] I know you had your spinal fusion, so anything that you do that’s uncomfortable just let me know, ok?

[Anat] No no no no no. Don’t “anything you do that’s uncomfortable let me know.” “Do only as much as you can that is comfortable.” Say … [TN: Anat to student/teacher] “I hope you’ll survive this little exercise. I hope I’m not killing you. Tell me if do.” Just like you’re telling her. Say to her, “Do the movement just as much as you can, and as gentle and as little as you can. Ok. And of course you can tell her if it hurts let me know right away, and don’t go any further … You can just say that if you need to.

[Student] Right. So do the movement that you can, and as gentle and a subtle as

[Anat] works for you.

[Student] As works for you. So, [To Anat] would I ask if her hand is in a comfortable position?

[Anat] Just tell her.

[Student] Put your hand in a comfortable postion.

[Anat] Where you feel you’re really leaning on it. And if you’re not sure, and if your client doesn’t know, then you apply essential number 4. Variation. You say, “How ‘bout we move it here, and here, and here, and here.” And now go ahead and do it. [Anat to Ginny] But lean, lean. [To Student/teacher] Go ahead and do it. Lift the hip, right?

[Student] I was going to ask her to go ahead and lift your hip slightly.

[Anat] And put it back.

[Student] And put it back.

[Anat] And do it a few times. And you see what she does. She really solves the problem by taking her shoulders way to the side. [To Ginny] So lean back, and let’s see. If you really lean behind, it’s probably going to be a tiny little movement. But see if you can put pressure on your foot and lift … that’s it. And don’t go any further. You see that’s what you can do. You just do what you can do. You just stop because people don’t know what … And go back. How about back? You see she goes back primarily with the shoulders. You felt that Ginny? So now do it with the hip and go back with the hip. Ah Ha. You see, now she caught herself. And that’s what I mean functional translation. Because she has figured out how to shift herself in space by taking her shoulders way in space and then the pelvis goes after because it’s fused. But we’re trying to awaken something in relation even though she can’t move it hardly at all. And we don’t want her to move it a lot, because that means she’s messing up with her fusion. So of course we don’t want that.

[Ginny] I think my hand’s better over here.

[Anat] Ok, wherever you feel you can do it. Just press on the foot and lift the pelvis a little bit and come back. And now that’s how she’s doing it. We know that’s as far as she goes. What will be the next thing you ask her to do? [To Ginny] And rest for a minute. By the way do you feel … How’s the weight going off the left hip and the right hip? Is there a difference?



[Ginny] Yes there is.

[Anat] Lighter or clearer? Don’t look at me look at him [Student].

[Ginny] Clearer.

[Anat] You see the reason I’m asking that is to see functionally if it’s really starting to work. You see so she did a couple three little movements where a lot of … I’m interested to know if the brain is connecting to this hip and to this movement. I’m not after a huge movement. And I know, she’s a perfect example, there isn’t going to be a huge movement. But we are driving for her to be able to go to the floor and come back up. And she can do that. I’ve had somebody do that who had no hip joint. At tall guy, one hip was fused. We figured a way for him to do that. Ok. That’s the power of the brain. So keep going.

[Student] Ok. So you had your hand, your right hand was on the table, can you just put your left hand next to it. And just slight …

[Anat] That’s good. I would do that as an instruction, by the way. You see, it’s not easy for her. So I’d say “Lift the hip” ah don’t move the feet. Think of lifting the left hip again [Anat guides her left arm across her body towards the table] and lean. You see the moment she thinks of lifting she … Functionally you start connecting. And what is very good about that, and you did it and Christina did it, is that you are really starting to introduce a very important element in that ability to go up and down from the floor in that way when you get her to do this. [To Ginny] Why are you shortening the neck so much. Ok so next thing.

[Student] So you’ve got your right hand down, and your left hand comes over. You head comes down. [To Anat] I guess I wouldn’t tell her to round her back.

[Anat] No, it’s not about rounding the back, it’s about the next action you ask her to do.

[Student] Right. Then I would say you can start bringing the knee towards the ground then slightly come back up.

[Anat] And stay aware of the other leg. You see now she needs to move the other foot.

[Student] And your other one’s going to slide to the left.

[Anat] All you have to say to her is to make sure your right foot stays standing.

[Student] Make sure your right foot stays standing.

[Anat] Do you hear the language? Don’t “Move it to the right. Move it to the left.” You see make the mistake of trying to solve the problem for her that’s what you did. You come in and try to solve it for them. You help them solve the problem by giving them a sequence of to do’s. And holding them. And say do it gently. And being an astute observer. But you help them solve the problem by providing them the opportunity to solve the problem themselves. If we could solve the problem for other people, rehab would be the perfect path to go. And it would be so great. We’d just say do this, do this. And people would be perfect. It would all be perfect. Darn it. We’re not built to do it that way.

So you tell her, “Make sure you keep the right foot standing.” It’s up to her. Then she will self-correct. It’s up to her. You understand, it’s about her feeling it. Are you starting to get … I’m hoping you’re getting it, and that you will jump into it. You’re not going to do it perfectly. I don’t do it perfectly, but I have so much experience and freedom, that when I don’t do it perfectly I just self-correct. I self-correct. I self-correct. I self-correct. And I just see what happens. Ok. But at least you know and you start listening to what you say. So you don’t say … And you repeat.

There is a tendency … And I told you, that is something that was a gift and maybe not a great gift in a certain way, that my father endowed me with since I was four. He told me I should say what I think, and think what I say. That my words should represent my thoughts. I was four. Ok. So I got it early, from somebody who really expected me to do that. And it wasn’t mean or anything. So it was very safe. And I thought that’s the way to go. You



know. It doesn’t mean I always say what I mean. And I find myself with people who do it better than me, like my daughter. So I urke her. I agitate her. Because I’m too diffuse for her. Can you believe that. I’m not specific enough for my daughter. You see, I raised her. So I’m the bottom. She’s off that.

I told you about her fourth birthday party. Did I tell you about her fourth birthday party? So I did this birthday party with the little patio, and I invited all these little kids and their parents to celebrate my daughter’s fourth birthday party. I grew up in Israel where nobody did those things. They didn’t have clowns. They didn’t have much money. I don’t know, they didn’t do things like that. Anyway, so I was going to provide my kid a better childhood than I had. And I had clown. I got her this gorgeous hot pink dress, right. She was really … All those blonde curls … she was four, right? And the clown comes and he finds out she’s the birthday girl and he wants ingratiate himself to the birthday girl and her mom. So he goes to the girl, to my daughter Sasha, and he says to her “What a pretty pink dress.” And this little four year old looks at him and says “It’s not pink, it’s fusha.” And he jumps back and he says “How old are you?” I never forgot that. She had a clear distinction between pink and fuchsia. She couldn’t say ‘fuchsia’ she didn’t have the diction, but she had the concept.

So … the more you do it you’ll see that people are … let me tell you, language is powerful. And it’s real … The more you are able … That’s what I told you … This woman that I heard, this Paula Kluth, and she comes from a background where I think she was one out of seventeen kids. Seventeen. And not fancy background. Not fancy schools and so on. But what a magnificent, heart connected to the mind and to the feeling, and boy she makes distinctions. And she uses language. It’s really, really magnificent to see. Magnificent for me. I love it.

So go ahead and give her her next instruction. Tell her what to do. “Put your hand here.” Don’t think that because she did it before you don’t have to say it again. Ok.

[Student] Ok. Put your right hand on the table, and make sure you support your weight with that. And then I’m going to have you take your left hand and put it right next to it, make sure your weight is supported there, without moving your hips yet. Now what we’re going to do …

[Anat] Change. Make sure it’s supported. [To Ginny] Come back. Make sure it’s supported.

[Student] Make sure you’re supported on your hand.

[Anat] No. Look to support. She can’t make sure. I don’t know that she can do it. You can only make sure with something that you 100 percent you know you can rely on. She’s in a learning process.

[Student] Ok.

[Anat] No no no. I want you to slow down.

[Student] I get it.

[Anat] I know you get it, but I want you to slow down. Slow down. Because right now … Anyone in the room is not going right now “Oh my god.” Raise your hand if you are. Are you going “Oh my god, I’m learning something.” Raise your hand. You see, it’s very important. So you’re getting the brunt of it, but they’re all getting the benefit, so you are going to have nightmares, but they are learning. Make sure there are nightmares tonight. [laughter] Send you to the heart doctor. And this time it will be for real.

[Student] Thanks.

[Anat] You’re lucky. Say “Put your right hand, and see the best you can lean on it.” See you invite her to do the best she can, or to do it, or notice if she can. We don’t know if she can do it or not. We are providing a process where she will get better at it.



[Student] Ok. Put your right hand on the table, which it already is. And look to support your weight the best you can. And as you bring your left hand on the table do the same thing. Look to support your weight the best you can on the table.

[Anat] That’s it. She did quite well, now let me just show you … [To Ginny] Come back with this arm, leave that right where it is … If you just reminded her and say “And as you bring your left hand to bring your weight on it, remember your left hip.” Let’s see how she does it. So remember your left hip. Remember your left hip.

You see, better. You see, the fact that she did it once, it’s once. She’s lived with it for a long time … the back … You see how much difference it is. One of your usefulness is to remind people, to say to people, to point out, I do it with you all the time. I’m doing it right now as we speak. I don’t see that anything is wrong with it. I don’t think that you don’t know the work. I’m just kicking your butt, that’s all. I’m popping you to the next level of accountability, of awareness. And part of it is repeating yourself. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Go ahead, so now just do it. I mean think of the hip.

[Student] So think of the left hip when you do that.

[Anat] And make sure your right foot is standing. Put it wherever you can so it stands. You see all the details have to kick in again. The main details. Not all the details.

[Student] Make sure your right foot remains standing, and then we’re going to bring your left foot or your left knee down to the ground slightly. And remember your left hip.

[Anat] And there’s one thing both of you neglected, is [To Ginny as she demonstrates on her] Stay there. Stay there. Slide your left foot back as you bring the knee down. Otherwise the knee could go down under the hip. And do it a few times. You decide how many times. And that’s the time you can use your hand to help make sure she doesn’t go too fast down, and come back. And each time bring this arm back, and put the full weight on the hip.

You see she replaces the shoulders with the pelvis. She replaces the feet with the hips. You see? And it’s understandable. It’s because she has intelligence. So she found solutions. But we’re trying to get her past her limitations due to her solutions. So go ahead. Think of the hip. Move the hand. Make sure you’re leaning. Slide. And I’m going to hold you. And see if you can go a little … That’s it. You see now she corrected the foot herself. And see if you can … Does it feel safe to go further? Ok, there you go. And now pop the pelvis back. You see I asked her if it felt safe. And now rest. One time, big deal. Now rest. Just put the hands and rest. Ok. Anybody, just say in words what you would do next. Or we can just do one more and then I want to move to another … Any idea?

[Student] Me?

[Anat] Yes. Just one more idea.

[Student] So she gets down to the one knee, and the goal is to bring this one around … I’m kinda stuck right here.

[Anat] How about, we’ll shift our goal. So lean on the right hand. I’ll help you here. Remember, make sure the right foot can stand. That’s it … that’s it … Go down.

[Ginny] I need to go down wider.

[Anat] Wherever you want. That’s it. Ok. Wait, don’t come back yet. Keep both hands on the table. And now, think now of pushing on your toes and lifting the left knee a little bit and use it to swing back.

[Ginny] Oh Yeah. Oh my god.

[Anat] Oh Yeah. Well my goodness. You see. She already having the knees like that so the swinging up and down is actually … It’s already happening. Ok.

[Student] Part of it.



[Anat] You want to try it one more time? [TN: they rearrange the padding on the floor for Ginny to have more padding available for the movement.] I understand. So lean on the right hand first. Lean on the right hand. There we go. You see how nice her hips are moving now? And you point it out to the person. Say “Your hips are freer.” Notice. Because people do it and they don’t even know. And it gets lost. [To Ginny] That’s it. And then go wherever you need to go. Put the toes like for running. There you go. Both hands are leaning. Wait. Wait. And now, first of all think of pushing on the toes, lifting and twist. There you go. Not bad, eh? [Ginny comes up from her knees to sitting on the table.]

[Ginny] Oh, oh my goodness.

[Anat] You see. There we go. Ok.

[Ginny] Thank you.

[Anat] Isn’t it fun.

[Ginny] Yeah.

[Anat] You see and that’s when it’s relearning. It’s a bang. It’s not just an exercise. It’s relearning. It’s real transformation. It’s huge. You see how emotional she gets? You let me know if you’d like to do it one more time, or if it’s too much.

[Ginny] Oh, I’d love to do it one more time.

[Anat] You see, she really wants to get it under her belt. So take your time. Breathe. I need you to breath, or I’m not ok. That’s it. [To Student] Now you give her the instructions. [To Ginny] I’ll be right here next to him. I’m keeping you safe. He’s going to do perfect.

[Student] Put your right hand on the table, and look to do your best at supporting your weight.

[Anat] Ah, ah, no. “Look to do your best.” Came out of your mind, mouth you didn’t even hear it.

[Student] I did. Look to do your best at supporting your weight on your right hand.

[Anat] Look to do your best. Look to do your best. Look to do your best.

[Student] No?

[Anat] Look to do your best. Move your left hand to lean on it. Remember it’s the action. Leave out “Look to do the best. Make sure you’re doing good.” Whatever.

[Student] Just be direct.

[Anat] It’s more than direct. Clean. Words are powerful and they’re actions. Think that every word is action. So “Look to do your best.” is one action. Move your left hand to lean on it, remember to think of your hip while you do it is another action.

[Student] Ok.

[Anat] Do you want her to look to do the best or do you want her to lean on her left hand.

[Student] Lean on her left hand.

[Anat] Then leave “Look to do your best” out.

[Student] Ok. Ok.

[Anat] You’ll raise your kids differently once you think that way. Look to do your best. Look to do your best. I’m looking, I’m looking to do the best. I’ve ruined it for you for the rest of my life.

[Student] No, you’re making it better. That’s what you’re doing.

[Anat] Ok, lean on your right hand. Clearly. And now remember your hip. Put your left … And wait. Don’t rush. Do not rush. And now you see she’s so excited about it she’s going to



rush and she could hurt herself. We don’t want that to happen. So. Now. Remember. Your right foot is somewhere you feel you can stand on it.

[Ginny] Yes.

[Anat] Your left leg, remember … [To Student] Go ahead and help her. Gently take it wherever she’s going to direct it herself. She knows how far to go to the left. You just help her. Give her the freedom. [To Ginny] And now, stay there. Soften the chest. [To Student] You’re not going to help her pick up. What you’re going to do is touch here [left hand on left hip, right hand on right side of sacrum]. Just touching. She’s doing it. And you say, “Think of lifting your left knee.” You see that’s the movement forward. And put it back down. Don’t even swivel. And again, feel how far forward your head goes and swivel and sit. And you do it all by yourself without any help. Provided you go slow. Ok. And think of all the details. That’s it you see … Look at her left hip now is moving. You wouldn’t know now she had fusion. There you go. If you landed with the toes standing it will be safer, by the way. It doesn’t matter. Now think of driving your head forward. Forward. There you go. So then it’s easy. That’s enough. I don’t want you to do it any more. You’re … But sit there and feel yourself.

And look how much she’s sitting now on the left hip. You feel? You’re totally on the left side. That means it’s a real brain change. She really experienced it profoundly. It’s a functional reorganization. I didn’t expect to do so much about the languaging of the instructions, but I wasn't going to just listen to it and say nothing. Let me tell you that, you guys.

[Anat takes Ginny’s head in her hands and brings her to standing.] Now, and you see I’m going to show you that in more detail, but use that moving the head forward. Ok? Thank you.

[Ginny] Thank you.

[Student] Thank you.

[Anat] Thank you. You’re very welcome. Walk. Walk slowly. You see you’re limping because one side is so different from the other. But feel how one is different from the other. Yeah. Feel. You’re kind of a little bit like a crab. Take your time. It’s different because there is so much change. That’s it. That’s it. That’s better. There you go. Nice. Nice. Now she’s integrating. Good.

Ok. Away from this position. Another way of driving in some of that information of how to shift weight. What to do with the head, the pelvis, the timing. All of that stuff that we’ve been working with this segment. Somebody that has greater limitations. Hah. What. No, I’m not going to demonstrate. I want a student to come up with ideas. Oh, she should come up with ideas? Oh, ok, I want you to do your best coming up with ideas, right now. Marcy has just decided. [To a student] Oh, Marcy just volunteered your brain. Be creative now. Do you have any ideas? Ok. Any body else has any ideas? See just, are you at least trying to move your head around to have an idea? Or are you just sitting there saying “Idea. I don’t have one. Somebody will come up with an idea. Anat will for sure come up with an idea. It will work out. I don’t have to anything.” I want another person. I have to have more than two people in the class.

By the way, it’s so interesting. I just read this research. You know how people do brainstorming and one of the things that is very common, is that people are not supposed to oppose each other and criticize what each other is saying. And should just be kinda of supportive. And they did research on creativity. Problem solving and creativity. And they had one group where they did brainstorming and they were nice. And another group where they actually allowed, you know, not mean, but room for people to disagree and to be in that sense critical. Say, “I don’t believe it. This is not going to work. You’re making a mistake here. The brain doesn’t work this.” So if I could say to an ABM practitioner “Excessive repetition is harmful, I don’t care what you do in the context. Denial of variation is starving the brain of information.” Things like that. I would like to be able to do it, right? And they found out that the brainstorming groups were really not very creative. And the one’s that had the



freedom to disagree … You know, in a decent way … But to disagree, were a lot more creative. And they mentioned one of the big … I don’t know if it was Apple … One of those where they got their certain teams where they need them to be creative … They actually installed the invitation to be open about disagreements. It’s not competition … I don’t remember … I’ll look it up. I have it at home, so I’ll look it up and try to tell you. So that there’s room. There’s room to agree, disagree. But in this case right now, it really any idea will work because it’s not … We’re not trying to sell a product. It’s a learning process. So that’s a bit different.

Any idea? Somehow use the high table. [To a student] You can use anything you want.

Yes. Yes. May she have a student? Thank god, she has a student. Give her a hand for volunteering. This is a big part of the fun of the profession you have acquired here. Is that you get to make it up. Sharon, she’s had more experience. You were pretty petrified at the beginning too, probably. I was.

But it’s a big fun. You know, that brain could do it. I bet you if the person I’m working with can do this this, this, this and this, I bet you they could also do that. It’s just how do we get from here to there? That’s the only question. What kinds of actions we take between here and there. And actions include thinking and feeling, all that stuff. What actions do we take to get them from here to there. What information do we try to give them an opportunity … Things to feel … And that’s why I love it. I love it because of that and then seeing people transform. Seeing someone like Ginny have the moment that she had just a minute ago. You know, this is what I do. That’s why I love doing this work. Otherwise who cares. Yeah, go ahead.

[Student] Karina, last lesson when you came … I want us to remember … ah. Eh eh.

[Anat] No. I want us to remember … I’m going to remind you.

[Student] I’m going to remind you

[Anat] Or you just say, do you remember that last time? Simple. Do you remember the last time you had fish and chips?

[Student] Last time do you remember lifting one hip up in the air and the other hip up in the air?

[Karina] Yes.

[Student] And let’s remember that. [TN: Karina is sitting on a chair, student sitting on a stool in front of her, hands on either side of Karina’s hips, guiding the movement.]

[Anat] No. Not now let’s remember it. Let’s do it.

[Student] Let’s do that. Lift one hip in the air. And lift the other hip up in the air.

[Anat] I have to give you an English course in an Israeli accent. That’s what is missing for all of you.

[Student] That’s it. And you shift on one hip and lift the other hip up in the air. And you shift your weight. That’s it. Now we’re going to use that. So please come forward in the chair. Scoot to the edge. That’s lovely. Lovely. And please take … Your right foot is standing on the floor in front of you. Please slide … And your hips are seated right in the middle of the chair, correct? Yes. And if you were to …

[Anat] Now, again, can you feel, or are your hips seated in the middle of the chair. How does it feel to you. Does it feel like they’re in the middle or not. Not, “They’re sitting in the middle seat, correct?”

You see all this language. Like with Ed. Listen, this is a straight continuation. See how deeply embedded it is in us … When I listened to this Paula Kluth yesterday, I thought “God, she is definitely three notches about me in her ability to use language. And not evoke the



echoes of criticism and judgment we all grew up with.” Does that make sense to you? What I’m saying? I think I’m pretty good at it, especially when I’m intentional. But boy, she actually, in that respect she’s at least three notches above me. So for me, what she was doing was fine. It wasn’t that important to me because I understood the principles she was using so it didn’t matter. But I was listening to her languaging, and I kept listening to her languaging. And I need to hear this more until I get used to it and I can recreate it. But I recognize it, which means I have hope. I recognize the difference.

Yes, so go ahead, and tell her … You can even ask her “Do you feel like you’re sitting in the middle or do you feel like you’re sitting more … Because by asking those questions you get the brain to scan and to notice …

[Student] Differences.

[Anat] That’s right. You turn the learning switch on [Anat snaps her fingers] like that. Ok? Otherwise when you sit somebody … You’re doing xyz you’re actually getting them more passive and tend to turn the switch off. Ok.

[Student] And do you feel that you are sitting in the middle …

[Anat] What do you feel? You see you’re used to being directive. So you start by what do you feel. You feel like … What do you feel. So she know she’s going to feel something. So what do you feel? Do you feel like you’re in the middle, more to the right, more to the left?

[Student] And what do you feel? Do you feel you are sitting in the middle of the chair, more to the right, more to the left? [TN: Karina shifts her seat forward.]

[Anat] You see she responded correctly. Because we didn’t ask the question. She thinks we’re talking about where she is situated on the chair.

[Student] Don’t change it.

[Anat] No. No. No. She responded. You were intending to ask her … Both you and I made a mistake. “What do you feel, that the weight is centered? Equal between the right side and left side? Or do you have more of your weight to the right hip or left. Isn’t that the question you’re asking? Or are you asking literally if she’s more on the right or left of the chair.

[Student] I want to ask her to shift so I want to get where …

[Anat] Shift what?

[Student] I want to get her to move her weight onto one side of the chair then the other, so I wanted to establish where we were.

[Anat] Wait. Wait. Wait. Let me make a distinction here. Do you want her to literally move the tush more to the right on the chair?

[Student] Yes. Yes.

[Anat] Ok. So all that matters is that “Just feel where you are sitting right now.” Who knows if it’s exactly in the middle. You know, you have to bring a ruler. So if she’s …

[Student] Notice where you’re sitting right now. Don’t change.

[Anat] Yeah, exactly.

[Student] Notice where you’re sitting right now on the chair. And can you slide to the … [TN: Student struggles with how to say it] Good. Boy. Hard.

[Anat] One of the things is do you want her to lean on her hands, or to slide without actually leaning on her hands.

[Student] No, I think I want her hands still here.

[Anat] Ok. So, and do you want her to slide, or do you want her to hop?



[Student] I want you to slide so one hip is close to the side of the chair.

[Anat] You want her to slide her pelvis to the side. That’s it. Easy.

[Student] Slide your pelvis to the side.

[Anat] Slide your pelvis to the side.

[Student] And back to the middle please. There you go. And I want you to slide so one hip is off the edge of the chair. That’s lovely. That’s lovely. And are you comfortable there? [Karina shakes her head left to right in a so-so way] And slide back to the middle.

[Anat] If she says so so you can ask her …

[Student] I want to see if the other side is … if there’s a difference.

[Anat] Oh. Oh. Ok. Good for you.

[Student] So let’s see if sliding to the other side is more comfortable for you.

[Anat] You’re not asking if the sliding is more comfortable, you’re asking if the sitting …

[Student] If sitting on the edge is more comfortable.

[Anat] So you say slide to the other side and when she’s there … Again, don’t give her the full thinking process you have. Just say “Slide to the other side.” When she’s there say “Is that more comfortable than the first side.”

[Karina] It’s more comfortable.

[Student] It’s more comfortable.

[Anat] Simple. Simple. Simple.

[Student] And now, begin to slide your left foot behind you.

[Anat] I would suggest she lean …

[Student] Lean on something …

[Anat] Either lean forward …

[Student] I’m going to give you something to lean …

[Anat] Wait. Wait. Wait. You can put the chair or you can use yourself. Sit. Sit again. And you give your thigh and you say “Lean on my thigh.” With both hands? She doesn’t need both hands. And you can use this, remember [Anat takes Karina’s head forward], and slide leg a little and come back. And then again, use my thigh. That’s it. And guide her head to go forward as she slides this backwards. And then you tell her how far to go or what she’s doing. I don’t know what she’s doing.

[Student] And sit in the middle of the chair please. And rest a minute.

[Anat] See that’s just one possibility. She could put her hands on your shoulders. She can lean on the hand behind. You can also do all variations. Sometimes you’d work with a man, that would not be comfortable. You work with someone with certain religious beliefs you can’t do that. You understand? You have to … It also depends on your size. If you’re a bossomy gal and you work with a guy, and he’s going to put his head into your breast. Not a good idea. You might want to put a taller chair. I don’t know. You have to be mindful of those things, right.

[Student] Karina, I want you to slide to the edge of the chair again.

[Anat] Please.

[Student] I want you to … Please slide to the edge of the chair again.



[Anat] We don’t care what you want. Now are you starting to hear it? Is it starting to scratch in your ear when you hear it? Yes? No? “I want you to ...” When people say “I want you to … “ I’m just like …

[Student] I heard that. And put your hand on my le … Lean on my leg with your hand. Slide, soften the chest.

[Anat] As she slides.

[Student] Slide your foot to the back. I want you to …

[Anat] AH

[Student] I want you to come back. Well I was going to say I want to keep you safe.

[Anat] We don’t care. Keep her safe. She will either feel safe, or she won’t. And if you want her to feel and be safe say, “Let me know if you feel safe.” You’re gathering information. And you’re asking questions. “I want to keep you safe.” Great. I want to keep you safe. Boom, I dropped you. I don’t care if you want to keep me safe. That doesn’t make me feel safe. How you touch me, and how you guide me, and whether I know if I’m safe as I move. So you give people the power. You empower people. You say “Let me know if that feels comfortable and safe. Don’t go too fast.” So she doesn’t come right back. So you ensure they’re safe. You do it. You don’t want to. You see it’s again, just like him. “I want to keep you safe.” Or I’m going to act in ways that ensure that you are safe. That’s why “Try to be good.” Am I going to try? Or am I going to be good. Try to finish your homework. Oh I’m trying. I’m doing trying. When you tell people to try you actually tell them to do something different from what you want them to do. I don’t want you to try. [To Karina] And come back to the middle … She’s uncomfortable.

And you know in schools when they realize self-esteem is very important and associated with kids well-being an so on … But they reverse the order. They thought they could build the self-esteem and then get kids to do well. They didn’t realize that self-esteem is a result of doing well. Right? So they were building self-esteem. And why did I want to say that? I don’t remember. Oh, because they trained kids to say “I tried real hard.” Oh, you tried real hard, that’s good. I’ll give you an A. You tried hard. So you give them an A for trying hard. You don’t get an A for being capable. It’s ridiculous. So then you get a lot of people they’re baffled when trying hard doesn't get them the accolades.

Because when it comes to the Olympics, let me tell you, they all try real hard. And trying doesn’t give you the Olympics. And trying doesn’t give the results with your clients. I don’t want you trying. I want you intending. And being interested. And curious. And learning. And listening. And going back to the materials. And experimenting. And becoming a better and better observer, so you know when it is and when it isn’t. And listening to your language.

Try and … throw it to the garbage. You see people also confuse try with putting in the energy and the intent. Definitely intend to. But trying is a waste of time in that sense. And then people say “Oh, I really tried to.” Ok, well at least you maybe you can have compassion and not be mad when it doesn’t work, but if you really need outcomes, like not get run over by a car, trying is not enough. I tried not to run you over, but I didn’t do this well enough. You know. Or I didn’t mean to. Love that one. It’s ok one time. Second time, what about it did you not figure out. You know. I know it sounds tough, but if you are going to take people that are going to have transformation, trying hard … [to Student] Now, don’t try to speak differently.

[Student] No. No, No.

[Anat] No. Just listen to what you say and self-correct. And you see how in the beginning how you didn’t even know how to replace it. That’s one of the reasons that it’s difficult. And it’s so automatic. So the thing is how to replace it. And just think, what am I going to ask her? What do I want her to do? What am I trying to communicate to her? What am I attempting



to do here? What’s my intent. So you say, “OK, slide your pelvis to the left.” So the hip is … do this … do that … We’re going to now start taking the leg down, so go slowly. Use my leg, and just go as long as you feel safe. Come back.

With Ginny, did you see? Three or four times I stopped her. Cause she was ready to be unsafe. She was ready to bump past her own sense of safety. So I pulled her back. And when she was stopped from bringing herself back from past the brink of safety, into unsafety, that’s when she could figure it out. Because the brain gauges safety. That’s one thing the brain gauges all the time. Safe, unsafe. Safe, unsafe. Safe, unsafe. Safe, unsafe. It is the primitive brain, and it is the most potent, powerful part of our brain. Safe, unsafe. That’s one of the biggest mistakes in rehab, working with the kids, all this stuff. They’re put into an experience of lack of safety, of danger. Not intentionally. Over and over again, that’s one of the main reasons they can’t improve more, and they get stuck in their patterns.

Ok. I don’t want to take a lot more time, so just describe, where are you heading? She’s not going to do it, but where are you heading.

[Student] She was going to slide one hip off. She was going to take a foot back, with her knee standing, whether it was the floor or something. Lean on something and then have the ability to lean forward and come forward. Push through her foot.

[Anat] Yeah. Ok. That is perfect. It’s very similar to what you did here. In certain ways … both are ok. It’s more advantageous to do it on the table. It provides more safety. It gives the swivel, and it provides more safety. To do it here, forward, off a chair, it’s a big … If you were to do it … If I were to do it … I mean, you take the hip off … Try to do it yourself. Stand up you do it. Now I use the word “try” of course. You want to be more at the edge of the chair. Yeah. You see, because it doesn't allow for the swivel. And to really do the movement … also even when you’re on the floor, you swivel the pelvis to come on the … You see, you need the swiveling movement. So if you do it in a chair … [TN: Student puts a stool in front of the chair and leans on it] Yeah but then you have to push straight forward. Yeah that is ok. That is good, then it’s not taking the knee down to the floor to the side. You see, free, free. Then you can do a little bit of the swivel. Now swivel to the other side. That’s it. But don’t let the heel fall to the left. Use the toe. There you go. See. And also forward a little bit. Yeah, that’s a nice idea.

Now I’m going to show, let me just use you Patty, just show you another way. A person comes … it’s too far … arthritis, back pain, stroke, you name it. Come here, and what I would do, you can do the same thing. What I would do … So since we’re demonstrating just one basically one function. You can have the person stand. You’ll find out that when people are in dire trouble, actually you keep them standing. Like we did by the wall at the beginning of the segment. Remember? A hundred years ago. And the thing that you can do is … I’m not going to go through a lot of variations and stuff, but the thing that you can do …[Patty stands in front of the table, hands leaning on the table. Anat is behind her with hands on Patty’s hips] You do a little shifting weight, shifting weight. In this position, bending one knee and lifting one heel. So giving a little bit of freedom and mobility. And maybe you know, bending one knee, looking over one shoulder.

Ohhhh. Poking your client in the eye. Are you ok? Do you need help here? That’s special treatment. Sorry. That’s cause I love you so much. I don’t remember the last time I poked a client in the eye. Not part of the procedure. Thanks for being reassuring. Oh, ouch.

And now bend this knee and look, and bend this knee and look. Bend the same knee and look. So you give just a little variation. Opps. I almost did it again. And I did not drink before I came here. Any way. So now, you get the person to be able to lift this knee and put it on the chair. You see how you get the person to a similar position. And then you can travel the arms a little bit further forward. And you can do it in phases. And if you have one arm that’s a bit spastic or what not, then you start here [Anat bends student’s elbow and puts



forearms on the table.] You understand? You start here. Or you do the variation, arm up or down. Or you can even do one arm straight and one arm bent. All these variations.

But let’s just take one position at this point and you see you can put your hand here [hips]. Or here and here [one hand on hip, one on head]. [To Patty] Just don’t over respond to my touch, ok? Then you can’t get there. And now, begin lifting your left heel and driving your weight forward, and see how your weight comes onto the right knee.

You see that’s an example of translating functionally where if you’re not more experienced … If you’re not experienced you wouldn’t even know it had anything to do with anything we did earlier. [To Patty] You see, lift the heel, and come on the elbow and on the knee. And then come back. And see if you can do it and just twist a little bit. There you go. You see this kind of movement. And come back up. Come back down. And rest for a second. She’ll feel. You see how clearly the weight now is on the right leg? Keep leaning. There you go. You feel that?

So you can do a number of variations like that. Again, lift the heel. Place the knee more forward. More forward. Further forward. So you want … You giving it more to drive further to lean on the knee, right? So let’s see how it goes when you’re on your hands. Lift the heel, the other heel. Press on the toes, and look to bring the weight … We probably need to move this leg a little back. And this chair a little bit back. And this leg a little bit further back. No. No. This leg is forward. There you go. You see what I’m doing is making it so she has to drive herself quite a bit forward to come on the knee. And maybe it’s a little too much. You see how I self correct? I put the chair, she’s in there, I see uh, uh, it’s not going to work. Change it. Big deal. I’m not going to … I’m literally making it up for the first time. I don’t know that I ever did this. I don’t think so. In all my career. So I’m just making it up. So I’m going to self-correct. And for her it’s just a variation. Ah Ah. Too hard work. Try to make it easier. Do something with your tusch and your head.

Now, come on your elbows, both. And let’s see if it’s easier in this position. You see it’s easier, because the head is already lower. You see so the relationship between the head … Look at, that’s easier. You feel that? You’re pressing on the toes. That’s it. That’s easier. So now put this hand for pushing up, and do it. And see it’s not as easy. So let’s find a way to do it that’s easy. There you go. Make sure that your neck is not … That’s it. Now make it easy. There you go. Now put that elbow down and put this one for pushing up, and let’s see if we can make it easy.

You see how I say “Let’s see if we can make it easy.” Not “I would like you. I want you. Make sure to…” And actually, my words, I just listened to it, express where I come from in my in my intent. “Let’s see if we can make it easier.” I don’t know. I really don’t know. She doesn’t even know what I’m asking her to do. So she surely doesn’t know.

That’s it. Was that easy? Now I just want the neck a little freer. Now I want it freer, let me tell you [Anat moves Patty’s head from side to side in a shaking motion]. Cause I won’t let her keep doing it if she keeps the neck so stiff. Because I don’t want her to train to do it … That’s it, you feel how your hip joint got completely free. Nice. Now put both elbows, do it. No. Eh eh. Don’t contort yourself too much. There you go. So I even order my clients around. “Don’t contort.” Because she has the idea that everything has to be loose. No. Just the movement. There you go. Up. Back. Up. Back. Up. That’s nice. Isn’t that nice? You could run like that. And you could say that to somebody who has a stroke, because it’s true. Up. And now let’s see if we can make this easy. AH Ha. How about that. Get your knee.

[Patty] Better.

[Anat] Better. And just stand. And see how you’re standing. There you go. Stand up. And feel one leg then the other leg. Feel how you’re breathing, how you’re standing. Zazoom. There we go. Walk around. [Anat slaps her on the tush] What? The one time I did it when I thought I’d die is when I did it with Sagio Osawa … He got to move the pelvis a little. I said terrific. And I slapped him a little on the tush. Oh, I’m dying. One of the world’s top



conductors. He couldn’t care less. He was so happy to feel better I could do anything. But I thought oh my god, Anat are you crazy? But it just came out of my hand. He was like a kid. His tush was moving, and I said “That’s terrific.” She’s a musician in an orchestra. She knows what that means. You do not spank the conductor on the tush. Oh dear. Oh God. Ok,



Bonus Notes: FS #1 Review Done as a TML, parts 1 & 2

(Taught by Marcy Lindheimer Day 2) Length of lesson: 52 min

NOTES

[Marcy] We’re going to work on FS 1 of this segment. And I thought we would start it. It’s really like doing a TML with some help from the teacher. Because basically if you think about what Anat did, she held the waistband in back, so that she could monitor, I would say, what was happening in the low back. And also amplify the experience for the student. And then, once in a while there was twisting the pelvis. Otherwise, it’s really a TML. And we’ll start at the wall. And then I think we’ll work a little bit on the floor too, so you can experience it in other positions.

1. So go and claim a piece of the wall. Oh yes, get a pad for yourself, for your head. [To Student] No, no, it’s TML. No partners yet.

2. Please lean your forehead against the pad that you have. And put your hands up. 3. And begin to bend your left knee a little inward or forward, whatever direction it goes.

Bend it slightly and come back. And just start, what Anat uses the word collapse, just start to let it collapse a little bit and feel what happens in the pelvis, in the spine. Start to detach the heel from the floor just slightly. Or at least let the heel lighten as you collapse the knee.

4. And let that go, and walk a little bit. 5. Now Anat taught this two different ways. I watched three different recordings of it. One

having the student walk between each movement. Another was just to have the student stand there, which is what Michael did.

6. Go back to the wall and try to position yourself so that you have evenly plenty of room so that you don’t feel constrained with your arms.

7. Now begin to bend or collapse the right knee. And listen to what happens in the spine, in your sternum. Does one side of the ribcage get longer, the other shorter? Where would you want someone to put their hands to help you feel what the experience is? And notice, does your pelvis twist? And do it and keep your pelvis from turning. We’re just doing the right knee for a moment. And now let your pelvis move as it needs to.

8. And now alternate, once the left, next the right. Take your time though so that you can really feel what happens up through the spine. And where in the spine, the high thoracic spine, the beginning of the cervical spine, do you not feel much movement?

9. And let this go, and walk around. And just feel how you stand on your feet. And is your pelvis doing the walking or are your feet doing the walking? Or in some cases, are your shoulders doing the walking?

10. And go back to the wall. 11. And begin to lift the left foot and bring it across the right to come onto the floor and find a

way to bring your weight to it. And then bring it back. 12. And you remember Michael kept his feet very close together when he did that, and Anat

asked him to bend his knee more. So think of your leg as nimble the way that your hand and arm could be. Your foot and your leg could be nimble.

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson Bonus TML : FS into TML


13. And feel again, how does the pelvis participate in this movement. What starts the movement? Your foot, your knee, your hip, the ribs? And does one side of the ribcage get shorter than the other? What happens in the collarbones?

14. And leave that and walk around. 15. And see now if there is a specific difference that you feel between how the left foot comes

on to the floor. Or do you feel that your weight is more on the right foot. Has just doing this caused your right leg to become your standing leg.

16. So stop at some point and see what leg you want to stop on. And where you want to put your weight, and then start again. And find your way back to the wall.

17. And now again, with your arms up, robbery style, begin to cross your left leg behind your right leg. And feel how you do it. Do you do it with a straight leg, like a wooden leg, where you have one thing happening from the pelvis, a straight leg to the foot going across. Try that, and see what that would be like. So that very little differentiation comes from the pelvis. The leg doesn’t really do anything, except to swing behind.

18. And then bring your weight onto both feet. So give yourself time once you’re there to bring your weight onto both feet.

19. And each time you come around to cross, see if you can plant your foot in a way that it’s parallel to your right foot. The toes going in the same direction. If you’re not sure, just look down and see what you’re doing. So it means that you have to twist in the ankle slightly to do that.

20. Ok now give up the wooden leg. And now try bending in the knee. Think of the ankle. So that you have a more differentiated movement. Again a more nimble one.

21. And each time you bring your foot down, you can even look at your two feet and see could it look like two feet that weren’t crossed. That the feet are parallel with each other.

22. And leave that and walk around please. 23. And find the wall. 24. And now cross the left foot in front of the right to stand it parallel to the right. Lift it, without

stopping on the side go around to the back, and plant it parallel to the right foot. And again without stopping go around to the front and cross in front.

25. And feel what happens in the pelvis. Feel the twisting. When do you arch? Do you feel side bending at a certain point? Do you feel the rounding of the back at any point? And each time you put the foot down bring your weight on both feet, and feel how the force is directed up the spine.

26. And leave that, and walk around. 27. And feel, do your already feel some changes in how you carry your head? The length of

your spine? Do you feel taller, shorter? 28. And go back to the wall. 29. Now again, your hands up. And begin to imagine bringing your right foot across in front of

the left. Imagine what would happen in the pelvis, in the spine, in the sternum, in the collarbones, in the shoulders.

30. There’s an answer here for Irene’s student whose leg is not moving. What happens in the chest as if it could move. What happens in the pelvis, in the shoulders?

31. And now begin bringing your right leg in front. Cross it in front. And come back. 32. And pretend for a moment that you have that wooden leg. You’re Irene’s student, you

can’t move your leg, but you can move your pelvis, you can move your ribcage. You can move the collarbones, the sternum, the ribs. So the leg becomes a detail.

33. And now once bring the left leg across in front, and come to standing on both feet. Go back to having both feet next to each other. And now cross the right leg in front. And go back and forth alternating. And feel what happens in the chest. Is it clearer to you that more of you is participating with one leg than with the other?

34. And leave this, and walk around. 35. And come back to the wall. 36. Now continue to have your forehead on the pad. Now this is what I call the string base

position. Bring your left arm across in front. 37. And it’s interesting, one lesson that Anat gave to a student she actually had the left hand

on the wall, the palm on the wall. Another, I think with Michael, she had the left hand



facing the right arm or the right side of the torso. I happen to prefer that myself. And so pretend that… decide whichever way you want to do it.

38. And bring your right arm to be long above you. So this is a little bit how a string base player would play if they were playing it in the opposite direction. That’s fine, we’ll be going the other way too.

39. And now feel by doing that what constraints you feel inside yourself. 40. And begin crossing in front, one leg and then the other. 41. And feel, how is this different for you. Are you having fun yet? How much movement are

you feeling in the left shoulder joint by having this. You can lean the arm against the wall if you want. That might be easier for you. Another way you can do it, if you had a teacher behind you, they could hold the wrist.

42. And now change your arms over. Now this would be definitely more like playing the string base. Your left arm up, your right arm across. Your bow arm.

43. Now again, cross in front. How about bringing the left foot in front across, and then bringing it all around in back across. And feeling what that’s like.

44. And now do the same thing with the right foot. 45. Until you can alternate doing it once with the right foot and coming back, and then once

with the left foot. 46. And feel where would you want your teacher to put their hands? 47. And leave this, and walk around. 48. Are your wrists freer? Are your knees freer? Can you tell you’re getting a lesson? 49. And now go back to the wall. 50. Put the left side of your face on the wall on your pad. Put your right hand in front of your

face and your left arm hanging down. This is what I call the “on the belly position.” Right? Can you imagine you’re lying on your belly?

51. And begin to cross one leg behind. And I’m going to let you choose whichever leg it is, and I’m going to tell you which leg is winning in this class. There’s one leg behind. See if you can feel what your instinct is telling you. That’s it. And now be sure to keep the side of your face on that pad. And feel where is the constraint, and how are you twisting all around that.

52. Now begin … I think most people brought the right leg behind the left. Is that true? Ok, so bring the left leg behind the right. But those who did it the other way then you just go to the other leg.

53. And now remember the feet parallel. And as I look around I think you’re doing it more naturally. Interesting. You’ve learned something. That’s it. And when you get it there across, bring your weight to both feet as if you were going to stand like that.

54. When I watch the Today Show they have a new gal, Savanah something, and she always stands with her legs crossed like this. She never stands with them next to each other [laughs].

55. Now quickly cross behind one leg, bring your weight entirely there. Feel that when you bring your weight on to both feet, can you feel the force move through your spine? Uncross, cross the other leg behind. Go back and forth. Get tall, swing around. Get tall, swing around. And tune into the pelvis, the tumblers, remember? The pelvis, the spine, the ribs.

56. And leave this, and walk around. 57. And go back to the wall. 58. And put the other cheek, the right cheek on the pad, and put our left hand in front of your

face, and your right arm long above. This is what I call the hail the cab position. You can see why I get so little sleep, I spend so much time being creative.

59. Ok, now begin to bring one leg, and I won’t tell you which one, because I want to see what you do, across in front of the other.

60. And you can try one and then try the other and see what’s most comfortable for you. 61. And now the one that’s most comfortable, repeat that several times. And every time you

come to stand on your two crossed feet, check in your sensation, or to look, are they parallel to each other? Are you putting your weight on both? Do you feel the force moving up to your ribcage and spine?



62. And can you wait long enough there that you could imagine that your wonderful practitioner twists the pelvis in that position. And in fact you can do that, you can twist it left and right and just feel what that’s like. It one of the things that Anat did. That’s it.

63. And now uncross. And do it again. 64. And now cross one leg behind. Is it going to be the same leg? Is the same leg going to be

the easiest? Or the other leg? Find out for yourself. First what your instinct is, and then compare them. And see if your instinct was right, for you.

65. And now cross once in front, and once behind. 66. And stop when you cross in front stay crossed. And now this is something I don’t think

Anat did with Michael, but you can do it. Round your back and then arch your back. Your legs are crossed. Your weight is on both feet. You have the constraint of your cheek on the pad. Round your back, and arch your back. And as you do that feel, where would you want your teacher to help you? How about the lower ribs going backwards for rounding? And does the tail see the ceiling when you arch?

67. And now quickly uncross your legs, and bring the leg in front to cross, and then in back. And then change to the other leg, in front and in back.

68. And now come back to having your feet in the usual standing position which is probably not your usual standing position. Put your hands on either side of your head. Have your forehead on the pad. And now begin to collapse or bend the left knee. And do that several times.

69. And feel, what does it feel like now? Is it different from the beginning? And if you don’t come back to this at the end of the FS you really deny your student an amazing opportunity to feel how they can make a difference.

70. And now collapse the right knee. Are they more similar than they were at the beginning? 71. And now alternate, one and the other. 72. And just feel is the pelvis swiveling? Do you feel movement in the spine? Do you feel

movement in the ribs? In the collarbones? In the sternum? Is your jaw freer? What piece of music would you like to dance to right now? Salsa? Ok.

73. Great. Leave your pads against the wall. Walk a little bit. [TN: bathroom break] 74. [Q & A] Any insights that you had? 75. [Christine] I don’t about all of you, I was sweating. It was harder than it looked, cause

when Mike was doing it I was like, “God. Just put your foot behind.” [Laughter] 76. [Marcy] Don’t you feel enriched by that insight. 77. [Student] I agree with Christine on that one too. Also it was interesting to have the head on

the wall and feel kind of walking through the whole of the body. It gave so much information. It was incredible.

78. [Student 2] Because I have metal in my knee, I’ve had my tibial plateau reconstructed, I’ve never done anything that got into the difference between the space that’s my body, there’s all this extra space… And just a general lack of sensation but rigidity on the other side. My pelvis feels totally tilted now too. But I can stand on this leg in a new way.

79. [Marcy] Wow. 80. [Student 3] I’m with you Christine, I felt like it looked so easy and I was so incredibly

frustrated. It was so hard. I couldn’t do it. 81. [Marcy] Just help me a little bit, what couldn’t you do about it? 82. [Student 3] Anything. I’m just like leaning against the wall was a challenge in itself. You

said forehead, I tried the forehead, it felt like it was shortening my neck. And then to differentiate all the different parts of the spine and the pelvis… I think it just goes right into my problem that I have in my pocket.

83. [Marcy] Yeah. Well next time let me know, because maybe you needed less pad actually rather than more. We’re going to do it in a little different way, and we’ll see if maybe we can get some insight.

84. [Marilyn] It really makes you aware of any areas in your body that are restricted in any way. And it’s such a really gentle move, but if you’re not all lined up, everything’s going to … You’re going to feel it everywhere. Which I found in the areas that are not working for me really challenging.



85. [Marcy] So if you were giving a lesson to Verana, and she was getting so frustrated, what do you think you could do about it? Anyone have an idea?

86. [Student 4] I thought that the TML that we did yesterday was very helpful for me for this movement that we did today. That we did with Anat, and we did the breathing. Put the belly in and inflate the ribs and let it go. So I would put her on the table, and I will do that with her before.

87. [Marcy] A different position probably would be better. A different lesson. Believe me, if you give a lesson and someone feels that frustrated … Now she’s already paid her tuition so she has no choice but to stay here … The person’s not going to come back, because the just feel like they’re heading into a wall. Literally. [laughter] I’m so cleaver.

88. Verena go to the wall for a second. Put one hand on the wall in front of your forehead, and put the other hand on top of that. There you go. Now how is that position?

89. [Verena] That’s a little bit better. 90. [Marcy] Ok, that’s the first thing, you can give any position. Anat mentioned that… Put the

hand on the back of the head … You can do anything with it. But you see there’s … Verena, we’re not going to go into her issue, but she has an issue around the hips. And very real and very important one for her in her life. So first of all, what is it like to cross your legs? Cross one in front of the other if you can do that. Is that alright?

91. [Verena] Yeah. 92. [Marcy] Ok, so now come back. Good. Just stay there. Go a little closer to the wall if you

can, if you’re still comfortable in your neck. And now begin to think of a triangle of you arms and hands and so on. You have one big triangle. And begin to move one elbow upward on the wall. Great. Now are you frustrated yet?

93. [Verena] No. [laughing] 94. [Marcy] Tell me, cause I want to know. And again, the same elbow. Now you see what’s

happening … It doesn’t bring in the twisting, but it brings in all the side bending, what’s happening in the ribs. It’s affecting her hips, but she’s not directly having to do so much. Now cross the left leg in front of the right. I think that’s what you did before. Yeah. There you go. And bring your weight as much as you can on both feet.

95. [Verena] Right here I feel frustrated. 96. [Marcy] Right here you feel frustrated? So slide your arms over so you’re more right in front

above your crossed legs. How is that? 97. [Verena] Much better. 98. [Marcy] Ok. And now begin to slide one elbow up. See if it’s still the right elbow you would

like to slide. Ok, so what we’ve done is twisted the pelvis because of the crossing of the legs, and done all the movements in the ribs, in the sternum, in the collarbones … All that is happening, but it’s much more protected for her. And now how does it feel to you Verena?

99. [Verena] Much better that I don’t have to be over here with all that. [TN: Verena demonstrates shifting her body and feet to one side rather than right under her forehead.]

100. [Marcy] Ok. And now try lengthening the left elbow. How’s that? 101. [Verena] Ok. 102. [Marcy] Good. Now alternate, one and then the other. Great. So now put one

side of your face on your hands. Still ok? [TN: inaudible] Good. And then lengthen one elbow. And see now she has more of a twist, so there’s more constraints happening. That’s it. And now come back. Uncross. And of course you want to do very short. And put your forehead on the backs of your hands. And bend one knee a little. Collapse one knee. There you go. You don’t have to cross, just collapse. And now collapse the other knee. Good. And come away from the wall and walk a little bit. Have we restored your faith in yourself? [TN: Verena gestures with her fingers showing a little bit.] [laughter]

103. [Marcy] You have to have a strong ego for this job I’ll tell you that. I’m always telling the parents that when the kid cries. Thank you Verena.

104. Can you see how important it is to problem solve? I live with a problem solver. Walking down the street and all of the sudden I realize I am walking alone. Diane is standing there looking at a manhole going “I wonder why the water is getting stuck here.” I’m like “why do we care?” But that’s what it takes, in short little bits. Because how she



feels about herself in the end that is the most important thing. That she has a sense of hope. And it’s truly, I mean that I have no doubt that Verena is going to come back to one of these segments and she’s going to say “You know that lesson, I can do it easily now.” But it’s not in the cards for today. So today we have to problem solve. Katie you want to say something?

105. [Katie] So when you brought her feet, or her elbows more over her hips after you crossed the feet, that was reducing some of the need for side bending? Or what was that?

106. [Marcy] I think the side bend, and also the twist was greater. Is that right? [TN: to Verana who must nod yes] And it’s fine, because she’s still getting some of that twist. Irene.

107. [Irene] So during the lesson at one point I got a cramp in my hip and it just made me think about it because it’s happened when I teach classes where people say “Ow, I got a cramp.” And, what I try to do in the class if that happens is kinda what you did with Verena. Simplify, reduce the demand a little bit. Are there any other suggestions to do when that happens?

108. [Marcy] Well, when you study your TML’s you’ll see that you can pull in something from another TML that will meet the moment. Oh, yes, Donna.

109. [Donna] Verena, thank you for pointing out what was difficult, because I actually had a lot of trouble with my pillow. I thought is it too thick, is it too thin. At one point I felt that I was working hard just to keep it against the wall in some of the moves. And I thought “I don’t think I’m going to learn, I have enough trouble, let alone that.”

110. [Marcy] Yeah, you have to just keep shifting it. Look at, my nose seems to be large, it’s something I noticed in life, and certain lessons on the floor where you have to put your forehead down. You feel my pain now? Yes, you have to keep adjusting for what is needed for you.

111. [Donna] So it could have been too thick because I felt like 112. [Marcy] Absolutely. It could be that you don’t even need a pillow, depending on

how your neck is organized. And how the whole spine is organized. Absolutely. And you need to keep trying with your student’s to see how … I make my students crazy with “Let’s try this pad. No, I think the other’s fine. No, no, try this pad.” Until I get exactly the right height. It feels very important.

113. [TML Resumes] Lie on your belly. 114. And now you can try different ways. Maybe we’ll put one hand on top of the other

like Verena did. And put your forehead on your hands. That’s it. 115. And just begin to roll your pelvis one way and then the other. And think to yourself,

that you’re standing at the wall. 116. And begin to roll your pelvis as you’re doing, and bend the knee that wants to bend

to the side. 117. And because where the floor is you can’t bend the knee in the direction that you

did standing at the wall. But just feel the relationship of the bend of the knee. Maybe the bend of the ankle, or how you organize your ankle. What happens in the hip on that side where the knee bends, all the way up the spine? What the floor is telling you about what’s going on in your chest? That’s information you can’t get from the wall directly, like you can get it from the floor.

118. And go back and forth. 119. And now let that go, but leave your head where it is, and now begin to lift one leg a

little bit as if to bring it behind, above, and across the other leg. Go only as far as it’s easy. And feel how much do you have to twist in the pelvis to even think about doing this. Do you lift your leg first? Or do you roll your pelvis to a certain point where it’s easy to lift the leg because it feels much lighter at that point? And are you doing the wooden leg? Or the other leg? That’s it.

120. And now go back and just roll your pelvis. 121. Now take that same leg and cross it to wherever you want to cross it. On the other

heel, or across the leg, or near the leg not crossed. Stay there and roll your pelvis. Because that’s basically what happens at the wall right? The leg is crossed and the teacher can roll the pelvis.



122. And bring the leg back. And lift and cross it and see if it’s easier because of having rolled the pelvis. What do you think yes? [TN: affirmative murmurs]

123. And please rest and lie on your back. 124. And now roll to lie on your right side. Put your right arm underneath your head if

necessary. Whatever makes you comfortable. If you need a pad go and absolutely have to have a pad, go and get one. And now put one leg on top of the other, but don’t bend your legs too strongly. So they’re not straight, but not greatly bent.

125. Now begin to bring the left leg to be in front of the right on the floor, and then back again.

126. And feel how you do it. Feel the movement of the pelvis. How can you do it continuing to breathe and not having to stop the breath? At a certain point in doing this does the right side of the ribcage press into the floor at any point?

127. And now bring the left leg to be behind the right leg. 128. Do you feel the twisting motion? And when it finally comes to the floor behind do

you feel arching? And can you feel any force travelling through the spine? 129. And now go a little quicker and bring the left knee in front of the right leg, and then

behind. 130. Now feel when do you round your back, when you have the leg on the ground.

And when do you arch your back? Is it when the leg is in front? Or is it when the leg is behind?

131. So everyone when you bring your leg in front roll your pelvis forward. When you bring your leg behind roll your pelvis to the left. And do it that way for a moment.

132. And now, when you bring your leg behind, actually bring your pelvis forward. That’s it. Verena do you feel the difference? Yeah. This is a very important TML. There are many TML’s around this for you to explore how the back arches when you bring the leg behind.

133. Now bring the pelvis backwards when you bring the leg behind, and feel what happens in the abdomen. How you have to have to actually brace yourself, really, to keep from falling. You feel that?

134. And now bring the leg in front, and bring the leg behind. When you bring it behind find what can happen that you wouldn’t have to brace yourself. Great.

135. Lie on your back and rest please. 136. And now lie on your stomach once more. Put your forehead on the floor, and your

hands on either side the “Get your hands up position.” And lift one leg and bring it wherever you can, eventually across if it works for you. And then bring it back and then lift the other. Whatever is comfortable. If you have to imagine it that’s fine. Even just rolling the pelvis is fine. That’s it.

137. And now, bring your … How can we do this? Bring your left arm underneath you, underneath your torso with your hand around your ribs on the right. And your right arm up in the string bass position. And now continue crossing.

138. And just feel what that’s like. It’s a little convoluted because it’s not so easy to do in this position. This way. And some of you are managing in spite of it.

139. Now bring your left arm out, and put the left side of your face down. Put your right hand in front of your face, your left arm down in the on-the-belly position. And now cross your legs. Lift your leg and cross one and then the other. That’s it. [TN: repeats instructions] Sure. Your left side of your face down. Put your right hand in front of your face. Your left arm down behind you in the on-the-belly position. That’s it.

140. [Student] Underneath? 141. [Marcy] No, just down behind you in the on-the-belly position on the floor. This is

the on-the-belly position where you always have the arm behind you, down. 142. Ok, here, we’ll make it easy. Keep your right hand where it is. Put your left arm

above you in the hail-the-cab-in New York position. And continue lifting the leg, one way then the other way.

143. And just feel what the various constraints do for you. 144. And now put your left hand on your right ear. Bending the elbow to the outside

and continue. And feel what that’s like.



145. And leave this and lie on your back. 146. And bend your knees, put your feet standing. Interlace your fingers, put them

behind your head. And begin to lift your head using the basket of your hands. Lift your knees. And just so the back can ease.

147. And leave that, and come up to sitting. 148. Did that give you any insight into how much you need to twist? It’s certainly a lot

more extreme when you’re on your belly. It’s like what the lesson standing at the wall lives within.

149. [TN: Marcy discusses practicing] I really would like you to practice the crossing of the legs, the lesson Anat did with you. But you certainly can be creative in arm positions. And you never have to be symmetrical in the way you do one thing with one leg. You don’t have to do it symmetrically with the other leg. You can go on to some other movement. So, in watching the lessons I saw how differently Anat did it with each person depending on how they used themselves.



Bonus TML’s from V&AA Seg 2

TML: Lying on Back: Tilting Crossed Legs, Coordinating with Head and Eyes (was TML 2 in previous V&AA S2 segments)

(Transcription as Taught by Anat Baniel)

Notes

1. Scan the way you’re lying on the floor.

1a. Bend your knees. Put your feet standing. Put your right knee over the left one. Simply cross the legs with the right one on top. Begin tilting your knees to the right and back.

1b. And now, do this movement in the context of what you did the morning and what you saw in the demo this afternoon.

In other words, feel the movement of the legs and the pelvis and the twisting and the pull on the spine, and the head being pulled down. It’s not going to bend forward, because you are not upright, but it’s pulled down, the chin. And feel yourself moving, lying this way, but in the context of you moving before.

Do you understand? Does that make sense, what I’m saying? That way, this lesson will get more outcome for the lesson itself, but you’re also going back to have outcome and improvement for what you did this morning. So one thing feeds the other. And that is a way to demonstrate concretely what I talked about earlier when we started the afternoon.

Now this lesson, lying on the back will make a difference in the lesson that you did on the knees and so on. But if I just did this lesson and like it for even seven years and never put you on your knees and started putting that other demand on you, or set of demands, this lesson wouldn’t be contributing to it. Does that make sense?

All right, so uncross your legs and rest for a moment.

So, it’s like your brain is still working in the background, trying to figure out and solve the problems of the morning as it gets fed the information now, which also takes care of now. It’s not like either or. So it’s kind of like if you’re trying to figure out something in your life and you go to the movies and something in the

ABMPT Vitalithy and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson Bonus TML : Lying on Back Tilting Crossed LEgs


movie gives you an idea and you solve the problem, but it has nothing to do with the movie. But if you haven’t set up to try and solve that and figure out an answer, you can see five hundred movies and they won’t make a difference. Now you can have the problem, you can go to the movies but if you don’t have a brain that is looking to do something, nothing will happen anyway. And that’s aging. People start aging when their brain stops doing this proactive looking to figure things out and do things better and invent new things. That’s when the show is over. It just takes a while for the light to die out. Some people are dead for forty, fifty years before they die.

2. Bend your knees. Put your feet standing. Cross your right knee over the left again. And if you think of what you saw: Janet crossing her legs in standing, you need to do the same thing in lying. So uncross your leg and cross it again with the idea of what you saw her pelvis doing and her rib cage doing and see if it changes how you cross your leg.

So how about you take what she got and make use of it for yourself? And see how that’s important for balance.

2a. And by the way, you shift the whole weight to one foot. Did you realize that?

2b. Now keep the legs crossed and each time you tilt the knees to the right, tilt the head to the right. So you coordinate the two movements. You begin tilting or rolling the pelvis to the right and rolling the head to the right. As long as one goes, the other goes. If one stops the other stops. And you come back.

But you keep your shoulders on the floor.

2c. And now continue doing it, just close your left eye. Keep only the right eye open.

2d. And now do it, but the left eye open. And when you do it look with your eye along the ceiling and over to the wall and down as far as you can see and look back up and see if you can make the movement of the eye and the head as smooth as possible. And notice if you can start feeling you’re spine twisting and moving as you do that?

2e. And now, when you come back to the middle, next time, have both eyes open and look, follow the ceiling. You can see which ever line like on that and down the wall as you tilt the knees towards the floor and you come back. Move the head, the pelvis and the legs at the same rate.

That means, that you start together and you end together. You don’t do one and the other one is still going.

Excellent. Stop it and rest please.



3. Bend again your legs, put your feet standing and notice when you do that,

whether the contact of the feet with the floor shifts and changes? Just notice any changes and cross the right leg over the left again. And now, tilt your knees to the right with the eyes and stay there. And now, get a hold with your right hand your left arm. You can hold it at the wrist or closer to the elbow. And begin pulling your left arm with your right hand to the right. But don’t roll to lie on your side. You understand? So your knees are tilted to the right, your head is turned a bit to the right, your eyes are looking a little to the right and now you are pulling with your right hand on your left arm gently and feel what that does to your ribs, especially the upper left corner and the ribs behind and higher up and anywhere else you might feel it.

You might want to grab a little closer to the elbow. You might want to try it both ways. See what works better for you. But feel that rather than trying to dislocate your shoulder, your arm out of your shoulder, see what you need to, how you can let go and allow the sternum and the clavicle and the rib cage to move. What’s happening up there?

And come back to the middle and rest. 1[COMMENTS ON WAYS THIS LESSON CAN BE USED]

3a. Bend your knees. Cross your right knee again over your left. And now, as your tilt the knees to the right, turn your head to the left.

That’s why you can take somebody who has had a stroke or somebody who is forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years old and in one forty-five minute session, give them a whole new life, especially if they become aware of it and they adopt it. One of the reasons things slow down is that people simply don’t trust that the shift is real. They feel, like, “Oh my God! That can’t be real. That’s not me, I know me.” But if people are willing to say, “That’s me! I like that person, that’s me!” Then the change can be right there forever. And then you build on top of that.

Feel what your chest needs to do. Feel your chest on the left side, just under the armpit there. Some of you that chest part is kind of like…. Try to tighten it and see what happens to the movement. Tighten, kind of like under your left armpit. Are you differentiated enough to tighten on that part only? And feel what it does? You feel

aaaaawwwkkkk! Most people you put your hand on those ribs and touch it and they scream, it’s so painful. Because it’s been held for years like that.

3b. All of you take your right hand across and touch those ribs and see if you can feel some movement there when you turn your head to the left and tilt your knees to the right.



3c. And now continue the movement, just close your left eye and feel whether that changes anything in the movement, in the ribs, in the twist, in the feeling, in whatever?

3d. And now close your right eye and see if that makes your twist less or more?

3e. And now open both eyes and see if you can get the movement of the eyes to be really smooth looking over the ceiling and down and all that stuff.

Marvelous. Straighten your legs, put your arms down and rest for a minute.

4. Bend your knees. Put your feet standing. Cross your right leg over the left.

See if the crossing is getting easier or not? And now, tilt your legs to the right, turn your head to the right. See if that is any different than a half an hour ago or whatever?

4a. And now get hold with your left hand your right arm and keep the head to the right and the legs to the right but pull gently on the arm to the left. See if somehow you can get some mobility in the ribs on that side, on your right side and the sternum. What does it need to do? And the clavicles.

4b. Slow, gentle, feel what your abdomen muscles are doing? What the lower ribs are doing if anything?

But keep the knees tilted if you can, Rebecca and the head turned and then just the arm, so then you can feel if those ribs are moving or not.

4c. And bring everything to the middle and just rest for a second. And bend your knees. Put your feet standing. Cross the right leg over the left and simply tilt your legs to the right and feel if it’s any different? And if it is, where, how, where do you feel it, what has changed for you?

That’s wonderful. Undo your legs and lie there for a moment. Scan the way you’re lying.

2[ANAT REQUESTS STUDENTS TO DO AN ACTIVITY BEFORE TOMORROW]



6. So roll to your side and get up.

6a. And feel first of all how you are standing. It’s amazing, you’ll see everything re-organizes you. You’re on your skeletons more and more. Can you feel that?

So you see, once you give a context, everything you do tends to fall, it’s sort of like it eats it up. It does its own thing, but it also becomes part of the other thing. And it works back and forth. When you do the next movement, you’ll have this one too. You understand? And of course we did it also on one side so you can feel the difference between one side and the other. And enjoy the difference, rather than worry. You can get it symmetrical in two seconds. So that’s not the issue.

6b. But really feel how one shoulder, the other, one knee, the other ….

You Linda are like two people. Do you feel that?

Walk around please.

Wonderful. Look at you. Chris, you’re so tall. As if you weren’t tall enough before. And you.

Ok listen. Wonderful having you back here. Love seeing all of you. Love working with all of you. Have a great evening and I shall see you here tomorrow.

END OF LESSON

1 [COMMENTS ON WAYS THIS LESSON CAN BE USED]

Now you see, that’s another detail, that in the context of what you did in the morning. Look it, this is a wonderful, stand alone lesson and if people will do it they will feel much better. Their hip joints will get freer and they’ll breathe better and it is a perfectly amazing and important lesson for its kind to do with people and do it in the earlier stages with people. At the same time, now that we’re doing this other stuff, this lesson is extremely potent. It is facilitating what we started working on in the morning. Now, if you didn’t do what we worked in the morning and did this lesson and came back, it wouldn’t have contributed to it very much. But in the context of having done it in the morning, this lesson now would make a huge difference in what you did in the morning. And that’s one of the things that I’ve realized way back and I’ve started working with it early on, that’s when I started realizing that in a two day workshop, I can get people to do things that before was considered to take one, two, three, four months worth of work, can be done in a day or two. Because it’s done in a way that the brain goes like VAVOOM! It digests it and uses it. And that’s the way children grow and that’s the way we’re built to progress. We progress in transformations, in paradigm shifts. What a child does when they’re five is not an accumulation of what they did up until then, it’s like what you do now is a launching board for the next thing, but you have to fly through space, you have to go sort of nowhere and land some place new so to speak. It’s a



metaphor, of course. Don’t buy things to launch from. People are going to start jumping off bridges and things expecting their life to get better. (laughs)

2 [ANAT REQUESTS STUDENTS TO DO AN ACTIVITY BEFORE TOMORROW]

What I would like you to do, is between a few minutes from now ‘till tomorrow morning, find a wall somewhere. You can take a regular pillow. By the way, we have a bunch of foams, but if anyone can bring a pillow that’s not too soft, a pillow that has some cushioning, tomorrow to class, that would be very appreciated. You might also like to put your face into a pillow rather than a foam, but if you can’t we have a bunch of foams so we can take care of a number of you, but I thought, it just occurred to me if you could drag a pillow from the hotel or something, it would be great. Not too big a pillow, you don’t want a huge thing, but a pillow.

But also, when you find a wall today, and whatever of those movements that you remember. We started by having Janet just shift the weight a little and bend one knee and feeling the weight going over to the toes. Whatever you remember of the crossing of the legs, doing this that, the arms. You don’t have to…… Marcie will take you through everything tomorrow, but do it. Is that ok you guys? You’re not used to getting homework. So do it on yourself. You don’t need anybody, or you can do it on somebody, however you like to do it, but most importantly is that you experience it before tomorrow. And you don’t need somebody else to experience it. Ok? Yes, yes?



TML: Standing on Knees to Standing (# 4 in Series)


1. Stand on your knees. Both hands on the floor. Toes of both feet as if for running. Head down, chest free, breath free and uninterrupted. And now, press on the toes, and lift the knees off the floor. And then come back down. So the tush climbs up.

And remember what you started doing this morning with Claire (pushing through the skeleton).

And do it so you don’t have to push much with the thighs. That means not much arching in the lower back, actually. Remember how you did it with one foot standing? The force from the toes goes straight thru the spine as it is. The tush climbs up and the knees get straighter.

1a. Leave it alone, and roll to lie on your right side. Bend your legs one on top of the other. Bend them quite a bit. Put your left foot standing in front of your right ankle; knee standing. What does it mean, “knee standing?” The knee is standing over the foot. That it bears weight. That it is vertical above it and it takes as much of the weight as it can. Come up to lean on your right elbow and forearm. Now it will be easier to have the foot standing. And you are still on your side. Get hold with your left hand your right temple. And now gently bend the left ear to the left shoulder and then bend the right ear to the right shoulder.

1b. And what’s moving? The ribs. And what are the ribs doing? When you take the left ear to the left shoulder, the spine sinks way down, you’re almost lying on the floor. Then when you take your right ear to your right shoulder you shorten your right side and lengthen your left side and what has to move or it won’t happen? The pelvis. The pelvis does a huge movement of rolling, right?

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson Bonus TML : Standing on Knees – To Standing, Part 4


1c. Is your lower back arched while you do it? Try rounding your back and see what happens. Slouch, keep your back rounded and try to do the movement.

Good luck. That means when we stand, and use our lower back properly, we are FREE TO MOVE. The head, the arms, the shoulders. You understand what I’m saying here? When you don’t use the lower back, we can’t move the arms and the neck and the shoulders and …

Lie on the back and rest. 1[MINI-LCTURE ARCHIGN LOWER BACK]

2. Now roll to lie on your left side. Put your right foot standing, just in front of your left ankle. Come up on your left elbow and forearm. Make sure you are on your side. How do you know you are on your side? Your lower back is keeping you on your side.

2a. Now don’t be on your side, pull the belly in and round the back and feel. You see the pelvis rolls a bit toward the back of the pelvis. Now how do you put yourself clearly on your side? Do that, whatever you need to do with your back.

2b. And you feel that then you can push on your right foot, can you feel that? Push a little on the right foot to bring yourself on your side. Just like you did before in lying with the other lesson. Same thing.

2c. Take the right arm above your head. Make sure you’re ON YOUR SIDE, to the best of your ability. Then move one ear to one shoulder and the other ear to the other shoulder.

Start with a small movement. Don’t start with a big movement. But know what you are doing. Small movement.

Some of you are going as far as anatomically possible. That’s not a small movement. Small. Inhibit your drive to do big. That alone will make you so much better, you can’t even imagine. That you don’t “have to.” Get over that compulsion. Do small. Know that you’re worthwhile without doing the biggest possible. Without even doing half the biggest possible. Do small. Tiny.

2d. Slow. Forgot that part. Slow. And when you start doing slow and small, start paying attention to what parts of you are right there as you move the head, and what parts either don’t kick in, or like, kick in later.

Because to be well organized, to do it really well, nothing is asleep to the fact that you are doing it. So are there ribs that don’t move and you have to yank on



your neck to get those ribs to move? Maybe to move? Does every rib in you know what you are doing? Does every vertebra know what you are doing? Are you breathing without interruption?

Some of you are dying. Lie on your back and rest.

That’s a really good anti-aging thing: kill you now, you’ll be young forever. Some of you didn’t think that was funny.

3. Roll on your knees, through the other side. Remember where you went before? Put your toes like for running. Spread your knees comfortably, everything comfortable. Lean on your hands. Lift your knees, lift your tush up and FEEL if it has become easier to do.

Look at that, more and more of you have that magnificent imaginary tail.

3a. Do a few quick ones like that, tush up, tush down, tush up.

Don’t bang your knees when you come down.

3b. Lie on your right side. Bend your knees enough and put your left foot standing in front of your right ankle. Place your left hand on the floor somewhere in front, near your right forearm. You’ll know soon where to put it. And now, in this position, do a movement where you hop your pelvis a little behind you and then hop it back to place.

Remember hopping on the table. How I had you do that?

3c. Notice, where does your head go as you hop? Forward. (And also a little down.) But, forward. Can you feel it? If you were sitting, it’s forward. A little closer to the floor, but forward.

3d. Try to keep the head behind you and do it. Put your head behind you and try to do it. See what happens.

That’s how people who are old and have lost vitality try to move. (Makes grunting sounds... ah, ah, uh, uh). They bend down, uh, uh. They don’t breathe. Uh, uh. Listen to it. You hear it.

3e. Now do the other way. Don’t go too fast. Go slow enough and feel how really, you need to free the chest. And bring the head way forward. Free the neck.

3f. Feel how reducing the effort throughout your back and chest makes it so you can pop your tush easier.



You can lean on the hand. You can do something with the hand to help you. That’s why you put it there. There you go.

And when you go down, don’t bang your tush. Place your tush delicately on the floor, like you’re kissing it. Because you love the floor.


Do you feel, see the relationship between what you did on the table a couple of days ago, and what you are doing here?

I assume that each time you rest, you scan yourselves; you’re old pros at that.

4. Roll to lie on your left side. Bend your knees; put your right foot standing in front of the left ankle. Come up to leaning on your left forearm and elbow and hand, put your right hand somewhere where you feel you could use it, you could lean on it, (that’s part of relationship to gravity). And now gently and slowly popping your tush a little behind. Hopping it. And a little in front. See that you do it without interfering with the breathing. And you can do it so you have control of the tush. You don’t just have it land. But you do it not by tightening your chest, but you do it the other way around: by not putting in effort where you don’t need to. And you let the head come way forward.

That’s what you need to teach little children, C.P. kids. Not to yank on their arms to come up, with spastic legs hanging for dear life on some kind of walker or something.

If they can do that (putting effort where it needs to be), they can have a say in being upright.

4a. Do a few quick movements like that - Pock, pock, pock, pock. Make sure you are breathing. Very good.

4b. Come on your knees. You’re expecting to rest, aren’t you? That’s the rest; coming to a different position is a form of rest. It is, because you change stuff in the brain.

Come on your knees. Lean on your hands. Put your toes as if for running.



And now, popping your tush up and straighten your knees and see if that has become easier.

You see, that’s what this work is all about; what anti-aging is all about. 4c. Free your neck. The whole way (the entire movement.)

So you don’t associate shortening the neck with being upright.

Many, many people associate shortening the neck with being upright. This is an opportunity to change that.

4d. One time as you come up, look forward, which is to shorten the neck. It’s okay to do it intentionally. And then one time do it without bringing the head up. So you know the difference.


And feel what else is shifting in you. Changing. Getting better.

Don’t is not necessarily spoken of, or intended in the speaking of the lesson. What else is getting better? What else do you feel that you like?

5. Roll to lie on your right side; same position. Put your left foot in front of your right ankle. Lean on your forearm and hand and elbow. And is that getting clearer? Put the left foot standing, clearly; knee above the foot. Get a clear feeling that that foot is standing, or do the best you can. Lean on your left hand as well, and take the pelvis backward and up so that you can put the right knee standing on the floor. (You’re staying on your right forearm and elbow.) And then come back. If you can’t do it all in one go, then do it gradually. But that’s what you are aiming for.

When you put your knee down, try not to smack your knee. Because knees don’t like smacking.

You need to bring the pelvis up and back, up enough so that the leg basically hangs from the pelvis and then you place it on the floor. You don’t have to lift it much more than that, but don’t just zoom (sound indicates cranking through it).



But the other foot stays standing. Not only stays standing, but it helps. Remember the lesson from the morning, it helps.

And the reason it’s not clear to you, look here, look here. [DEMO] You see, she does that. When I tell her to keep her left foot standing, look, it’s not easy. And one of the reasons, if you look where the foot is and where the arms are, when she does the movement, do the movement, the foot is way too far from the pelvis. She can’t lean on it anymore, the knee’s almost straight. (Anat brings the student’s standing foot much closer to her center). And now try it. See there, she goes. Do it the old way. See how hard the thigh muscles have to work? That’s what old people and disorganized people do. That’s what gets us to have pain and loss of vitality and loss of well being. (Then Anat repositions the foot in a clear standing place. And the student does the movement.) There you go. Also she needs to get clearer on using her lower back. Until she did this movement you might not know it. That’s what frees the children, and frees their adductors, when they get this organization; bang I get their knees to open up. They do this (Anat imitates walking with legs clenched together), and they learn this and the knees can go out and they can sit cross legged and it’s no big deal.

All of you do a few more. Feel how you’re doing it. See if you can bend your legs a little more. Make sure you stay standing on the left foot.

[DEMO] Now look here. This is a perfect example. Virginia will not be able to work like you will. Because there’s been structural changes made. She’s got a rod pretty much through the spine. That does not limit her either from thinking how to do it and get the benefit of whatever she figures out. Because the function gets the brain to wake up to how the pieces need to move. And she learns to move with her new body, her new back. Now, let’s see. (Virginia does the movement. She can do it.). See. And it can still get better. She can still soften her neck, even if she has a Harrington Rod. There you go. Now, soften the chest as you do it. As you do it, think you’re a lazy person. Put the foot a little more standing, there you go. There you go. You see, that will teach you how to move, even with a Harrington Rod, and have better breathing, and better coordination, and better stability.

All of you lie down and rest, please.

She doesn’t need to do more than two or three movements and look what that does. It gives life in a way nothing else can do, that I’m aware of.

6. Lie on your left side. So what you’re doing is some of what you did this morning in the sense of transferring the force through the skeleton, and at the same time learning to not put tension into the chest and stuff. Using the power in the center of the body to be able to actually become upright. Right? To stand on your knee in this case. Lean on the right hand standing in front of you, right foot standing clearly. Take the pelvis back and up, swiveling it like that, and making enough space to put your left knee standing. And then come back down.

6a. And reduce the tension in the chest. And imagine the spine growing longer, especially in the side of the head. But you can also think it from



the tail, that your spine gets LONGER while you move. And see that if you can really imagine the spine getting longer, you will move a lot better.

Put the foot standing where you really move from the power of your skeleton.

See if you can keep the right heel on the floor. Some of you can’t do it yet, but think in terms of reducing the effort, and finding a place where the right foot so the heel doesn’t leave the floor.

6b. Do a few quick movements like that. Boom, boom.

All right, lie on your back and rest. 2[MINI LECTURE KNEES]

7. Come to lie on your right side; same way again. Lift the pelvis in such a way that you will be able to straighten your leg so that it will be forward, so that it will be between the right forearm and the left leg. So you lift the pelvis so you have space to straighten the leg in front, and then you lift the pelvis and bring the leg back to where it started. But when you go to the front, you land; you don’t stay in the air. You lengthen the leg and you place the leg down. Don’t take your left leg farther away so there’s more room; lift your pelvis higher up.

3[DEMO]

All of you do it. See what you are doing.

But it was a perfect example.

That’s it. You see if you don’t use the pelvis you have to use a lot of power in your leg. But if you swivel the pelvis, now you can decide: take the leg forward, take it backward, decide to sit down, no change your mind.

Let the leg hang when the pelvis is high. Breathe. There you go. Now you can take the leg anywhere.

Anyway you do, it’s always the swivel. When you come forward with the leg, come down with the pelvis. Come down.

7a. Do both the leg straight, and onto the knee.

7b. Now, the other side. Go ahead, get in the position. And now, lift the pelvis so you can straighten the leg forward.

Let go of the ankle. Ankle has nothing to do with it. Toes have nothing to do with it. Nothing, nothing, nothing.




8. Roll again onto your right side. Now the movements are getting familiar; really look to have the chest free, the breathing uninterrupted, whichever way, don’t worry, when it feels really free, you’ll be doing what you are supposed to be doing with your pelvis.

Put the left foot standing, lean on your left elbow and forearm, the left hand on the floor, lift the pelvis and swivel so you can bring the pelvis under you. And sit down like that. And then take the pelvis and swivel it enough so that you can come to stand on the right knee. When you stand on the right knee, the left foot is standing. Let the spine be long, let the head hang.

Gradually for the left foot find a place to put it, so it really stands. The knee stands as vertical both when you are sitting and when you are on the knee.

There you go. Lie on your back and rest for a moment.

9. Lie on the other side; the left side. And this time bring your pelvis and swivel so you can put the leg straight, and then bring the pelvis up and swivel so you can stand on the left knee, and you are standing on your right foot the whole time. Lift the pelvis high enough so you can bring the leg in front, and let the leg be as relaxed as possible. Certainly when you sit, let go of the leg. And then lift your pelvis, so there’s room for the leg to come behind you.

9a. Let the head hang. Let the spine, feel, imagine the spine long. Feel the ribs.

9b. Each time that you do it, it is for the opportunity to do it a little easier. A little simpler.

9c. Do a few quick movements like that. And when you take the leg forward, take it a little more forward.

[DEMO]: Stand on the leg. On the right leg. That’s it. You see, and feel how much movement between the shoulder blades. Correct your leg a little more and I’ll demonstrate with you. That’s it. See, he holds the pelvis high in the air so he has time to do what he wants with the leg. Now again; that’s it. Eh, eh, you see, wherever the pelvis stops moving, the leg gets stuck and tight. So, do it again. You do it excellent, except one part. (Anat holds the back of his pants). And here (moving toward knee going to stand), keep moving the pelvis. In this



area, you stop moving. Slow, slow, slow. (Goes back and forth). See how much you have to move the ribs. Yeah. You see now, there’s no problem.

It’s almost always right in the rib cage, right in the spine, right in the neck. We shorten. We immobilize. And we try to shove our leg. (Anat makes grunting noise). And then we try to walk like (said in strained, old person grunting voice) that (imitates very limited old person’s walk.)

Anyway, go ahead. All of you. Imagine I’ve caught your pants.

Isn’t it magnificent? I think it’s beautiful. It’s exciting.

Because we are BUILT to operate this way; you can take someone with half a brain and half a body, and still teach them to do that.


10. Come up on your knees, please. Lean in front of you. Look at me for a second. You’re on your knees; put your right elbow on the floor under your shoulder, and your right forearm on the floor, pointing to the left. You lean on your left hand wherever is comfortable. Put the toes like for running. And now lift the tush up and back down. That’s very nice. Let the neck be long. Just don’t lean on the head.

10a. And the next few times, lift the eyes to look a little bit forward. So instead of dropping the head, you lift the head a little.

And sit for one second. Rest for a second in sitting.

11. And now, come back on your knees. Put the left arm and forearm pointing toward the right on the floor, lean on your right hand somewhere that works for you, lean on the toes. First of all, have the spine long and the neck long, and lift the tush.

Look what you’re doing you guys. It’s incredible. You know how people stretch, to get their hamstrings longer? People do it sometimes so powerfully that they actually snap their Achilles tendon. It’s so horrible. And look at this. Amazing.

11a. Now look up a little each time you do it. Then let the head go down and the knees go down. Gently. Gently. Then come up, look up a little with your eyes. Perfect.

Lie on your back and rest. You earned it.



12. Come back on your right elbow, the same way (pointed left) and your right hand. Don’t lean on your toes, but bring your knees close to your hands. So you’re kind of like sitting a bit back, right? So you’re sort of curled like that, but you’re leaning on your elbow and hand. Now, what I’m going to ask you to do is to hop, hop so you are standing on the toes, with the knees straight. And then hop down, and when you hop down, flatten the feet so you land on the toenails, and the knees can land very safely. Each time you land with the knees, try to bring them closer to your head. The head, let it go down when you land. Round your neck. There you go. Don’t push it down, but let it land down.

And when you land, land with your toes flat, with your feet flat, and the knees close to you, so that when you land on your toenails first, you cushion the landing of your knees. That means your knees come down softly, instead of banging the floor.

[DEMO] Let me demonstrate on Rebecca. It’s the tush, both ways she brings the tush up. Now do it faster like you like to do it. Boom, boom. Up, and then up again.

Go ahead. Everyone do it. Lighten up your tushes. The knees close to the chest. Fly the tush up, so there’s time to straighten the legs.

12a. Change over the arms and do the same thing on the other side a little bit.


13. Okay. Let’s do two things, so you’re a little more prepared. Come on your knees. Lean on your right forearm, elbow, and left hand. And now do what we just did. Hop with the tush.

And now, hopping with the tush has a whole new meaning from what it did a few days ago.

13a. And now, one time you hop so the feet are spread, and one time so the feet are together. And when you land on the knees, land completely. Let go of the chest. Some of you are standing on the head. Not permitted. That’s excellent.

13b. Change the arms.

[TN: rest]

Feel how much better all of you are doing.



4[DEMO]

14. Lie on your right side. Bend yourself. Lean on the elbow, forearm, put your left hand somewhere,

[To student]: You see how much better your knee can stand now.

[To class]: Her hip joint hasn’t changed. Her knee is now almost vertical, and before she couldn’t do much more than this [indicates a much smaller range]. Now look what she can do. See the changes. Look what she does with her back and rib cage. Now if you (to student) arch your back at the same time, it will be even better. You see. Now go again. Not so much work here (in leg), but if you do this (Anat presses into student’s back). Don’t throw your head back.

So when we have an obstacle, be it a structural issue, be it age, be it injuries, be it belief system, we need someone else’s help to open up the process, so we can discover the solution. The solutions don’t just normally come up. We can do it ourselves when we know how to go about it. But then we have to be our own teacher. We have to be very diligent, very aware, very intentional. Much harder than to be with a teacher. Much, much harder.

So, get into that position (lie on right side). Don’t let me talk so much. Lean on your elbow and forearm and get a hold of your head with your left hand. Make sure you are on your side. Remember the first move of the lesson? Make sure you are on your side. Take the head one way and the other way.

14a. That’s lovely. Feel how you’re now like an anemone. It’s this thing in the water that expands evenly and contracts. Like a wave.

14b. Put your left hand down on the floor, and now you are going to swivel your pelvis and bring it up enough so that you can be standing on both toes. Then you’ll hop up in the air and land sideways. But don’t keep the feet where they are. You leave the feet from the floor. You hop and then put them back.

[DEMO] Aha! Look here. She does it very well, but there’s one thing she could do better. What could she do better? What is this nonsense? Since when is anyone using the floor and putting the hands like this? “It hurts?” Talk to it. That means you’re doing something here (indicates neck), that you’re doing too much effort. Feel clearly where to lean. Go ahead. See, now she can really do it. It’s the same thing. The tush is high. It’s like hanging from the tush. The legs can do anything. That’s lovely.

All of you, do it. It’s easy, once you get organized. Don’t land on stiff knees.

14c. Notice where your elbow is. Once it starts being out there, bring it back under you.

See a big guy can do it too. Here, look at Charlie. Look at that. Pop, pop.



14d. Do it the other way. First of all, lie on your left side. Put the right foot standing. Bend yourself, and first of all, catch your head, and do a few movements of going one way and going another.

14e. Feel if that is different and easier from the beginning of the lesson.

Just that alone would be worth the lesson. Imagine what that does to your breathing, what that does to your digestion, what that does to your thinking, does to everything. The sternum, the clavicle.

You see, you can bring your head now to vertical.

15. And now, put your right hand on the floor, and now, do the thingee. (Hop up to toes and then back to original position)

Make sure your hand and elbow are where it makes it easiest. Because if you don’t lean properly on the elbow and forearm, you lose a lot of the force.

Nice, nice, grasshopper.


[to a student]: No grasshopper with you? Not yet.

Now, see, the difference between taking people who are disorganized and telling them to do upward downward dog, what’s the yoga thingee? Downward dog. Instead of just telling people to breathe, stretch; the wealth of information to the system. You can take a group of people and everyone pretty much uniformly makes huge progress. Everyone gets more flexible. So let’s just do one more thing.

(About yoga classes.) I look around, see there’ll be work for me forever and I’m out of there. Also, I can no longer work where there’s no room for me to discover how to get there. Do that. Do that. I don’t know. I need some experimentation to figure out what works for me. I look around me, and think, “this is terrible.” To take all the rigidity and limitation and stiffness and lack of any idea of how to go about it, and then superimpose on that the best approximation they can.

I have a friend who decided with her husband to do it privately; they hired a private yoga lesson. I had to rescue her the next week. I said to her, “of course you couldn’t do it. It’s not like you can’t do it, like something’s wrong with you. But you have to do something before you can do it.”

16. Stand on your knees. Put one foot, right foot standing. Put the foot back down.

16a. Can you bring it to standing easier? See how all of you do an arc? Look at you guys, you can become Shakespearean actors.

16b. Now keep the foot standing. Put the back toes for running, and simply bring yourself up on both feet and come back down. Just come up, don’t bring the foot to the front. Or, do bring your foot up.



16c. Feel how you bring your head up. How the force shoots up. Right?

16d. Switch, do the other leg.

See, no one would think of coming straight up the way you did a few days ago. You bring the weight forward, you push on the toes; you can even let the arms be free.

[DEMO] You see, look here at Linda for a second. You see, nothing to it. You can have,… this guy I told you that had no hip joints, could do that. Because you don’t need a hip joint to do it. You see (with Linda), her arms are free, and she simply guides her weight, she still pushes a little on her leg. Let go of the chest. That’s it. That’s it. Now it’s almost clear.

That’s what it’s called to stand up. People don’t know that.

17. Ok, all of you, go down, and come up like that, and walk around.

The up and the down are almost the same experientially.

17a. Walk around. Come down, come up, walk around. That’s lovely.

END OF LESSON

1 [MIN-LECTURE ARCHING LOWER BACK]

So the arching of the back could seem logically as if it could inhibit the movement of the chest and the ribs and the clavicles and the head. But it’s not so. Because you arch the back and you can superimpose on it everything else. You can arch and bend it. You can arch and twist it. You can arch and go in the top part in the opposite direction to the other part. If you don’t arch it, you can’t do the other movement. You’re not working against gravity and not bearing the weight through the bones. Which frees you to move. Bearing the weight accurately through the bones, frees us to move. Does that make any sense at all? Makes perfect sense; love it.

And what happens with loss of vitality, with pain, with aging, is that that function of the brain, that capacity of the brain to organize us in the gravitational field, gradually, or not so gradually regresses, diminishes, loses differentiation, gets sluggish. Understand?

So when you work with someone, and you want them to get rid of pain, you want them to get more vibrant, you don’t push on muscles or whatever, or make them more flexible, you go straight to what matters. And what matters is the brain’s ability to recognize itself, to recognize its relationship to the gravitational field, to be awake to it and have the capacity to do something about it. Because when we are moving, we have to do something about it constantly. It’s not like we figure out how to do it well and then we are there. We’re not like a statue or a vase or a table. We’re in motion all the time. That means the brain has to do it at a higher or a lower level all the time. And then the rest of it is details. You find which movement lessons, what someone’s ready for, but you are after something that is more central and core than the specific content you are working on.

That’s why Linda can walk better than she ever could in her life. And she said that the hip is still stiff. We didn’t change the structure of the hip. But she has, her brain has, been accessing the function of organizing herself in the gravitational field so much better that the brain can now figure out what to do with a stiff hip. And it’s a lot less stiff than it would be otherwise.



That alone, just what I told you here, some could turn into a method. If you just took that idea, and worked with that idea with everyone, with athletes, with musicians, with people with back pain, with people that are aging, just that idea, you would have better outcomes than most anyone else has. Just that. And… you’ve got a lot more than that. A whole lot more.

2 [MINI LECTURE KNEES]

By the way, this is magnificent work, not just to work with hip joints, of course, but to help people with their knees. Because what you learn is how to organize the rest of yourself around the knee. People hurt their knees because their pelvis and lower back and all those relationships between that and the feet, is faulty. And the knees get abused, misused. Magnificent way to get the knees to work better. To heal from injury. To heal from surgery to the knees.

In order to get better, to heal, always through action. Always through improving the quality, the organization of the action. And bringing in new demands of action and greater complexity of demands. It’s dynamic. We help people by getting them more into life, not less into life.

So when people have back pain and they’re told to pull their belly in and immobilize their back to “protect” the back, it’s real good, if you are done with life. But if you really want to get better, not rough, not tough, not beyond what you can, but from where a person is, forward, a little more, a little greater differentiation, and little greater refinement, a little greater complexity; a little greater capacity, a little greater demands, complexity, unexpected things. And the trouble disappears. It gets absorbed. It becomes so tiny that it doesn’t matter any more. It doesn’t dominate. It becomes irrelevant, basically.

It’s like what the, now deceased, Prime Minister of Israel, Sharon, tried to do, and to some extent succeeded, with Arafat. Instead of fighting him, he woke up on day and said, “Let’s just make him irrelevant.” Great way to fight a terrorist. Let’s make him irrelevant. Brilliant, actually. Brilliant idea.

3 [DEMO]

But look at something very interesting. He’s doing what I ask, and look how quickly, especially when someone has the strength, how quickly we revert to doing it poorly. Now, (to demonstrate), put the leg back, and do the movement we did in the previous thing, where you put the knee to stand. You see, he does it very nicely. Do it again. Very nicely. Look what he does with the tush. And now, do the other one. (Hands out, gesture of “what can you do?”). And he’s smart. That’s with an intelligent person.

So do the other one (to knee) slow, I’m going to catch your pants. Do it slow. And now (mid-way through this one), change your mind and instead of putting the knee down, straighten the leg and bring it forward. There you go. Why not do it that way? That (pelvis high) is the least effort movement. You’re an engineer.

Now do it (leg straight) the old way. See how much work you do with the shoulders and the arms? That’s a great way to get problems in the shoulder, and to age, and … Now, do it the other way. You see, hard for him to think how to do it. You just lift the pelvis, swivel and put the leg down. Swivel and do it like that. Swivel and do it like that. You see, the power is there. It’s more the differentiation. What’s aging is not the shoulders; what’s aging is the brain. You will never see a young child doing it in the more work way, lifting straight up. You have to grab with the floor and tighten the chest. When we do it with less effort, everything we do with the legs requires using the power of the pelvis. Do it the way with less effort. See how the head goes places, it balances the pelvis.



4 [DEMO]

You’re so not doing it. You are just straightening the legs and bending them. It’s hopping so you land all folded. And then hopping so you land on the feet. It’s not just being there and doing a minor little thing with the ankle. The ankles bend, but you come into the air, and then you bend with the knees close to you. And then you bring yourself on top of the legs to stand. It’s not doing the part with the knees.

Do what you were doing. Now she’s moving her knees a lot more forward. Before she didn’t even do that. That means that there is a lot of power in the arms and a lot of power in the thighs.

Now, bring the knees close to your hands. Now let your head down. Your chest down. Not the elbow. The elbow is up and the chest is down. Now hop your pelvis up to the ceiling. And come to land on your toes. You see: still catching and pushing. Now try to hop (so the knees come back close). You will need to bend the knees a little to hop. Do it again. You see, you see how much it’s the legs. Now hop again the tush. And why do you take the feet so far behind you?

This is the movement, the hopping of the tush, up. That gives you time to decide where you’re going to take the legs and feet. You can take them here, you can take them there. But it’s not the legs dictate what the pelvis does; it’s the pelvis allows the legs to go where they need to.

And this is a good demonstration: when we are strong and flexible enough, we can do things poorly. What happens to people, is that when they get older, or injured…[unfinished sentence] And by the way, when we do things poorly, we desensitize ourselves. So it’s not just the friction on the joints and all that stuff accumulates, we get a less awake, less sensitive response in the nervous system. And that’s where the real price is paid.

So you can take somebody (indicates a student) whose hip joints are from birth a structural issue. And at this stage of her life to get better because this gives the nervous system the opportunity to do something about it. She could have learned how to do this as a child; it’s just that nobody knew how to do this.



TML: Stepping with Use of Lower Back (#2 in Series)


1. Lie on your belly. Spread your legs comfortably. Put one hand on top of the

other and place your forehead on the back of the top hand. And, now, slowly start rolling your pelvis to the right, and back. And feel in this position what gets your pelvis to roll.

1a. What do you do to get your pelvis to roll?

Does anybody want to say? The muscles in the lower back, right?

And what happens to the hip on the left side?

I know it is moving to the left because that is what we are doing: but, what else is happening? It goes a little behind you, right? Up towards the ceiling!

1b. So, now do this movement and exaggerate it. There you go.

Now, stop that and just stay there for a moment, and just rest.

And, do you feel that “coming back” is just letting go of the back muscles! Do you feel that? And also, in this position, gravity helps unless you take it too far back. It will just want to come back with the pull of gravity.

2. So, now, do the same thing on the other side. Start with a small movement so you can feel just as you begin to do the movement.

So you learn to recognize it right away and you don’t have to be half-way to the moon before you realize that you are on a journey. You move your tushes beautifully!

2a. Now, do the movement bigger! As you can easily.

As your brain knows to get your muscles to contract; as your ribs know to make room; the spine needs to twist and move out of the way by arching forward and

ABMPT Vitality and Anti Aging Segment 2 Transformational Movement Lesson Bonus TML: Stepping


a little twisting. If you have a little scoliosis one side will feel different from the other. And for most people there will be some difference.

2b. Get more and more the sense, the feeling of the gradual letting go. So, you gradually pick it up, roll it over to the left and arch your back muscles.

2c. Your belly actually gets freer. Can you feel that? The lower abdomen just lets go.

2d. Now do this from side to side. Slow. From side to side.

2e. Notice, are you straining your shoulder? Are you tightening your neck? How about your chest, by the way. When you lie like this, can you just let the chest lie? It is being completely supported by the floor. Very nice.

2f. And now do a number of quick, easy movements from side to side.

Just like plu-plump, plu-plump with your tush. Very nice. It’s like a wave in the room. It’s like being on the beach. I’m on vacation.

Quicker! Let’s have the water a little more ruffled. Do smaller and faster movement. Quick, quick, quick.

Oh that is a tush there. I think it’s Neal’s. That tush got confused Neal. That’s rolling. That’s right. [laugh] That was funny. How do you call it in the water when it goes in a swirl that can suck you in? That was a whirlpool, not a wave.

Ok, lie on your back and rest.

And just feel, lying on your back, the feeling of the spine.

1[COMMENTS]

3. Roll on your belly. Switch the hands, so if you had the Right on top, have the Left, and vice versa. And now, roll the pelvis to your Right, and keep rolling it until the leg starts turning, and then when it’s easy, start bending the knee and sliding your leg towards your belly, and come back.

Your job is to only move your leg as long as your tush is rolling. The moment you stop rolling the tush and taking it back, you stop bending the knee.

3a. Actually, how about all of you go to the place where the tush stops rolling and stay there. That means roll the tush to the Left and bend the knee and however much.



Don’t do anything with the tush and try to bend the knee more and see what I mean.

3b. Do you feel the difference in the kind of effort in the muscles that are working?

3c. So now, let the tush only roll a tiny bit, but try to bring your knee way up. So don’t do much with the tush at all and try to bring the knee. Feel? That’s what many of you were doing in standing. Does that make sense to you what I’m saying? Do you feel it in your body? Good.

Not the other way—why are we working on the Right leg? We’re only doing the Left now. Only one side, only one side first.

3d. And now slowly go back now to coordinating, and you can start bending the leg a little sooner but coordinate the leg moving as long as the pelvis is rolling, as long as the back is—that’s excellent. That’s very good.

3e. And feel how far back the pelvis goes in order for you to do that. Can you feel that?

3f. Now don’t let the pelvis roll at all and try to do it and see what torture really is.

You can’t. If you really stop your pelvis from moving, actually, lying on your belly it’s impossible. Unless you dig a hole in the ground, it would be impossible.

Stop it and rest on your belly just for a second.

And feel how, for instance, your left shoulder is compared to the right one. Is there a change in the lying of the left shoulder?

4. And now, with the legs comfortably spread, begin doing the same thing on the other side. That means, roll your pelvis to the Left, use your lower back muscles, and don’t do a big movement in the beginning even if you could because the most important thing and the purpose of doing this movement is for you to really first of all figure out what it means to take the pelvis like that but, also,



mostly to coordinate, completely coordinate between the movement of the pelvis to the lower back and the movement of the leg.

This is a movement that little babies do when they are very young and that is how they get towards being able to do the next thing which would be crawling or getting up or what not. And this is one of the things that when you look at people who have lost vitality, have aging symptoms, back pain, etc., don’t do this any more.

4a. Just rigidify your chest now, let the pelvis move but make the upper chest stiff, and see how that affects the movement. Do you feel? Can you feel that immediately, your thigh muscles are working harder? Yes? No?

Do it again like this: just stiffen the chest and the shoulders. Most people walk so poorly; they try to walk basically as if it’s their chest that’s walking, as if it’s their shoulders that are walking.

4b. And now, free your chest, and coordinate the movement of the leg and the pelvis so that it’s really one action. And now do this from side to side.

And anyone of you who’s still doing the [?] spine [?] a little shove of having the knee have to move just a little bit higher, see if you can inhibit that.

And if you’re not sure whether you’re one of those that I’m talking about, then move a little less anyway. See if you can inhibit that.

4c. And really focus on the ease and the coordination and the feeling that the legs have become very light, almost like noodles. Because it’s the powerful muscles in the back and the pelvis that attach to the pelvis that are doing the brunt of the work.

4d. And now do it fast. Small; fast; easy light; good; bad. Who cares? Even faster.

What kind of tushes do you have? Make it smaller and faster. Excellent. Excellent, excellent, excellent.


Feel what it’s like to have awaken your reptilian brain. It’s very important to bring all of the different levels of the nervous system, especially those parts that are overly inhibited, to have a say, to be a resource for us. Not so much to have a say, but to be a resource. You don’t want the reptilian brain to make the decisions, usually.

5. Roll to your side and stand up.



Hopefully you enjoyed your rest, your floor time—it’s like kindergarten, nursery. You had your tummy time. We strengthened your back muscles. [Laugh] Okay. Here we go.

Stand and feel what it’s like. How do you feel standing now? Do you feel your hip joints? Do you feel your lower back clearer? Is there less effort in your chest? Slowly begin taking your pelvis backwards and lifting the right knee; pull the whole pelvis, but the right hip a little more backwards, bending the knee until you can lift it off, and then bring it and step a little forward and let go of the lower back as you step forward; and then come back like that. Lift the pelvis there and then bring the R leg back to place. Make sure not to rotate the shoulders. Before you know anything, all the sudden the shoulders think, Ah, I’m called to action again.

The pelvis backwards is a way to lift the leg and bring it forward, and then placing it down and letting it rest, and then taking the pelvis backwards to bring the leg back to place.

5a. Notice, see if you can just leave the chest to be free. Don’t take your shoulders backward.

5b. Now do the same thing with the other leg.

It looks like it’s becoming clearer and a little simpler for most of you.

Take the pelvis back as you lift the leg to move it forward; take the pelvis back as you lift the leg to put it in place.

Both times utilize your back muscles, differentiate it as best you can from your chest.

Don’t bring your whole weight forward; that’s not what we’re doing

We’re staying upright and using your lower back.

Otherwise, when you walk you’d have to bob forward and backwards like that: bob, bob, bob.

5c. And now do it one leg after the other. Do it slow enough so each time you lift the knee, you take the pelvis forward, you put the foot down and you let go. You let go. The next time you use your lower back and you let go. But you don’t use the lower back the whole time. You let go. That’s excellent.

You start looking like some of those wonderful street dancers, brake dancers; that’s one of the moves they do.



Keep moving forward, walking. You’ll be walking actually. You bring the foot forward, and then you let go of the pelvis, and then you take the pelvis again back and lift the back leg and bring it forward. So, each time you use your back muscles to bend your leg.

And some of you are lifting the shoulder as you take your hip backwards. I bet you you don’t know you’re doing it.

That’s wonderful.

5d. How about walking backwards.

Don’t fall like a paralyzed person; you have a little more control. There you go. But that’s an okay variation. Excellent. That’s lovely. A very nice walk.

And now stand and rest for a second.

You see, all you have to do is do it a little bit, then take a lunch break, then be a little late. And then you can do it. So now we know how to get to it. [laugh]

That’s one of the signs of the poorest kind of teaching is to think that the process you went through is the process everybody has to go through.

One of the main mistakes with great people who’ve achieved very high accomplishments in their own field, that they look into their own process and get very rigid about what they identify in their process, thinking that’s what made it work.

Very typical of music with proteges--Famous pianists teaching young kids—they teach them so-called the good stuff but force them into their idiosyncracies and their mistakes. That can cause enormous trouble over time;

Rather than if again if you understand the underpinnings of the process, you understand the essentials, then you work with the person so that they generate the solutions and find their idiosyncratic specific fine-tuning. Because everybody fine tunes differently than somebody else.

We fine-tune differently within ourselves over time. So we want to keep that freedom there.

6. Now, do the same movement, take the pelvis way backwards and lift the right leg; you’re not going to step but lift the knee much higher, kind of like what you did on the floor. Keep taking the tush, arching the back; the knees.

But don’t lean forward with your shoulders. No leaning forward with the shoulders.

That’s it. You get taller. That gets you standing clearer on the other leg.

One leg only for a while.



Then of course, you let go of the lower back.

A little less the shoulder. That’s okay.

Many of you now get tall on the leg that you stand on rather than sink. You know how people very often when they walk, they step and they sink. They step and they sink.

You are lifting the leg, getting taller, getting up on your bones. You’re revitalizing yourself as we speak.

And stand for a moment and rest and just feel the difference between one foot and the other one shoulder and the other one side of your face and the other.

Which toes are more spread? Which side of your lips is more ready to laugh or pull back to a smile. Listen to your breath—where do you feel movement in breathing. Is there any difference? Which elbow is closer to your body. Which arm is longer, by the way? (I can see that many of you have your right arm longer.)

7. And now do the same thing with your left leg. So you’re going to pull the pelvis back and bend the knee and bring it up and gradually bring the knee up higher and higher.

We’re not doing circles. We’re not peddling. As you take the pelvis backwards, and the leg straight forwards. You coordinate it. You don’t take the pelvis backwards and then the leg.

As you take the pelvis backwards, you lift the leg. Bend the knee, bend the hip, take the pelvis backwards.

[DEMO] Lift the leg, bend the knee and keep it there. The idea is you (Neal) can put your hand on my (Anat’s) shoulder and do this. [Anat presses through Neal’s raised knee as pressure travels through to his hip; she tells him to lean forward a little, and he keeps his balance while standing on one leg as Anat pushes through his knee.]

[AFTER DEMO ] Now go ahead. All of you do it.

Think I’ve pushed on your knee and hip backwards and do it. You don’t have to have me do it. If you imagine it, it’s as if I’ve done it.

7a. All of you lift the knee however you lift it and then keep it there and then take it back and forward as if somebody’s pushing your knee.



No not to the side. No, don’t take the knee backwards. The knee stays in front and somebody’s pushing.

Put your hand on your knee. And give yourself an FS. And push the knee backwards. That one. So lift this leg again. For me, it helps to lift the leg and touch it lightly with the same side hand. Just with the tip of your fingers. You’re not really going to push it back. It’s just to get the feeling.

Arch. Arch, arch, arch. Drop your belly out. That’s it. You have to drop your belly.

Some of you take your heel behind you. That’s not the movement.

It’s the tush behind you.

7b. Do it with the other leg. You take your pelvis back to lift the knee, you stay in the air, and you do a few of those movements of pressing the leg straight back.

Not sideways. Straight back. Some of you are pulling the belly in. It’s the other way around. It’s the hip, not the heel [that goes back]

See how, because it’s something you’ve never really developed yet, you’re [not yet focused on taking the hip back]. I could say the weirdest stuff: it’s not the tongue, it’s your hip; it’s not your heel it’s your hip, it’s not your shoulder, it’s the hip [that moves backward].

Walk around.

I’m really asking you to hang from a chandelier and swing, so that’s okay. [laugh]

Doreen says her back feels fantastic. Just don’t overdo it but you see that’s what you’ve heard from me a long time ago already.

When people have back problems, they’re told to tuck their belly in and inhibit movement and protect their back. Well that’s the time to dig your grave and go. If you protect your back, you protect your body, you protect yourself, then we’re done: time to dig the grave.

Instead, you take however long it takes, however many steps, it could take one lesson; it could take one hundred lessons. It could take one day; it could take one hundred days; it could take 5 years—it doesn’t matter.

You go in a progressive process of increased possibility and differentiation.

Look what I do with you. And you’ve done literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of movement lessons already.

8. Now do once one side, once the other, just pulling the pelvis back, lifting one knee high up and putting it back down and letting go of the pelvis; and then the other one. Just alternate basically lifting the legs.



You take the pelvis back as you lift and then you let the pelvis go as you put it down. And vice versa.

8a. And now do the following: as you lift the right knee, you’re taking the pelvis back lifting the knee up, at the same time, move your left shoulder. As you arch the back, lift the knee up take the opposite shoulder towards the knee.

Not the arm, the shoulder.

Not twisting around yourself, nothing else, the shoulder.

8b. And now do the other side

8c. And alternate like that.

And remember to take the pelvis backwards. Not twisting. The shoulder.

There will be a minor twist at the top. It’s the shoulder

8d. Stand for a moment. Move your shoulder. That’s it. Can you move the shoulder? How about that.

8e. Now that together with the knee and the pelvis.

It’s not the can-can. Your knee is still forward; it’s not that. Your shoulder is not your chest.

[Demo with knee] Anat’s fist is stabilizing Neal’s chest, as he brings just his shoulder forward, differentiating shoulder movement from chest movement.] Shoulder forward; there you go.

All of you do the two options.

8f. Now lift the knee and shoulder forward and take the tush backwards at the same time. SLOW.

Some of you are taking the other elbow way behind you. See if you can avoid doing that.

The other arm is hanging.

Can you imagine what kind of differentiation that is, that you’re really learning to stand up finally.

That’s what little children do when they start learning.

Their arms get all stiff, because they’re not differentiated yet.

8g. Alternate sides.



But you’re dragging the other arm behind you and you didn’t even know.

It’s amazing what we can be unaware of in ourselves and our surroundings. It’s quite remarkable.

As I said, one of the most stunning things about awareness is the lack of it!

And then I tell three stories, one after the other, of things people were doing and they didn’t know they were doing.

The shoulder goes relative to the chest.

[TN: There is no a real ‘rest' before or while lying on back]

9. Lie on your backs.

I’m going to have you differentiate your shoulders.

Lift your right shoulder to the ceiling. That’s forward. Lift it and slowly bring it back. (Don’t drop it.)

9a. And now, pull your belly in, stiffen your chest, lift your chest, do the see-saw movement, just half of it and keep the chest there. Don’t change the chest, but move your shoulder forward.

That’s what most of you are trying to do when you’re doing this movement lesson.

9b. Now let go of your chest, let the sternum move. Move the shoulder forward. Put your other hand on your sternum and feel how it slides down and to the side.

You don’t twist, but something has to give.

9c. Now stiffen your chest, keep it like that and try: you can’t! It’s impossible hardly to move the shoulder at all.

So what happens is that when you stand up you stiffen the back, you take the other arm backward, you squint your face, you do all kinds of weird stuff.

9d. Now lift the other shoulder forward.

9e. Now lift both shoulders forward.

Now you see, when you do both shoulders forward, it’s a little harder to do the boobie thingy.



9f. Now pull your chest up again. Keep your chest up. Pull your belly in and keep your chest up. Now try to bring both shoulders forward. If you’re really [following directions], it’s impossible—can you feel that?

9g. So now, bring the shoulders forward and let go of them.

9h. Now do one after the other.

You see, it’s the shoulder. You can keep the brunt of yourself quiet.

9i. Do small quick movements like that. Pang, pang, pang, pang.

[TN: no ‘rest’]

10. Hop up on your feet. Now, Take your pelvis back, lift your right knee up and move your left shoulder forward, not the right arm backwards, and then reverse it.

That means you let go of the pelvis, you put the foot back down, all the part that has not changed.

10a Now do it a little quicker, but with all the parts [of the sequence] there.

It can be smaller and quicker.


11. Bend your knees, put your feet standing lying down like that, spread your legs comfortably. And now, begin lifting the right side of your pelvis, again arching your back and rolling the pelvis a little bit to the left. And back.

The foot is on the floor. You press on the foot.

You’ve done this movement a million times, but now it’s in a different context.

11a. And now, as you lift the right hip and roll the pelvis and push the belly out, the whole spine, at the same time, lift the left shoulder. So the left shoulder moves toward the front of your right hip.

So do a small movement. If you do a huge movement with the pelvis, it will press the shoulder back down to the floor. So do a small enough movement so that you can lift the left shoulder and lift the right hip.

And that’s what you were called on to do when you were standing.

But the hip and [shoulder move] at the same time--it’s a simultaneous movement, not one after the other.



Don’t do too big of a movement in the pelvis because then you have no choice: it presses your shoulder blade back into the ground. It’s mechanics—you don’t have a choice about that.

11b. And now gradually do a tiny, eensy little movement and do it faster and faster.

But you’re not pulling the belly in.

Some of you have reverted to pulling the belly in, because you see, when you lift the shoulder, it uses the front muscles, the pectorals on the top, and some of you just reduce the differentiation.

So, arch your back and bring the shoulder up.

Make sure that you press on the right foot, roll the pelvis, push the belly out and lift the shoulder. That’s right.

Stop it for a second.

Feel by the way how the legs lie on the floor from doing these movements.

I suspect that most of you would feel your legs lying flatter and flatter to the ground. Can you feel that?

It’s not the relaxation, so to speak, per se, that gets us from our work to lie flatter but it’s the organization you see from doing the work, from indicating to yourself how and what muscles to use when as you use your legs, excessive efforts, contractions, compulsive contractions in your legs tend to let go. And it’s instantaneous, it’s either or.

12. Bend your knees, stand your legs comfortably apart. And now lift your left hip off the floor, roll it to the right, do it a few times until you are clear. And make sure you free your abdomen and that you roll the pelvis so that your belly button is starting to face a bit to the right.

12a. And now at the same time lift your right shoulder forward. Slow. Do a small movement slow, because you don’t know how to do that yet. So figure it out.

12b. And now do this movement faster and smaller but be sure you are still doing the movement.

12c. And a few times slower.

12d. And a few time faster.

And leave it alone and rest for a moment.



13. And now bend your knees, put your feet standing spread comfortably and arch your back so that you will roll and the weight will come on the tailbone. And then stop arching the back.

That means you don’t pull the belly to bring the pelvis back. You simply stop arching the back.

13a. So arch the back and stop. And feel how, when you arch the back, the chin is pulled down through the spine. That means, from the pelvis, it pulls that means when you stop it actually pushes the chin away, that means it pushes through the spine. And do that.

So there’s the active movement of arching the lower back, rolling the pelvis, and then you can let go abruptly or you can let go gradually but you don’t activate the abdomen muscles.

You simply gradually stop using the back muscles.

13b. And feel how much the chest moves. All of you stiffen the chest just for a second and now to try do it [while you] keep it stiff. And try to do the movement. Feel what happens. You know it’s not going to work well, but feel it. See? That’s what many of you do in standing.

So you take away your power. You really take away your power literally and figuratively.

People stiffen the chest in an attempt to be safe, in an attempt to get balance. When we don’t know how to do something, that’s a form of anxiety and that’s what we do: we hold our breath and stiffen the chest, trying to do better and getting in our own way. It’s like putting a piece of wood in the middle of a wheel.

13c. Now let go of the chest and feel how immediately you have more access to your power.

13d. And now do this movement quickly. Very quickly. Small, quick.

Do let go, do let go, do let go.

And you don’t have to wait after you let go.

Do let go: pum-pum, pum-pum, pum-pum

13d. And quicker.

If you take a break after each time, than you’re not doing it quickly.

But don’t use the abdomen muscles.

Don’t press on the feet.



Do; stop. Do; stop.

If you’re using your feet, you’re using your abdomen muscles.

Straighten your legs.

There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion; it’s only if you get too attached to them and rigid around them. I have very, very strong opinions and I’m usually very ready to let go of them. I don’t care. Some people who don’t know me think that if I feel so strongly about something, I’m probably never going to change my mind.

13e. As you are, lift both shoulders off the floor, forward, and feel if both shoulders lift the same.

Most of you know that one shoulder moves anywhere between 10- to 40% more than the other.

Notice what you’re doing.

13f. Both shoulders, lift them forward. What part of the spine presses into the ground when you lift the shoulders forward?

13g. And do this movement really quickly. If you want to do it quickly, you have to do it small. Some of you look like you’re going to start flying. Very cute.

See if you can leave your elbows on the floor.

Different ways to wake up people’s whatever. [laugh]

13g. Now bend your knees and put your feet standing, arch the back, lift both shoulders, arch, arch.

Arch the back lift both shoulders. Go slowly. It’s unusual. Not normal.

Roll the pelvis and lift the shoulders at the same time.

13h. See, the tendency is to pull the belly in, so do a few movements, pull the belly in and lift both shoulders.

That’s easy. Pull the belly in and lift the shoulders. That’s easy.

13i. Now do the other way around: arch the back and lift the shoulders. Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh.

13j. Now lift the right hip and the left shoulder. Roll the pelvis to the right and lift the opposite shoulder.

Right hip, left shoulder. Left hip, right shoulder.

13.k And now do it faster. And even faster.



13l. And from side to side. Side to side.

14. Okay, get up on your feet.

It’s a drill. I’m giving you a brain vitality drill.

Feel how you’re standing. That’s different again.

14a. Now, take your pelvis back, lift the right knee up, move the left shoulder forward in the direction of the knee, and then let go of the lower back, put the foot down, and do it the other way.

14b. Take the pelvis back, lift the left knee and move the right shoulder forward.

14c. And do that from side to side.

14d. Has that become a little clearer?

Do arch your back as you do that.

14e. And now, don’t think about the shoulders any more. Simply take the pelvis back, arch the back, lift the right knee, bring it forward, step on to it, let go of the lower back, and then take the pelvis back, lift the left knee, and walk like that. We’ve done that before. See if that has become clearer.

14f. You see there’s a softness now.

There’s the control of the leg because you have a say in what your back is doing.

It’s okay to land on the toes first because of the way that we’re doing it.

14g. That’s nice. Do you feel that? Very soft, very like a cat.

15. Just walk around, simply. And feel what it means to walk for you now.

END OF LESSON

1 [COMMENTS]



Ginny, may I tell the group a bit of what you told me? Yes? Because I think it’s very valuable. Ginny and I were in the kitchen at the same time and she said a couple of things that I thought were valuable to the group as a whole.

First was that if it weren’t for this morning, what you did with each other, she wouldn’t have been able to do the TML lesson that we did afterwards. And that she realized that she’s aware of the rods, but she’s not aware of the hips or the rest of the structure of the back of the pelvis. And she then said that she has a certain degree of numbness there since the surgery.

And even without the numbness, it would tend to be so, with the numbness, even more, is that really the self-image, the body image, just changes really rapidly; and with numbness, it’s kind of like the hips are gone or the pelvis is kind of like there and not there.

And can you imagine how amazing and valuable it would be in the future when any person that goes into any kind of surgery, especially orthopedic surgeries will have this work before and then immediately after to insure reintegration and reorganization of the body with its new, in this case, hardware?

There is so, so, so much work for us to do. The only thing is to create the awareness of the need for the work, but there is an unbelievable amount, enough for everyone to do, and many more.

anat baniel method professional training vitality & anti ... · anat baniel method professional...

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