Segment 7, Day 9: Practicum #1

Today was our first set of practicums! Everyone brought in a guest, then handed that guest off to a classmate and received their own client, so we all worked with a stranger. We did two rounds of lessons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that if you were a practitioner in the morning, you were a facilitator in the afternoon for the person who facilitated you.

I was a facilitator first, so I got to start the morning sitting back and observing a lesson, giving tips when needed. The practitioner I observed got paired with a woman, bus driver by profession, who complained of having a tight lower back and hips while doing yoga. I found myself very surprised that she did yoga. Maybe it was the way she held herself (she was very tall and perhaps felt a little awkward about her height), maybe it was the bus driver uniform she was wearing, maybe it was the motorcycle gear she took off before her lesson... Whatever it was, she turned out to be a very different person than I would have guessed by first impression. By the time she was on the table, her practitioner realized very quickly that there was all sorts of holding going on in her torso and not a lot of movement available. I think it scared her off, so she ended up working from the woman's feet and legs instead, trying to free up her hips a little. It was a tricky lesson, and when the woman sat up she said she didn't notice any differences. What she did notice was that she had gotten a feeling of "universal love" through the practitioner's touch and had really enjoyed that sensation. Neither the practitioner or I really know what she was talking about, but she's coming back for another lesson next week, so she got something out of it...

After lunch, I became practitioner. My client was also a woman, although a very different one from the morning. She was tiny, talkative, had done a little Feldenkrais a long time ago and remembered the impacts, and was very sure of her self-awareness. She also knew exactly what she wanted me to do. After telling me "someone" had told her she had scoliosis in her upper back and neck (quite extreme, actually, I'm amazed it doesn't cause her pain), she said that she wanted me to straighten her spine. She also mentioned some deterioration of her lower spine, the kind that comes with age, and clearly would have liked me to reverse her aging and bring her lower spine back to perfect 20-year-old health. I explained to her that straightening a spine isn't something I can do, or certainly not in one lesson, but I could at least send her in the right direction.

I started the lesson not actually knowing what I wanted to do, exactly. I knew it would be about her spine, but I didn't decide what until I'd had my hands on her for a few minutes. At that point, it became completely obvious that where there should be a clear line of the spine, there was a major disconnect between her pelvis, ribcage, and head. Her head was forward and turned a little to the right, her ribcage was both shifted and turned to the left, and her pelvis also turned a little to the right. I spent the rest of the time helping her find connections between the disconnected parts of her torso along the line of her spine (ie. when your head turns right, so can your sternum and your ribcage and your shoulders AND your pelvis, imagine that), and by the time she sat up from her lesson, she said her spine felt straighter!

Ladies and gentlemen, the power of intention.

Later, already feeling pretty good about how it had gone, Angel came up to me and said that she hadn't wanted to overly compliment me in the group feedback session, but that I had done "really, really good work." Comments like that from her are excellent ego boosters. I feel pretty proud of myself.