Moving Around

Before walking and running, before cruising and crawling, infants find their way from moving their limbs and heads around — staying on the back or belly the whole time —  to moving from where they are to someplace else. 

This is no easy task. As infants, our heads weigh as much as a third of our total weight; our limbs are relatively small and weak. Our size and proportions keep changing, in uneven spurts, disorienting and confounding us. In our personal apprenticeship to gravity, we each discover the first rudimentary forms of locomotion in our own individual ways. There is no one developmental pathway through these early challenges, no necessary step, magical milestone, or preordained progression.

The Moving Around ATM® series offers an experiential exploration of the strategies and skills that make this developmental transition — from moving around yourself to moving yourself around — possible. It’s an opportunity to revisit early movement patterns, to traverse the range of possible options, discover coordinations you may have missed the first time around, understand your child’s or grandchild’s experience from the inside out, and connect with your ability to learn on your own. 

The 18 Awareness Through Movement® classes comprise the lessons taught during the 11-day sixth segment of the Amsterdam International Feldenkrais® Teacher Training in February 2018. The lessons give you the chance to investigate, from the first-person perspective, how children prepare themselves to move around and the various ways they then start to change positions early in life, including slithering, rolling, sitting up, and combat crawling. One of the rare publicly available ATM series from a professional training program, it includes classics, such as COORDINATING FLEXORS AND EXTENSORS and TILTING THE KNEES TO SITTING, along with many ATMs rarely taught outside of training programs and a few of Larry Goldfarb’s original compositions, such as FROM CATERPILLAR TO SALAMANDER and PRAYING THE FELDENKRAIS WAY (on the side).

Here’s a list of all the ATMs:

      1. STATUE OF LIBERTY
      2. CRAWLING ON THE BACK
      3. COORDINATING FLEXORS & EXTENSORS – TEACHING EXAMPLE
      4. PUSHING, ROLLING, AND REACHING
      5. SLITHERING ONTO THE FRONT
      6. PUSHING THROUGH THE FEET
      7. ROLLING FROM AN X TO THE SIDE I
      8. ROLLING FROM AN X TO THE SIDE II
      9. TILTING THE KNEES TO SITTING
      10. FROM SIDE LYING CATERPILLAR TO SALAMANDER
      11. PRONE TO SITTING – TILTING LEGS BACKWARD
      12. PRONE HEAD IN HANDS – CIRCLE
      13. PRONE HEAD IN HANDS – ROLLING & LIFTING
      14. PRAYING THE FELDENKRAIS WAY – ON THE SIDE
      15. SURFING THE PULSE
      16. PRONE HEAD IN HANDS – LIFTING ELBOW SIDEWAYS
      17. IF SHIFT HAPPENS – WHERE DOES IT BEGIN?
      18. HOLDING HEAD IN HANDS – CRAWLING ON THE BELLY

These lessons based on early movements in infancy can be of great benefit improving mobility, equilibrium, dexterity, and coordination.

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Disclaimer: The Feldenkrais Method of neurophysical education is presented on this website for educational and entertainment purposes only. The Method and all articles, videos, photos, audio recordings, and documents of any kind available on this website are not intended to be a substitute for professional help or medical treatment. Nothing on this website is intended to diagnose or treat any pathology or disease of any kind. This website, all media files found on it and the creator of any and all of these files, and anyone featured on these files, cannot be held responsible for any injuries or discomfort that occur. Before doing any of the movement lessons described or portrayed on this site, consult your medical practitioner.

Whenever you do ATM lessons, please abide by these guidelines:

  • Stay in your own range of comfort.
  • Listen to the wisdom of your body.
  • This is a NO pain, more gain approach.

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