Even the smallest gesture can make a huge difference.
—Billy Butler
The international online Feldenkrais teacher study group known as An AY a Day, which I have written about before, has met every day since the first day of June 2017. After having taught each other the 550 Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons in the Alexander Yanai collection all the way through more than a couple of times, the group moved on to other materials in Moshe’s canon. Back in October of 2023, we started working our way through the public workshops and ATM teacher training programs he taught in English.
A couple of weeks ago, we started listening to the audio recordings of Moshe’s 1981 Quest New York course. The fifth lesson, The bell hand: soft opening and closing movements of the hands, sparked considerable confusion and led to a discussion about how the hand was supposed to be held.
Unless you’re an ATM aficionado, you may not be familiar with this lesson. It was a late entry in the many pedagogical devices Feldenkrais developed and taught, quite possibly the last one. In June 1981, immediately after the workshop above, he taught my Amherst Training classmates and me a series of classes based on the bell hand theme. That was the last teacher training program he offered. Not a lot of people know it, in part because it never became part of the training curriculum.
Knowing the precise shape of the hands asked for is crucial to benefiting from the lesson. Making a "bell shape" with your hand, where you curl your fingers inward and bring the tips close, is unfamiliar to many and, therefore, challenging to convey. Some of the people listening to the recording of the NY lesson couldn’t understand what was required based solely on his verbal instructions. Indeed, both in New York and Amherst, Moshe chose a teaching tactic he almost never used: he demonstrated the movement.
Not to say that it’s an entirely unfamiliar action. For instance, in Italy:
Referred to as making a purse with your hand or holding it like a pinecone, or, in Naples, like a pepper, the gesture has various meanings depending on the orientation of the arm, the rhythm of motion, and the person’s facial expression.
Moshe occasionally instructs students to put their fingers on the floor “arranged like a bell" in other lessons, starting with Alexander Yanai #45, LIFTING THE ELBOWS IN FRONT. It was not until decades later that he turned this shape into a movement and gave it the starring role in an ATM.
By transforming a static form into fluid action, Moshe provided another example of a key aspect of his methodology: harnessing the way the nervous system works to improve your abilities and adjust your attitude. The bell hand lessons illustrate his uncanny ability to make an abstract idea — such as how excitation and inhibition work across the motor cortex — concrete, in this case, as a means to induce a global shift in underlying muscle tonus.
The motion of lifting the elbows is central to Turning the Page, the new course I am offering next month. Register by January 31st to save 20% on tuition.
I took the photo of a bell being rung at the top of today’s post. I chose this image because it illustrates how I made sense of the bell hand instructions way back when.
I made a screenshot of a GIF to create the image of the gesture above.
If you’re wondering, the quote above is from Billy Butler, the baseball player, not the jazz guitarist, singer/songwriter, or British DJ.
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Responses:
Sophie Quénon -January 01, 1970
Dear Larry Merci de partager cette reflexion. Merci également de ta réponse à mes questionnements (dont j'ai trouvé en partie les réponses sur le blog (Riding the roller coster). Nous avons travaillé cette leçon (ou une adaptation) avec Myriam Pfeffer (Paris V) en début de formation. Après un certain temps d'exploration sur la position des doigts, du coude, nous devions passer de la position couché sur le sol à assis puis debout tout en continuant le mouvement. C'est pour moi une main qui respire et je l'ai baptisé (pour moi) l'anémone de mer. La façon dont Myriam avait amené la leçon et le mouvement continuum de la pulsation de la main m'avait fait imaginé les algues dans l'eau... ). J'aime beaucoup les précisions que tu apportes ! C'est précieux Bien à toi
Hello Sophie - Thank you for sharing your experience of being introduced to the Bell Hand ATM in your training with Myriam Pfeffer. In case you're wondering, the lesson(s) you described -- doing the Bell Hand while moving from lying to sitting to standing -- are from the second year of the Amherst training. I'm glad you appreciated the details in the blog post. By the way, the lesson made me think of a TV show from my childhood, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau . . . and sea anemones. Until soon. -
Karin -January 01, 1970
Thank you for this interesting post. I love the bell-hand, static and moving, but am not sure I always do this movement correctly. I look forward to understanding better how ‘knowing the precise shape of the hands asked for is crucial to benefiting from the lesson’. My few experiences of lessons with the bell-hands have been wonderfully soothing, whether I’ve been doing the movement correctly or not….. I look forward to experiencing and finding out more! I’m curious about the wrists as well as the elbows. It looks like an alert wrist is required as opposed to a softer wrist. Your photo makes me realise I’ve thought of the bell-hands as bluebells or as bells themselves, rather than as hands holding a bell. I’m now curious about whether the bell-hand is meant to be a hand holding a bell or to be the bell itself! (I’m drawn to the latter possibility – which may not be what’s intended!) English bluebells tend to droop as they age, rather like many humans, while Spanish bluebells have alert stems. So the question now is – is the bell-hand an English or Spanish bluebell?! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/spanish-english-wildlife-trusts-rhs-b2312972.html Maybe because I live in the English countryside and very near to wonderful bluebell woods, beautiful and fragrant in the spring, I have always thought of the bell-hand as a living entity.
Hello Karin - You understood Moshe's instructions correctly. Every time he uses the phrase, he explicitly instructs students to make the shape of a bell with their hands. (The image I put at the top of the blog was about how I thought about the shape because it didn't make much sense to me way back when.) One wonderful way to learn more about the Bell Hand would be to watch the videos from the first week of the second year of Amherst Training. Thank you for the link to the bluebells. After checking it out, I think it makes perfect sense that you thought of them. It is also reasonable to consider the bell hand a living entity. Some folks refer to the position and gesture as resembling a sea anemone, while others describe it as moving like an octopus swimming. -
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