Why I do this

Here’s what Rose Silberman, one of the participants in the Boulder course, wrote me after the course:

I have had so much fun applying what I learned at the workshop in my practice the last two weeks. I gave the Awareness Through Movement lessons you presented and the Functional Integration session you taught us to a wide variety of students: a competitive cyclist, a tennis player, a woman with scoliosis, another woman with a botched hip replacement, a group of teen modern dancers, and my senior ATM class. 

With my students, I practiced co-discovering which was their standing leg and which side they could not stop working. The outlier was a new client, a woman with a bungled surgery who stood on her shorter right side, which was the side with the hip replacement. They set her right leg in internal rotation during the operation.  Her left leg turns out, and she rolls her left ankle outward. She was not able to evert her left foot. After the FI, she stood more erect with more weight on her left foot.  She was quite amazed by the changes she felt.

I taught my teenage modern dancers the ATM standing at the wall and then in a circle with arms around each other. They loved it! They laughed when we did the interactive part and said they wanted their dance teacher to incorporate the sequence into their upcoming show. I noticed they were walking so differently afterward. They did, too. 

I look forward to trying this out with my adult tap dance class. I will report back to you how it goes. 

Applying what I learned about the spinal engine to my freestyle and backstroke increased the power and efficiency of my swimming. I improved my speed without raising my heart rate! I could access my latissimus dorsi muscles more efficiently and reduce the strain on my shoulder joints. I am always looking for ways to improve my strokes, so that was super cool.