Hello Friends! I’ve been so surprised at what’s emerging as I write every day to you!I may not write every day – in general, I need to take one or two days off a week, usually Saturday. But otherwise I’ll keep on going.

The key point that pops out for me so far is this:  your kinesthetic or spatial intelligence is separate from your “feeling sense.” Your spatial intelligence is what creates ease in movement – it’s what you use as a pre-curser to movement. I know “effortless movement” sounds corny, because we all know that movement requires effort. But if it’s coordinated movement, where all parts of your body are working in concert with one another, you don’t feel “tension” per se because coordination = harmony in action. No part is fighting another part and preventing you from going where you want to go.

If you’ve been following along, you now have 6 points of awareness to play with:
head
tail
left knee
right knee
left elbow
right elbow
(go here for specific info about all those points)

Today, I felt that I could reach you more directly by making a video – warts and all! I hope you will make the extra click and watch it, because I talk you through my own process of applying the 6 points in that most basic of dances: going down and going up!

The material that is emerging will become part of a new workshop I hope to be offering soon, Creative Process Lab for Actors and Dancers. Stay Tuned.

The last place to include in the kinesthetic map I’m building is your lower arm bone, your ulna. It’s the exact mirror of your tibia (from a previous blog post), in the upper limb instead of the lower. It’s the more powerful bone (meaning it has bigger muscles attached to it) of your two lower arm bones. On some mammals, it sticks out alot more than it does on us. Specifically, I am imagining a spot right in the middle of it’s elbow end. You can feel it if you fold your elbow, it’s the bone that pokes out the most. It’s often mistaken for an the upper arm bone.

You can see the end of the ulna clearly in the picture above. If you fold your elbow, the spot I’m imagining would be right in the center very end of the bone. You can touch this place both when your elbow is folded and when it’s opened! It doesn’t get buried in the elbow joint.

Now your awareness has expanded to include your head, your torso, and each separate limb, with no effort, so the mind dance goes like this:

1) Imagine a spot exactly in the middle of the crown of your head

then

2) Imagine a spot at the tip of your tail bone
and enjoy the distance inside you between the two spots, as well as knowing where those spots are in space, and let them be springy and mobile in relationship to each other;

then, always in relation to the first two points,

3) Imagine a spot right in the middle of the top of your left and right tibia, or lower leg bone.
It’s fun to experience the play between one knee point and the other as you move.

Then, in relation to these first 4 points, add in your last two elbow points, completing the circle of kinesthetic awareness of self:

4) Imagine a spot right in the middle of the elbow end of your left and right ulna, or lower arm bone.

It’s fun to experience the play between one elbow point and the other as you move.

Next, we will play with the difference between combining this mind-dance with unstructured, improvised movement; and after that, we will combine it with a specific movement form.

Thanks for all your comments and feedback! I hope this helps you enjoy your moving all throughout your day, no matter where you are.

I think most of us have limited ideas about what we are capable of. If you are a dancer, you know you’ve had those moments where your body goes somewhere or does something that blows your mind, and you can only “sit back and watch.” Well, I think that’s a pretty good way to work!

I think when you have those mind blowing experiences while moving, your kinesthetic sense is on, it’s alive.

In our mind-dance that uses this sense, we are going to add in two more spots to track: one on each leg. Specifically, a spot exactly in the middle of the top your tibia (the larger of the two lower leg bones in the image above). Notice that the fibula, the smaller bone, does not go up as high as the tibia. The tibia is what supports your femur; the fibula is off to the side.

This process of methodically expanding your awareness of your self has a sequence that is really important. You’ve got to know where your head and your trunk or torso are first, because that’s how you organize any movement – something we’ve experimented with alot in the Alexander teaching community. So start with the previous sequence:

1) Imagine a spot exactly in the middle of the crown of your head

then

2) Imagine a spot at the tip of your tail bone
and enjoy the distance inside you between the two spots, as well as knowing where those spots are in space;

then, ALWAYS IN RELATION TO THE FIRST TWO POINTS,
3) Imagine a spot right in the middle of the top of your left and right tibia, or lower leg bone.

At first, you can just play with being still, and knowing where these 4 spots are in relationship to one another, and observe how/if they move in relationship to each other as you breath and relax.

This is the first step to saving your knees – just knowing where they are. Your lower leg is a really powerful lever and is very important in supporting and generating movement.

Next post, we’ll look at ways to experiment with these 4 points in movement.