Here are two versions of ‘left knee to roll’ because sometimes it is nice to have some variety.
The Left Knee to Roll from our class in December.
The Left Knee to Roll from my archives.
Third Eye from second class, January. I left the discussion before and aft this time. Skip to minute 6 if you want to go straight into the movement.
Falling to the Side, third class.
To change things up when you run through the tape you could…
Add a variation at the end of each major section where you try rotating a little bit rather than only side-bending. Take the sequence very OBVIOUSLY—a little rotation—until your lower ribs aren’t stacked right on top of your hip—and then sidebend. (Chris, this is for you of course.)
Same thing but try flexing (tuck your chin and bring your belly-button back) or extending. Each one of those sort of hitches your ribcage up off your wings of your pelvis. Experiment.
When you are playing with the sequence ‘pelvis first’ and comparing it to ‘head first', also play with how you cast your gaze. Is it ‘gaze-pelvis-torso-head’? Gaze-head-torso-pelvis? Can you choose all sorts of different sequences? The casting of the gaze is particularly useful when you want to become more nuanced with how you move your head.
Generalized and Fovial Gaze 4th Class
Please only read this after you have enjoyed the class a first or second time, and want a change-up.
Wow there are just so many great ways to play with this class. Remember, each set of variations is going to be trying to differentiate. Differentiate the tension of the fovial gaze that is in your mind from the tension that is in your eyeball muscles (but you could do a similar differentiation between the tension in your mind and the tension in your tongue, or wherever your tension resides). So… think of something that feels generalized to you, the kind of mental state on a perfect paddling day when you are 3/4’s of the way to sated and with people you love and trust, in awe at the beauty of your surroundings. Notice, now, how your tongue is. Then try to figure the square root of 786 and observe what happens: tongue, awareness of your breath, awareness of your pelvis, awareness of the world around you. Go back and forth so that you can observe yourself changing from one mental/muscular/respiratory state to another. Use the variations from this lesson as a template but substitute the tongue for the eyes or a movement up and down for the sideways movement, progressing to the point where—in this example—you can ‘go fovial’ WITHOUT engaging your tongue.
In this lesson, I’m also encouraging you to look at a detail WITHOUT tensing your mind.
And perhaps most grounded (ahem Randal), notice the sets of variations that are about engaging your focused gaze WITHOUT losing your body.
Too complicated? If you want to take one thing from this, it is the scan where you have your eyes looking forward but your attention is on the periphery. If you just got in the habit of doing that for 30 seconds here or 30 seconds there, and did it just for the fun of it for a couple of months. Wowza.
Also, it might be interesting to go back to Left Knee to Roll and do the whole lesson with the intention of finding what makes you go fovial and/or convergent and what you can do to stay generalized and eyes-divergent—and how you roll!
Differentiate:
Mental focus on details / sense of your body + periphery
Mental focus on details / convergence and divergence of eyes