Before you begin, here are a few important tips for getting the most out of the lessons:
GO SLOWLY
Take your time—you’ll learn more! These movements may seem unusual and unfamiliar. You will need time to assimilate them and to feel the way your body is moving and changing. Do not rush! Pause whenever you feel like it, and repeat movements you find pleasurable or want to experience more fully.
INSIST ON COMFORT
There is no reward in doing any of the movements in an uncomfortable position. Gently alter your position in whatever way makes it comfortable for you. I want you to enjoy the process of the movement as much as the result. If it hurts, it’s not helping you. Never try to override pain if you feel it. Pain is your body’s way of asking you to find a new way to move. Answer it with gentleness and respect.
DON’T COMPETE W/ YOURSELF
The Change Your Age Program is not about seeing how far you can move, how high you can lift, or how long you can stretch. Your goal should be to discover how your body achieves a movement so that you can learn to make that movement easier. Your movements should always be as light and effortless as possible. Imagine how good it will feel to do simple mobile tasks without stress and strain.
USE YOUR IMAGINATION
Allow the movement to become very clear and lucid in your mind, like a scene from a movie. You may find that your body responds to your mind by moving as if it is replaying the imagined movement, with almost no effort at all.
REST FREQUENTLY
These movements, while gentle and pleasurable, may cause slight strain because you are using parts of muscles you may not have used in a long time, or you may be using them in ways that are not familiar. Rest often during each lesson. You cannot rest too much. Resting is a time when your brain can integrate new movements and new sensations. Relax and let the movement settle in. Enjoy the feeling. Who knows—it could become a habit.
CHOOSE A COMFORTABLE SPACE
Learning occurs in direct proportion to the comfort and relaxation your body experiences during the movements. In other words, if you feel comfortable from the beginning of a new lesson, you are much more likely to learn it. For this reason, it is perfectly all right for you to do lying-down lessons in bed if you find the floor uncomfortable or if getting up and down from the floor causes stress or pain.If you are doing the lessons on the floor, please use an exercise mat or carpeted floor rather than a hard floor, and have available a towel you can use as a neck or knee support if needed. Make sure that you have space around you to move and that your clothes are loose enough to not restrain your movement. It is important to lower the lights and decrease distracting outside noises so you can sense the reactions and changes your body will experience.
DON’T FEEL OBLIGATED TO DO ALL OF THE LESSONS
Some lessons may be difficult or painful for you to perform, either from the starting position or at some point during the lesson. If you feel discomfort or pain while moving, stop. Just imagining doing the lesson, or parts of the lesson, will benefit you almost as much as physically performing the movements. Then, as your body changes and your quality of motion improves, go back to the tricky lesson to see whether it has now become possible to perform it in some way. If the movements still cause pain, stop and choose a lesson that does not.
TAKE THE LESSONS WITH YOU
Pay close attention to how each lesson affects you throughout your day. Notice changes in the way you reach, walk, sit, and think. A lesson doesn’t have to end with its last movement—let the learning process linger and grow. I strongly advise keeping a journal to note the changes you observe after each lesson. You might want to repeat a lesson that gave you a particularly interesting or pleasurable feeling.
POSITION 1 : LYING DOWN
Most of your youngest movements were done lying down. You probably don’t remember when you learned to roll on your back, to roll from side to side, or to lie on your back and turn your head to look all around the room. Then there was that time when you rolled over all the way to your stomach. Incredible! Only to discover that, with some exploration and practice, you could roll all the way onto your back again. Wow—a much bigger world.
Back in those days you learned not only how to bring your hands to your mouth and other neat tricks but how to push against the floor, at first with your arms and then later with your feet, back, belly, and bottom.
In these lessons, you will return to the days of your early movements.
StartFragment
POSITION 1: LYING DOWN ON YOUR BACK
The program begins with lying down on your back to ground yourself. “Grounding” refers to a general feeling of stability, a connection to the earth, a certain kind of awareness. It also refers to gravity and, as I teach it, to “ground forces,” which are the forces you press against the ground in order to move your body. (For example, you must push down to jump up; you must pull backward to step forward.) Most of your ability to propel yourself through the world starts belly down, a position that allows you to push with your arms and legs.
You can see the power of ground forces at work when you watch astronauts struggling to move deliberately in zero gravity, or when you watch divers pushing against the platform to perform their amazing moves. Without ground forces, movement is difficult.
Lesson 1: COORDINATING YOUR NECK AND EYES WITH YOUR LEGS AND PELVIS
• Intention: To differentiate (discriminate) the motion of your eyes from the motion of your head, neck, shoulders, and pelvis. This lesson will help you if you can’t move your eyes or turn your head easily and quickly, which is one of the first obvious signs of aging.
• Starting Position: Lie on your back with your arms on the floor at the level of your shoulders and your legs long. I recommend closing your eyes so that you can go further into your kinesthetic sense. Your eyes and your visual sense can often pull you out and make it more difficult to sense your body.
1. Roll your head a little bit from side to side, searching for the ease in the movement.Most of the time when we turn our heads from side to side, we turn as far as we can turn. Here, rather than think about which side allows you to turn your head farther, find the side on which it is simply easier to turn. When you discover that easier side, the side that feels more natural, roll your head back to the center.
Tip: To detect a lightness, an easiness in movement, we have to reduce the effort in our muscular contractions. The harder we try to do something, the more difficult it becomes to make distinctions. While you’re working to feel which is the lighter side, can you make that side even easier and lighter?
Roll your head only to the side that is easier. Do so a few times until the movement becomes even easier and smoother.
Rest your head wherever it feels most comfortable.
So, did you find the side you prefer? Recognizing which side is easier helps you to understand some of your established habits.
EndFragmentStartFragment2. Still lying down, pull your left leg up toward the ceiling so that you are “standing” on your left foot with your left knee bent. Can you push through your left foot to lift the left side of your pelvis and roll it to the right? You can shift the placement of your foot to find the easiest place to roll your pelvis. Your head may roll to the right, or it may feel easier rolling to the left. Go with whatever feels natural to you as long as you are aware of how you are moving.
Make it an easy push. Feel how pushing through that foot carries a twist up through your body that may facilitate the rolling of your head. Allow your head to roll farther. Discover how the use of your legs and pelvis helps your head to turn more easily.
3. Rest with your arms and legs long. Roll your head from side to side again. Notice if your sense of the movement of your head and neck has expanded. Maybe rolling your head has gotten easier on both sides?
EndFragmentStartFragment
Tip: Differentiation is a brain-body concept that everybody uses and everybody needs.
For example, to type or play the piano, you must learn to differentiate the movements of your fingers from each other in specific ways. If you didn’t, your hands would move as if you were wearing a mitten.
When you turn your head to look at something, your eyes can move only a certain amount inside your head, and then your head begins to turn. If you want to see still farther in back of yourself, you need to turn your trunk and move your shoulders, and if you’re standing, you’ll probably need to shift your weight.
Most people have been taught to think of stretching their muscles to increase their range and ease of movement, but stretching muscles will not help you improve a skill, especially if that skill involves sitting more easily, climbing stairs more lightly, or walking more gracefully. For example, if you want to speak more clearly or learn to sing, it would be absolutely useless to grab hold of your tongue and stretch it by pulling it out of your mouth.The more differentiated your neck becomes through proper use, along with your eyes, shoulders, and trunk, the farther you’ll be able to turn as you involve more components or parts of your body in the same movement.
StartFragment4. Return to the same arrangement (lying on the floor, left knee bent so that you are standing on your left foot and your arms are out to your sides). This time open your eyes and look with a soft focus toward the ceiling. Push through your left foot and let your head roll as before, to either side, but keep your eyes oriented toward the ceiling. Your head may go so far that eventually it gets hard to see exactly where you started.
Feel that your foot is solidly in contact with the floor. Feel that you can know how you are positioning and moving your legs, your pelvis, and your shoulders. Think about whether your arms are too close to the sides of your body.Now perform the whole sequence of pushing through your foot and rolling your pelvis and head a little faster.Do your eyes have the independence to soft-focus on the ceiling while your head is rolling on the floor? Your eyes can work independently from the muscles of your neck and trunk. Some people can turn their head to one side, and their shoulders, pelvis, and the leg they are standing on will follow. For other people, their body will follow the movement of their eyes. Part of what you are learning is to create more independence between your feet, trunk, head, neck, shoulders, and eyes.Come to rest with your arms and legs down. While resting, observe the differences in your impression on the floor. Does one leg feel younger than the other? Do you feel that your body is inclined to roll more easily toward one side? Maybe one leg feels longer. Slowly roll your head from side to side with your eyes closed and feel whether you favor one side.Slowly come to standing. Observe the differences in standing and walking between the two sides of your body. Which leg feels younger? Does your head turn more easily to one side?Go back to the floor and again lie with your arms out to the side and your legs long.
5. Now bend your right knee and stand on your right foot. Let your eyes close, if you want. Can you find an easy way to push your right foot into the floor and feel how your pelvis starts to roll to the left and then how your head eventually rolls?
Feel the influence of your rolling pelvis on the movement of your head. You might discover that your head can roll more easily in either direction.
And then pause for a few seconds.
Can you open your eyes? While your eyes are looking up above yourself, continue the same movement of rolling your pelvis and your head.
Don’t worry about rolling your head farther. Instead, observe that your head can roll and your eyes can stay looking at the ceiling. Try to make it easy. You want to make sure that you are able to maintain the position of your eyes, keeping them focused on the ceiling, even as you turn your head.
Pause. Take a full rest for 30 seconds or a minute, with your arms and legs long.
6. Now bend both knees and “stand” both feet on the floor. Keep your feet a comfortable distance apart so that your legs are independently balanced above them.
Next, can you tilt your knees over toward the right side? As you do this, your feet will keep some contact with the floor. Your pelvis will roll as your knees tilt. Then, return your knees to the upright position and repeat the movement. Keep breathing and observe whether you can relax your jaw.
Pause, with your feet still in standing position.
7. Repeat Step 6 on the left side. On which of the two sides is it easier to do this movement? Explore this a few times until you feel the difference.
8. Now, with both feet “standing,” slowly tilt your knees from side to side and notice that your head is inclined to roll. Maybe your head wants to stay in the middle, or wants to follow the direction of your knees, or wants to go the opposite way. Any of these inclinations is fine. What is most important is that you are observing what you are doing.
When you keep your eyes softly focused above yourself while tilting your legs from side to side, you’ll continue to differentiate the muscles in your eyes, neck, and back. Don’t let your eyes freeze the motion of your pelvis. Let your eyes, calm and still, be a part of the movement, just as the rest of your body can be calm and in motion. Make sure you keep breathing while you do this, so as to gain mobility in your ribs.
9. Rest with your arms and legs long.
Tune in to your contact with the floor and to the general state of your body. Notice whether your body feels younger. Do parts of you feel younger than other parts? Turn your head slowly from side to side and see whether this movement is any easier.
Rest. When you are ready, come to a full stand.
Stand easily and look around the room. Do you feel as if your visual field has expanded? As you walk, see whether you feel a difference in your balance as you walk turning your head from side to side. After doing this lesson, maybe you would feel safer crossing the street in heavy traffic or hiking on a rocky trail.
This might be a good time to journal, draw, or, if you are with a friend, discuss what you learned and experienced in this lesson.
EndFragment
EndFragment
EndFragment