Movement of the Week: Baby Liv

September 4, 2011 by Admin 12 Comments

I write a lot on this blog about the value of moving slowly, mindfully, gently and playfully as an excellent way to develop efficient and pain free movement. If you want to know what that looks like, watch a baby move.

Babies learn movement at an amazing rate with no instruction at all. Moshe Feldenkrais developed his method for teaching efficient movement in part by studying how babies learn to move. Frank Wildman, one of the world’s leading teachers of the Feldenkrais method, stated that Feldenkrais movement lessons are basically structured baby play.

With that in mind, the Movement of the Week (maybe I should start calling this the Movement of the Month) is a video of “Baby Liv” learning to roll over. The video was done by Irene Gutteridge, a Feldenkrais practitioner and filmmaker. Irene interspersed various stages of Liv’s learning process with written instructions you might hear in a Feldenkrais class. It’s really a beautiful video:

The point of this video is not just that babies are cute, although it does provide some excellent evidence of that fact. The point for me is that our bodies and movements are a huge playground for curious exploration. Even in adulthood.

If you want to try a free Feldenkrais lesson, click here.

coordination, Feldenkrais Method, Movement of the week, play

12 Responses to “Movement of the Week: Baby Liv”

  1. Mugen Reply September 4, 2011 at 7:32 am

    That. Was. Absolutely. Awesome.

    Thank you so much for sharing that video and the supporting post!

  2. jdendy Reply September 7, 2011 at 6:00 am

    Love reading your posts! This one was really fun to watch. Reminds me of the Z-health transitional movements from the floor. No wonder why I love rolling around on the floor…because it brings back early childhood movement patterns of exploration!

  3. Chris Reply September 8, 2011 at 12:01 am

    Fantastic and inspiring

  4. Theresa Nesbitt Reply September 13, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    This was great Todd. I think developmental approach to movement is so inspiring. I have learned a lot in Pavel Kolar (Prague School) DNS certs – definitely makes me look at things in a new way – but this really made me smile!

  5. Irene Gutteridge Reply September 15, 2011 at 12:00 am

    Hey Todd

    Irene here. Just saw “via google analytics” that you found baby liv! Awesome. good to see people using it for the exact reason we started this project “the next 25 years”.

    Just touching base and connecting.

    I’ve got lot’s of folk/friends/teachers and collaborators in the seattle area!

    maybe our paths will cross one day.

    Irene.

    • Todd Hargrove Reply September 15, 2011 at 7:54 am

      Irene,

      Thanks for stopping by. You did a great job on the vid, people really seem to respond to it.

      Our paths have already crossed actually. I’m pretty sure I met you at one of Jeff Haller’s friday morning mentoring sessions at his house last year …

      Keep up the good work and keep in touch.

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Perfect Health Diet » Around the Web; 9/11 Remembrance and Brain Injury Recovery Edition - September 10, 2011

    […] Not the weekly video: Todd Hargrove introduces us to a film introducing the Feldenkrais method from practitioner Irene Gutteridge. Meet […]
  2. Learning to move « whyama - September 29, 2011

    […] Todd Hargrove posted this amazing video the other day and I just wanted to call attention to it and the things that it teaches.  Todd’s own material on learning how to move is definitely worth buying and learning from, taking some of these basic principles and influenced very much by Feldenkrais. […]

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