Written Overview of Loop Karen Lehman
What are the easy to remember ingredients of your loop?
1- Bridge (Head, shoulders, and feet in contact with floor, and pelvis lifted; but contact points can shift, glide and roll)
2- Mini cobra (on belly, with head, neck and upper chest lifted; but belly, pelvis, thighs in contact with floor)
3 - Ball (more open to interpretation, but body making a shape of a ball by closing in the front of the body and lengthening through the back of spine)
Variable added of breath awareness, slowness, glide/slide, rock and roll, tension/relaxation, shifting POC
Added challenging of transitioning between different positions by using one shoulder as the POC, or decrease the POC’s
Describe your process. How did you choose the parts? How was your experience leading up to filming? What did you need to do to get in right state of body/mind/spirit to flow?
Since I was just doing this for me (versus planning a class to teach), I just put on music and began with the warmup movements of rocking, wiggling, pandiculation, twisting, to the music while laying on my back. I led my body lead me into positions that felt good, and stayed with each one for quite a while initially… I entered with no plan on the 3 loop elements… but I had the intention of using POC, breath, tempo, tension/ease as variables; the gliding/sliding became pleasurable variables during the loop progressions
What felt good or provided a healthy challenge in this loop video?
The bridge element felt so good, as I felt a lot of freedom with this space and lots of room for exploration;
the ball came up naturally as a transition from the bridge to the mini-cobra… which at first felt good… after the first loop, however, the ball felt a bit challenging and limiting, in that there were not a lot of options for movement within it.. So the challenge was finding movement within a ball: where could I push against the floor? This is also where tension and ease became useful explorations, and I practiced accepting the micro-movements from there… my body still desired more movement, so the challenge was staying in the ball shape, versus moving too quickly through it.
If there is one thing you would do differently, what is it?
Haha - I feel like I would leave the ball shape out, but I think exploring my discomfort with it is where I’d like to go… stay with the ball more and find more ways to explore the discomfort… I’m definitely more comfortable in the movements that require more expansion… overall it was a pleasurable loop that I staying in for about 13 minutes - video was edited for submission…
What did you learn from this experience that you would put in your own training/teaching?
Trusting self, be open minded, not rushing through a sense of discomfort. To clarify, the discomfort with the “ball shape” was not physical pain, but a frustration with the limitations my body felt within it. Staying within that type of mental discomfort is a great opportunity to be present and surrender, and the tensioning/releasing exercise within it was very helpful