Laura & Carie

Hello, Dear Improvers!

Thursday class:

• Here is one of my favorite videos of a ‘Functional Integration’ (the hands-on version of how I teach).

  • I’m posting it for you because it is a partial answer to Keira’s question about ‘why Triangles’ (the mini lesson we did at the end of Wednesday). Can you see how the movement lesson Triangles relates to what Mia Segal is doing with her student, especially in the beginning?

  • And I’m also posting this video in answer to a question about recurrent under-the-shoulder-blade tension and discomfort. At minute 3.54 Mia starts a brilliant exploration where she goes to the student’s ‘good’ side and has the student recreate the tension that normally occurs on the ‘bad’ side and then let it go. Then she helps the student transfer that letting-go wisdom to the ‘bad’ side. You could do that! I would suggest doing the entire long version of Triangles and then, once you are warmed up, use the good side to teach the uncomfortable side.

• Here’s Fred Astaire (and while you are there, feel free to poke around).

• At the end of class, one of you suggested a voice series and I am certainly embracing that.

• In a discussion towards the end of class, Ben said something fascinating and maybe bouffon-ish. It had to do with the ‘theory of mind’ which is the stage (usually about 3 yo) where a person recognizes that another person may have different information. So just because I know the toys are in the cupboard doesn’t mean that Dad knows the toys are in the cupboard. My student pointed out that when you take on a character in Improv, you have to have a ‘theory of mind’ towards the character: you-you might know that the other player is stealing your money, and you-you would probably lean into this, but your character does not know. Fascinating. (There were so many great insights in that last hour of class, but each one bumped out the last one so I mostly remembered the last one!)

• Here’s a little reel I made about our work together. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DNV6gaNRZBi/?igsh=eDJuOTRmYWZmamp0

Wednesday class: Below, please find some reels about pelvic rotation. I promised you the extended ‘Triangles’—what we did at the end of the class today, Wednesday. And I intended to post our pelvic clock… but I @#!ed up the recording with my fancy fuzzy lavaliere, so what you have in the recording for pelvic clock is also an older, longer version of the lesson you had today. It was done for kayakers so please ignore the paddling part. It was interesting to me to go back to that recording—I don’t do those ‘long form’ lessons very much any more. There’s some richness there! But I’m of two minds whether it needs to be so intense. Sometimes less is more learning. If you have any thoughts about that, I’d be interested to hear them. This is a part of my evolution. I do think it is nice for you to have two very different versions of the same lesson.