Session 2 Transcript

Ksenia Shcherbakova 00:07 People often tell us is that just from these simple exercises, just deciding how deep you need to go into a squat, is my squat today like this or like this or like this or like this? That transfers to catching that moment when you need to maybe back off in some other tasks. So it kind of works like that a little bit. I’m just gonna quickly check if Martha’s meeting that says. Sure. Then I come back. This will not disconnect if I go. It’s okay. Go ahead. Just don’t pick it up. Martha? What is it? You forgot. You forgot the door?

Patrick Oancia 01:26 Okay, come on up, stand in. You don’t have to stand there. You can stand behind me. You can stand wherever you want. If you feel more comfortable over there, it’s absolutely fine. Up to you, wherever you want to stand. So something I just didn’t mention last week that I’d like to go over today is that we have…

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:45 I’ll go with you.

Patrick Oancia 01:46 I’d like to explain a bit about the arc to you. So the arc of where we’re going, where we started, and where we’re headed. Okay, so over the next, well, in total, seven sessions, we started last week with three forms. A lot of talking in the introduction, three forms. What we’re going to be doing right now is diving into the practical application part of it, which coincides with the actual assignments that you do at home. So we’re going to be continuing to build from these three forms to over 20 by the end. So the arc will include our introductory practices and the ending practices, which we call ignition and assimilation. And those practices are not something that are required for you to learn in the first five segments as the criteria for this study group. So you’ll complete the first five segments of the study group by the end of the study group. And then after that, you’ll have the ignition and assimilation modules of that. You’ll learn about that later on in time. But for the time being, we just want to take you through as much as possible the practical application. And it extends from the work that you do at home in the assignments. Does that make sense? So, again, we can’t overemphasize. At the end, we’ll do a little presentation just to kind of try to exemplify the body of work. There’s just so much. it’s so dense and the assignments are critical for us to get anywhere with that. So if you have the time throughout the week to take the time to go through the assignment slowly and then repeat some of the things, it’s going to make a lot more sense as we go through the arc in the preceding weeks, if that makes sense. Yeah, so and plus this next assignment next week is a little bit shorter, it’s only 40 minutes, but the preceding week after that’s 80 minutes of your time. So please All right. So we can get a jump on it.

James 03:59 What? So we can get a jump on it.

Patrick Oancia 04:02 Well, yeah. Rather than think jump, like as much as we ask you all to moderate when you practice, we ask you to moderate the content that you do at home too. Like as much as possible, do little bits of it at a time and then that allows for you to sleep on it and digest it and then it brings that much more into the actual experience.

James 04:23 I guess my question would be, so if it’s 40 minutes, would it be better to review what we’ve already done and then go to the week?

Patrick Oancia 04:31 You know, if it’s at all possible in your schedules, keep doing the smart revisits for everything you’re already doing. Even the preceding assignment, don’t just focus on the preceding assignment, but rather do the smart revisit for those assignments too. Yeah. And this is not us waving our fingers, you know, “Hey!” like this. It’s more just like we want to give you the best possible experience you can out of a body of work that’s been cooking for 20 years. And we think it’s successful what we’re doing here. So it works better if everybody’s on point with the assignments. So let’s start with the feet a little bit wider than hips width apart. Actually, I’ll just get rid of my keys. and bend the knees a little bit. So as we bend the knees again, there’s a little bit of a crease that happens in the hips here at this point when you bend the knees and the weight goes back to the heels. So again, we come to the same thing over and over again at the beginning of the practice and throughout the practice where all the standing forms, a lot of the time it’s almost like you feel like you’re gonna fall over that way. Like Asha almost just did. So the weight really comes back to the heels but we’re trying to find, adjust or calibrate the position by which the weight can stay centered over the heels but we’re not falling, if that makes sense. So the knees will be bent and the big muscles of the legs and the upper part of the legs here become actually active when we bend the knees a little bit here too. So they act as a real stabilizer and particularly in the ignition practice which is the first part of the arc, the overextended arc into the practice. This foundation which can also be found in a lot of athletics and martial arts and yoga and other practices too is a really foundational position to stand in. So we’re already trying to get the legs a bit a little bit active here from the start by bending the knees, the weight goes to the but relax the arms initially so there should be no kind of tension to the neck or the arms and when you raise the arms it’s it’s not forcefully raising them up but more like we’re using that analogy that there are maybe strings attached to your arms and somebody’s levering the arms up into the air like this so they so the movement is quite slow and the wrists initially they’re quite limp as as you go up. And then the arms when they come up to the shoulders height here, this is when we start to activate the forearms by torsioning the wrist. So you can think of the wrist moving in this kind of lateral direction. And the wrists torsion up, which makes the forearm become active. And then we’re trying to turn the palms forward. So it’s not out, but forward. And the forearm become a little bit awkward. And then you can also imagine like there’s these squishy physio balls in your hand. You know like what I’m talking about, those foam physio balls that the physiotherapists give you to sort of work on isometric contractions. And the elbows, they’re have to be marginally bent, but not really. The arms stay about shoulders height. And you can remember here at any point in time, just because it takes some time for the arms to get used to staying up, that if there’s any fatigue or you feel tired, there’s no problem at all to let the arms go down at any point in time. Asha and I may not let the arms go down, but that doesn’t mean you have to keep the arms up. You can always let them go down and relax at one point, and then when you’re ready, you can raise the arms back up. You know, eventually over time, you can leave the arms up for longer, but it’s not a prerequisite. The prerequisite here, even in this initial part of practice is just to spot notice where the fatigue starts to become a distraction right so that you can see that tired tired let the arms go down so that it’s no longer distracting you and then when you’ve collected yourself again you can raise the arms back up again and then torsion the wrists so that torsion the wrist is a very important part that’s dynamic the rest of the rest of the stuff happening is quite relaxed. The belly is just hanging relaxed down. There’s no activating the abdominal wall at all. At this point there’s no drawing the shoulders down either. The shoulders just are, the arms are just that shoulder’s height. The only activation is in the forearms with the wrist torsioning forward. You can also relax through the neck here. And of course you could keep the eyes closed but not in the sense that it becomes like a cosmic experience as we just mentioned before that the eyes can be closed if it’s just more comfortable for you if it’s bright or something you can close you can close the eyes otherwise if the eyes are open you can almost just imagine that we don’t let the eyes wander too much the eyes can just stay focused at one point on the floor or in front of you and we focus just a lot more on trying to keep the arms up relax the necks and then lower the arms when it’s appropriate those two things maybe could be the focal point. But we try to keep the knees bent and we try to imagine that we’re sitting back to the edge of that tall bar stool where it’s you know there’s something kind of like an imaginary prop underneath the buttocks that hold you up a bit but it’s actually the quadriceps that are doing the job their weight to the heels makes it a little bit more stable and occasionally the torsion in the wrists will release, but you want to activate that torsion again. Again, it becomes too much. You lower the arms, take a rest so that you can do all those things in a unified way. And again, wherever you hear the breath maybe coming stronger into the picture here, we try to notice, okay, the breath is becoming deep now because we feel challenged. Then that point you lower the arms so that the breath comes back to its neutral, normal, unregulated natural state so you can talk like what I’m doing. If I was if I was breathing deeply I wouldn’t be able to talk so easily. You can just imagine that analogy that the talking’s got to be happening. The ability to talk clearly without losing the breath should be something that carries itself through even into the more challenging aspects of the practice as time goes by. I’m really not trying to stimulate the body in such a way where they where the speech becomes fragmented or where there’s too much activity in the respiratory system. It just should be neutral. Occasionally too you can move the neck. Make sure the neck is not tense. Check the torsion in the wrists. Check the belly’s relaxed. Check to see the weight centered over the heels. And the knees are slightly bent. The quadriceps are slightly active. All right. So as we straighten the knees, we lower the arms. So we’re trying to synchronize movement of the knees straightening with the arms lowering. So we don’t have the knees extended completely until the arms reach down to the side of the body. And this is just a very very minor synchronization of movement and pretty easy to achieve. But it’s very relevant as we start to get more into the practice itself to synchronize these small subtle movements so the arms going down the knees straightening again this is just one of the things that adds to the the pallet of sensory threshold stuff that we talk about okay now bring the feet hips width apart and if you’re looking from above the outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other so the uh just want to really make sure that those outside edges of the feet are parallel, the toes don’t point away, but rather slightly in. But of course they don’t point overtly in either, it’s just that sensation a little bit, that the illusion that the toes point slightly in with the outside edges of the feet parallel. And then we’re going to go ahead, straighten the knees, we’re going to draw the shoulders down, and as we draw the shoulders down we’re going to spread through the fingers. So kind of drawing downward. So the shoulder depression is also activating the scapula in the back. I’m making reference to anatomical parts of the body just so that you can feel it. You’re not activating the scapula, the shoulder depression by default activates the scapula and then the spreading of the fingers by default activates the arms. So with that movement of the fingers spreading down and the shoulders drawing down, now we’re gonna slightly grip the heels in toward each other. So the heels want to kind of pull in toward each other and then you’ll feel the inside outside edges of the legs become quite strong. But the grip is not too much, it’s just a little bit at a time, right? So the shoulders draw down a little bit. All the movements that we do too, sometimes we exaggerate those movements just because we want to give you some visual cues. But really they’re quite invisible. If we didn’t exaggerate the movements then it would looks something like this, right? So right here I’m drawing the fingers down, I’m spreading the fingers and I’m drawing the shoulders down, I’m gripping the heels toward each other, but you don’t see me moving. The belly is also relaxed here, move the neck, but occasionally you’ll see us do like this, the spreading and drawing, this is just so we give you the cues, that makes sense. You don’t necessarily have to do that if you’re following through with the movements, absolutely fine. And with this shoulder drawing down motion, with the fingers spreading, you can imagine that the crown of the head moves up away in opposition from the movement of the shoulder down. So at the same time, there’s a bit of an imaginary springing to the floor. So shoulders draw down, but the crown of the head moves up away from that movement. And then there’s this kind of like a little bit of a bounce in the feet. You don’t bounce, but there’s a bouncy sort of like upward feeling, opposing the shoulder depression and aligning with the head going up. So the crown of the head extends and the neck elongates a little bit as you do that. So these movements are very subtle. The shoulders draw down, spread the fingers. You can stop gripping the heels just for a second just to see what’s going on here with the neck. Spread the fingers, extend through the neck, the crown of the head moves up, the shoulders draw down, and then boing, there’s a little bit of like a bounce through the soles of the feet coming up. Again it’s not really a bounce because we’re not bouncing, but it’s this feeling of opposition from the surface. And then we’re gonna relax everything. So that’s quite active there for a second, I’m gonna relax. Now what we’re going to do is gonna crease into the hips again, and as we crease into the hips, you can keep the knees straight. We crease into the hips and as we crease we bring the arms forward to offset the weight over center of gravity. So the arms are the things which are preventing you from falling over because they’re really heavy the arms. I forget but the weight of each arm is something like between three and eight kilograms per arm or something like that. It can be for some people. So or even two to three, two to six or eight kilograms depending. And then as your arms go forward then you start to hinge into the hips more and the knees stay completely stacked over the top of the ankles. If the knees start to go over the top of the toes then you have to focus more on moving more towards the heels using the arms not to fall over so that the knees stay stacked over the top of the heels and then align the arms with the upper torso and then from here you can draw the shoulders down again, spread through the fingers. It’s a similar movement to what we were doing when we were standing straight up, shoulders draw down, spreading the fingers, weight centralizes over the heels, and then we’re going to reverse the movement of going in. As we start to straighten the knees, the arms go forward slightly, and then as the pelvis comes forward, the arms start to come further down. And by the time the knees are totally straight, the arms meet the side of the body and then the knees are straight. But whenever the knees come straight again we don’t lock out the knees, we’re just trying to make them straight. There’s never any locking in the joints happening, it’s just really subtle. Those movements speed up over time, the synchronization of those movements will speed up but we slow them down for the time being again just so that we can have an idea of how to enter and unpack each specific movement. And now we’re going to bring the feet a little bit wider than hips width apart. The feet are wider than hips width apart like this. You can also think initially that the outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other. And I’m just going to turn around and face this way. You can move if you want, but I’m just going to face this way. So I’m going to give you people in back a bit of a different view of what’s going on. And you can move whenever you want to, too. Outside edges of the feet are parallel to each other, and the feet start to pull away from each other. So when we pull away, we don’t pull away to the point where we feel super tired, but we just notice that that pulling is happening. And you feel here, outside edges of the hips become a little bit active. And then the arms first down by the side. You can go ahead and draw the shoulders down. And as you draw the shoulders down, then we’re starting to raise the arms out to the side and up. And again, we’re really taking our time for this move. So as we draw the shoulders down and as we reach the arms out to the side and up, you can also start to imagine again that this back of the neck thing starts to extend and the crown of the head starts to move up and there’s that spring into the feet a little bit more again. You can spread through the fingers here. Again this is just our exaggerating, spread through the fingers, shoulders continue to draw down, actively legs go pulling away from each other and the crown of the head moves up, bouncing kind of away from the floor and following the movement of the crown of the head and the neck extension. So this depression of the shoulders kind of also acts as an elongation of the neck itself. Imagine there’s a suction cup, you know, like somebody put a suction cup on your head and they’re just like sucking your head up like this in a very gentle way, right? Almost like an osteopath would pull onto the back of the head like this when they’re doing some sort of an osteopath session to you, like cranial sacral or orthobionomy or one of those osteopathic modalities where they’re playing a little bit with the position of the head, again, in relation to the neck, and a slight traction of the cervical spine. You want the feeling of that gentle traction of the cervical spine, but on its own, moving up with the shoulder depression. The shoulder depression is one thing that will help to initiate that traction. You spread through the fingers. Continually pulling the feet away from each other. Again, all these movements are subtle to the point where you can continue to manage it over time. If they’re too strong, you’ll become tired. If you’re too tired, let the arms go down once, relax and join back in. Ideally we should be able to keep the arms up for a while eventually and spread through the fingers, but by no means are you required to at this point in time or ever. It really all depends on how you feel. So just keep checking in to make sure, take you know take a break whenever needed, join back in whenever you can. Shoulders draw down, spread through the fingers, extend through the back of the neck, the legs pull away from each other. Now we can also add a little bit of the micro-movement process into this too. So the rib cage itself mobilizes around the top of the pelvis. So you can imagine, don’t pull the navel to the spine here, just move the rib cage. So the rib cage itself mobilizes, it’s not the hips that move, it’s just the rib cage that moves around the top of the pelvis like this in a kind of a circular motion or from side to side and the hips stay and then you can also move through the neck, move through the fingers a little bit and then we’re gonna go ahead lower the arms down and as we lower the arms down continually acting activating the legs away from each other continuing to draw the shoulders down as we lower the arms down continue to extend through the back of the neck and then when the arms get down beside the body just let everything go soft for a second particularly you know you might have noticed that the belly got a little bit active or that the you felt a little bit like there was some activation in the abdominal wall, just check to see have you drawn the navel to the spine like you might have done in some other practice like Pilates or or yoga or or fitness or something like that and try to bring awareness to the fact that this becomes automatic and we try to decondition the automaticity of this navel drawing to the spine all the time it happens all the time in our daily life too because we all believe that there shouldn’t be a belly there and we should draw the navel to the spine so the social aspect of it too we got to break through that like look you know like look see my mother told me to never do this I’m exaggerating this right because I want everybody to see how how relaxed the belly can be the belly is completely relaxed see I’m just letting it protrude out you imagine that that feeling of relaxation is always there, that this never comes into it. So that’s a hard one to get over time and let’s try this again. Let’s try this particular one again with this, right? So when you pull the legs apart, as I mentioned last week, there will be a little bit of activation here and here, but that’s not because we’ve drawn the navel to the spine, because that’s a different mechanism in terms of what the nervous system is doing. The belly’s relaxed, the legs pull away, and this becomes slightly active. That’s normal. Let’s draw the shoulders down now. As we draw the shoulders down, you can tell that the scapula become active and then this becomes a little bit more active here. But still the belly’s not being drawn back in towards the spine. It’s just completely relaxed at this point still. Now as as we draw the shoulders down and spread the arms out to the side, activate the legs away from each other, spread through the fingers, extend through the back of the neck, and then when the arms get up to about shoulders height, you start to depress the shoulders again, draw the shoulders down, spread through the fingers, oppose again this tractioning of the neck, opposing upward, spread through the fingers, extend through the back of the neck, again check again, Has the navel drawn back to the spine? This is happening to so many people. We’ve seen it happen so much over the years. Hard to decondition that one because it’s so natural for it to happen. So, and if you hear the breath getting deep, then it’s time to let the arms go down and relax and relax the breath again. Because there’s a tendency for the breath to get deep when we’re challenged, or when we’re trying to get through some element of something which is unfamiliar to us. So we have to spot again, that’s a cue. The breath becomes strong, then we say, “Oh, time to relax.” You let the arms go down, relax for a second. It’s the same way as if you feel the temperature of the body increasing. Like if it starts to heat up a little bit, then let the arms go down because maybe the body’s working too hard. And then the next time you bring the arms up, what I’d like you to try and do is less activity with the legs, less activity with the shoulders drawing down, but continue to do it. So we’re trying to moderate the intensity by which we draw the shoulders down and by which we spread through the fingers and by which we extend through the back of the neck and by which we pull the legs away from each other. So the whole thing is stable, But as you can see, I’m still talking. I’m in a relaxed composure. My breath is not deep. My body temperature is not going up. Of course, I’m used to it, but everybody will get used to it over time. This type of dynamic, it becomes inherent after some time. Belly. Check the belly to make sure the navel is not pulling in towards the spine. Spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, extend through the back of the neck. Pull the legs away from each other, and then go ahead and mobilize the ribcage over top of the pelvis once or twice as we move through the neck. And then as we lower, reach out and lower. So again, I’m exaggerating these movements. So you don’t have to be so exaggerated like me, but I’m extending the arms out as if somebody’s pulling my arms away from me and the legs pull away at the same time. And as you extend out the arms lower down, the shoulders continue to draw down, the neck tractions away from that movement. Again, it’s just all real subtle. It’s nothing too invasive here. It’s just, again, our demonstrations are a lot more abrupt than the actual reality of what’s going on here. And then by the time you get down to here, you can then let the legs go soft and let the arms go soft and then check in again to make sure the bellies relax. star form. And we go ahead now again and pull the legs away from each other, raise the arms up. Actually, you know what? No, let’s keep the hands on the waist. Let’s go into it. Let’s go into slightly differently. Activate the legs away from each other. And as we activate the legs away from each other, we’re going to draw the shoulders down once, hands will be used to the hips. Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to drop the left heel back. the left heel will drop back like this and the right foot will turn forward. So if everybody could just bear with me for a second, we’re going to go through this movement a few times. So the idea here is that when the left heel goes back and the right foot goes forward, the pelvis by default turns, if that makes sense. So it’s not as if we’re doing this, where the left heels drop back and we turn like this. This is not the, and this is by default what we’re wanting to do. It’ll be separated. The heel drops, this thigh turns in, that foot turns out, and then look, the upper torso just turns like it looks robotic almost, right? See that robotic look, and then you see here too far forward, too far forward, Marta. What we want to do is we don’t want to turn this direction, we only want the hips to move as far as necessary. So it’s not going to be facing that way, the hips are actually facing diagonally out in front of you like this. So you think here, the two hips, you’re diagonally out like this. So where you’re all standing right now, in theory, when you’re when you’ve turned, you should still be able to see me, you shouldn’t have to look like this to see me. That’s kind of like where we’re at with the position. So let’s try it again. Let’s bring the heel in. So the outside of the feet are parallel to each other and we’re going to separate these movements because these are very relevant and this is also a big part of our principle which relates to fixing, separating, isolating. And this is where it’s also becomes very unnatural when it comes to habitual movement patterns because the habitual movement wants the body to turn there. And what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to separate the movements so we don’t follow that habitual pattern. So the left heel, byproduct is the thigh turns in, the right foot turns out, byproduct is, look, that the thigh turning, the pelvis follows it. So we’re not facing that way but rather we’re facing that way. And when we face that way, look at the the chest and the arms line in relation to the legs and then raise the arms up. So the arms shouldn’t be like this, nor should they be out like this. The arms lift into the line of the pelvis position where it is right now, if that makes sense. So see the pelvis position is there, and the arms come up, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down. Now go ahead and pull the legs away from each other here. So slight pulling with the legs away from each other, with the arms up, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down. Now what we’re going to be doing here is this hip creases like this. When it creases, you can think that the left buttock goes back and this right buttock drops. So with that crease, we turn a little bit further forward and the upper torso follows that movement. So again, we’re breaking down this movement to get to this position here, but the arms are in one line. The left arm doesn’t drop back. It stays in line with the shoulder girdle and the pelvis. Spread through the fingers. As that hip draws down, we allow for the upper torso to come down a little bit more, but not beyond the point that the hip creases. And then we unpack that same movement. We push the right hip forward. The left hip draws back. The arms come up. And let’s keep the arms up here and let’s unpack it slightly differently. Let’s take the right foot in now. This thigh is still in. And then the left comes in we come back to the front and we lower the arms. So slowly lowering the arms, slowly lowering the arms. We’ll take a bit of a break here and then the shoulders draw down once and then relax. So we’ll take a break and we’ll do the opposite side. Okay hands on to the waist to start. So Marta you can see me from behind now Yeah, you can watch that. It’ll be a different perspective. But we’re going to do the other side now, so I don’t want to fuck with your brain that way. So the right heel drops back. And as you see with the right heel dropping back now, that hip moves forward. And then the left foot points out, and the pelvis follows. And now we activate the legs away from each other, and we reach the arms out to the side, so that they’re in the same line as the hip. They come up to the side like this and we activate the legs away from each other as we spread through the fingers. As we draw the shoulders down and as we move the neck, tractioning away from the shoulders, spread through the fingers, you move the crown of the head slightly up. As we activate the legs away from each other, we can also slightly move through the neck to here and also mobilize the ribcage over the top of the pelvis. As we spread through fingers, draw the shoulders down, mobilize the ribcage, and then we’re going to unpack it with the arms up. Okay, so what we’re going to do first, oh sorry, we’re going to go down first. So from there we’re going to drop the left hip and the right hip comes slightly forward so that we’re going into a little bit of a dip here, but as you can see the arm position, upper torso position doesn’t change as we drop. So you can just think this left hip drops and there’s a mobilization in the femur, right? So the femur comes up into the acetabulum, which is the big bone of the thigh, comes up and connects to that round socket in the hip, and both of those round-shaped bones kind of sway into this movement in their socket and go this far forward, spread through the fingers, the shoulders continue to draw down, the neck is kind of extending again, shoulders drawing down, spread through the fingers, and we’ll repeat these things over and over again, just for the reciprocity. And now we’re going to push the left hip up. The right hip comes back. We’re going to keep the arms up. We’re going to turn this left foot in first and we’re going to turn the right heel in next. And then we’re going to extend the arms out and down. As we extend the arms out and down, draw the shoulders down and go ahead and pull the feet away from each other here now too to activate that movement. There’s a lot going on, right? Lots of details to remember. I check the belly too, see if there’s any of the core activation conditioning going on there and occasionally just let that go. As the arms come down here you can relax the entire body once and we’re just going to go ahead one more time and we’re going to try that both sides. But this time rather than starting by the hands onto the waist. We’re going to start with the hands up. So we’re going to go ahead now, pull the at the end. I want to answer all your questions. We’re going to leave enough space at the very end. So I’m sorry, but just make a mental note. We’re going to go into detail. Yeah. So activate the legs away from each other and then reach the arms out to the side. Legs activate away, reach arms out to the side, spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down. If the question related to pain, Caitlin then moderate, however it doesn’t feel painful. I just, that’s a little disclaimer there. I don’t mean to discard anything related to pain, so just be very careful. If something feels uncomfortable, don’t do it, please. Activate the legs and then we’re going to go ahead this time and we’re going to start to go in slightly differently. We’re going to start now with the right foot instead of the left heel, okay? And then we’re going to go ahead and drop the heel back, right? See if that changes anything. And then spread through the fingers. Yeah. Noemi, you’re turning the body too far forward. Keep the body more neutrally back. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Pull the legs away from each other here, spread through the fingers, and then crease in that right hip. Allow for the upper torso to drop down like this. Just a little bit like that, right? And then spread through the fingers, draw the shoulders down, draw the, push the right hip up again, the left hip goes back, and then we’re going to take the left heel in, and the right toe, and we’re going to bring the hands down to the waist. Hands down to the waist, once stay there, relax the legs. Just comfortably have the hands on to the waist here for a second. So we’re going to enter again on the second side. So the tendency is again for the upper torso to turn to the left. We try to not let that happen. We’re just only, the hips move only with the position of the legs. So we’ll do it again. Let’s bring the arms up together. So the arms go out as we extend the arms up to the side. Spread through the fingers. Draw the shoulders down. Activate the legs away from each other. Spread through the fingers. Now we’re going to lead with the left foot. Look at this. See the left foot goes out and then the right heel drops back and then there’s just a marginal movement of the upper torso. Spread through the fingers. Activate the legs away from each other, draw the shoulders down, try to keep those elbows straight out to the side unless you have pain, unless you have any pain, and then crease the left hip a little bit, so you lower, so see this, there’s a crease in my left hip, it goes down, and activate the legs continually, stabilizing, spread through the fingers, and then activate the legs away from each other again as you push the left hip up, draw the shoulders down continually. We’re going to now take the left heel in and the right toe, the left, sorry, the right heel in, left toe forward, extend the arms out to the side, lowering down. So when I say lower, it’s an extension and lowering down with each movement. That’s it. And then the arms just stay down beside the body like this for a second. Okay, bring the feet again, hips width apart. And go ahead, come down to the floor. So we’re going to go back and hang back like this, hook onto the knees. So when you’re, oh yeah, one thing, come on up for a second. the sacrum, the bone here, for some people it might feel a little bit bony on the floor, like there might be a little bit of pain onto the surface of the floor, particularly when we lean back to this position here. What you’re trying to do is trying to adjust so that that bony protuberance of the sacrum doesn’t cause any discomfort. Does anybody have a

Ksenia Shcherbakova 39:25 problem with this? Yeah. Okay yeah but definitely you know how it feels right

Patrick Oancia 39:34 so be very careful not to have that bony protuberance like you know yeah so when we’re doing these movements which are going to be happening over and over and over again, you have to find a point of moderation by which it doesn’t feel painful. Alternately, what you can do is you can fold up a towel questions after. Sorry, I’m going to answer

James 39:57 all your questions in detail. Yeah, so there’s always a bit of an imbalance here and there,

Patrick Oancia 40:09 but let’s get into discussion after. Keep that open, and we’ll definitely come back to that. So just my point here was that please don’t aggravate that bony, that bony protuberance feeling here. But you want to hang back like kind of this far. Actually, if you do go back this far, you get right off of that bony protuberance. You’re kind of like above the sacrum and then you hang back and lift like this. So we’re trying to find that point of standing. It’s much harder to do if you’re here. Okay. It’s much easier to do if you roll off the back of the sacrum and let your arms hang here. So this is our reclining transition. We let that go. We press the palms forward, draw the shoulders down and spread through the balls of the feet, point the balls of the feet forward. Yeah. And then we’re going to lower the arms down like this. And then we’re going to cross that left leg and cross the right leg. Cross at the ankles, pull the heels in toward the pelvis and lower the legs down as such. So you can see the legs are kind of crossed, just a simple cross with the legs here. And then we’re going to bring this right arm forward like this. We’re going to try as much as possible to not push too much with the other arm, but we’re going to try to find a way that we can find our balance and by which the abdominal muscles are helping us up without drawing the navel to the spine. and then we’re going to be drawing the shoulders down as we flex the upper spine and as we roll forward in the upper spine flexion we’re going to oppose this movement of the flexion forward as we flex forward and down so the opposition is that the feet are pushing into the floor like they want to push you back and in with that same pushing from the feet you flex the spine and you go only as far forward as possible. Some people may stay here, some people may come further forward. The upper spine is flexed, as you can see, it’s really round, and the hands are just beside in a really relaxed way. The shoulders draw down here, the neck can periodically move. Make sure that the belly is completely relaxed. Continue to oppose this movement by pressing the feet into the floor by flexing the upper spine. So there’s an opposition that as you go forward, you feel like you’re flying backward at the same time with that flexion. Now we’re going to unpack that from our flexion to extension and when we extend the spine we may have to adjust to go back slightly, as you can see. And you might even just support yourself with the hands here so that you can go into the full flexion. You can see I’m supporting a little bit with the hands, I’m still pressing with the outside edges of my feet to the floor as we flex, as we extend the spine here. So the spine goes from full flexion to full extension and then as we flex again we’re trying to find that tipping point by which we can let go of the floor and lean back again like we’re falling back. It’s the same idea as when we’re standing on the heels, okay? So we’re trying to find with the weight of the arms the point in which we can teeter-totter into that balance. We go back and the legs lift up off the ground like that and then the arms are also helping here and then the legs extend the balls of the feet press forward the thighs roll in towards each other and then we lower the arms like we’re landing in the spaceship balls of the feet press forward lift the chest at the very end uh which right leg is the opposite right left over right left over right thank you thank you james left over right cross heels come in close to the pelvis once bring the arm forward the other arm forward it should be opposite arm I brought my right arm forward again should be the left arm that comes forward on that opposite time and then oppose flex one side always different than the other and that flexion opposition spine stays flexed as you come forward shoulders continue to draw down and then you feel that activation under the scapula. Shoulders continue to draw down as you flex forward and then the upper spine flexion goes to the extension and as we extend the feet are still resisting and you might put the hands beside the body. You might even prop yourself with the hands for a second there so that you can feel that that the extension is stable. In the end we don’t want to use the hands for the extension whatsoever. We want to be able to extend without any propping that if you need to, that’s fine for now. Just so you can feel the difference between the flexion and the extension. And then as we flex again, we’re finding that teeter-totter, that balanced tipping point. Hanging back here. Try to keep the breath totally calm. Try not to deepen the breath if you feel challenged. Just take a break and watch if you feel too challenged. Balance. Balls of the feet go forward. You can see my breath is calm. I’m talking normally. Lower the forearms, balls of the feet press forward and then lower the knees. Oh sorry, lower the feet down to the ground. Take one hand around to the front, the other hand around to the front and just hang back once here. And when you hang back once you feel the belly get really relaxed because there’s a lot of abdominal wall activation in this. Belly gets relaxed once and then come on up. And again please save your

Ksenia Shcherbakova 45:38 questions, Asha you take over. Proceed. So we will now proceed to the peak but when we peak is this form but before we do that just think about when we do the v-sit this point this point and this point this is the inverted shape of the peak right so those two forms are connected like this right So it’s a completely different muscular dynamics, but the position is the same. So when we get inverted, we’re looking for the same position, the knees, the hips and the shoulder, but inverted.

Patrick Oancia 46:15 Right. Oh, can you go back for a second? I just want to show them. Also, you can also think that the gap is closing between the top of the thigh and the rib cage.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 46:24 Yeah, like kind of like this, this movement.

Patrick Oancia 46:27 And you can control that by bending the knees more. You’ll see when we go upside down.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 46:31 right and how we find the natural position for this conformation for ourselves feet on the floor hands here we lean back extend the elbows and then we tilt back right so this is kind of like what it should feel like if you release the hands this is more or less the natural position here for you when you go upside down the gravity will be and also the tightness of the hamstrings will be pushing you more like this but you need to continue trying to converge so in Baseworks we call it converge because of what we are doing this movement essentially with our hips so when we do the peak what we’re looking for is that we don’t want kind of this stuff to happen we keep converging this is why the focus is called converge you may have to open your arms more right like you don’t want to do this type of stuff you don’t want to like let’s say if you’re really tight maybe you will be more like this this is also what we don’t want to see so you need to open your arms as wide as you need to in order and bend the knees in order to be able to push your pelvis back until you can have the knee hip and the shoulder this shape right so we’re looking for a position for some people who are very flexible that’s more easy but if you’re less flexible the tendency is that this stuff happens so you need to think about holding something in the crease of the thigh. Okay so let’s try to come on the hands and knees and then we will try to come into the peak and find that shape. So more or less hands under the shoulders, knees under the hips, tiptoes. Open your arms a little bit wider now than your shoulder widths and also when we come into people want to draw the shoulders down so that the side of the ribcage is active. So lift the hips up and relax the neck, draw the shoulders down, make sure you’re not really like dropping the chest, you want to have your spine straight. The hands are pressing forward and down, you draw the shoulders down, don’t open the chest, the heels are high up so you’re on the tiptoes, bend the knees and push the chest back. Okay, lower the knees down. How about you all turn in the opposite direction so that when you go kind of upside down you can look at me. Can you do that? Okay great. So once again let’s come onto the hands knees and toes and then coming up so lift the sit bones make sure that you are really high on the tip toes right so bend the knees as much as you have to and the arms are pressing back right so you can kind of bend your elbows just a little bit and then extend the elbows just to feel this movement of pressing forward and down with your arms make sure to draw the shoulders down right so don’t hike your shoulders draw the shoulders down push the hips back and you’re really high on the tiptoe and again like don’t drop the heels the heels are high up and the toes are gripping back anytime you’re tired drop the knees and relax

Patrick Oancia 49:47 Anytime. Don’t persevere to hold it while we’re instructing you.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 49:51 Make sure that this movement doesn’t happen. You want to as much as possible. If you don’t feel like you have enough flexibility, you can bring the stomach closer to the sides and try to lift your hips a little bit from that position.

Speaker 5 50:06 Let’s drop the knees for a second.

Patrick Oancia 50:11 Actually, you have to remember it’s a little bit more challenging being upside down. There’s a lot of activity there. so a lot of weight being held so we can’t hold it for so long.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 50:24 Yes?

Patrick Oancia 50:33 You were saying something? Exactly, I was just saying that you’re we we’ve got to remember that it’s actually very challenging. Well anyway yes whenever you

Ksenia Shcherbakova 50:43 feel tired calm down just make sure that you don’t open the chest when you start opening the chest you draw the shoulders down and you try to kind of bring the armpits in so you don’t want to like really open here at all close and draw the shoulders down whenever we are standing also we never can open like this we stack the ribcage and pelvis and this is the same position that the upper body is doing, only our knees are bent here. So let’s just try one more time and again when you feel like you’re getting tired just bring the knees down, we don’t want to lose the form.

Patrick Oancia 51:21 Yeah just a quick just a quick note on that, so the thing about moderation and just take our word for it, it happens that when we practice these particular things with so much detail that you won’t feel it here, you’ll feel it when you go home. So our most important advice to everybody is that if you feel it when you go home, you’ve probably overdone it. So in the session, even if you don’t feel challenged at some point, but you feel a little bit tired, drop down, take a rest and watch us because we don’t want you to go home and say, oh geez, my shoulders were sore for three days type of thing. That makes sense. we’re used to it so we can hold it for a long time that uh please just be be mindful of that and then particularly if you go home today you feel sore from this session remember next time

Ksenia Shcherbakova 52:12 you can always moderate. James try to bring your heels much higher yes and bend your knees even more okay yes yes okay so let’s try one more time let’s come up heels high bend the knees push the chest back and when you are here really like you need to keep the shape very strongly so for example, try to lift one of your feet and your shape should not change at all, just a little bit. Not very high, but just lift your foot just two centimeters off the floor and the rest of the shape of your body should not change at all. Keep pressing forward with the arms, shoulders drawn down, relax the neck and just play a little bit with your feet. So you should be able to lift the foot just a little bit and also with your hands like you can kind of lift one hand lift another hand the rest of your body should hold the shape yeah okay let’s bring the knees down let’s bring the knees down because you are very flexible draw the shoulders down and close Okay but essentially the upper body is doing the same shape as here and we’re doing this movement. Okay so that’s the converge focus. Next. Yes and another form that we will look in detail right now is the the front lines that we’ll be doing a lot. In almost every session in Baseworks we will do this. So this is this, this, this and come out. We call it ascend as we explained in the lesson because you have the foundation which is like strong like a rock and from there we lift up while keeping the foundation. So this pattern we will see it a lot across different forms but this form is really good to look into it. So okay intensity modification. We had a comment that it’s tiring, it is tiring for some people and how to deal with the tiredness in the lunge. The most extreme version of this lunge will be using the arms to offset the weight and then the depth is determined by how far you can bring your foot without momentum. So for me it’s going to look something like this. But if I spend a lot of time here this is very tiring. So for example maybe I wouldn’t

Patrick Oancia 54:47 be doing this every day. But you can also see that Asha was shaking on the way down so she is tired. I can see that there was a slight fluctuation. Well that’s actually not because of tiredness,

Ksenia Shcherbakova 54:59 that’s because that range is difficult to control the movement. You’re a little bit tired.

Patrick Oancia 55:06 But, but. So ideally the movement of each form should be fluid so when there’s any kind of shaking or instability, that’s conscious or unconsciously telling you that there’s less control in the

Ksenia Shcherbakova 55:24 movement. Yes, but yeah so control is a big part of intensity modification. We do talk about it in segment four I think that control is one of the types of intensity modification but for fatigue the lunge can look like this. So arms up, we hinge, we shift and we can bring the leg maybe just here as long as the front knee is above the heel this is also perfectly acceptable okay or even like less or even less you can just go almost well you have to have your back heel high up so you cannot really kind of like this is maybe this is maybe not working but maybe the minimal distance is something like this which is doable so anything from here and then you move the leg back back back back this is all the same form and you just determine the stance based on how you feel okay that’s intensity modification but in terms of the ascend aspect of this form so when we enter this is basically a squat we shift we bring the leg back we make sure that this knee is above the heel so it’s not here it’s not here like this we are really aware of the position of the front knee we pull the legs away to create from the foundation and then we find a straight line between the back leg and the upper body this is the grid lines and symmetry and from here we pull the legs away and as we wiggle we only bring the upper body up forward up forward this ability to separate is what ascend is about. Okay when we exit we will lean forward with control come out this is called transit we have another segment about it. Let’s stand up and let’s try to do it. So we start with feet, hip widths apart as usual toes lightly in draw the shoulders down bring the pelvis above the hips spread the fingers and first bring the arms diagonally forward draw the shoulders down once again and then hinge in the hips we’re kind of coming into squat as a transition make sure that the weight is on the heels shift the weight onto the let’s say left foot and then you begin to lift your right foot and then bring the tiptoe back and then just find a position where you feel comfortable so that you don’t feel tired make sure sure the front knee is not forward look at it and make sure the knee is above the heel pull the legs away make sure that the right knee is extended the back heel is really high up so don’t drop your heel and then lean forward to find a completely straight line to your back leg so upper body and the leg completely straight pulling the legs away create the strong foundation and as you pull the legs away and you wiggle the spine a little bit start lifting your ribcage without moving the legs. Legs don’t move at all. Keep pulling the legs away, draw the shoulders down, spread the fingers. So we have distributed activation in the legs and in the upper body but the waist is liquid. And then we lean forward, we find the straight line one more time and then with control we shift the weight onto the front leg. Balance, bring the right foot to hip width apart, return to center slowly arms down with control slowly slowly slowly lifting lowering the arms come to the standing position relax for a moment yeah make sure that the feet are hip width apart the pelvis is above the heels shoulders don’t spread the fingers arms go diagonally forward offset the weight draw shoulders down keep the arms active never let go of the activation hinge in the hips draw the shoulders down shift the weight onto the right foot and then the left leg goes back again find the stance where you would feel comfortable for maybe 40 seconds lean forward find the straight line between the back leg and the upper body keep pulling the legs away the back heel high up don’t drop it. So straight line, shoulders down, spread the fingers, pull the legs away. The legs are active. As you pull the legs away there’s activation in both legs, back knee extended. And then as you wiggle the ribcage, lift the ribcage. There should be no compression in the lower back. If you feel compression in the lower back you can lean a bit forward. Keep the back heel high up. Keep drawing the shoulders down. Then lean forward one more time find the straight line shift the weight onto the front leg balance the left foot returns to back to hip width apart center and then slowly lower the arms extend the spine unhinge the hips very very slowly we return to standing position and relax for a moment just throw the shoulders down and relax the neck Which time do we have?

Patrick Oancia 01:00:43 Time to do the McCain.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:00:44 35 minutes. Let’s do it again. Yeah. So let’s do it again a little bit faster, but make sure what I observed a little bit is that some heels, the back heel sometimes was a little bit like this. High, like tiptoe. Okay, pull the legs away and the legs are very strong. So the legs are the back knee extended, the front knee is above the heel. Really strong foundation. So let’s do it one more time. Throw the shoulders down, spread the fingers. I’m gonna just like turn around and arms go diagonally forward. Hinge in the hips, weight on the heels. Shift the weight onto the left foot. The right tiptoe back to comfortable position. Look at your knee, front knee above the heel. Lean forward as you pull the legs away. Wiggle the ribcage and try to find a completely straight line from the back leg to the upper body spreading the fingers and then as you wiggle the ribcage you lift the ribcage a little bit drawing the shoulders on making sure that the legs don’t move only your upper body moves keep pulling the legs away drawing the shoulders down lean a little bit forward find the straight line again straight line shift the weight to the front leg balance right leg returns to hip width apart and then slowly unhinge and bring the arms down. Controlled exit. Okay, confirm the position of the feet again, draw the shoulders down, spread the fingers, arms go diagonally forward, spread the fingers, hinge, so bend the knees, bend hips shift the weight onto the right foot the left tiptoe goes back establish the foundation the back heel is high up we’re pulling the legs away straight line from the back heel to the top of the head wiggle the rib cage as you pull the legs away like strong shoulders down we wiggle the rib cage we feel the straight line and then we separate the lower body and the upper body and the upper body starts moving up as we wiggle the ribcage, drawing the shoulders down, pulling the legs away and then lean a little bit forward, shift onto the front leg, left leg returns to hip width apart, arms slowly down. Okay let’s do it one more time, last one. So shoulders down, arms diagonally forward, draw the shoulders down hinge in the hips shift the weight onto the left foot right foot goes back high on the tiptoe create the foundation pull the legs away legs strong find the straight line and as you wiggle the ribcage and pull the legs away you start to lift the upper body keep spreading the fingers keep the arms active drawing the shoulders down and then lean forward find the straight line shift the weight onto the front leg right leg hip width apart center slowly lower the arms and the last time arms diagonally forward drawing the shoulders down hinge in the hips and the knees shift the weight onto the right foot left foot far back high on the tiptoe pull the legs away create the foundation lean forward find the straight line wiggle the spine and as you wiggle lift the ribcage no compression the lower back okay pulling the legs away and then lean forward straight line shift the weight into the front foot left leg returns to hip width apart weight center arms down slowly extend the spine draw the shoulders down and then just relax a little bit relax all the muscles, relax the neck and just stand for a moment. 20 minutes? I think we have 31. Let’s do a simulation and then Q&A. 20 minutes? Well, 30 minutes. Lie down. Let’s do a simulation. Lift your head up off the floor, look forward.

Patrick Oancia 01:05:16 You can even move the legs a little bit away from each other here. Wiggle through the hips a little bit. And then leading from the shoulders here, you want to extend the shoulders forward and flex the upper spine. The back of the pelvis is glued to the floor and the lower part of the back becomes long as you do this. So as you flex forward like this, the very lower part of the back becomes long and the upper spine flexes. Once you’ve got more length into the lower part of the back, you can keep the chin tucked in towards the chest and then allow for the

Patrick Oancia 01:06:10 to touch the floor with the chin as close to the chest as possible. Okay, once the head touches the floor, try not to move the pelvis, just leave it where it is. You should already have a little bit of attraction in the spine here. Go ahead and take whichever hand feels comfortable for you and reach around to the back of the head and very gently just pull the chin in toward the chest a bit more making the back of the neck go a little bit longer. Now this is uncomfortable for you,

Speaker 4 01:06:36 you don’t have to do it so much or not at all even. But if it feels okay for you to extend the back of the neck and pull the chin a little bit closer to the chest, go ahead and do that with your hand and then go ahead and let the arms lay beside the body. The palms can be facing down, it doesn’t really matter, and the arms can be away from the sides of the body. Even the palms can be facing each other or the palms can be facing up. Whatever feels more naturally comfortable for you. You’re bringing some sort of level of attention to the weight of the body onto this surface that we’re on here, which is this Marty floor in the studio. Feel the weight of the heels and the back of the calves and the back of the pelvis and the back of the shoulders as well as the back of the arms, elbows, shoulders, back of the head. First we just want to bring the attention to the weight so it’s noticeable that this weight is prominent, the body is heavy and it’s really connecting with the surface. over some period of time here we’re just kind of imagining that the points of the body that i just explained the heels the back of the legs the back of the pelvis the back of the arms the back of the shoulders the back of the head that they all start to merge into that surface below you so it goes from this weight to a kind of a weightlessness and just the breath here is just totally relaxed and you know just composure also relaxed breath is calm just trying to imagine this transition from full weight to weightlessness and whereby possible we don’t move either we let that the tractioning of the spine stay intact. So of course if it feels uncomfortable you can move, but it’s comfortable for you to allow for the traction to be happening in the neck and from the pelvis to the middle of the back, then just let that go. And again, what that might resemble is a bit of an osteopull, like a chiropractor might do that, or some osteopath might do that. So it’s that feeling that the head is really suspended in that weightlessness, when we get into it, that is. Now you can do whatever you want here with your eyes. Your eyes can be open. They can be staring up at that beautiful white ceiling. It’s very vast and I love that white. Or you can keep the eyes closed here, up to you. But the idea is that we don’t want to sleep, nor do we want to kind of drift off into some sort of euphoric, super comfort state either. We want to bring all of our attention to the transition of the weight to weightlessness. Allowing for that traction in the spine just to be intact. And of course, if the weightlessness thing doesn’t happen, it doesn’t matter. If the weight thing is happening today, that’s also good. Just bring attention to that. at any point in time of course if there’s any discomfort in what we’re doing you can modify the way that you are right now to to reduce or alleviate that discomfort because we don’t want you to be uncomfortable and then it’s possible. Okay, we’re going to go ahead now and with a really kind of slow movement, we’re going to reach the arms around the back of our head, so over the top of our head I should say, maybe it’d be easier to understand, and then we’re going to interlock the fingers, our arms are still close to the ground here, and we’re going to push the palms away from the head as we stretch up through the arms and armpits and we’re going to also move the legs away from the arms so we’re kind of extending the arms away from the legs. The legs are extending away from the arms and then we’re gonna let the arms go for a second and we’re gonna find the the most non-invasive way to

Speaker 5 01:14:50 roll over onto our stomach. Then when we get over onto our stomach, we can put the crown of the head down or the cheek, either cheek down. It doesn’t really matter what you do here. And we’re going to again bring a sensation, bring our kind of attention to this weight sensation. So depending whether your head, the forehead’s down or the cheek is down, that part of your head, the weight there, the weight of your arms facing down, the weight of your ribcage and the lower part of your chest, the weight of your pelvis and the weight of the legs, including the knees, the weight of the tops of the feet. And again, we’re bringing a sensation of this weight first and foremost connecting to the surface below us. So we sense how heavy the body is. I mean, it’s quite heavy. And then at some point, you know, if it’s successful in some way, then we feel this weightlessness, this dissolving of these points of our body into the surface below us. And that weightlessness becomes very comfortable. So we’re no longer tractioning the spine here now, so we’ve given the spine a bit of a break. But that sensation of the body prone here facing down, the weight sensation is also slightly different. So you can take a mental note of whatever feels different. and then however you want you can sort of just find your way back to coming up to sit and we’ll

Speaker 4 01:18:33 just have a bit of a chat and answer some questions and go over whatever we

Patrick Oancia 01:18:40 need to with everyone. I just want to make sure the time 20 minutes okay perfect. So Caitlin let’s start with you because you did have a question. Face.

Speaker 4 01:18:59 Face. Ah.

Natalie 01:19:01 And I’m going to say, I have a tendency to clench holes, and I’m just…

Speaker 4 01:19:13 Face. Yeah.

Patrick Oancia 01:19:14 That’s a good, great question. I think it’s really important as much as possible to try and relax the face. Relax the jaw, relax the mouth, relax the cheeks, relax the tongue, relax everything. The tension in the face, I also have, I tend to clench my jaw, and I do have TMJ as well. I think they call it TMJ, TMJ syndrome. So I’ve had to wear a mouth plane for the better part of my adult life, because when I go to sleep at night, I grind. When I was really young, I was dislocating my jaw in my sleep. So that tension does carry over for me. So I empathize with that. But as much as possible when we’re doing any of the forms here, try to keep the face as relaxed as humanly possible. And a way to kind of maybe help with that a little bit, although we don’t talk a lot about the face when it comes to the practice, is to open the jaw like that and then just relax it. And also, as we get more into the micro-movements, which we emphasize a little bit today, that movements with the neck and the subtle movements in the shoulders and the chest and the ribcage can sometimes potentially aid in helping the face to relax. But this is really interesting because not a lot of people ask about the face. So thank you for that question.

Speaker 5 01:20:45 Oh, yes.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:21:01

• Yes. This part?

Noemie 01:21:04 In different parts, my body, and then the focus into the pain, I notice it, and I keep just doing the exercises, and then it went away.

Natalie 01:21:15 I feel like a lot of it is fine too. Cool. just the first few times we did this, like it just, this was adjusting, like, gee, gee, exactly, and she said gee, gee, gee, gee, gee, and now my heart is okay, and I wonder, could we ask questions after each second, because then it’s very far away, the stuff I want to say

Patrick Oancia 01:21:40 that I forgot. Yeah, so the practical application part of the, part of what we do here in every session in relation to questions is meant to carry through with the with the assignment work and i totally understand what you mean about questions yeah yeah so all that all that we say that you know it’s just a disclaimer that that we ask everybody to be considerate of when you when we start and sometimes too i i’m just reminding asha because people will sometimes persevere with the movements and if you feel something strange all that we ask you to do is if something feels a little bit awkward or strange and we’re not in that question asking adapt or stop and just watch um for the time being what for the practical part of it it It just carries through from what you’ve experienced watching the applied practice labs on the platform and then doing the practice itself. So we know it’s challenging in people’s schedules to do those exercises at home, but the more those are done at home and the more you rewatch the practice labs, the more we can hit the ground with the practical application here. So again, it’s not like I don’t want to scold anybody, because it’s not about scolding. It’s more just about it’s designed in such a way that it’ll be different from a regular workshop and where you could stop and ask the teacher lots of questions and we break it down. That’ll break the momentum of our practice, if that makes sense. But now is the time. And also, it’s very important, and I’m glad you brought it up. Really, really, if anything feels strange for anybody, It’s absolutely fine to stop at any point in time. You can stop, you can observe, you can watch, you can check in. None of what we’re doing here, if it’s approached with moderation in mind, is meant to be invasive in any way. And over the years, there are certain people that have had what they thought were adverse reactions to it, that it wasn’t adverse as much as it was just something they didn’t experience before, and it was having an effect on the body in some way. So we just ask that everybody be really mindful of how you feel, and if it feels strange while we’re in the practice, you can even just sit down and watch at any point in time. Yeah? - It actually felt good at the end. - Good.

Natalie 01:24:25 My body wasn’t trying to something positive. The other thing when we were doing this and moving back and then you said traction and I feel like you’re going backwards. I guess I’m checking in, is the feeling I’m feeling the feeling that we’re supposed to be feeling is kind of my question. Yeah. So it feels like the counter, like I’m pushing, and I’m not resisting, but it’s like doing this. It’s a good feeling. Is it a good, is it a good feeling? Is it a good feeling like this?

Patrick Oancia 01:25:09 Yeah. So I think the outcomes of the sensation that anybody has will be will be different. What we’re what we’re focusing on more is just body weight transfer, a simple way to say that. As a result of some body weight transfer you may be feeling things that are different from others but in specific movements like when we ask you to push the feet into the floor and push away and flex the spine, what we want you to feel is that just to push the feet to the floor and flex the spine, draw the shoulders down. If at some point there’s something in there which comes up as a result of those movements which feels very unique and very specific. Of course you can talk about it at the end in the practice sessions or you can also share on the form and those things in detail because in the form we could share we can also go into a lot more detail about the result of like what’s happening but it’s not a question of it being right or wrong for anybody. The main thing is just simple stuff that doing like the pulling of the legs away from each other and the drawing of the shoulders down, the spreading to the fingers and when we’re down on the floor, the transferring of the weight, the pressing the feet to the floor, the drawing the shoulders down or as we work today in the peak hold, the bringing the ribcage toward the thighs and drawing the shoulders down at the same time, you’re doing those things. We want you to feel, we want you to follow all those little instructions as closely as possible, moderating them to the point where you can feel like it’s not invasive. That’s the really important thing. Even if it’s a little bit unique, the way that you’re feeling it, and it feels kind of strange, but it doesn’t feel invasive, like invasive is not the right word, but you’re unsure of it, even at that point I’d say you could, if you want, you could stop and just observe. follow follow the instructions as what seems most appropriate to you so any of the instructions to we give of the movements if you can follow those without it feeling like it’s overwhelming you then follow them and yeah at this point in time the most important point that we can make about the practice is rinse and repeat that’s how it works these movements drawing the shoulders down and pulling the legs away from each other and spreading through the fingers and flexing the

Natalie 01:27:59 spine those things are being instructed a million times but it down in the

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:28:08 ankle yeah whenever you lift the foot extend the ankle in base work can I add just a bunch of technical stuff just to add to what Patrick said so first of all about remembering what you wanted to ask until kind of the Q&A a part of it is also training because if you notice something and then you forgot that’s just the reality of what it is to work with all this very subtle stuff so in a way holding the memory until the end of the session is a form of training too yeah so one part of it is yeah it’s true that it also disrupts the practice itself which means that you and the group might lose you know the momentum something that they could get from the practice but also just holding on that that’s training in itself. The second part about here like feeling kind of like almost like jerks like realignments it’s absolutely normal and in fact the longer you do this practice the more this happens and training your arms to be strong enough to hold them in this position without dropping a sweat without you know your breathing become becoming labored that’s actually what’s building the more contemplative aspect of it and also eventually helps to use this practice for relaxation because I realized that if you’re completely untrained you start doing this and you’re like oh my god this is so difficult like how is it the contemplative practice but when you get comfortable what you’re describing that there are certain like readjustments and then by the end maybe you have learned something about certain imbalance for example I often notice that in the end when I come out the way my fingers are touching my thighs they will be just slightly slightly asymmetrical in certain days and we’ll pay attention to that or for example as I lower my arms I count how many different types of sensations in like in the how much my knees are bent for example let’s say today I was able to do 25 steps as I was extending and that’s different from day to day and so on like there’s so much stuff that you can find in these standing practices that we don’t instruct but that’s like a game in a way. It is what it is basically a contemplative practice and in relation to this we’ll talk more about what we’re actually doing here. We press and we do the opposing movement that’s called distributed activation sorry that’s called the opposition of forces as a strategy to create distributed activation so we will talk later about this. It did come up in one of the videos I think in what was the video maybe the movement patterns and micro movements one of the do you remember one of the videos is in segment two didn’t mention that position of forces anyway but it will come up more yes but and also in relation to the last question that you had like how do I know this question comes up a lot how do I know that I’m doing it right the structure of this program is the first five segments of the primer which map on the first six session sessions of this program is where we learn the vocabulary, the foundation, you know, what we’re supposed to do when we hear the vocabulary, especially in session two if you’re like I’m not sure if I’m doing this right. That’s fine, completely fine, because we haven’t even studied all the vocabulary until the end. Yes, but trying to do exactly what we’re saying is a part of it. Yeah, okay.

James 01:31:45 Kind of also like…

Noemie 01:31:48 We create space into the body, like more space so the body can readjust and heal by itself. This is actually how we were doing it. Like you know when you said that you had something just falling over there? I feel it so much into my body. I feel like taller. So for me, you see, it’s different than the way you see it. like oh wow it’s so good because it’s like i feel i have more space to like i feel yeah

Patrick Oancia 01:32:21 but one thing i i in these comments are great one thing i want to say is that it it’s not i don’t want to say you should feel bad that is not meant to be feeling good all the time either i think what what the result of doing these movements are sometimes is that it will make it may make some people feel uncomfortable with with not understanding as you’ve mentioned am i doing this right or not and that’s a part of the immersion if you want to call it that so you know like a um i don’t know if you’ve ever done a language immersion in another language that you haven’t like i don’t know like if you go to china like you go to china you took a little 101 with uh you know like chinese basic crash course in grammar and then you’re like in a scenario where the the teachers are just like talking at you in Chinese. It’s a similar type of thing that we have with the movements. We do have the, but different to that is that we do have the theoretical preliminary in the segments, which you practice between. But when we get into the first part of every session, so they’ll all be like this, that as we get closer to the end, we’re doing more and more forms. So in some ways, even though we’ll be reminding you of the instructions it’ll go a bit quicker and by that point too I think that some of the things will make I’m hoping they’ll make more sense alongside of the theory so yeah

Noemie 01:33:46 I have a question

Patrick Oancia 01:33:47 yes

Noemie 01:33:49 what do you suggest like if I want to practice more of the forms should I just like choose like maybe a couple forms and just really get into it or if I want to like maybe build up a routine so I can do it in the morning, like just just practice and go even deeper into it. I don’t know what you suggest.

Patrick Oancia 01:34:13 Yeah, so at this stage the only thing that we suggest is just to to get through the segments, the online and then do smart revisit.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:34:29 As much as you feel like doing it.

Patrick Oancia 01:34:32 The smart revisit is a randomized repeating of the theoretical and the practical. Okay, the practical application aspect of the practice labs.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:34:50 By the way, is everybody familiar with smart revisit? Does everybody? Patrick, why don’t you explain? I’ll just open my computer and I’ll show it.

Patrick Oancia 01:34:58 Yeah, so a smart revisit is just, it’s on your dashboard. So, and there’s a little box that says smart revisit. It’s just going to suggest things that you do and just click in and it’ll show you a practice lab. And then you can do the practice lab along with it. So, is there a way to do it? Yeah, so, but it’s interesting you have a question. So, we…

Noemie 01:35:19 I’m watching videos, but sometimes it’s like I’m going into it, but I don’t want to know the rest of it. So it’s like I’m doing it, but I don’t feel like I’m going deeper as much as I’m in the pool. So that’s why I was like, maybe I should do it. But that’s me. I like to go deep.

Patrick Oancia 01:35:40 I think it’s a great question. But this also is something that we ask everybody that comes in with that mindset to leave that aside. So what you’re used to doing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I also do that when I study specific things in my fitness-specific workout routines. When I do strength training or when I do cardiovascular fitness, I follow more of a model whereby I’m rinsed and repeating with stuff that is more systematic in terms of repeat application. As to where in BaseWorks what we’re asking everybody to do is, as much as possible, try to understand the theoretical applications first. Then let that go and just experience it. And if you don’t think you’re doing it right, it doesn’t matter.

Noemie 01:36:31 Yeah, I think that’s because we actually used to like, are doing it right or not right. in society in general. Is it right? Is it wrong? Is it true? Is it wrong? Just do it. Feel it. It’s something that maybe…

Patrick Oancia 01:36:50 Yeah, and the outcome for you and for you it’ll become different for all of you. So what we’re trying to also encourage is that how one approaches this practice becomes very independently different. That’s something that we, although we teach it, you could say what we teach is structured, and it’s got like a dogmatic structure to it. We’re always saying moderate the intensity. So the practice will look different for everybody, according to how you feel. And this is where it becomes a little bit outside of the conventional, practical application box of movement education. So movement education is focused very much on linear progression as to where ours is, this course is, it runs on a linear path in terms of the primer, but the smart revisit and the regurgitating of all the applications is non-linear. And that non-linear application relates entirely to individual condition and we don’t know who you

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:38:05 right we don’t know what goes on in your lives so that’s also i would like to add that in terms of what’s correct and what’s not correct in terms of movements in Baseworks absolutely 100 there is a rule for what’s correct and what’s incorrect in terms of what we want to achieve but the path to be able to do that it’s different for everybody and there’s this phase where you will be doing something not how we really want you to be doing that but just if we just start stopping everybody and correct every detail it’s just going to be overwhelming for everybody so we don’t do that exactly so they may not be really parallel but your effort to keep attention you know and pay attention and try to understand whether they’re parallel or not this is also what’s building to eventually being able to keep them parallel. Okay so look that smart to revisit is on your dashboard here yeah so the more you practice the more you essentially it shows you randomly two random practice lessons so the more you progress the more there will be a variety right and also I wanted to ask you are you familiar with have you found your primer print on this menu did you see your primer print everybody yeah so also the more you do the practice the see that your primer print becomes revisit you how do you say you start revisiting there is a revisit index on the primer print right and ideally you want at least 50 percent that’s ideal many people do 16 25 that’s fine we don’t push you to do 50 but we find that people who get the most they have their revisit index of about 50 and you can see your index on the primer print It is fun to watch. It is fun to watch, yes.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:39:59 It is fun to watch, yeah. Yeah. And the more you progress, the more it is fun to watch. Yes.

Natalie 01:40:03 I think I’m at about 40%. And I’m actually strongly visually motivated to just—

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:40:12 I’m so happy to hear that because this is a part of it. This is really satisfying to see it being drawn and kind of replay your progress. Yes, that’s part of it. Thank you.

Natalie 01:40:23 I love that you say, “Oh, I’ve been chunking all of my training on this day.” And then I see it. So, yeah, it’s a good feedback.

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:40:34 Any other questions? We’re kind of out of time, but… Are we? No? Okay.

Patrick Oancia 01:40:39 Are we out of time?

Ksenia Shcherbakova 01:40:41 Well, it’s the end of the session, yeah.

Patrick Oancia 01:40:43 Okay. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. See you next week. Oh, any questions come to mind, please post them on the forum, and we’ll answer them in detail.