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Showing results for tags 'tai-chi'.
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I wonder if anyone has any advice on exercises for specifically increasing body awareness in a general stretch class. I teach two classes. In one, the members are all long-term yoga students and all have excellent body awareness, and move into and out of positions under control, with economy, and gracefully. However I have recently taken over another group of students, whose backgrounds can be more simply called "stretch" (and they have signed up anticipating a stretch class). The age range goes from late 30s to late 70s (though the one in the late 70s is a long-term yoga student who is excellent in all respects). However, they are a very mixed group, and some of the others give rise to concern. I suspect that some have poor body awareness and control. Some may flop into and out of positions. Some seem unable to control different parts of their body separately. Some are unable to relax their muscles while under stretch. In all my classes I pay some attention to body awareness, and find that slow, smooth movements (e.g. rotations) of the wrists and ankles are excellent at drawing peoples' attention to this (some of this is included in the Novel Movements posting some time ago; we do these too). However, these relate to only limited parts of the body. I know that body awareness underlies the practice of ST at every stage, and therefore it is implicitly taught by every exercise, but I wonder does anyone have any exercises that brings it to the forefront and teaches it more explicitly, and for parts of the body other than wrists and ankles? Also, it would be good if it ended up looking rather not too far from a stretch exercise, because they did not sign up for dance, or tai-chi, or Feldenkrais therapy (though I am looking at exercises from the latter to see if they can be used). Many thanks if anyone has any ideas. And do we have any Feldenkrais therapists on this board? Jim. (And, yes, I did a search of these forums but did not come up with anything, though may not have used the best search terms).