Advanced-training for Feldenkrais practitioners
The Shoulder joint: Its freedom and mobility

Stockholm : 28 mars – 1er avril 2015

Thanks to its structure, the shoulder joint, which connects the arm to the ribcage, allows the arm to move in many directions in space.

Its liberty determines the ease and fluidity of these movements, not only of the arm and the hand, but also of the fingers, be it for grasping and moving objects, the efficacy of gests in certain sports, the quality of drawing, or the fluidity and precision of playing a musical instrument, a.s.o… When the shoulder girdle is in it’s neutral or relaxed state, the respiration is able to develop with more ease and comfort.

Habits, traumatisms and a natural tendency to isolate different parts of the skeleton in their functioning, reduce the mobility of these joints therefore limiting their movements and often causing an increase in the effort needed to act. This in turn reduces comfort, fluidity and efficacy.

The human skeleton, along with the brain, is conceived and organized for movement, whether it be for managing dynamic stability, making changes to position and orientation in space, using the arms and hands for taking, giving, doing, mobility of the neck to allow changes in position of the sense organs, fluidity of mouth movements…

If the bones determine the solidity of the skeleton, the articulations, due to their configuration and their degree of mobility, define the movement possibility in the three planes. They also allow more overall sharing of the workload and reduction of force (as do a series of pulleys in a mechanical system).

An anatomical observation shows us clearly that function of the pelvis, due to its extremely dense boney structure, is to assure our stability, the solidness of our contact with the ground, the efficacy of our movements in space and the development of force throughout the body. The shoulder girdle, however, with its fine bones elaborately articulated, is conceived to allow us to express our relation to others and to the world around us, to react with the hands and arms in an extremely fine and differentiated manner, to use instruments and tools, for communication, touch, sensing and receiving.

The work i’m proposing will allow you to:

• Rediscover the relation between the dynamic opening of the arms and the freedom of the ribcage, breath and voice;
• Relax the shoulders, and in particular the trapezium muscles to which we tend to attach various psychosomatic tensions due to our particular way of life, our habits and attitudes developed in the recent past and also in childhood;
• Develop mobility of the shoulder blades and the upper part of the back, without which the arms are unable to attain freedom of movement and the ribcage is unable to expand during breathing;
• Sense the path of integration linking the hand, arm, shoulder blade, clavicle and spine which allows effortless movement with no joint limitation as well as differentiated and harmonious movement be it for sketching, playing an instrument, gests in sport or other hand movements.

More information about where this seminar takes place, its cost and inscription process, please contact : Kristina Strohmayer, organizer – e-mail : kristina@scandes.se