Recorded ATM lessons in English

The shoulder joint consists of many components.This film is a must-see for my students. The image precedes the action. Please improve the self- image!

Imagine the locomotion of a chimpanzee, characterized by independently mobile shoulder joints (forelimbs) and hind limbs that are structurally connected through the pelvic ring.

The earliest evidence of walking on two legs (bipedalism) dates back to approximately 6 to 7 million years ago. 

a) Sahelanthropus tchadensis (around 7 million years old): Some researchers suggest that the position of the foramen magnum  indicates upright posture,
b) Orrorin tugenensis (around 6 million years old): Fossils of the femur (thigh bone) show adaptations consistent with bipedal walking.
c) Australopithecus afarensis (“Lucy”), lived around 3.9 to 2.9 million years ago and had a body structure well-suited for upright walking.

Lesson VII
The position of the head affects the conditions of the body's musculature.

During the lesson:

1. A clarification of how the functioning of the entire body's musculature depends on the position of the head and the muscles of the neck.

2. As the movements of the head become easier, and its rotations more comfortable and expansive, the turning of the body becomes simpler and approaches the possibilities allowed by anatomy.

3. Attempts at mental motor activation and its immediate results.

4. Mental activation separates between commands and the image of the action, between execution and an improved estimation of muscular effort.

Metacomment

The sensation of discomfort – or perhaps even pain – associated with the first movement when returning to a familiar situation, after having regularly and repeatedly performed a movement in a new situation, is of great interest. No one can use their body according to a different muscular pattern than the one they are accustomed to – and at the same time, that habit is the only one available to them. Now, however, changes are occurring in the majority of the muscles – or at least in the more essential ones.

Out of this arises a new, desired movement, in which the person controls their muscles automatically in order to maintain their habits – while the changes underway demand new habits, for better or worse. Only the new experience, and the insight that follows, can convince the person of a different self-image and a new form of self-control – one that differs from before.

This can only take place after the new experience presents the person with the possibility to sensorily inhibit the habitual movement that, in the present, seems lost to them. (A cerebral command is necessary, but not sufficient.) It is through this inhibition that the new can be integrated as habit or naturalness.

Our system allows for change in a distinctly traumatic way – but gradually. This is one of the functional difficulties.

That is why it is important to listen carefully to every change and simplification after each movement sequence, in order to do two things at once through sensation:

1. To forbid the earlier habit, since it now seems lost, heavy, and less comfortable.

2. To reinforce the new habit, which now appears more pleasant, more fluid, and more adequate.

This conviction is not intellectual, mental, or more acceptable on a rational level – it comes from within a tactile-sensory experience, as the result of personal learning.

With an awareness and an understanding that connects the change with the necessary conditions, it becomes possible to renew the sensory experience – and, with sufficient precision and repetition under similar conditions, to deepen the experience at the very level of perception.