Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are. Liberating Your Neck and Jaw Starts 9.22

Come Out, Come Out Wherever You Are!

Liberate Your Neck and Jaw Series

Starts Wednesday, September 22, at 9:30-10:15 and 6:30-7:15

The mornings are cooler, it’s getting darker earlier, and the kids are back in school. It’s a good time to come back to class to Liberate Your Neck and Jaw.

This season is about softening, even unclenching, the jaw. If you grind your teeth, clench your jaw, have headaches or neck pain, jut your chin to read screens (formally called “text neck”), this is for you. If your asanas seem to get stuck in the neck (and hips…), if you prefer to sit comfortably tall at the computer, if you would like your walk to be regal, this session is for you.

“Liberating Your Neck and Jaw” is composed by Feldenkrais Trainer and practitioner David Zemach-Berson. He has taught Functional Integration for over forty years, and has taught in Feldenkrais Training programs for 35 years. He studied directly with Moshe Feldenkrais and graduated from the first US Feldenkrais Professional Training Program in 1977.

What I like about this series is the systematic exploration of the connections of the neck and jaw with the whole body.

You can bet that Marilyn didn’t clench her teeth or suffer from “text neck”

The tongue is the tip top end of the spine, in ways that will delight you.

Think about it: the head is the tip top of a structure that starts at the feet and rises through the hips to the spine, from which hang the ribs and arms. A kink anywhere below the jaw may makes kinks all the way up to the jaw. Blind spots from there to there might manifest in “Why in the world is my neck hurting?” And unnecessary connections can extract extra work that ends in ripped or torn muscles and tendons exhausted by gripping.

Also, there’s the tongue. It’s the only muscle that can go outside the body. It moves in 6 directions, as opposed to every other muscle that contracts and releases. Tongues make language - thus human evolution - possible. And it’s fruitful to imagine your tongue as the tip top extension of the spine. Exploring the tongue has riches you can’t even imagine before you try.

This series is about looking for the kinks, the blind spots, the connections from the feet up that affect the neck and jaw. Explore while offering your nervous system alternative patterns that work better. Over the series, we will look at connections between the neck, jaw and:

Feet and hips (lying on back)
Tongue - incredibly important - (lying on back)
Jaw to cranium and face (lying on back and side)
The Spine (lying on back and side)
Jaw to whole self (lying on back and side)
Facial muscles (lying on back)
Bonus: Seriously about the tongue (seated on a firm-bottomed stool or chair)

The philosophical basis of this series is evolution. The neck, tongue and mouth connections are billions of years old, as you can see from the very earliest forms of life. Finding the built-in correlations between overall movement to the neck, tongue and mouth is a recurring theme here.

These lessons are both developmental and stand alone. Each session features extremely low impact movements with multiple variations appropriate for people with pain and elite athletes, whose ability to listen inward can help realize subtle improvements for a competitive edge. The science nerd candy has many options: we’ll look at the anatomy of the neck and jaw, the tongue, spine, and answer the question of “what does it mean when my neck cracks?”

Do the series on Zoom, via recordings, or drop in to Zoom as your schedule allows. Returning students use their existing logons. New students register here.

The Wizard of Oz: the munchkins parade. See the entire Munchkin Parade scene, with the Lullaby League, Lollipop Guild, Mayor of the Munchkin City and more, here.

Only good witch work here: it feels good to have a comfortable neck and jaw. And you’ll look so much better. Join.

Jacki KatzmanSeptember 13, 2021