Yesterday I was invited to offer my first Mums and Baby group session, helping Mums with Tummy time. And I got to see many of the movements I’ve been talking about in action! It was so much fun! Babies rolling from their backs to the belly and returning, Babies who liked to roll to one side, and not the other. Babies rolling up to sit, and coming back down again! Babies grumpy on their fronts or on their own who miraculously cheered up as soon as their Mum picked them up. One beautiful moment when I was teaching proprioceptive touch to the Mums with their babies, when the whole atmosphere stilled for a few minutes. The breathing in the room slowed as the babies were listening to their bodies, as their Mums were listening to their babies through neurological touch. Childs’pace and Feldenkrais touch is both gentle and profound . Platonic touch is how babies sense themselves in space, and in relation to another (and not just babies, but adults too!)
Of course it’s not just motor development that happens in these first months, it’s also emotional and communication developments. Babies wanting to play with another baby or their mother. Some who were happy to be playwed with by me, and others who had just discovered stranger danger, and had no wish to be in close contact with someone they didn’t know (and told me very clearly, even without words!)
And babies develop these three areas at the same time. Coming up to sit allows them to see more, and reach out with both hands to the world, to others. Some of the babies were already social -they wanted to chat with everyone around them, and others less sure about interaction. As adults, we’re not necessarily going to change our communication through Feldenkrais, but as our physical self changes, so too does our mental state. Emotions are body states after all.
Transform how you move, feel and live 