I’m thrilled to share an extraordinary three minute video.
If you are intrigued by the Emmi Pikler/ Magda Gerber approach to infant gross motor development but unconvinced; struggling to find the patience to allow your baby to achieve tummy time all by herself (!); or would just like to be inspired by the beauty, power and wisdom of babies, this is the movie for you.
Rolling – Feldenkrais with Baby Liv from Irene Lyon on Vimeo.
In producer/director Irene Gutteridge’s words:
This is a montage of a little baby named Liv doing what babies do during their first year of life.
It is these first beginnings that form the initial pieces that someone would learn while doing a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Lesson. Finding the floor under you, finding the support the environment gives you such that you can move, repetition that is driven by curiosity and exploration such that action can begin to be effortless and more refined.
This piece of baby development forms a major foundation of the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and his method, The Feldenkrais Method.
This video clip is the beginning of a series of video clips that will be used to highlight the foundations and principles of The Feldenkrais Method.
This has been compiled from a year of footage taken in Whistler, BC. Visit http://www.thenext25years.com for more information on the project.
A big thank you to Irene Gutteridge for allowing me to share this! Also, thanks to Monika Szucs Eichler for introducing me to Irene’s amazing series of videos. Read more about her work as a practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method on her blog The Human Groove.
(Photo of baby Liv by “Feldenkrais – The Next 25 Years” on Flicker.)
Parents and professionals who wait for the next and the next “achievement” sadly miss the miraculous little changes which are occurring all the time. –Magda Gerber
Thank you for sharing this, Janet! Wow! Beautiful! The complexity of the human baby is masked by what we see as being so “natural” and yet – the natural is so miraculous! Thank you for keeping us inspired, smiling (and ocassionally tear-y)!
Beth
Hi Beth,
I know just what you mean about feeling “teary”. As you say, Baby Liv’s roll from back to tummy is so natural, but there is also something courageous about it… I think we all have this courage — this confidence — when we are babies, but it can be lost if it isn’t nurtured.
Very encouraging to see how baby ovwrcome rolling over on her own.
Wow, I absolutely loved this video- thanks for sharing!
What a lovely video! I love the free motion and the connections to the Feldenkrais dialogue are really nice. It’s so great to see the small and vital steps of motor develop getting the appreciation they deserve. The other videos on Gutteridge’s site are great too.
I just joined this blog, but I’ve been enjoying your posts for a while. I just took the RIE I summer intensive and it was amazing! I am very excited about making RIE a bigger part of my life and hopefully becoming an associate someday. I’m very grateful for your blog. It’s very friendly, informative, and easy to access. This is a fantastic way to reach parents and other caregivers. Thanks for the work, and see you around!
Hi Christina! Thanks so much for checking in here and commenting, and for your compliments. I strongly encourage you to become a RIE Associate!!!
Looking forward to running into to you in and around RIE one of these days!:-)
This video is beautiful, Janet. The word accompaniment reveals so much to the adult viewer. What I think is important to mention is that the baby does everything naturally, with (very) little ‘thought’ and mostly subcortically – all the while the repetitions are building connections from subcortical areas to the cortex.
I recently came across your blog and I have enjoyed it so much! Many of the ideas presented here echo the instincts I have towards parenting my daughter.
It’s funny how things arrive in life just when you need them. I let my five month old daughter have floor time on her back and I really enjoy watching her explore herself and the space. She hates “tummy time”, and I’m reluctant to force it on her. I’ve been anxious that she hasn’t rolled over yet, though she has made many attempts. This video was a gentle reminder that I need to be patient and let her get there in her own time.
I am the author of the above comment, and I had to return and share that my daughter rolled from back to belly and to her back again, just as the video shows. It was really an amazing thing to watch.
Yay! Melissa, thanks for sharing!
I absolutely loved this!! She is such a natural! I wish I would have had something like this to go on when my oldest was a baby. Poor thing had to endure tummy time which she hated. This would have been far more beneficial to her learning to roll and move about more confidently.