My viewpoint

My curiosity about Matt's 10 minutes unit of "What is the essence of my teaching?" is based on what I understand as Matt's key interest of using anatomical information for connected moving.

The 10 minutes class

Matt chooses an example for conveying the essence of his teaching: the feet. He starts by giving information verbally while at the same time modelling physically what he is doing, and asks us to explore physically at the same time.

He directs our attention to putting weight on one foot and finding the "spring back" quality of the foot. He talks about and shows the arches of the foot that flatten out somewhat while putting weight on the foot, but how there is a reaction that helps the arch to recreate themselves after a moment while the foot is still on the floor.

I am intrigued by the fact that in this exploration the factor of timing comes into play immediately: It is not quite a reflex, but yet the reaction of the foot is independent of conscious moving. The reflex is a little slower in walking and faster in running.

The focus is on the bone and facial structure of the foot. Matt talks about how sunken arches are able to realign themselves with this kind of work. He asks us to flex our toes while setting the foot on the floor and to see what happens - I notice the foot becomes more flat, the reaction is smaller.

In the next step we relate the hip joint to the arches and the foot "spring": exploring how the turn out affects the arches (it does). On the other side, too big a turn out lets the knee to go on the outside of the foot which creates stress on the knee.

My experience focuses on how the awareness of the whole leg and its spiral organization affects the foot instead of consciously turning out my hip.

Comparing approaches to anatomy material

Coming from Myoreflex, the biggest difference that my "entrance door" for physical are the muscles - Matt on the other side only talked about facia and bones.

Interestingly, Myoreflex works with muscles and their reflex patterns - while Matt does not refer to the nervous system as such, the aspect of time i the "spring back" reaction of the feet are clearly related to it.

The basic principle of Myoreflex is that through very specific touch at the boundaries between muscle, tendon and bone as high receptor density area it is possible to influence and regulate connected muscle looks throughout the body.

What I notice is that the combination of verbal information/ instruction and physical modelling is very common these days. I do it a lot as well. Probably due to the fact that it works well! as I noticed consciously while taking part in Matt's teaching. I wonder however if we are narrowing down methodologies too much, if there are other things that might be lost as a potential by other methodologies we don't use so much.

So what are other methodogies? A quick brainstorming with myself reveals some optios:

"Side coaching": Like a soccer training who stands at the edge of the class and does not participate, watching the proceedings and calling in information that might be helpful for the process.

Modelling with an example an then letting students explore on their own, using media such as anatomical pictures, or other media (i.e.music)

Teaching withouth words: Interestingly, we rely so much on words in teaching. I notice I get interested in what the options are to convey information that cannot be trasmitted verbally so well. I decide to try that out in a class and will come back telling about my experience, maybe in a new idoc...