Five lines: Finding wholeness

There are many five lines lessons in the Feldenkrais Method®. The five lines are a fundamental aspect of Moshe's work. He considers it the basis for all underlying movement patterns. Really, it's just the human stick figure, like any child would draw it. It's the most basic, elemental representation of a human being that anyone would recognize in any context, in any culture, anywhere in the world.

Moshe talks about the lines as a touchstone, or a reference point. It's not the part of us that moves, like rolling the pelvis in a circle, it's the background sense of self out of which movement is generated, just like an artist’s canvas has an underdrawing or imprimatura out of which the painting emerges.

The kinesthetic five lines, the primary image, or the "primitives," as they're often called, are an imprimatura of the self as lines. it is just the leg lines, the spine line, the arm lines, and a lollipop head on top. Not muscles, bones, sinew, flesh or ligaments. Just lines. It's abstract, a schema. The lines have shape, distance, position, and movement, but it's not the "body" as your physical self. 

The lines are a representation of yourself to yourself. If you can work with the lines, it is a truly magical way of sensing.

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Here is my teacher, Dennis Leri, on the five lines, edited for clarity, which is necessary for Dennis:

The primary image, or the five lines, is a way to embed a sense of yourself that is not transitory, ephemeral, or fleeting. You develop a touchstone that you can constantly refer to. When you have an address, you can calibrate really differently.

Once a pattern has been learned, it can be transferred to other places where it can be adopted. It's not just movement, it's locating yourself in space. The five lines are an image that helps you orient. It's not what you see, it's what enables you to see. It's in the background.

It’s something in your own nature as a pattern of action upon which all other actions are predicated.

—The Primitives workshop

 AY338

Moshe says here, “And now, for everyone, for themselves, give an accounting. During all these movements, did you think of your image? Of the longitudinal line? That line of length from the sacrum to the head by way of the back? Did you think of the directions of the arms, of the legs?

If you did not do this, you missed the main essence of the previous lessons. In other words, you did the external parts, the movements of the muscles. This helps nothing.

It does not change anything in the spine, except perhaps to increase the pain, or, sometimes, if you did it slowly, to make it more comfortable. The fundamental change in the spine, to change it to something flexible and strong and straight, does not happen without relating the movement to the image.”

AY339

Moshe says here, “It's not important to do a fast, strong movement. Don't try to lengthen with your muscles. It's important to think it and distinguish it without the intention to do the extra work. It's empty work if you make effort in the muscles without any connection to the image. Rather than putting effort into lengthening or bending, put attention on constructing the lines, on staying connected.”

AY340

AY341

A leg and balance challenge to maintain the lines.

AY342

AY343

AY344

Comments from my workshop on the Five Lines