Elegant Shifting, Part 1: Big Muscles
I love to shift. It wasn't always this way.
Preparation
Before I teach shifting, basic beautiful posture and focus must be in place. This means:
You should feel absolutely great standing there with plenty of breath going through you, air in your armpits, floating, focused.
Shifting with the Big Muscles
When you shift "up", it's not really up, it's horizontal. Your hand moves toward your nose (shifting "up") or away from you toward the scroll (shifting "down"). Sometimes it helps to stop saying "up" and "down" and instead shift "across" to the other position. The tendency is to want to raise the left shoulder to do this. Please do the following instead: