Pecking like a chickenDuring a postgraduate program in Berkeley, Gaby Yaron, one of the graduates of Feldenkrais’ first teacher training, asked us to sit backward on a chair with both feet on the floor and forearms resting comfortably on the back. From this position, she asked each participant to slowly, gently bring their chin forward like a chicken pecking.
Rather than lowering, lifting, or tilting the head in any way, the idea was to move your face forward while staying seated. This action isn’t a true translation because if your head moves strictly along a horizontal line, your pelvis would soon lift from the chair. Advancing your skull in this manner in this position necessitates that your configuration changes, which means something has to happen in your spine.
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Stormy weatherIt’s been a wild and wooly time at the western edge of North America since the start of the new year. One storm after another has dumped incredible amounts of rain, leading to overflowing creeks and rivers, raging high tides, and destructive mudslides. The downpours are wreaking havoc on the city and county of Santa Cruz.
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Breathing optimallyInstead of perfecting a specific form and rhythm of respiration, the Feldenkrais approach is about moving past the habitual postures, recurrent holding patterns, and deep-seated dispositions that interfere with breathing well. You do this by exploring the many ways of breathing built into your body’s design, becoming aware of your compulsions and options, and expanding your respiratory repertoire.
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A holiday treatFor the past few days, the morning AY a Day peer study group has been listening to the recordings of Moshe Feldenkrais’ 1981 workshop in Washington, DC. A colleague from Central California, Laura Willard, has been playing the cassettes from the four-day seminar, which was one of the last public courses that Moshe taught, if not the very last.
The crux of martial artsWe just added the Awareness Through Movement® sequence Moving from Your Center to the Mind in Motion Online Shop. Until now, these lessons were only available to the folks who’d participated in The Bodywise Project a couple of years ago.
Inspired by Moshe Feldenkrais’ curriculum for the second year of the San Francisco teacher training, this program presents these rarely taught and profoundly transformative lessons in an accessible, user-friendly format. To read more about this series’ background, please look at my earlier post about it, Finding center.
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Somatic support staffISMETA is looking for a part-time Assistant Director. If you or someone you know may be interested in joining the ISMETA Team, please check out the details below and send them your resume by December 5th, 2022.
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A trailblazing teacher and trainerHigh school physics teacher and violinist Yochanan Rywerant started studying with Moshe Feldenkrais in 1952. From 1967 to 1971, he was a member of the original teacher training program in Tel Aviv. Moshe invited Yochanan to teach in his studio at 21 Nachami Street, where he worked for 13 and a half years. He also made Yochanan a member of the faculty of the Amherst training (1980 to 1983), where I met and studied with him.
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No straight lines make up my lifeWhen Frederick Schjang invited me to be part of this next LGBTQA Feldenkrais® Festival, I instantly thought of our anatomy and how none of us are straight . . . or perfectly symmetrical.
That’s why I decided to teach a Feldenkrais lesson about one of the nervous system’s critical — yet unappreciated — functions: compensating for our structural asymmetries. Whether you have scoliosis, issues with equilibrium or orientation, or are just dealing with our shared inherited right-left imbalance, I figured this would be a relevant, useful topic to address.
I’ll teach HEADS AND SHOULDERS IN ARC, (also known to Feldenkrais enthusiasts as Alexander Yanai 436), next Thursday, November 17th, at 7:30 AM Eastern time.
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A global approachChecking out my Facebook feed this morning — something I must confess doing incredibly irregularly — I read a post from French Feldenkrais colleague Mickaëlle Acke. In it, she quotes Feldenkrais trainer and speech therapist François Combeau. Over 30 years ago, François established the l’espace de temp présent, a stunning center for somatic learning in the heart of Paris. (I speak from experience because I have had the honor and pleasure of teaching there.)
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A matter of styleA few days ago, Carmen Llerenas, a Mexican Feldenkrais colleague who lives and practices in Paris, asked me about my teaching style the other day. I demurred, only saying that how I present Awareness Through Movement lessons has certainly changed over the past 40-plus years.
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Design for actionAs Halloween approaches, skeletons start showing up all around my neighborhood: sitting on a porch swing, standing in the window, and popping out of the ground.
As someone who is osteophilic — loves bones — I delight in their sudden appearance. For me, they’re anything but spooky. Rather than representing death, they stand for life. Once we have grown up, the cells that make up our skeleton continually regenerate, replacing approximately ten percent of old bone with new every year.
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At the same timeIt’s easy to find soundtracks, movies, and videos of the heroes and villains of yesteryear and yesterday. We have letters, photographs, and voicemail messages from those no longer with us. While these mementos and reminders are wonderful, none of them will bring anyone back.
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Honoring a somatic pioneerLittle known outside the domains of dance and theater, Mabel Todd is one of the pioneers of somatic movement education. A voice teacher in early 20th century Massachusetts, Todd became dissatisfied and frustrated by the conflicting ideas about the anatomy and posture of singing she encountered.
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Pencil downI dreamt of being back in grade school the other night. I remember flashes of long ago classrooms and running around the playground. I woke up at the end of a math exam right after the teacher announced, “Time’s up. Please put your pencil down.”
Though it’s been a long time since I took a test in school, those words kept reverberating in my thoughts.
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How to adjust your attitudeInternational RSI expert Deborah Quilter interviewed me the other day for her YouTube channel. We discussed this summer’s upcoming Feldenkrais Summer Camp, The Power Within.
Deborah asked about what I will teach and why I chose this topic. Our conversation covers the relationship between posture and emotion, changing how you move to change how you feel, and developing the ability to respond in the moment, independently of your habit and history.
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In appreciation of limitsIn a Feldenkrais class, the teacher creates the conditions for students to figure things out for themselves. Instead of showing or telling you how to move, you are asked to follow directions designed to reveal long-lost abilities and new skills.
How does this work?
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Degrees of freedomOn the Fourth of July, we celebrate the passage of the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
Ahead of my almost annual Feldenkrais Summer Camp, I taught an Awareness Through Movement class on July 4th, 2019. I composed the lesson in keeping with the theme of this holiday called, appropriately enough, DEGREES OF FREEDOM.
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This time, it’s personalSince its inception 22 years ago, Feldenkrais Summer Camps have explored all sorts of topics, from classic themes, such as breathing better, to innovative subjects, such as using a doorway to improve your balance and coordination.
This summer’s curriculum takes a different approach. This time, it’s personal.
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Pent upMoshe Feldenkrais repeatedly challenged the commonly held hydraulic model of emotions by asking us why there was no such a thing as pent-up joy. He asked us to consider how anger could create pressure building up to an eventual explosion if this was not the case with other feelings.
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Who said that?In the description for this year’s Feldenkrais Summer Camp, The Power Within, I quoted: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
It’s been one of my favorite quotations for a long time. I have included it in every training program prospectus I created, starting with the first Strasbourg International Feldenkrais Training back in the early 1990s. Back then, I attributed it to Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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Searching for researchWhen was the last time someone asked you what research there is on the Feldenkrais Method . . . and where to find it?
Thanks to the literature reviews I did in my Master’s and Ph.D. programs, once upon a time, I had a decent sense of what kind of studies were available. I have been — and, thankfully, still am — actively involved in conversations with colleagues about what they are investigating and how they’re conceptualizing and doing research. Over the years, I also had the privilege and pleasure of actively participating in a few people’s projects.
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Possibility and positivityA funny thing that happens when you do a Feldenkrais lesson.
When persistent problems fade, new options appear, and you undergo a fundamental somatic shift in how you move, something else occurs. It’s not just that you breathe easier and feel relieved, taller, more grounded, more present.
When you harness your innate ability to improve, you realize you can help yourself. You discover you can change yourself. This embodied knowledge changes your outlook. You feel capable. You are more hopeful.
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There is a better wayWhat do you do when you need directions? Or when you need to look up a definition?
Gone are the days of reaching for the dictionary or a map.
It’s so easy to type a question into a web browser. Those inquiries — millions a day the world over — generate income for the company that provides the software, profits from endangering our privacy, and depletes precious energy resources in the process.
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SummertimeThe summer of 2000 was the first time I offered a five-day Awareness Through Movement Summer Camp.
Back then, there weren’t many options available. You could choose between taking a weekly class or signing up for a four-year professional training program. From my experience becoming a teacher, observing companions go through the process, and eventually training others, I learned firsthand how beneficial it is to do a couple of Feldenkrais lessons a day for several days in a row.
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CamaraderieSince I wrote about the AY a Day grassroots peer study group last week, I keep thinking about what I’ve gotten from participating that I didn’t mention. This benefit isn’t a thing; it’s a feeling. I refer to camaraderie, that sense of community and fellowship, of mutual trust and friendship that develops over time.
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5th Anniversary1,831 days.
That’s how long the AY a Day peer group has been meeting. Every day for the past five years, including major holidays, Feldenkrais trainees and teachers of all levels of experience have gotten together online to do a classic Awareness Through Movement class. Each day, one participant teaches; afterward, the group discusses the lesson.
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On the road againFor more than two and a half years, I have not gone anywhere overnight except the University of California San Francisco’s Bakar Cancer Hospital. Nothing about this time — surgery, chemo, radiation, recovery, more surgery, more recovery, and the enduring exhaustion — resembled a vacation.
As you can appreciate, I was excited, nearly giddy, to board a plane for Europe last month.
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Why your arm doesn’t fall offProfessional Pathways in Somatic Movement: Building Knowledge, Skills & Practices is the latest online conference created by ISMETA, the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. Starting a week from today, exemplary proponents of a wide range of contemporary embodied practices will be presenting 70-minute sessions introducing their work and some aspects of how they train others.
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Teacher or practitioner?Yesterday, I received an email from someone who has enrolled in my courses for the past couple of years.
I should probably mention that my classes are not the first classes that this pupil has taken. After sharing one of Mary Newell’s recent verses in my Poetry Month post, I learned she had been one of my current student’s earliest Feldenkrais teachers many moons ago. I love how she told me that Mary “got us to instigate movement, see possibilities.”
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The standing legWhen it comes to the structure of the human body, symmetry is a myth.
The lungs have three lobes on the right side and two on the left. The liver sits on the right side. Even for folks with situs inversus, asymmetry is still the rule.
The same is true when it comes to function.
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