Helping people help others

The first time I heard about it, I had been dining and drinking with Feldenkrais colleagues in a small restaurant at the ocean’s edge on one of the Canary Islands. Rather than get together in Stockholm in the deep dark of winter, the Swedish group voted to meet for our fourth and final time in the warm sun; one of the participant’s sisters was a travel agent, and she found us a sweet deal.

The air was warm and salty that evening. We were chatting after dinner as the sun sank into the sea. That’s when someone started telling us how she and other teachers were working with refugees in Eastern Europe.

Soon after, someone else told me about working with children and parents in Russia. Gradually, I learned of other peers doing the same in additional countries, all places where Moshe’s method was barely known, where there were no teachers, and where the standard rate rendered lessons unaffordable.

My friend Lynn Bullock, who lives in France, and Nancy Aberle, located in Switzerland, are Feldenkrais teachers and practitioners of the Anat Baniel Method are two of these unsung heroes. Working with children with developmental and neurological challenges, they soon realized how important it was to bring parents into the process. This understanding inspired their work with children, parents, professional colleagues, and others in Eastern Europe and elsewhere for sixteen years. Their project, Feldenkrais without Borders, provided over 900 free individual lessons to children in Croatia alone.

Nancy and Lynn recognized that children with disabilities benefit when their parents and caregivers develop a practical, applied understanding of brain plasticity. Rather than focusing on what children cannot do, Empowering Parents teaches adults to recognize and build on each child’s current abilities. Adults develop the practical skills, such as refining how they touch and move, needed to create the “best conditions” for improving children’s motor coordination and supporting their ongoing learning.

Here’s how Lynn and Nancy introduce their pre-pandemic parents’ workshop:

The edited videos of the two-day workshop, taught in English with translation into Croatian, are now available for on-demand viewing. Lynn was kind enough to agree to extend the special reduced holiday price, 50 Euros rather than 80, until this coming Christmas. To get access to this course, please send 50 Euros via

https://paypal.me/LynnBullockParis

Then click here to send an email letting them know where to send the information about accessing the workshop.

In keeping with Mind in Motion’s commitment to making Moshe’s method more accessible and considering how crucial it is to help parents help their kids, I wrote this blog to support Lynn, Nancy, and their associates’ invaluable work. If you have questions about the videos, please click here to contact them directly.