“A sensory stimulation is not an experience without awareness. There is no meaning to it before there is an internal query as to what one feels”. Moshe Feldenkrais As human beings we learn through play. It’s how as children, we learn to communicate with others, build relationship skills, conceptualise abstract thoughts; it encourages us to … More Feldenkrais and Practice Part 5: Creativity and Play.
Whilst my concert dress has stayed sadly in its wardrobe other than a brief outing in April, I did have one trip of fascination. Just before this second Lockdown I was invited to Sandhurst to teach some Feldenkrais to the British Army, to their Brass Band.Having been someone who wouldn’t have made it through the … More Feldenkrais and Practise Part 4: Micromovements
I was writing in the first post on practice about the base of support, and how important it is to have that in your awareness. You can think of it as foreground and background. When we play or sing, one’s fingers and the instrument, the notes, the sound all come into the foreground, and sometimes … More Feldenkrais and Practise Part 3: Supporting the arms
This week I was people watching, and noticing how early it is that we start to move in less than ideal ways. Watching a young man walk down the street outside a coffee shop (one of my first since Lockdown) I could see how he may have difficulties walking in later life, and where I … More Walking in comfort
Using non-judgement to help us learn better. … More Feldenkrais and Practise Part 2: Non-judgement
Much of Feldenkrais’s thinking was that if we change the way people move, we also change the way that they think. And that’s very much part of the process when we start to work with Feldenkrais. Many of our habits are learnt via a reward-based process, of “negative and positive reinforcement”, whether sensorially, or socially, … More Changing Habits
In the last weeks, as the disparity between the black experience and that of white people has been brought under the spotlight, I have wondered how to address it, if to address it within my Feldenkrais teaching. Is it relevant to Feldenkrais, and lessons that I teach? Would it put you off to read more … More Black Lives Matter.
In these past few months, many of us have been spending a lot more time in front of our computer screens: whether conference calling for business or pleasure, teaching on screen, or spending more leisure time inside our four walls. When we work at a computer we tend to be sitting on a chair. And most of us have … More Comfort at your Computer
And whilst it might not seem it, greater kinaesthetic sense of ourselves, a clearer relationship to ourselves and to the environment around us, can help us find more calmness, more sense of what is us, and what is outside of us. It shows us the possibility of giving ourselves the mental space to respond rather … More Improve your mental health
I took part in a plenary session today of Specialist Music and Feldenkrais teachers today, after our successful week’s event- Daily Feldenkrais for Musicians. One of the questions that came up was an interesting one. How do we as musicians incorporate or involve Feldenkrais in our instrumental (or singing) practise? Even if you’re not a … More Feldenkrais and Practice Part 1: Start Small
