This week, someone said something in a lesson that stayed with me. “I felt movement where I’ve never felt it before… and it felt exciting.” I realised afterwards that this sentence could have come from almost any lesson I taught this weekend. The details were different, but the experience was remarkably similar: people discovering possibilities … More A Chance to Choose
I’ve been noticing how differently people move in warm weather. Warmth often allows muscles to soften. There can be a sense of languidness (a word that always makes me think of the slow movement of Summer from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons). But we don’t always relax. Sometimes we tighten somewhere else instead. If breathing feels a little harder in … More Is core strength enough?
This week I had a concert with my young violinists. One six-year-old spent the entire rehearsal in tears. Nothing her mother or I said could persuade her to play. Yet at the concert she walked on stage, played beautifully. Afterwards, her Mum said that ice-cream bribery had been used. (Clearly a useful strategy in the … More Why experience matters
Hidden in Plain Sight If you’re not moving your pelvis, everything becomes more difficult. And yet, it’s not something we talk about very much. Perhaps because it’s close to the genitalia, it tends to get shuffled quietly offstage. But the pelvis deserves centre stage. It just happens to be where sex and excretion take place, … More Giving the Pelvis its Due
Stability is useful, there’s no doubt. But we need mobility as well, unless you’re a rock! Stability is only part of the story. We need Core Mobility, and also Core connection. You needs to integrate it with rest of you. When you hold yourself contracted continuously, you separate your two halves, top and bottom. But … More Beyond the Core
As you know I’m a violist, and recently a colleague referred a teenage violinist to me. Some of my favourite work (I like it all) is combining music making with Feldenkrais. So I’ve been enjoying working with her. What’s in the self image? In her lesson I observed her playing a little. I noticed that … More If you feel it, you can change it
How many parts of you can you feel when you move your knee? When does your leg move in isolation (from the hip joint) and when does the pelvis join in to support? Often when we have pain or an injury we adopt an adaptive way of moving to stop the pain. And that’s useful, … More Thigh bone connections
This week, I was working with a client, who was thinking about how he stands. He realised he wasn’t using his legs as well as perhaps he might, as he was getting pain from them. In our lesson I asked him to kneel, (standing over his knees) and then I worked on rotation from the … More Intelligent Legs
A common idea for us as musicians, organising different parts to move together. We’re excellent at dividing attention between our instruments, sound and musical colleagues. Yet we’re often less practised at applying that to ourselves. The Symphony of your Leg The complexity of the movements of the legs need all four areas to work together. … More Connecting the Dots
This week saw Moshe Feldenkrais’ birthday. He had an extraordinary life. He was born in Slavuta, Russia (now Ukraine) in 1904, and grew up in part of White Russia, now Belarus. At 14, after members of his family narrowly survived a Russian pogrom, they sent Feldenkrais alone to make his way to Israel, then under … More Happy Birthday Moshe!
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