As musicians, our physical self is the primary instrument. And I write”physical self”, rather than “body” because the brain and body work together. All of the time. They never act separately. It’s simply not possible. And whether you’re a musician or not, every movement we make is together with a thought, an emotion, and a … More The brain and body work together.
Collective Celebration New Year’s is a collective celebration of resilience—a reminder that we’ve made it through another orbit around the Sun. While 2024 brought its challenges, I hope it also brought moments of joy and connection. In tough times, I’ve found that keeping a gratitude list can be a grounding practice. Not as blind optimism, … More A New Year
Over the weekend, I’ll be teaching at Limmud, in Birmingham. It’s a Jewish learning festival, usually held over the Christmas period, where I started introducing Feldenkrais 7 years ago. It’s a festival that has it’s own flavour. There is a massive range of topics, and sessions run alongside each other. One of ideas is that … More Learning
This week I’ve been at a live segment of Childspace, a child development course, closely related to Feldenkrais. I was quite quiet for a lot of it, as I lost my voice on the first day, but it was a fascinating experience. One of the important things we’ve been learning about is this transition from … More Finding Ease in the Shoulders
How do you think of posture? For many people, it’s a thing. Good posture or bad. People with good posture have their shoulders back, and head up. Bad posture is associated with slouching. Good is a perfect ratio between the head, neck and shoulders. Something to get, to have, to keep. Shoulders and head not … More On Posture
Shoulder problems are one of the common reasons people come to see me. The shoulder joint is a work of art. It’s fixed to the skeleton via the collar bones at the front. And has a large range of fascia and muscles attaching it at the back, sides and front. It’s massive range of movement … More Exploring the Shoulders
One of my colleagues was collecting ideas as to why people don’t like Feldenkrais. One cropped up quite a bit, which I found particularly interesting. “Feldenkrais is too slow”. I know what they mean. I started practising Feldenkrais long before becoming a teacher. There were days where I found it hard to concentrate, hard to … More Slow learning
A question I’m often asked, is why should I do Feldenkrais? Why is it useful? To start to answer that, let’s start with another question. What is health for you? Our modern dictionary definition labels it “the absence of disease”. Not very positive, or heart warming! Originally, the word healing itself comes from the old … More What is health for you?
This is the question, which when I heard Moshe Feldenkrais asking it, made me realise he was on another level. That his intellect was far above the vast majority of people. The answer is no, of course. But who stops to ask the question? When do we start to see light in the womb? It’s … More If there was no light, would we have eyes?
The other day, I saw some of my favourite Heifetz pictures. They’re photos taken with a light at the end of his bow. And you can see the sheer amount of different movements he makes to move the bow in different patterns. And I assume, different pieces. Sadly he had passed away, so I never … More Movement in every moment
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