Curiosity is innate Curiosity is something we’re born with. It’s one of the 7 emotional patterns we come wired with. It creates our desire to explore, know more, to understand the world around us. Curiosity pushes us to connect, find out more, or see what’s around the corner. It’s what propelled our ancestors to travel … More Curiosity and the Hands
Human’s opposable thumbs are thought to have developed c.2 million years ago during the Homo Habilis time of our evolution. They may have been used for food gathering, and most certainly contributed to the development and use of tools. Our Chimpanzee cousins have opposable toes as well as thumbs, which makes them much better at … More Musicians’ Fingers and Thumbs
You are your primary Instrument… Whether that’s a Strad or a factory violin is up to how you use what you have! All of our technique, whatever we play or sing, boils down on movement: we move ourselves to create music. The less effort and tension we use, the better, and more efficiently, we can bring across to … More Feldenkrais Method for Musicians – Why do it?
Some clients I wish I had recorded as they speak. There’s something about being at the beginning of a learning process that makes our thoughts fresh, and our way of describing what’s happening easy to understand to other beginners to our learning process. ‘Mary’ has been coming for assistance with shoulder pain. She felt something … More Discovering easy shoulders
If we think about the spine, there are 3 main planes of movement: flexion and extension, (arching-rounding), side-bending, and twisting. I’d like to focus a little about twisting. Twisting is where our power comes from. As upright mammals without massive muscles in our jaws (think crocodiles) or paws- who’d want to be swiped by a … More How easily does your back move?
When we learn about the body, if we do in school, it’s not always that we learn about the nervous system. We can think of our nervous system as our communication system between the brain and the body. Like an old fashioned telephone exchange. The nerves communicate with electrical signal, which can travel up to … More Our nervous system
Unwrapping yourself One of the things we talked about this weekend was this idea central to Feldenkrais, of stripping back. We used to play this version ofpass the parcel in my family when we were little. The parcel would be wrapped in many layers of wrapping paper, sometimes with chocolates between the layers. When the … More Unwrapping yourself
Our past experience creates the thoughts that we have. It is hard to get rid of limitations of thinking and moving created by our experience. But, whilst our bodies and minds may have limitations, our imagination doesn’t. If we can create freer experiences in our imagination, we can create concrete experiences to follow. To the degree we … More Musicians and Imagination
This week is Mental Health Week, something important to me. As someone who has worked hard to become mentally healthy, and now teaches ways to be healthier to others, I wanted to write a little about anxiety. Last week, I played the violin for an event at my synagogue. Those of you who know me, … More Looking at Anxiety
Some excellent questions came up in one of my last classes, one of which hinged around fear: How do we work with or move past fear, when moving, if we’re concerned about restrictions of movement, or pain? To start with, I would ask where is the realm of comfort for you? Where you can move … More Working with, or moving past fear of pain
the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter 