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
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
This week I was playing a concert in Totnes, close to where I grew up as a child. I was fortunate to play in a wealth of different youth music groups and ensembles. It led me to decide to become a musician. When we start as children, we don’t know what a profession looks like, … More Seeing the Whole Picture
I like to think that Moshe Feldenkrais would be pleased that the Feldenkrais Method is reaching further and further around the globe, 50 years after his passing. And that he would be delighted to know that there’s an International Feldenkrais Federation set up to facilitate communication and discussion between all the national Guilds in the … More Back from the International Feldenkrais Federation
As we send out the old year, and welcome in the new, I wanted to write a little about my work this past year. I feel fortunate to teach (and learn) from my students. I’ve met so many lovely people, and I enjoy what all of you bring. As a Feldenkrais Method teacher, people come to … More Happy New Year!
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?
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
Looking at Anxiety Part 2 The Neurophysiology of Anxiety Anxiety is created in the brain. Like everything else. As a fear based emotion/response it’s part of the sympathetic-parasympathetic system. The fear response is holistic. (Brain-and-body). Adrenalin gets pumped around the body, and its brain equivalent epinephrine, in the brain. The nervous system includes the brain, … More Improve Anxiety
the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter 