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
When we are anxious it affects our breathing. It becomes shallower, faster. We hold our chest still. Then the ribs can’t move with the breath. Often we’ll hold the low chest muscles, stopping the movements of the diaphragm. Again, stopping the lungs from expanding. Very useful if we want to pretend we’re dead whilst a … More Breathing and Anxiety
The New Year is often a time we think of restarting, of making better habits. And as those of you who come to classes regularly know, Feldenkrais is a practice, like tai chi, or yoga, where coming regularly over time is what makes a difference. It’s a time outside the cut and thrust of normal life, … More What are your dreams?
It’s interesting to me that touch is often equated with being emotionally moved: “I was touched by his musicmaking.” As a musician I aim to move our audience simply with soundwaves reaching their ears. Touch, being touched, and connection is a basic building block of being human. I think one of the things so many … More Self care: Feldenkrais for Performers
Today is Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of Atonement. It’s a day on which we fast and and repent, and symbolically hope we behaved well enough to be inscribed in the Book of Life this year. Actually, the first service of Yom Kippur starts the evening before, and ends just before sunset, called Kol Nidrei. It’s … More Habits of Gratitude
This weekend has been quite full on for me. What you might not know about me, is that I’m part of a group of international Feldenkrais teachers who facilitate continued development for my professional colleagues, and am doing an online workshop over the weekend looking at a tool for assessing our work. As I write … More Alone we go faster, together we go further.
Now that Spring is here, why not shake out the blankets of your habit cupboard! We all have habits, they allow us to make short-cuts- to put your clothes on without thinking, or whilst thinking about something, to doing two things at once, drive whilst talking for example. Some of you know I lived in Holland for a while in … More Spring Cleaning your Habits:
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
Transform how you move, feel and live 