As it’s the Jewish New Year this week, (Shana Tova to those of you that celebrate!), I thought it might be interesting to share a Hebrew concept many of you may not have heard of. Hafshata: “the virtue that arises when something is taken away.” I was introduced to it recently, when a Feldenkrais colleague wrote about … More Freeing your Ribs: Part 3
This week I’m in very hot and humid Palermo on another segment of ChildSpace – a Feldenkrais based course on early child development. It’s great to have a change of scene, (and great coffee), and to be surrounded by some lovely colleagues. The work is really beautiful, and uses play as a base to observe … More Variation for Learning
How do you respond when you reach your limits? I was teaching some of my small (6 year old) violin pupils this week how to synchronise the finger notes together with the bowing. It’s one of the trickiest transitions, as you put two things together that a beginner might still find tricky. The difference in … More What are your limits?
This week I gave a workshop on stage presence for a lovely group of A-level students in Saffron Walden. I didn’t make it over in person, I did it online, but it was great to see the changes in how they sat and moved, even by the end of their short session! We talked about … More Plant the seed of your somatic change
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
Life long learning Last week, I was teaching on the Feldenkrais Training, London 5, which has just started. (There’s still time to sign up if you’d like to be a Feldenkrais Method teacher. Or if you would like to dive into the work in more detail!) It’s always great to be there. It’s like practising … More And rest
Today I went to a klezmer jam. A folk session of Jewish folk music. It’s by ear, so there’s no music. Which isn’t my usual way of doing things. But it had felt like a while since I’d enjoyed playing with others just for fun, so I put my violin on my back and pootled off. … More Strategies for Learning
“Heads shoulders, Knees and Toes” Part of a song we learn as children. Connecting all the parts of our skeleton with action. We spend the first months, years, learning to connect and own different parts of ourselves. In order to make complex movements such as crawling, walking or talking. As we socialise, and move towards … More Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes…
Humans are one of the best species at receiving new information, digesting it ,and changing what we do. That’s the definition of learning of course. In Feldenkrais’ words: “Thinking leads to new action, anything else was swilling around of the brain”. Which always puts me in mind of someone swilling a wine glass before sniffing … More Learning is easier together…
the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter 