Feldenkrais: Moving into the Unknown

As a trauma-informed integrative physiotherapist, Paul Watt offers Feldenkrais and Tension Trauma Release Exercises (TRE) alongside physiotherapy. He accompanies clients of all ages on often difficult journeys of exploration towards harmony, balance and self-love to come "home" to themselves.

Paul's discussion of TRE offers great parallels and insights into a deeper understanding of Feldenkrais as well as how TRE can be taught as a self-educative technique used to complement Feldenkrais to unpack accumulated stress, unresolved narratives and chronic holding patterns. He recommends trying TRE in the process of continually re-orienting to our environment with kindness.

You can contact Paul Watt via:

Website: highwayelephant.com.au

Email: [email protected]

Contact Moving Into The Unknown:

[email protected]

Deborah offers insightful expertise on chronic pain and pelvic floor health coupled with simplicity of process. Initially enticed by Moshe Feldenkrais’ theory of the mind and body connection, Deborah embarked on a personal journey of emotional and mind transformation. With more than 34 years as a revered Feldenkrais Practitioner and Trainer, Deborah has developed a unique style engaging people in a gentle, safe and pleasurable process of self discovery. An inquisitive scholar, Deborah has delved deeply into pelvic floor health and chronic pain research and has keenly refined a distinctive, highly effective style which has enhanced the quality of life of thousands of clients throughout her career.

As a Feldenkrais Trainer, Deborah continues to inspire students and graduates to develop and gain confidence to pursue their passion as practitioners. Deborah’s authenticity shines as she explains how her unwavering curiosity has allowed her to explore and develop deep understandings. She shares practical, easy to implement strategies and techniques for the path she has grown to love, that of working with people with chronic pain. Deborah helps listeners understand through evoking curiosity, we can interrupt our patterns and that pain can change as people alter their self image. This is a delightfully personal and practical conversation with a highly respected Feldenkrais elder. 

Deborah's website:

https://www.feldenkraissf.com/

https://www.feldenkraissf.com/about-me-deborah

Self-Paced Online Feldenkrais® Courses:

https://www.movementandcreativity.com/deborah-bowes-online-feldenkrais

Feldenkrais Moving into the Unknown hosts: Heidi Carroll, Libby Murray, and Kym McGregor.

[email protected]

Leora Gaster brings Moshe Feldenkrais’ background to the foreground with a fresh sense of aliveness and gives colour to the creative environment she experienced growing up through the formative exploratory years of Moshe Feldenkrais' work with her mother, Mia Segal. It’s an uplifting account of the vibrant experimentation and cross-pollination of ideas with eminent thinkers influencing the human potential movement. Leora expands on how the synthesis of Moshe Feldenkrais’ work was based on questioning with respect - all the science and philosophy of the time.

Immersed in the influence, observations and teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais since childhood and emerging with wisdom and clarity of her own, Leora is embracing a new generation of practitioners with Mia Segal in Mind Body Studies Academy and is ready to impart with simplicity the tools and techniques everyone can use to improve the whole of life. MBS Academy teaches an accessible language of communication between our brain and body using movement-thought exercises to empower self-knowledge and self-mastery. Leora gives a practical example for understanding the essence of this effective work in a simple precise blueprint.

Leora affirms the continuity and relevancy today of the ways Moshe Feldenkrais was seeking to further develop the intersection between disciplines discovering the connections between movement, thoughts, emotions and self-image. She further distills and succinctly expresses the simple ways we can identify and change the seemingly inseparable physiological and psychological aspects of life to improve our human ability, movement and behaviour.

Links for all Leora’s resources and Mind Body Studies Academy: 

https://mbsacademy.org/

https://www.facebook.com/MBSAcademy

https://www.instagram.com/mbsacademy/

Upcoming courses: https://mbsacademy.org/mbs-new-courses-2022/

Feldenkrais Moving into the Unknown hosts: Heidi Carroll, Kym McGregor and Libby Murray.

[email protected]

It’s not just about the body! Body language expert Lavinia Plonka brings recognition of the fullness of expression of our emotions into relationship with our body posture, gestures and breath using the lens of the Feldenkrais Method® with her signature Emotional Body® techniques. Lavinia has always been attracted to the expression of self through her love of movement and recognises the role her extensive creative life in mime, dance and theatre has played in her own conscious evolution. Integrating all the elements of her own deep humanistic quest towards self-actualization and creativity, Lavinia gives us a sense of embracing the wholeness of ourselves, helping us recognise our passions and fears in identifiable archetypes of human behaviour.

Lavinia explains for everyone how from within a place of personal safety in a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement or Functional Integration lesson, we can begin to explore and recognise not only physical and movement habits but patterns of emotional expression. Here we can use the power of where we place our attention to discover our unseen emotional habits, uncover our biases, and see for ourselves the stories our bodies tell to find more congruency, capacity and resilience to channel more efficacy into our lives. We can find links between our physical and emotional discomforts, learn from these expressions and reorganise to release ourselves from many fears or other self-limiting emotions. Lavinia champions that finding creativity within ourselves is accessible to all of us.

For practitioners, Lavinia suggests that using the Feldenkrais Method as a means to develop our authentic professional path includes following Moshe Feldenkrais’ lessons for ourselves. In integrating what we know of our emotional as well as cognitive and physical “self”  with ongoing discovery and interoceptive perception, we can give the best representation of our authentic selves to simply BE with our clients to help them to do the same for themselves.

Lavinia Plonka practises the Feldenkrais Method® as a teacher and assistant trainer and is the director of Asheville Movement Center in Asheville, NC, USA.

She runs Feldenkrais workshops, classes and retreats online and in person, and is a teacher of the Alba Method and an Emotional Body Instructor. She was an artist in residence for the Guggenheim Museum and movement consultant for theater and television companies around the world. Lavinia is a faculty member of the Shift Network and the author of several books and audio programs, including her best seller "What Are You Afraid Of?" which has been translated into five languages.

Link for all Lavinia’s resources:  https://laviniaplonka.com

Feldenkrais Moving into the Unknown hosts: Heidi Carroll, Libby Murray, and Dale Dickins.

[email protected]

twitter@FeldenkraisMI

Tara Eden, Feldenkrais Practitioner, began her Somatic Movement Project as a child and continued her innate life journey as an observer and student of the human condition. She travelled an intense route of self-expression via the heat and power of yoga, striving to overcome frustration, anxieties and burnout – society’s common symptoms of chronic disconnection to self in a saturated life chasing improvement, betterment and existential change. Tara explains how we have tried to form and conform ourselves to not only yoga but society’s poses and postures without reference to the individual self.

Moving from the frenzied pace of New York to exploring a spiritual path in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Tara found personal vulnerabilities were exposed in the energetic exchange of Thai massage. Leading herself with this newfound “feeling” and beginning to differentiate uncomfortable choice points led to the discovery of limitations in yoga for options of choice, rest and adaptation. Tara transitioned into a Feldenkrais immersion of authenticity and acceptance of self, and now offers this window to others wanting to see themselves clearly, discover healthier self-use, empowerment to trust and learn from their own embodied experience and to discover a unique inner calm, stillness and self-knowing that arrives spontaneously in an embodied state change.

Tara suggests strategies to have this container of Feldenkrais for yourself, as a structure and a lens for being able to support yourself and other people in their authentic experience of themselves, to literally and metaphorically “come to the floor” and reconnect with themselves.

Tara is a Feldenkrais Practitioner and member of ISMETA (International Somatics Movement Education and Therapy Association) offering individual, group, online and face to face Functional Integration and Awareness Through Movement lessons and Somatic Movement Mentorship.

You can reach out to Tara:

Website: https://somatic-movement-project.com

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/feldenkraiswithtara

Feldenkrais Moving into the Unknown hosts: Heidi Carroll, Libby Murray, and Dale Dickins, 

[email protected]

twitter@FeldenkraisMI

Thanks to our guest interviewer Jools Glinkowski.

Kim Sargent-Wishart leads us on an exploration of somatics, inquiry and how we can find even deeper and more subtle ways of exploring our felt sense. Expanding on Moshe’s ideas of sensing the self through the nervous system and skeleton, Kim explains how sensing into any part of our anatomy gives us new insights and ways of being.

Taro Iwamoto meets people at exactly the point of understanding of their own movement or life challenges, responding and making connections with them via his YouTube channel “Feldenkrais with Taro Iwamoto”. He takes great pride in making simple, practical and useful YouTube videos using the Feldenkrais Method that speak to people of diverse ages and abilities. Taro has found a way to make an impact on how people connect with themselves to improve their own performance beyond the limitations they perceive, expanding individual human capability not just in the functional actions of everyday life, but in shifting ideals of perfection in favour of recognising that other options exist.

His unique Feldenkrais learning framework on YouTube takes inspiration from his background in athletic training, physical therapy and martial arts to use clear, elegant messages to engage people to discover their own solutions to movement within their own safe environments. He is inspiring people daily with Feldenkrais principles to be comfortable on solid ground, be able to find their way to stand, to overcome the fear of falling and to use the adaptability of their own nervous system for better balance, independence and ease of existence in many areas of life.

Feldenkrais with Taro Iwamoto

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TaroIwamoto

Website: https://trans4move.com/

Feldenkrais: Moving Into the Unknown hosts: Dale Dickins, Heidi Carroll and Libby Murray; [email protected]; twitter@FeldenkraisMI

Nick Strauss-Klein is committed to unveiling the grand vision of the Feldenkrais Project of carefully collated online audio Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons for all of humanity. The Feldenkrais Project promotes at its core the actualisation of the Feldenkrais Method across the globe, in a form easily available, digestible, sharable and definitely durable. In amplifying the accessibility of these simple but deeply clarifying lessons, Nick is a beacon, orientating us to the fundamentals of familiarising our ‘selves’ with the guiding principles and structures of Feldenkrais. 

Offered free, this novel model of the Feldenkrais Project has grown to be fully crowd-funded as the level of public responsiveness continues to grow. Ordinary people are discovering extraordinary wisdom first-hand and have the opportunity to contribute their own individual responses to lessons and ATM practice in fascinating raw and honest testimonial. Whether orienting newcomers to the Feldenkrais Method, delighting his growing website listening community or satisfying the curiosity of the serious Feldenkrais learner, Nick provides a Feldenkrais resource of great depth and uncommon contextualisation for everyday life, valued by all levels of participant. Nick’s pure intention of generating interest in and expanding awareness of the life-changing benefits of the Feldenkrais Method is now gaining traction and inspires practitioners to achieve this with online offerings.

This conversation suggests there may be a direction to connect the body of worldwide endeavours to continue Moshe Feldenkrais's legacy, in collaborative explorations linking self-organising interest-based groups such as Australia’s Feldenkrais Interest Group, the Legacy Forum of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America and Cynthia Allen’s Feldenkrais Awareness Summit.

The Feldenkrais Project https://feldenkraisproject.com/

Feldenkrais Interest Group https://fig.news

Feldenkrais Legacy Forum FGNA https://youtu.be/Smg5Le76CDs

Feldenkrais Awareness Summit https://www.feldenkraissummit.com/

piano by DJ, with a reminder: "all this stuff is practice"

Russell and Linda Delman encourage us to bring warmth, humour and kindness of heart and mind to the exploration of our intimate inner selves and the “feeling states” of being human. Together they explain “embodiment” and introduce to us a simple and powerful practical taste of the Embodied Life School™️. Via Feldenkrais Method, conscious movement and meditation using precision specificity of feeling and sensing, grounded presence is created in your own immediate experience. Russell and Linda discuss the meaning of “integration” of feelings, sensations, emotions, thoughts and convey how using principles by which our nervous system learns to grow our awareness beyond our physical body can be used to awaken to our individual and collective human potential. This awareness may be a tangible doorway to enter new states of consciousness available and useful to all of us, to a larger experience of spaciousness and deeply connected relationship to ourselves, to others, to our environment and our earth.

Embodied Life™️ evolved from Russell and Linda’s extensive personal explorations and experience with Moshe Feldenkrais’ teachings, with Moshe himself, giving Functional Integration lessons to Moshe and in giving numerous Feldenkrais Trainings together, as well as Russell’s longstanding Zen meditation practice, somatic psychology and Focusing studies and Linda’s Sacred Dance, spirituality and conscious movement studies and deep appreciation for nature.

Sustaining awe, wonder and curiosity in how we deeply listen to ourselves in the present moment can grow our own capacity and resourcefulness in moving beyond our self-limiting habits and beliefs to find the possibility of expressions of freedom, wisdom and love Moshe Feldenkrais’ teachings were leaning toward. Russell and Linda have taken the Feldenkrais Method to another level, truly evolving their own handwriting in their offering to humanity.

Links : website The Embodied Life School™️ - seminars, program and retreats

Linda Delman's YouTube -over 50 short Embodied Life School practices, free to subscribers

Books, CD's and products including recently released Let's Bow Together: Meditations Guided By Russell Delman in English and German

Living The Embodied Life: Feldenkrais Method®, Meditation and Guided Inquiry

The Embodied Life School Movement Essentials: A Guide for Cultivating Awareness

Heidi and Dale introduce a veteran gift to this Feldenkrais space, Alan Questel from SanteFe New Mexico USA. Alan has been practicing Feldenkrais since injuring his back many years ago whilst he was making a living to become an actor. He shares about some of the obstacles he faced along his pathway from being a client to becoming a trainer. Moshe often talked about practitioners bringing a unique aspect of themselves to his method, it seems his wish was that his insights for BEing human were expressed through people as they struggle/d with the maturation process of becoming a practitioner to further establish his work. Alan certainly took Moshe's intention to a different level, he has developed a signature style by practicing intentional acts of kindness via his Awareness Through Movement classes. He invites people to like themselves, beginning with sensing pleasurable options in the most unlikely movement - like rolling from back to belly with books on each foot (Imagine the advanced version of this, balancing books on hands also). Click here to see the downloadable collections on his website - reversibility, or as he calls it, ytilibisrever is amongst a host of valuable lessons.

“… when you go out into the woods and you look at trees,

The minute you get near humans, you lose all that.

— Ram Das, On Self Judgment

Heidi and Dale host this episode, the format of two hosts per episode has been planned for the rest of the year. Next month Heidi and Libby move into the unknown with Russell and Linda Delman, more Feldenkrais legends.