The Project

In 1980, Moshe Feldenkrais was beginning his last professional teacher training in Amhearst MA. It was videotaped and just now made available in DVD format for Feldenkrais Practitioners. 6 years out of my own training, I need another immersion and am ready to dive into these materials. My goal is to make daily contact with primary materials--transcripts and recordings of Feldenkrais himself--for a year. I have in my posession the 11 volumes of transcripts from his teaching on Alexander Yanai  St. in Tel Aviv, his books, some of the public lessons taught in San Francisco. But really the pinacle of his teaching was in Amhearst, so I will start there and work my way backwards (I have already used the Alexander Yanai materials extensively in my teaching.)

My own training was with 1st generation FELDENKRAIS Trainers Paul and Julie Rubin.

Is this project a bit extreme and arbitrary? Yes! But it excites me, and that's what counts. It is my way of carving out time for myself and continuing to grow as a practitioner and human being, while facing the physical and phychic challenges of parenthood. Blogging is an admittedly narcicistic form of public accountability and a chance to record my impressions. Checking in, and articulating my understanding of the method.

My constraint:  a 4-month-old daughter. Sometimes she will join me on the floor.
She is riveted by Moshe's voice!

She is also better "organized" than I am. Look at how her feet point towards the ceiling when mine point out straight, indicating more tonus in my extensors.

Feldenkrais comments that people with a lot of extensor tonus have studied something a long time that they feel is really important. For me, this was the viola (25+ years!) It is exacerbated by baby-carrying, habit, personality, who knows... I am excited to see what Awareness Through Movement (r), practiced daily, does to my form over the next 12 months. I am giving myself a slight head start by beginning before Jan 1.