Have you ever felt like you needed a whole new body, filled with a generous dose of joy?

Most of life happens in everyday moments and tasks. How we come to those moments with our whole being creates the quality of our daily experience. Hundreds of Feldenkrais lessons offer resources to improve our ease, efficiency, and safety when sitting, standing, walking, going up and down stairs, and doing household chores. These normal activities can be done with increased awareness and comfort by utilizing simple resources. This session will include a Feldenkrais lesson that uses a chair to help us learn about finding comfort in sitting and standing.

Balance and walking are key aspects of living independently and for longevity. The loss of thoracic rotation impacts both balance and walking, leading to increased risk of falls, medical dependency, and decreased quality of life. In this interactive workshop, you’ll discover how to quickly assess and improve thoracic rotation. Additionally, you’ll leave knowing how to educate and empower your clients to improve their balance and walking.

Decades of technological advances in the field of biomechanics have allowed researchers to collect, tabulate and otherwise quantify data in increasingly sophisticated ways. This has contributed, in part, to a seemingly endless stream of expert tips for how to run more efficiently. As the technology improves and new findings continue to emerge, however, the question of how accurately and precisely people are able to follow any given set of tips remains a burning issue. Unless we address this issue—one that is rooted as much in control as it is in learning—we are liable to (continue to) misuse the science, applying it in ways that are overly reductionist and therefore, more appropriate for machines than for humans.

While Mindfulness Meditation and the Feldenkrais Method are very different practices, they also share many underlying principles. In this talk I will be exploring some of their similarities, distinctions, and how from my personal experience they can complement each other and allow a person to move better through life.

For 400 years, the Western world has been under a spell of biomechanical metaphors to explain, assess and teach human movement. It has conjured up ideas of human bodies as compression organizations, of levers, joints and stacked bones to describe the musculo-skeletal system. Unfortunately, biomechanics is the wrong metaphor to describe any aspect of the living human being. There is nothing mechanical about humans. In this talk we will consider the natural biomotional intelligence of our animated, connective tissue, liquid crystal matrix – which is a whole other branch of physics and re-writes the books on posture, assessment and beings in motion.

Your pelvis is the vital center of human life. It is where new life is created, where it is cradled, grown and ushered into the world. Biomechanically, the pelvis is the base for powerful, efficient action. It is also a key location for sexual pleasure. Conversely it can be a source of restriction, pain, discomfort, and shame.
We will discuss all these aspects of the human pelvis and consider clever and intriguing strategies for healing, repair and enhancement. And we will consider Kegels, control, rats on treadmills, consent conversations in bodywork and the problem of portraying intimacy in the movies.

There are lots of gifts in deepening our relationship with grief and joy. We live in a culture that has forgotten how to grieve. We live in a culture that has forgotten that we have a relationship with grief – grief isn’t just an event to get past. We have forgotten that until we empty out what we no longer want there is no room for the new to come in. Join us in exploring grief and remembering your relationship to it.

Dealing with osteoarthritis can be tough and may make you wonder if you’ll ever feel comfortable again or be able to do things like gardening or playing with your kids on the floor. Taking care of your joints is crucial. From the Feldenkrais viewpoint, we’ll look into getting the most out of activities that support joint health. We’ll see how this approach promotes smooth and gentle movements that suit your comfort. We’ll also explore finding the right balance and learning to comfortably increase your range of motion where possible. A slow and easy lesson will be offered to provide experience in finding comfort.

The Feldenkrais Method is often described as a “movement practice.” Yet, while this dynamic approach to self-development uses movement as its primary vehicle for learning, the thinking that guides it can be applied globally. Let’s consider how the principles of ideal movement and the special learning strategies used in Awareness Through Movement can be applied to our thinking, our relationships and other realms. Furthermore, how can what we learn in a Feldenkrais class be used throughout the course of a busy day? How can we combine Feldenkrais with other practices to cultivate wisdom and live a better life?

In the age of the loneliness epidemic and technology overload, there are increasingly more ways to feel disassociated and out of touch with oneself. How do you come back to yourself? How do you begin to know yourself and allow for change? When you think of coming back to yourself, what do you imagine? This talk explores how the Feldenkrais Method® deepens our self-connection and intuition. Bring a notebook and a pen or pencil. The title of this talk comes from a poem by John O’Donahue.

New concepts in neuroscience radically alter the way we understand the integration of movement, exercise, mood and emotion. Many ideas that underpin the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education, some of which once seemed radical and even outlandish, are now gaining acceptance in modern neuroscience. We will discuss how recent scientific developments support much of what Moshé Feldenkrais taught as well as where some of his ideas need to be reconsidered. What does all this new science mean for our endeavor of improving well-being through Awareness Through Movement, exercise and mindfulness?

After years of practical research I can say that the intelligence in the body is an infinite portal for self-healing. The ability of the body to support and produce awake states of consciousness is like an act of real magic. When we agree to meet the body from an innocent place, and treat it as a canvas of sacred geometry, we can transform physical, emotional and epigenetic pains. The body is a temple. It is the most creative gene for holistic healing.

We know what we want to—and should—be doing for our good health, wellness, and life fulfillment, but struggle to get started and to stick with the actions that reliably bring them about. So we end up in that stop-and-start cycle of enthusiasm and frustration that is all too familiar. Join Delmar Davis as he reveals the simple NLP-based mechanism behind his End the Fight approach for finding ease, joy, and perpetual momentum in the essential acts of wellness.

New concepts in neuroscience radically alter the way we understand the integration of movement, exercise, mood and emotion. Many ideas that underpin the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education, some of which once seemed radical and even outlandish, are now gaining acceptance in modern neuroscience. We will discuss how recent scientific developments support much of what Moshé Feldenkrais taught as well as where some of his ideas need to be reconsidered. What does all this new science mean for our endeavor of improving well-being through Awareness Through Movement, exercise and mindfulness?

David Zemach-Bersin
Alan S. Questel – GCPT
Larry Goldfarb – CFT, MSME, PhD
Arlene A. Klein
Frederick E. Schjang
Cynthia Allen – GCFP, STMI