Yesterday, I taught a class at SOMA Fest in Santa Monica, CA entitled : The Feldenkrais Experiment: Righteous Dancing States through Physical Clarity. The workshop was grounded in an ATM standing oscillation lesson, and we took the oscillations into new directions.
Here is a description of the class I wrote months beforehand:
The Feldenkrais Method is a living, somatic system that ingeniously facilitates clarity of movement and vital awareness. In this workshop, we will develop the specificity and pleasure of our actions through Feldenkrais’ unique movement and touch; we will melt and reform patterns; and we will uncover new arising physical and imaginal landscapes through our live compositions and dance.
Through the workshop, we will practice Awareness through Movement®, which are calm, gentle, yet curiously rigorous movement sequences that reorganize our thinking, our breathing, our quality of movement, and our physical patterns. We will also work with hands-on movement, called Functional Integration®, integrating our action, connecting us to one another, and enacting the living environment.
The Feldenkrais Method offers a unique way to research movement – in quality, in attention, and in the expansion of choice of actions; it is an experimental process. What is so powerful about going from The Method’s somatic practice in through dancing and back again is that it offers ways to integrate the material in action with an exploratory mind, and in the context of improvisation, there is a forum for the spaciousness and awareness that comes through the lessons. Obviously from my writing, you can see this is not always so easy to explain! If Feldenkrais takes for you, it will effect any action you do, though with the right modes of embodied creative research specifically, the act of shifting between the Method and dancing can deepen the impact of experiment of the Feldenkrais work and expand the repertoire of one’s creative power and depth of reflection.
In the class, we oscillated on many levels; for one, literally we oscillated in different orientations (e.g., lying on the floor, standing up), in addition, the oscillations progressed from something to try without too much direction at first, so one could experience one’s own sense of it, and then changed throughout the lesson as the action clarified, and as we practiced new iterations. Then throughout the course of the class, oscillations became a mediating act – a way to find one’s center as a concrete enaction. Throughout the workshop, oscillations were also experienced as an analog in terms realms of action, since we would move between media – from ATM to open movement, in and out of writing, of conversation, and hands-on practice. Oscillating was both a physical act, and an integrative one on the many levels of action and social interaction.
The ATM lesson came from Feldenkrais’ original San Francisco training, and was taught to me during my own training by Yvon Joly. To dive into Yvon’s generous and reflective teaching in prep was a fulfilling learning experience. Dennis Leri, who was the Educational Director of my training is brilliant and unparalleled. He will be starting a new Semiophysics Feldenkrais Training in 2012. If you have any interest in going through a Training, this one is not to be missed.
It was an honor to be in the room with the participants of the workshop. To see the beauty in the simplicity and richness of their actions moved me, literally. Thanks to Teri Carter at SOMA Fest, and onwards and upwards now to performances throughout the weekend!
