We humans are experts at learning. We don’t need to show babies how to learn. As soon as they’re born, they begin.
Movement is key to learning. The Feldenkrais Method® works by inviting us to attend to small differences between movements and assess which are preferable: which use less energy, are more direct, and feel better. At any age we can notice these differences, learn, and improve.
Neuroplasticity: More than Just a Buzz Word
Literally our brain grows new neural connections: dubbed neuroplasticity, this ability of our brain to change has become a buzz word. Buzzy or not, it’s still true we can learn and improve. It’s pretty darn cool.
Feldenkrais teacher Rich Goldsand just produced a nice video demonstrating with several clients how the method helps them. Watch it below.
Discover your innate strength and capacity to learn. Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
You’ll learn to organize your physical self to move with greater ease and effectiveness, improving co-ordination, range of motion, and balance.
“Truly remarkable such simple movements have such a large impact.”
—Michelle Accardo, MS, ATC, LMT, CLT
LIMIT 15 participants.
6 Tuesdays, June 27-Aug. 8 (skip July 4), 7:30-8:30 pm.
Chinese and Japanese martial arts distinguish between internal and external practice. The internal arts utilize internal strength as a basis from which to move. Often practitioners of these arts refer to flowing energy and to the practice of grounding. Within the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education there are clear principles, both biological and in physics, that lead us into a unique perspective on internal strength.
Join us for this two-day workshop to investigate how to utilize these principles to connect with your own internal strength and improve your own functional self-organization.
Limit: 30 participants. SOLD OUT.
You’ll get tools to re-discover:
Skeletal support
Your connection with the ground
How your breath can support better movement
WHO BENEFITS
Athletes
Yoga, Tai Chi, Aikido and other movement practitioners
Anyone who’s interested in learning more about & improving their patterns of self-use
WHEN
Saturday & Sunday, Sept. 16 & 17, 10 am- 5 pm
Cost: $300; At door $350.
Students $200 (paid by check/cash). Register here.
Please email Angela at angela at dallasfeldenkrais dot com if you’re interested in a group discount for your own movement studio staff and students.
Payment in advance is required to reserve your place.
If you prefer to pay by check, register above, make your check payable to “Dallas Feldenkrais,” and send immediately to:
P.O. Box 797503
Dallas TX 75379
Jeff Haller, PhD, GCFP studied directly with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of the Feldenkrais Method. Jeff has led trainings and taught workshops on four continents. His additional study includes years of basketball, Aikido and meditation. Jeff has a doctorate in psychology. He’s based in Seattle, WA. Jeff is launching a revolutionary new training for Feldenkrais practitioners in Spring 2018: enrollment is open.
Bring awareness to how you use your hip joints, and their relationship to the rest of your skeleton. If you’d like to sit, stand and walk with greater ease, you’ll benefit from this series.
Transform your yoga or dance practice, or simply move with more clarity and enjoyment.
“Truly remarkable such simple movements have such a large impact.”—Michelle Accardo, MS, ATC, LMT, CLT
Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
LIMIT 15 participants.
6 Tuesdays, April 4-May 9, 7:30-8:30pm.
So, after six years of teaching, I follow my hunches when planning what to teach. I listen to my private clients, to students in my classes. I continue with my advanced study. Patterns emerge. Something comes into the foreground.
Now it’s hip joints which keep presenting themselves to me.
Connecting with Your Strength
My ongoing interest remains uncovering innate strength. And clarifying use of our hip joints is key. The pelvis is our power center. Those bones are the biggest we have. The lumber vertebrae are enormous, compared to our cervical vertebrae.
The head of the femur is spherical, almost. It has the potential to rotate in almost any direction. Yet most of us use only a fraction of the potential. Watch a dancer or gymnast to see the hip joint exploited to its fullest.
Most of us don’t have hypermobile joints like acrobats. Yet we can still find more range of motion than we’re currently taking advantage of. We can find, for example, the top of our hip joint, that place around which we can pivot freely and discover what Moshe Feldenkrais called good posture: the ability to move in any direction without preparation.
Why Study Anatomy?
I’ve been going back to the transcripts of the lessons Moshe Feldenkrais taught years ago in Jerusalem. We have roughly 600 of these lessons, from the time he spent teaching on Alexander Yanai Street. I’m finding gems in his comments to students. He says repeatedly that we don’t know where our hip joints are. We can’t accurately locate them on ourselves. We think our hip joints are located where our pants crease at the top of our legs. They aren’t. Because we move from a faulty understanding of our anatomy, we damage our hip joints and low back. Moshe said that 60 years ago, and it’s still true today.
The heads of the femurs point towards your sacrum. Your hip joints are located where they can direct ground forces up and into your spine on either side to help you stand erect and move your spine freely.
When you stand using your skeleton clearly, without unnecessary activity in your core, you’ll feel support flowing up from your heels to your hip joints, all the way to the crown of your head.
It’s literally a heady feeling.
So why do so many of us lack or forget that connection? Many reasons: injury, prolonged sitting, inactivity in general. I also think the English language doesn’t help.
Basic Pelvic Anatomy
We have one word, “pelvis,” for what are actually three bones: the sacrum in the middle and an ilium/ischium on either side. To add to the confusion, we don’t have one word for the hip bones on either side of the sacrum. Each is composed of three elements, the ilium, ischium, and pubis. These are separated in newborns and become fused by adulthood. The three elements form a deep socket called the acetabulum where they meet. The acetabulum articulates with the head of the femur. In front, the pubic bone on either side is connected by cartilage. So each of these three parts of your pelvis has the potential to move independently. To see that potential exploited to its fullest, watch a skillful belly dancer.
Why isn’t study of basic human anatomy required? How we’re put together is fascinating. When kids meet my skeleton Heinrich, they can’t stop touching him, moving his bones around, asking questions. It’s absurd and a profound disservice to allow children to reach adulthood in ignorance of how their physical selves function. (Of course, public school would probably find a way to make anatomy boring. But that’s another story.)
The point is, understanding and clarifying function of our hip joints is key to improving our movement and self-use. This spring, that will be the theme throughout my classes. I hope you’ll join me.
Going Deeper with Anatomy
If you’d like to study human anatomy on your own, there’s no better place to start than Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain. Her analysis focuses on function, not the study of anatomy for its own sake. She’s a dancer and physical therapist. The book is full of great illustrations. It’s organized so you can easily pick it up and simply read the section dealing with the pelvis. Or go cover to cover, if you like.
Bring awareness to how you use your hip joints, and their relationship to the rest of your skeleton. If you’d like to sit, stand and walk with greater ease, you’ll benefit from this series.
Transform your yoga or dance practice, or simply move with more clarity and enjoyment.
“Truly remarkable such simple movements have such a large impact.”—Michelle Accardo, MS, ATC, LMT, CLT
Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
Join us Mondays in February for Awareness Through Movement®.
Register soon: room for just five!
Discover your innate strength and capacity to learn. ATM® offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
You’ll learn to organize your physical self to move with greater ease and effectiveness, improving co-ordination, range of motion, and balance.
Join us Mondays in February for Awareness Through Movement®.
Register soon: room for just five!
Feb. 6-27, 6:30-8 pm.
Discover your innate strength and capacity to learn. ATM® offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
You’ll learn to organize your physical self to move with greater ease and effectiveness, improving co-ordination, range of motion, and balance.
Join us Mondays in February for Awareness Through Movement®.
Register soon: room for just five!
Feb. 6-27, 6:30-8 pm.
Discover your innate strength and capacity to learn. ATM® offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving.
You’ll learn to organize your physical self to move with greater ease and effectiveness, improving co-ordination, range of motion, and balance.
COST
$25 General Admission
$20 Members
$15 Fugitive (Unlimited) Members
Please keep in mind we need a minimum of 5 students to have the workshop and space restrictions will limit us to 20 participants.
Taught by Angela Alston, GCFP. Angela’s movement background includes dance and yoga. She teaches classes, workshops, and private lessons in several Dallas locations. Angela completed 800 hours of Feldenkrais® training in 2012, and is enrolled in an 18-month advanced training with the IOPS Academy focused on profound strength and ideal organization.
The workshop is sponsored by Fugitive Fitness. Fugitive Freedom “is about Freedom! The freedom to go where you want to go, do what you want to do, and be who you want to be. It’s about Independence, gained as you progress on that journey and become ever more self-reliant.”
We humans are experts at learning. We don’t need to show babies how to learn. As soon as they’re born, they begin.
The internal arts utilize internal strength as a basis from which to move. Often practitioners of these arts refer to flowing energy and to the practice of grounding. Within the 
The head of the femur is spherical, almost. It has the potential to rotate in almost any direction. Yet most of us use only a fraction of the potential. Watch a dancer or gymnast to see the hip joint exploited to its fullest.
