Find Your Voice

Getting It All Together

Silhouettes of happy people against the skyPhysical, mental, and emotional elements combine to create your unique voice and self-expression in the world. When you find your voice, you can improve your overall experience of moving, sensing, feeling, and “performing” in all aspects of your life.

WHO BENEFITS: Speakers, teachers, performers—anyone who’d like to use their voice, and themselves, with greater ease.

COST: Early-Bird $45 (thru May 3); General $55; $65 at door if space permits. Students: $30. Limit 20. Room for 12 more as of May 1!
Register on Brown Paper Tickets.

In this workshop, you will:

  • Feel surprising connections your jaw, lips, and tongue share throughout your whole system.
  • Sense the relationship between posture, breath, movement, and sound.
  • Improve vocal tone, clarity, and expressiveness.
  • Discover easy breathing, balance, posture, and movement.
  • Learn to interrupt muscular tension patterns of TMJ and headaches (Surprise!).

    Photo of MaryBeth Smith, GCFP

    MaryBeth Smith, GCFP

YOUR INSTRUCTOR: MaryBeth D. Smith, GCFP, is Founder and Director of the FELDENKRAIS Center of Houston. With a background as vocal coach and university opera director, she continues to work with actors, speakers, and singers to improve their skills, technique, and presentation. MaryBeth is a member of the teaching faculty at the Jung Center of Houston, and is nationally recognized as an authority on the improvement of human performance.

Awareness Through Movement Begins in Oak Lawn

Join us Mondays in February for Awareness Through Movement®.Self discovery with Feldenkrais

Register soon: room for just five! Room for 3 more as of 2/3.

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.


Patterns Study in February

Self discovery with FeldenkraisPatterns study continues. Open to students who’ve attended at least one series with Angela previously. Or email me to discuss whether this will be a good choice for you.

Saturdays, Feb. 11 & 18, 11:30 am-1:30 pm. Attend both classes or register for just one.
Limit: 5. Room for one more as of 2/10.


Registration Options



Awareness Through Movement

6-Week Series Begins

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. LIMIT 15 participants.

A woman and man practice Awareness Through Movement.

Copyright © International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden.

“Truly remarkable such simple movements have such a large impact.”
—Michelle Accardo, MS, ATC, LMT, CLT

6 Tuesdays, Feb. 21-Mar. 28, 2017, 7:30-8:30pm. Register on the MoveStudio website.

 

Taking Movement Investigation Beyond the Studio

Practicing Feldenkrais is about cultivating curiosity about your physical (and mental) self. Here’s a great example from Seth Dellinger. He’s a Feldenkrais teacher who continues to expand his horizons, looking for opportunities to play beyond the studio.

Start Small

John Tarr with a friend, practicing parkour.

Playful practice: John Cedric Tarr with friend.

John Cedric Tarr guided Seth recently in a parkour exploration. Parkour is a training discipline using movement that developed from military obstacle course training.

One rule: you start with something simple—ridiculous—and gradually increase the level of difficulty. You play at the boundaries, just like you do in an Awareness Through Movement lesson.

Seth writes: “The main thing isn’t being a daredevil, but yes, you must face your fears. So, start small, where everything is entirely safe!  Jumping from one ledge to another is no different than jumping from one line on the sidewalk to another. So start practicing your precision jumps where the height of the jump doesn’t pose any danger. And start with short jumps . . . there’s no hurry!”

Practicing Parkour

Another practical tip from Seth: “One of the key ingredients to turning the environment into my playground is making decisions.

  1. I look around for something to do.
  2. I decide: I will jump over that bench.
  3. I decide how I will jump over that bench: I will put my hands right THERE in order to support myself and swing my legs over.”

I’m hoping John and Seth will both come teach at Dallas Movement Lab this year.

Meanwhile, read the rest of Seth’s blog here.

Like to see the basics of parkour? Check out the video below. Six packs not essential.

Not ready to take on a self-designed obstacle course? Take a walk in an unfamiliar park or neighborhood. Or try crawling across your living room rug. Forwards and backwards and sideways.

Perfecting Appreciation of Imperfection

A young woman practices Awareness Through Movement.

© International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden.

Learning demands that we make mistakes repeatedly. It’s impossible to improve without error. It sometimes seems counter-intuitive, but to approach perfection, we must embrace imperfection. How many times does a baby fall before her first step?

But it’s SO hard to allow ourselves fail. Many of us are perfectionists, or were raised by them. We’ve been punished for failing. Or we punish ourselves. Negative self-talk can be a constant companion.

Show & Tell

Feldenkrais and violin teacher Lisa Burrell recently wrote a moving reflection on the value of modeling imperfection. She shares an anecdote about one of her students struggling with demanding parents and teachers.

Lisa’s own mistake in playing a passage became a pivotal moment in a lesson. “I was kind of dumbstruck that the simple act of admitting my mistake would be so powerful in this relationship.” The student’s demeanor changed markedly.

Lisa writes: “In this world of increasing competition and emphasis on getting the right answer, we need more than ever to be guides to what real learning is, not just in our language, but by sharing our own ongoing processes and revealing our own powerful vulnerability.”

Read Lisa’s complete blog here.

Holiday Gift: Jaw Investigations

Happy holidays! My gift to you: an audio lesson for improving movement of your jaw (and the rest of you). A great way to prepare for your Chanukah latkes or Christmas pudding!

Be sure to download by January 6, 2017. The link will expire.

Begin lying down, with legs long or feet standing. Remember to make to make small, slow movements. Pause frequently. Enjoy!

Anti-Fragile Walking Step By Step

Leave a reply
Feldenkrais teacher Andrew Gibbons

Andrew Gibbons, GCFP

Would you like to walk with greater ease and pleasure? Most of us walk with deeply grooved habits, repeating moments that lead to pain and stiffness. If we study these moments, we can create stability and integrity in our walk. With practice, we can clarify and ennoble an action we’ve done unconsciously our entire lives. Taught by Andrew Gibbons, GCFP.

In this 2-day course, you’ll raise your walking from an unconscious habit to an informed practice. You’ll emerge with a clearer perspective on how walking works and the art of transferring weight elegantly from leg to leg. You’ll learn what, why, and how to practice with greater specificity. Then walking can become a path to health. It can be your zen, your gym, and your joy. Limit: 25 participants. Room for 3 more as of 3/21.

Andrew Gibbons working with a student.The course focuses on three crucial moments in walking. These moments will set the parameters to test skeletal support, muscular efficiency, and balance.

As a participant you will learn:

  1. How walking is learned, and how learning is walked.
  2. Why your soft tissue cannot survive a disorganized skeleton.
  3. To see and sense shearing forces that poor walking creates, and learn how to move better by choice.
  4. Key relationships in the foot, ankle, and knee that every good walk maintains.
  5. “Do-anywhere” practices that help you tune your walking balance and maintain it throughout the day.
  6. How to use observational skills to improve by observing other people and yourself.
  7. Awareness Through Movement® practices that deepen your understanding and skill.

Participants will receive a set of four Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement lessons:  “Walking with the Ground.”

Instructor Andrew Gibbons is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Teacher in New York City. He’s spent the last 8 years uncovering the moments in walking that tell us the most about our posture and self organization. In his private practice, he teaches the humans of New York how to organize themselves better for the second half of life than they did for the first. Andrew has been a Feldenkrais Teacher since 2003. He’s on the staff of Jeff Haller’s IOPS Academy, a graduate program for Feldenkrais teachers in NYC and Seattle.

COST: Late $325 (by Apr. 5); At door $350 (if space permits). Students $200.

Register on Brown Paper Tickets. Or send a check payable to “Dallas Feldenkrais” to:
P.O. Box 797503
Dallas, TX 75379

Eyes Wide Open Begins

Eyes Wide OpenMuscles of human eye illustrated

4 Saturdays, Jan. 14-Feb. 4, 2017, 11:30 am-1 pm

Improve both the coordination and sight functions of your eyes.
Participants will receive audio recordings of the lessons.
Limit: 6. FULL.

Discover Core Ability: Intro to Feldenkrais

Todler child climbing a rock outside.Healthy children have core ability. They crawl, run, and climb freely.
As adults, we often forget this freedom. We use unnecessary effort. We try to build strength without accessing the strength we already have.

In this workshop, you’ll investigate the roots of strength and core ability. You’ll get tools to re-discover:

  • skeletal support
  • your connection with the ground
  • how your breath can better support movement

Useful for athletes, performing artists, yogis–anyone who’d like to move with more efficiency and pleasure. LIMIT: 16. Room for 6 more as of 1/6/17.

Taught by Angela Alston, GCFP.

NOTE: Please be comfortable sitting and lying on the floor, on your back, side or stomach.
Contact Angela if you are recovering from injury to be sure you’ll enjoy this workshop.