Tag Archives: strength

Uncover Your Innate Strength: 6 Monthly Workshops

A human hand holds her own foot.

© International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden.

Beginning January 12 and ending June 8, this will be a monthly three-hour workshop taught by Angela Alston, GCFP, MFA. The over-arching focus will be discovering your innate strength and, each month, we’ll investigate new possibilities. You’ll leave with tools—investigations you can do on your own between workshops. To deepen your learning, there’ll be opportunities for discussion between workshops: online video calls and/or a private Facebook group.

This is the kind of learning and self-study Angela was introduced to in an 18-month advanced training with Jeff Haller, PhD, GCFP. Her two-hour Saturday class has engaged in it for more than a year. Join us to dive deep into self-discovery. You’ll be astonished at the resources you find within yourself and among your fellow participants.

Come to all six workshops, or just one (if space permits).
Themes will include:
  • finding clear support,
  • reversibility,
  • balance, &
  • minimizing effort
Limit: 8. FULL.

DETAILS

When

6 Saturdays, 2:30-5:30 pm
Jan. 12, Feb. 2, Mar. 2, Apr. 13, May 11, June 8

Cost

  • By Dec. 15: $275 for all 6 workshops. Special offer: Includes one private lesson with Angela & one free workshop.
  • After Dec. 15: $275 for all 6 (one free workshop).
  • $55 per workshop, if space remains. Registration for single workshops opens in January.

Uncover Your Innate Strength in Portland, ME

Leave a reply
A woman lies on her side, with her right arm extended toward the ceiling and right foot standing.

© International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden.

Healthy children move freely, without thought. As adults, we often forget this freedom. In this two-hour workshop, you’ll investigate the roots of strength and core ability, and re-connect with your potential to move freely.

 You’ll get tools to re-discover:

  • skeletal support
  • your connection with the ground
  • how your breath can better support movement
WHAT PARTICIPANTS HAVE SAID
“It’s about gently introducing new possibilities for movement and listening to what your body tells you. After my first class I felt like a huge weight had been lifted. It was like a preview of how I could feel if life continued moving in this direction. It felt like joy.” — Sam Damask, musician
 
“Thank you so much for a most stimulating, enlivening, enlightening and totally fun afternoon!”— Linda Kemp
 
Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting patterns of moving. You learn most movement practices from the outside in, by imitation. In ATM, you’re invited to learn from the inside out. Then take your discoveries into another movement practice or your everyday life.
 
ATM is the group version of the Feldenkrais Method®. Pioneered by Israeli physicist/engineer/martial artist Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc., the Method offers a unique, profound way to examine and change your habitual and often limiting ways of moving. By attending to how you move, you’ll discover how to improve the quality of your movement. The building blocks of Feldenkrais are physics, biomechanics, and neuroscience.
 
ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR
Angela Alston, GCFP, MFA, has taught classes and workshops in Feldenkrais since 2010. Her studies and interests have led her towards making the practice and teaching of Feldenkrais a way of life: majoring in biology and philosophy in college; studying dance and playing music; loving to walk and bike and play with movement of all kinds (her new favorite is beginning parkour), and practicing meditation. She’s based in Dallas, Texas.

Discover Core Ability

Leave a reply

Intro to the Feldenkrais Method®

Healthy children have core ability. They crawl, run, and climb freely.

Todler child climbing a rock outside.As adults, we often forget this freedom. We feel heavy instead of light. We use unnecessary effort. We try to build strength without accessing what we already have.

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

Useful for athletes, performing artists, yogis—anyone who’d like to move with more ease and pleasure.
Limit: 14.

Registration: $45 Early-Bird (by Oct. 11); $55 Advance. $35 Students (paid by check).
Reserve your place now.

Please make checks payable to “Dallas Feldenkrais” and mail to:
3515 Cedar Springs, Suite 102
Dallas 75215.

Please be comfortable sitting on the floor, lying on your side or stomach.
Please contact Angela if you have questions.

Uncover Internal Strength

A 2-Day Workshop with Jeff Haller, PhD, GCFP

How do you define strength?

Chinese and Japanese martial arts distinguish between internal and external practice. A group of people practices Awareness Through MovementThe 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.

Jeff Haller uses a foam roller to demonstrate mobilizing 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

How Movement Begins: Jeff Haller Workshop from Angela Alston on Vimeo.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Black and white head shot of Jeff Haller, GCFPJeff 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.

Uncovering Your Innate Strength at Fugitive Fitness

Leave a reply

Intro to Feldenkrais®

In this workshop, you’ll investigate the roots of strength and core ability.

You’ll get tools to re-discover:

A woman and man practice Awareness Through Movement.

© International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden.

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

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.”

More about Strength

Strength from the Ground

In my teaching over the past year, uncovering inherent strength has become the organizing principle.

Tennis player in motion

© International Feldenkrais® Federation Archive, Robert Golden

My mentor Jeff Haller, PhD, first pointed me in this direction. It’s the central theme of his advanced training program. He said, “if I train myself in any exercise system, and I’m sloppy in the way I provide support for myself, all I will do is train muscles based on supporting myself the way I am accustomed to.”

In other words, if I don’t improve my relationship to the ground, I’ll strengthen habits of self-use which don’t serve me and might actually harm me—which is how I sprained my ankle playing squash. (By the way, I then got up and finished the game: don’t do that!)

(Find the complete interview with Jeff here.)

Are Humans Machines?

Image shows cover of Mass Psychology of Fittism: Michaelangelo's depiction of human strengthRecently I’ve begun reading an excellent book which delves into the question from a slightly different angle: how do we define fitness? Author Edward Yu answers the question in depth. He looks at how the West has defined health, fitness, beauty, and the human body over a period of centuries, to see how we’ve arrived at the point where for many these are synonymous. As a martial artist, runner, and Feldenkrais practitioner, he asks, what are we fit for?

He writes: “If I am considered fit enough to be on a magazine cover, does that also make me fit for the rest of life, which occurs outside of the confines of 8 1/2 x 11 inches? Should Albert Einstein, who probably never performed a single push-up, be deemed unfit?”

How we came to equate our physical selves with machines (thank you, Descartes!) is key to Edward’s analysis of the contemporary conflation of fit/health/beauty.

Read the prologue to his book, The Mass Psychology of Fittism: Fitness, Evolution, and the First Two Laws of Thermodynamics, here.