(Re)Mind Your Body

MOVE AWAY FROM BACK PROBLEMS in June's Workshop

Access your brain's capacity to unlearn habits and reset … REMIND YOUR BODY !

Old & young, fit or creaky can enjoy and learn from this Practical Movement Workshop using The Feldenkrais Method® - effective, user friendly Awareness Through Movement® exercises that engage the brain’s plasticity to bring about improvements in the body’s comfort and function - and drawing on Ruthy Alon's Bones for Life programme,developed to improve bone strength. Both aim to empower students (not patients).

Saturday 13 June 2015 10.30 – 14.30

Penrith Friends Meeting House,

CA11 7TR

£21 on door - £16 in advance (refund no, ‘exchange’ yes)

details Virginia Taylor PhD FG(UK) 0797 796 1563

So let’s rewind the clock – or if of the digital generation, return to an earlier system restore point. That actually is a lot more apt. (It’s REALLY apt!) We’ll do two lovely lessons which recapitulate key moments in the process by which we first learned to move. We achieved this by experiment and play, not by struggling and working. As infants we were experts on kinesthaetic feedback – we seek to recover that powerful skill by observation, attention, and repetition. By doing Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement lessons, indeed.

Could I just remind us all that ‘Feldenkrais’ is not just for [old] folk with major problems, or wanting exercise that isn’t! It is a powerful tool to improve function at all levels.

In this workshop we’ll also look at some of the practical and useful ideas developed by Feldenkrais practitioner Ruthy Alon, in her Bones for Life programme. (That’s Ruthy in the crawling picture). A lot of the people attending our workshops are women aged 50+ , and we are vulnerable to loss in bone density. The ideas in Bones for Life are entirely compatible with medical advice – check out https://www.nos.org.uk/ ( The National Osteoporosis Society). There is no doubt that bones strengthen with judicious stress, and Bones for Life is a lot gentler and cleverer than the NOS’s apparent advice … (to jog! ??? ). You can take these ideas away with you to do on a daily basis and help yourself.

Again, Bones for Life offers an extraordinary experience of being upright and organized in gravity, which is useful for ballet dancers, runners, and other people who use their bodies to do amazing things. 

1. In my research and preparation for this workshop I looked at http://balancedrunner.co.uk/trying-out-steve-maxwells-vestibular-reset-via-christopher-mcdougall/

The Balanced Runner is brainchild of brilliant Feldenkrais colleague Jae Gruenke (currently based in Edinburgh). She offers food for thought and practical support for serious runners – use her website and pass it on. The ‘vestibular reset’ Jae draws our attention to has much in common with Feldenkrais methods and principles – check it out.

2. I wondered if I dared offer a ‘Core Mobility not Core Stability’ workshop! This is somewhat controversial so I decided to leave it to another time. Melinda Glenister goes for it! and offers this Feldenkrais-based workshop:

You will see how adherence to a ‘stability approach’ can inhibit your movement as well as performance. You will discover alternative ways of moving and thinking about the centre and the spine which give a real alternative to conventionally held views of exercise, training, performance and rehabilitation. You will feel that a coordinated and mobile centre gives balance and strength, as well as relief to back pain, and that overly tensing muscles and preventing movement leads to less performance, less grace, and less ability to avoid back pain.

If you click on her link here, you can view the embedded link of Professor Peter O’Sullivan at the Royal Free Hospital on ‘the myth of Core Stability’. This is coming from a bona-fide medical authority, isn’t some weird untested fringe thing! http://www.body-equilibrium.co.uk/projects/myth-of-core-stability-workshop/

None of us are saying you don’t need to be strong but that you need to be discriminating. Feldenkrais offers you a great way to discriminate.