The Feldenkrais Method:
Our lives as well as our movements are very complex. The system that we use to coordinate its details is habit. Whether it is playing piano, driving a manual or running, we are building complexity on the foundation of habitually ingrained movement patterns. Those patterns might not adjust to the changes in our life, whether they entail structural changes, altering intentions or expressions. Only consciously getting to know and sense what we are doing, paralleled with the perspective of seeing that there are other options, will give you the pathway to retune how we hold, move and express ourselves.
Moshe Feldenkrais poured all his wisdom and knowledge into creating an optimized pathway to do just that. He himself was a juvenile Russian emigrant in the 1920s to Palestine, a high level physicist, a martial arts master, healer and one of the last humans that was able to have familiarized himself with a kind of universal knowledge that, in today’s world, would be impossible to achieve. At a time when the world looked at the adult brain as a slowly declining construct of nerve tissue, he very clearly worked with the experienced based hypotheses of a highly neoplastic system that constantly changes by the experiences we make. As a consequence of that, he created sequencing, optimized learning conditions and clarified intentions to optimize a pathway for humans to find their potential. What differentiates his approach from so many others is the lack of right and wrong judgment. This creates a safe learning platform keeping truly all options open.
A lot of the Feldenkrais work is taught through ATM (Awareness through Movement) lessons that guide you through movement sequences experiencing the skeletal connections and consequences of one’s movements. In the retreat you get to explore one of those lessons every day. Focusing on running we have attempted to find reference points and bridges to integrate the increased embodiment of fluidity and efficiency into the complexity of running. We will invite you to inform your running with exploring those reference points.