with Victoria Worsley (Feldenkrais Guild UK)
SUMMER BREAK
-all classes finish Saturday 30th July and start again on Friday 9th September.
-I am doing Functional Integration (one to one hands on) sessions on 15th, 16th, 18th and 19th only during August and will start again properly in w/c 5th September
AUTUMN WORKSHOPS : workshops for actors and for everyone are now on the schedule page
Ground-breaking movement and awareness classes and gentle individual hands-on sessions to enable you to do what you want in life more easily.
The Feldenkrais method can also be helpful to those experiencing migraine, CFS, neurological disorders, stroke, RSI, the results of injury (or childbirth!), chronic pain, the somatic aspects of emotional trauma.
"to make the impossible possible, the possible easy and the easy pleasurable"
MOSHE FELDENKRAIS
You may be familiar with best-selling neuroscience writer, Norman Doidge’s recent book ‘The Brain’s Way of Healing’ with 2 chapters on Feldenkrais in it, but if not here he is talking about the man, his genius and his Method.
I have been meaning to write something about my experience of sustainable training and working with injury for some time, as working with this has taught me a great deal about the Feldenkrais Method. I came out of physical theatre aged 40 and since then I have been supplementing my feldenkrais practice with barefoot running and, for the last 8 years, a demanding form of traditional Okinawan karate. At my age especially I have had to pay a lot of attention not to end up injured and out of both activities quite quickly and it is important for many of my clients too. Continue reading
This was my (uncut!) talk at the ‘(Re)storing Performance’ seminar on Feldenkrais for Performance, organised by Thomas Kampe at Bath Spa University back in June. Obviously I didn’t get to say all this in the time so here it is uncut. I have many more thoughts to share about Feldenkrais for actors and acting in the book I am writing (due out in the spring): this is a little piece and is specifically about teaching in drama schools. The audience consisted mostly of teachers of either Feldenkrais, dance or performance, some professors, some performers and even the odd student! Its quite long for a blog post and has no pictures, so its really for the hard core! Continue reading
A wonderful resource. Many very well known practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method in this video, some of whom talk about Moshe and their experiences of him on a celebratory tour of the places he lived and worked in Tel Aviv. Very touching little film and a way of feeling a little closer to the man for those of us who sadly didn’t meet him. I discovered the method in 1984 – the year he died. thanks to the makers of this for making it available to us all. click on title below:
I know. I haven’t written a blog in ages. But I have a very good reason. Nick Hern publishers have commissioned me to write a book on Feldenkrais for actors and as I have to write it in between my public Feldenkrais practice, drama school teaching, running and karate training and attempting to be a half decent mother/spouse/sibling/friend to various different people, the book takes up all other available corners in my life.
So this will be short. Continue reading
Brown belt grading for me on monday evening. It feels significant. As Sensei Kevin says: from here you can smell the black belt. But that depends if I get through. I don’t think I ever imagined I would get this far. Now I can’t see myself giving up until I am just clearly too old. Not that I am looking forward to the actual grading: two hours of incredibly hard work which I am just hoping I manage without losing my wits, being overcome with exhaustion or my arms getting too battered to continue. Hopefully I will get through. If I do it will feel fantastic.
I haven’t written for a while. Partly because all my writing time is going into a book I have been commissioned to write on Feldenkrais for actors (very exciting) and partly because I still can’t write about martial arts in anything other than a personal journey kind of way as I am just not remotely an ‘authority’ and I didn’t have any more to say about it for a while. But recently Sensei Kevin asked me something about what I had learnt from Karate and how it was affecting my Feldenkrais work with clients and my Feldenkrais Trainer, Garet Newell, was curious about aspects of it too and as I think I am the only Feldenkrais Practitioner who does Karate (as opposed to other martial arts) I thought this grading was an interesting time to re-collect my thoughts around those good questions. Continue reading
Terrible name for workshop. So sorry. Time pressure.
But I have been working a lot both myself and with many, many people who come to see me for one- to-one (F.I) with this issue of the freedom of the head in order to be able to look around (obviously) but also balance better, move from one position to another better (lying to sitting to standing etc) or one point of balance to another (one leg to the other), be able to use the arms for pushing, pulling, reaching, typing, playing an instrument – even punching. It can be so difficult to do these kinds of things without fixing the head by hanging on somewhere in the neck or right at the junction of neck /torso or neck/shoulders and so limiting possibilities and disrupting the very activity we wish to improve. And then of course there is tension and pain etc that can go along with it. Continue reading
Copyright ©2007-2016 V. Worsley all rights reserved Photos by Judy Bould