About Victoria Worsley
I first found out about the
Feldenkrais Method when I was 17 on a drama training in Paris. The movement
teacher had known Moshe Feldenkrais himself and her teaching was extremely
closely related. I had been a fairly sporty kid but I will never forget the
experience. It was like being plugged in: I could really feel what I was doing
for what seemed like the first time. And I discovered the pleasure in moving
and doing the simplest things - just for its own sake. I stayed in touch with
the method on and off from then on and it never left me. It just seemed to
inform everything I did.
After my actor training and university (oxford) I spent twenty years being an actor in everything from traditional and classical plays to cutting-edge performance and physical theatre (with a smattering of film and TV too) and especially in that place where speaking and moving meet. I ran a theatre company (Jade) for 15 years that made some great work and was often invited to be Movement Director at eg Birmingham Rep, for Kali Theatre, Pentabus, Northampton Theatre Royal. I also spent quite a while sorting out a few things in my life and getting to understand something of the relationship between movement and the self: the physiology of emotion.
Time went on: I married, got pregnant and found myself more and more drawn to the Feldenkrais training that began in Lewes in 2003. I guess I originally thought of it as a tool for the movement work I was doing with other actors in the theatre, but while I do work with actors and in drama schools (currently Rose Bruford) I rapidly found it opened up a much wider and very interesting world to explore and engage in too that brought together many of my life's interests and experiences. And now that is what I do.
I have been working in individual sessions or classes with:
- Amateur runners
- People with back pain or even spasm/knee/hip/ankle pain etc that interferes with their work, sport, yoga, or life
- Mums finding that child birth and then carrying babies/toddlers or pushing prams has wreaked havoc in their systems
- Musicians, actors, Movement Directors wanting explore and improve their skills
- People dealing with migraine, or those with conditions such as ME, insomnia, RSI
- People dealing with the somatic aspects of emotional issues
And there are many others the method can benefit whom I haven't yet had the opportunity to work with: those learning or re-learning how to manage in their lives with brain/nervous system injury or conditions due to stroke, disease, cerebral palsy, learning difficulties for example.
I am always open to new challenges.