March Weekly Zoom Class Includes Special Events and “Intelligent Effort” Theme

In celebration of the Feldenkrais Project’s second birthday in March AND in celebration of the many silver linings of 52 weeks of pandemic-inspired Zoom classes, we’ll enjoy two special events as part of our regular weekly Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement class, which takes place every Tuesday morning, 9:30-10:30 AM Central time.

You can read below about the “Intelligent Effort” theme we’ll explore throughout all five March classes (scroll down).

First, here are the special events:

FREE class March 16

To attend live or access the recording you must register with Zoom

A year to the day since our weekly online class first gathered we’ll again do it as a free Zoom event! It’s my great pleasure to again throw open the doors and invite ALL the local and online communities that I’ve been honored to share Feldenkrais learning with, including the St. Paul JCC, The Marsh near Minneapolis, our international community of Feldenkrais Project listeners and donors, and dear friends, family, and colleagues!

We’ll explore a joyful, essential Feldenkrais ATM lesson together, and then if you wish you can stick around after class for unrecorded discussion.

Register for March 16th

March 23: Guest teacher Kevin Kortan

Intelligent Effort: Yoga from a Feldenkrais Perspective

Newcomers to yoga, to Feldenkrais – or to both – are welcome

After a year of uninterrupted weekly classes it’s time for me to do a very Feldenkrais-y thing…it’s time to rest. I’m excited to introduce you to Kevin Kortan, who was my first choice when it occurred to me to take a week off! Some of our locals know him: Kevin and I have collaborated a number of times over the years in Yoga + Feldenkrais workshops in the Twin Cities.

Kevin is a Yoga Therapist, Yoga Teacher, Teacher & Therapist Trainer, and Mentor. He has also completed a Feldenkrais training! You can read more about Kevin here.

I’m thrilled that Kevin can lead us for a class, since as a matter of “practical Feldenkrais” I’m always encouraging students to carry the embodied principles we study “off the mat” and into all of life’s activities. Kevin’s teaching always beautifully illustrates this connection directly into the world of Yoga.

He wrote that he’ll be teaching March 23 on this sūtra:

“The test for intelligent effort is the response of the breath.” – TKV Desikachar

Commentary and Reflection on Yoga Sūtra 2.47

To register, simply use our regular pay-what-you-can Zoom class page.

When Kevin proposed this theme for his class I found myself really enjoying the concept of intelligent effort and its many implications, so with his permission I’ve borrowed it as our theme of the month! For all five weeks of class in March we will be exploring…

Intelligent Effort

Most of us, most of the time, are working to improve our lives and the world around us. Yet sometimes our well-intentioned efforts create unpleasant effects. What’s the difference between efforts that create something useful or help us learn, and efforts that cause strife in ourselves and our world?

In our March classes we’ll be exploring how we can bring more of our full human intelligence, sensitivity, and awareness to our efforts. We’ll seek embodied answers to four questions:

• Why in ATM lessons do we always seek to reduce the effort?
• What did Moshe Feldenkrais mean by “parasitic” efforts?
• How can we better sense when we’re trying too hard (in lessons and in life!) so we can improve our ability to discriminate between effective and self-destructive efforts?
• How can we prepare for previously unexplored efforts?

We’ll study specific awareness tools we can use to monitor the quality of our efforts, using explorations of breathing, quality of movement, connections to the support surface, and more.

And as always, when time allows we’ll discuss more metaphorical possibilities for our somatic learnings: how can skills of more intelligent effort that we learn through our embodied selves become part of our efforts in the larger world?

See you on the mat in March!

– Nick

PS – Continuing students, here’s a nice connection from our recent “Embracing Our Differences” lessons into “Intelligent Effort,” courtesy of Moshe Feldenkrais himself:

In order to recognize small changes in effort, the effort itself must first be reduced. More delicate and improved control of movement is possible only through the increase of sensitivity, through a greater ability to sense differences.