Though we all still face many pandemic-related difficulties, here in Minnesota there’s a lot of excitement on the spring breeze. With Covid vaccinations now available to all adults in our state, my family and I are finally glimpsing the approaching end of some of our quarantine practices. Plus, celebrations of spring and Passover (and Easter, for our Christian friends and family) offer rich reflections on themes of freedom and renewal.
All this has inspired my own Feldenkrais thinking lately, and I’m excited to share a theme of “Encountering Freedom” in each of April’s Tuesday morning lessons. From a Feldenkrais point of view new freedoms imply an investigation of current habits since, without examination, we may be so stuck in our habits that we don’t even perceive our new options. Auto-pilot is an easy default!
For the record, I think of the vast majority of habits as “good.” After all, habits allow us to function successfully in most if not all of the everyday activities of our lives. When we encounter new freedoms we want to probe the usefulness of our current habits, sense which ones may no longer be appropriate, and create opportunities to develop the most effective and appropriate habits we can for our new situation.
Feldenkrais of course provides rich opportunities for this kind of learning!
Each lesson in April will include an extra emphasis on encountering new freedoms and questioning our habits. Our task “on the mat” is always somatically-oriented, but never exclusively so. Patterns of thinking and emotional habits are intrinsically linked to patterns of movement and sensing. Knowing our wonderful class, I’m sure we’ll occasionally steer into seemingly less-anatomical, more “whole self” ideas about our theme as we work through April’s Zoom Feldenkrais lessons.
Pay-What-You-Can Live Video Classes
We hope you’ll join us!
Nick