Independent Feldenkrais Trainings, Part Two
Last week’s post regarding independent feldenkrais trainings provoked several people to contact me offline. They all had ideas worth consideration.
But before we go there, I thought you might like to see some writing from someone who has already proposed a new training model. To be fair, Ruthy Alon was originally speaking of creating new models within the Guild system. I am not. And Ruthy’s ideas were never taken up. But they might be a great place to start the conversation.
Part of Ruthy Alon’s 1998 Feldenkrais Training Proposal.
“I suggest we agree to a quota of personal experience in a certain volume of practice, for instance, a practitioner who has 10 years of successful practice and who has completed
A SCHOOL FOR TRAINERS (which can include visiting some trainings not
necessarily as a paid assistant) and presenting a written work, will grant
the candidate permission to present their own training providing:
1. The training will be small, 15-20 persons maximum at first.
2. The training will be at the trainer’s practice and divided throughout the year.
3. The trainer will hold his or her practice, which the trainees will be able to watch.
4. A clinic, with low fees, will be set by the training for supervising the
trainees.
5. The trainer will teach the first 3 years of the training, 150 days, with
assistant and experienced graduates.
6. At the end of 3 years, the trainees will have to complete a quota of 30
additional days with three different trainers in order to receive certification.
7. The main trainer will be responsible for the success of the training. The test for efficiency of the training will be evaluated by the Guild, who will follow graduates for a few years after completing their training and find out to what extend they had actualized their expectations. According to this survey, the number of participants in the next training will be given the permission to grow. To date, no such a follow up of results has ever been done. We are holding on to a format just with unresearched speculation.”
Download the entire proposal here: Ruthy Alon Feldenkrais Training Proposal
Please note: Ruthy’s proposal is over 10 years old. I have no idea if it represents her current thinking on the subject, nor if this is even a topic that she still cares about. I did not solicit Ruthy’s feedback for this post nor did I consult her or anyone else about publishing it.
Independent Feldenkrais Trainings
For the second time in as many months I have been contacted by a Feldenkrais practitioner who has begun teaching a Feldenkrais training outside the auspices of any of the “official” organizations. To a certain extent, this is not a new phenomena. The first time I met someone conducting “off the grid” Feldenkrais trainings was over 10 years ago and that person had been training for many years. I’m sure there have been many others that I do not know about.
What is new, I believe, is that the people are starting their own trainings earlier in their careers, choosing not to spend decades waiting for someone else to give them permission or certify them. The practitioners that I have spoken to are starting small. Each of them is only working with a handful of people. And they are doing so within their practices. For example, the students not only have training days and meetings but also watch and interact with the practitioner while he or she is seeing clients.
This very much reminds me of how Moshe Feldenkrais conducted his trainings with his original thirteen students in Israel. Bernard Lake did an interview with Ruthy Alon in February 1998 and this is how she described it:
“When Moshe did the first training…he took 13 people. He taught us one hour a day, six days a week, 10 months a year for 3 years, and he lived his life, he had his practice, we could see his practice and see what happened to the people who came to him. We could see the people who came to him 20 times, what is the history, how he approached it, what he answered them at specific times, and we could have some kind of concept of what the practice is about. I saw Moshe as a practitioner and not as a trainer.
That sounds wonderful, does it not? The process described by Ruthy is much different than that of most Feldenkrais trainings conducted today.
It’s unfortunate that I am not able to tell you more about the new trainings. The two practitioners that I spoke to are not interested in going public. I certainly understand. But as more people open up and connect I will put the information out there for you to consider.
cheers – Ryan
New Conference: Healing Trauma Through The Body
If you read this blog on a regular basis you may be aware that one of my businesses involves creating and promoting online conferences. Earlier this year, for example, I pulled together a Feldenkrais and Running conference with presenters Sharon Starika, Jae Gruenke, Edward Yu and Julia Pak. With my business partner Rob McNeilly in Australia, I have also launched conferences on creating solutions for people suffering from depression, and anxiety (nearly 300 people attended the Anxiety Solutions Conference!). Most recently Rob and I have launched conferences on Innovating Relationships and Brief Solutions For Trauma.
Healing Trauma Through The Body
I would like to take a moment and call your attention specifically to the Solutions For Trauma conference. From a personal growth standpoint it was the most important conference that I have done to date and I think that for practices related to Feldenkrais it is particularly relevant. I continue to be amazed at the potency of methods that put the student’s experience “front and center” and do not require a person to fit within any particular theoretical or methodological box. Or perhaps better said, I continue to be amazed by methods that do not attempt to force a person into the erroneous frame that “issues” a person has are somehow created by events in the past and one must hash, re-hash and “relive” a trauma in order to be free of it. As Moshe Feldenkrais wrote and enacted in a variety of ways, The important thing is to restore the function. Though they are not “doing Feldenkrais” per se, all of the presenters in the Trauma Solutions conference could be said to be true to Feldenkrais ideas of finding what works for a particular person at a particular point in time and helping them do that.
Perhaps you might join the conference and tell me if you agree: Solutions For Trauma.
a wakeup call to deadened urbanites (Steve Paxton)
“I think that one of the reasons I got involved in dance
is to finish my movement development.
Because I have a hunger to find,
and to finish,
and to explore,
to do essentially what babies do when they begin to move.
A hunger to find out more of what movement is or can be.
I think it provides a service to keep the search alive…”
More below within the video:
I found the video above through the blog of Tom Tabaczynski, Critical Somaesthetics. Tom was kind enough to post a link and quote to Konstantinos Koukopoulos‘s brief post about Steve Paxton. I have read that Steve Paxton is the creator of Contact Improvisation.
Feldenkrais In New York City: Got Any Stories?
Hi all – I’ve recently done a pre-launch of a new website called Feldenkrais New York which due to some super-duper geek stuff that I do is rapidly climbing up the rankings for google searches related to New York. The website has a special purpose which I will not be announcing publicly. However, a few choice practitioners in New York may be getting an invitation to join me in this new venture.
In the meantime, I am looking for little known facts and stories about Moshe Feldenkrais and Feldenkrais in New York. I’ve had great difficulty finding ANYTHING online. What do you know about Feldenkrais in New York?
I know that Moshe taught a well received lecture at New York University in 1973. And that the Amherst training was only a couple of hundred miles away. Surely, there were some New Yorkers in the training? And, what else? Would you be willing to leave a comment and tell me what you know or have heard?
