On this page you can see details of Advanced Trainings for practitioners. These are privately organised, not Guild-organised events – for Guild days and FGUK trainings please see the calendar of events.
Advanced Training with Shelagh O’Neill
Organised by Caroline Scott in Hebden Bridge
Internal and external reference in FI and ATM with a focus on ribs and shoulder girdle
My sense of the skeleton of the person I work with largely evolves from my internal sense of where and how I move. I update this every time I do an ATM, and every time I work with someone in FI. How do they move, and how does this align with my own internal sense of skeleton?
Many of us also work from a secure but external knowledge of anatomy. Does that externally referenced image create a different kind of work with the client?
Let’s work with this as our focus, exploring specifically how to bring clarity to the differentiation and integration of ribs and shoulder girdle.
The shoulder girdle is built for movement – skeletally attached to the breast bone, and largely held on to the ribs and neck/skull with muscles. The rib cage also has plenty of muscles and movement, but the number of joints involved seems to bring a different character.
How much do I take this on board when I work in this area? Am I clear about when I’m moving the shoulder blade, and when that includes the ribs? What kind of movement do I expect from a collar bone compared to a rib? And where do those expectations come from?
Thinking functionally, how does clarity here bring more freedom to look in different directions, and more efficient standing, reaching and turning?
Does this topic of ribs and shoulder girdle bring any ATMs to mind?
For me, teaching ATM is where the internal map intersects with seeing how this plays out for others. Are there times in a session when you’re accessing your internal sense more – or when your objective knowledge of ‘the skeleton’ comes to the fore?
Bring your experience and your questions. The more we can unpick and share our experience and the images and references we work from, the more options we have in our practice.
Better Hearing through Somatic Experience: A New & Holistic Approach to Improving Perception
Taught by David Kaetz, Canadian author, musician, Feldenkrais teacher, and developer of LWYWB.
For Somatic Practitioners, Musicians, Therapists, Teachers, & others seeking to improve their relationship with sound.
Listening with your Whole BodyTM is based on the teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais, mindfulness practices, ancient and modern acoustical research, neuroscience, and a life in music.
Location: Missenden Abbey, Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire HP16 0BD
Transport:Train – 40 mins from London Marylebone; Tube – Amersham tube (Metropolitan line) to Great Missenden Station, Car – free onsite parking for participants
Date: Saturday 26, Sunday 27th October 2024 – 10am-5.30pm
“As walking involves more than the feet, listening involves more than the ears. We use our whole selves — sensing, breathing, moving, feeling, remembering, etc. — in everything. When the whole self is listening, we have set the stage for improvement overall.”
“After twenty years of professional experience as a classical violinist, the changes I’m experiencing are as welcome as they are unexpected. The new ways of listening have also transferred to my playing & I’ve never known such visceral pleasure in the physicality of the sound. Also, to my joy, I’m better able to enjoy the voices of my children & husband, as well as my own.” – Andrea Hallam, Musician, Vienna Workshop, 2015
Price: £220 – includes all workshops, refreshments and lunch each day (some bursaries available)
To enrol, and for information about bursaries, transport, lodging & meals, please contact Mary Walton at dvmlwalton@gmail.com
Advanced Training with Olena Nitefor
Awakening the Mid-Thoracic Spine
In this advanced training, which draws on Olena’s knowledge of anatomy, we will look at the importance of the thoracic area just below the shoulder blades, where the rib cage tends to be the broadest. We will attend to this “middle” region and how to awaken and utilise it more effectively.
The T7/T8 area is where the thoracic spine has the greatest potential for turning, but where many people have little or no movement in rotation. It’s also an elusive area: raising awareness can help students be more upright and move more easily around the central axis.
We will also highlight ways in which, working with and within the ribcage is significant for coordinating the pelvis and shoulder girdle in walking, and provides and re-organises support for the head.
After this training you will be able to:
recognise the range of movement in T7/T8 area
explore ways to enhance the student’s thoracic movement through FI
improve the student’s uprightness
use your knowledge of functional anatomy to improve your FI skills
The main emphasis is on FI skills including handling, thinking, strategising functionally, keeping a global context even when working locally and of course a grounding in functional anatomy. Each day we will do an ATM to prepare us for FI work and lead us to greater functional understanding. After the training, there will be a Zoom follow-up session.
Here is a link to a short video to give you a taste of Olena’s FI teaching. Enjoy!
Olena Nitefor, M.Ed. (GCFP since1987) maintains an active practice in Toronto. She has assisted through five trainings with diverse trainers and has taught close to 2,000 hours of advanced training and mentoring groups in Europe, the US and Canada. With her background in anatomy, dance and kinesiology, she brings experiential and conceptual anatomy into her teaching in innovative ways.
Testimonial – Sophie Arditti, London UK
“Olena’s workshops are wonderful… Her warmth, clarity and enthusiasm are boundless, which creates an extremely generous and comfortable learning environment…
In her unique ATM teaching, she uses imagery so cleverly and effectively that when we get to the FI practice it’s with a crystal clear understanding of the sensation we could be delivering to the person on the table…her knowledge of anatomy and her explanations of what we’re exploring are vivid and enthralling. And then there’s the entirely attentive support she gives during the FI practice where you feel able to explore, get it wrong, talk about it, discover other strategies…. and learn.”
Venue: Centre 151, 151 Whiston Rd, Haggerston, London E2 8GU
Learning resources: Olena will film the FI demonstrations and audio record the ATMs.
Tables: tables are not provided. If you wish to work on one, please bring your own.
Fee: £420. A few spots remaining.
Contact:
Super excited about the upcoming journey with fellow certified Feldenkrais practitioners. If you’re as curious as I am, drop me a line: charlotte.seirberg@gmail.com
This is the first of a new series of advanced training with Victoria in the Clod Ensemble’s beautiful space just a few stops from London Bridge. Designed for newer or returning practitioners (but open to all!), the series will offer opportunities to refresh, clarify, practice and improve the fundamentals of your Functional Integration practice – in both strategy and technique – and consider the relationship to Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons as well. Lessons lying on the front offer us many possibilities for learning, but often we have students who find lying on the front difficult, uncomfortable or simply not possible for different reasons. Often we have to adapt, think how to find those possibilities in other positions.
So in this first two-day workshop we will address the preliminary questions:
What can make lying on the front a difficult position for our students? How can we make it easier?
Why might we want to choose a lesson lying on the front? What does it enable?
How can we address all these questions by exploring FI (and ATM) lessons lying on the back or side instead?
Of course two days is too short to cover everything, but we will delve into as much as we can through discussion and sharing ideas as well as practice. And of course there is always the next workshop…
The workshop is open to qualified Feldenkrais Practitioners & those in their 4th year of professional Feldenkrais Practitioner training.
A mat or blanket (We have a limited number at the studio if needed)
Table and rollers: we will have a few only, so please bring if you can.
Victoria Worsley qualified in 2007 from Lewes 4 after 20 years as an actor and theatre maker. She has a busy practice in North London for the general public but also specialises in working with actors and runners. She became an Assistant Trainer in 2021 and was invited to teach her first weekend of Advanced Training in Amsterdam in February 2024. Her book “Feldenkrais for Actors” was published by Nick Hern in 2016 and has so far been translated into Italian (Korean translation pending!). She holds a 2nd dan black belt in GojuRyu Karate.
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