Roberta Perlman

Biography:

Movement has always taken up a big space in my life. I loved ballet as a child, was passionate about contemporary dance technique in my teens and 20s and, as a drama student, I felt liberated exploring movement improvisation. But how was it that in a dance studio, on a stage, or on an exercise mat I could feel at one with my body in a way I never could when simply walking into a room? In pursuit of this feeling of integration, and perhaps knowing that the best way to learn is to teach, I combined my BA in Drama with the sweat of 1000 dance classes, called myself a Movement Therapist, and began teaching in a variety of institutional settings (yes, things were different back then!)

Trusting in ancient wisdom, I then trained in and made my career as a practitioner of the beautiful system of 5-Element Acupuncture. I also became deeply involved in Ki Aikido, a martial art practice that is in so many ways intertwined with the Feldenkrais method. Both systems teach us about gravity, being human, and the power of our thinking.

It was only many years later that I finally found my way to be lying quietly on my back in the Feldenkrais Training programme. There, and every day since, sometimes patiently sometimes in frustration, I began to unravel the questing/comparing/correcting, and instead try just to sense myself. Seeing those moments of connection with self in my students is what I love most about being a Feldenkrais practitioner. And I can walk into a room.