Moving Forward~

I want to start this off by thanking so many people that are on the front lines. Sadly, I have witnessed many heroes in hospital settings because of a dear friend having an accident and my beloved aunt in her final hours of life. The experience is surreal at best. Imagine not being able to comfort your mother when just a hug will suffice while her only sister is passing. My mother, like many others, is in the very high risk group. To comfort her without keeping social distance would put her at a higher risk as well.

So where do we go from here? I’m listening to a very meaningful podcast, Following Harriet. I am reminded of the enduring human spirit. I am not claiming that I am near the noble spirit of Harriet Tubman, but listening to her history emboldens me at this time.

Like many, I am exploring options, which is what Feldenkrais teachings have helped me understand deeply. I am also feeling the support from my Physical Therapy Associations on how to act with a healthcare license and provide the safest care I am able.

I am getting up to speed on virtual teaching with the support of my beautiful colleagues, Allison Rapp and Larry Goldfarb to name a few. Looks like I will finally teach Smartroller®️ classes online soon, thank you for your patience. And I hope to teach more virtual classes with my dear friend Cindy Fraser and the lovely staff at Santa Monica Yoga studio. Be well, and stay tuned for more announcements!

Bob and Ms. Bones meet

Mastering Ourselves: Smart Somatic Solutions

Attuning our senses to empower mastery in our everyday movement is our birthright. But somehow finding ease in getting up out of a chair, or finding quiet postures such as standing or sitting can be overlooked as ways we can find true grace with gravity.

I was recently reminded of what called me to teach in the field of movement. Helping others was so foundational to the core of how I was raised, so the field of physical therapy seemed to be the obvious place to start. My husband thinks I’m an enigma because I’m still passionate about my work. He also reminds me that not every conversation with others needs to be a discussion on becoming more aware of their movement.

So when I was introduced to foam rollers in my Feldenkrais training, I became excited on how these tools could help create the right conditions for learning through movement.  We applied this experiential learning which is  similar to how we learned as children to feel the freedom to move and sense ourselves in our environment. This playful learning allows us to foster our most innate intelligence to solve and evolve our movement and embodied skills. As adults, we need to be reminded of this. We become distracted with what we think we should do vs. what we feel we should do. This happens partly because our felt sense has been diminished through the lack of creative self guided movement. There also is a lack of trusting ourselves, and feeling the need to ask others to direct us to move correctly. 

“You have to do this as if you wanted to waste your time, but waste your time efficiently

-Moshe Feldenkrais ”

Here is an example of my most recent experience with this…

A dear friend, Susan Dopart, a highly respected international Motivational Interview teacher offered this story as she was teaching Life Style Solutions–

She witnessed one of her students was experiencing back pain from his long commute to her workshop. She offered to him her Smartroller® to see if this could ease his discomfort. As she describes it, she just told him to get on the Smartroller without telling him what to do. He not only trusted his own sense of curiosity to play with movement, but he later says, “2 minutes on the Smartroller was like an hour of Yoga.” He was also observed to move more comfortably the rest of the day. 

True mastery :-)

Join me as we explore further with smart somatic solutions at the FGNA 2018 Conference. 

“2 minutes on the Smartroller is better than 1 hour of Yoga” Maynard Hearns”