Awakening Yourself to new Possibilities of Well Being
Your body talks to you every day, all day. If you listen and support its needs, it will reward you with a vital, pain-free body. If you ignore it, it will send messages of discomfort and pain until you respond. Knowing how to communicate with your body is essential for a vibrant, youthful life.
Using the tools provided by the Feldenkrais Method, you will learn how to make lasting changes. You will:
• Boost your body’s level of health and wellbeing
• Reduce tension and discomfort
• Improve your posture
• Enhance the quality and range of your turning and bending
• Learn resiliency, grace and grounded self confidence.
Schedule: Friday, Saturday, Sunday 9:30 - 12:pm and 2:00pm - 4:30pm.
Individual sessions available in the afternoon break
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More about the workshop:
Do you experience any of these:
- Stiffness, Tightness. Can't get into the day without that first cup of coffee? You haven't really woken up. What if there were a different way to greet each day?
- A 'Cranky Shoulder'? Or any part of the body that complains. No matter what you are doing, it complains, hijacking your ability to enjoy your life, clouding your experience. There is another way to experience yourself.
- Unrestful Sleep. Even though sleep is supposed to be the time to recuperate, sometimes we cannot fall asleep easily, or wake and not return to sleep. Pain and discomfort exaggerate this. This can change.
- Lack of Flexibility. Whether you want to put on socks more easily, do a shoulder-check with confidence, touch your toes, ease your tight hamstrings, or open your hips, you can learn to increase the ease in flexing and open your joints.
- Balance Challenges. Do you have balance challenges, whether on uneven surfaces like winter snow and ice or hiking in the mountains? Or on even surfaces walking down stairs, putting on socks, or in playing sports?
- Coordination Challenges. Whether it is enhancing your Tai Chi form or your down-hill skiing, coordination is the key.
- Loss of Strength. Downward dogs got you down? Lost the joy of cooking because the pans are too heavy, or the grocery bags to heavy to lift?
The Somatic Awakening workshop focuses on how you can learn to move in new ways so that pain and stiffness are reduced. A student recently wrote to me about her changes: "So much less aching. Bending over. Putting on boots. Shoulder check when driving. Standing and cooking without pain and no pain after cooking. Shovelling snow. Getting in and out of the tub. So much less pain from flute playing--hurrah! " She added, "This little list tells the story of a life that is so much easier to live and a life that can contain joy and pleasure." Her limitations in all the above areas have reduced significantly and her sense of fulfilment in her life is profound.
How did this happen? I provided her a series of movement lessons that drew into use her whole mind and body; the lessons built upon previous ones and included ideas on how to improve the quality of all movements. She learned the essential movements that supported her. As she awakening to her somatic self, she learned to take the time and attention to open her awareness. She began to discover how she could integrate the new patterns into her daily life.
The somatic approach enhances the quality of living, as the student wrote, "a life that is so much easier to live and a life that can contain joy and pleasure". Another student commented, "this lead to confidence not just in large body movements but also a calming internal approach to life. " Some of these aspects are: Your body, your self. So often we have been taught not to trust the body. We also have learned not to trust our senses, and hence our 'sense' of ourself becomes distorted. We have repressed our emotions so that we do not know who we are, sometimes feeling more like a shadow, or an empty vessel that a living being. Experiencing the wisdom that is a deep part of your body-mind; learning to trust and to use this ability. Trust the support provided by the skeleton. This frees the musculature from excessive tightness and habitual holding, leading to increased ease and freedom of joints and increased strength. Grace, Ease. Elegance. Choice: maybe these words are unfamiliar to you; they can be helpful developing a richer, deeper sense of yourself. You need a safe environment to explore yourself moving in these new ways.
A student compared weekly classes with her workshop experience and wrote, "What I enjoy about a workshop is that there is more time to really sink into the body awareness and to experience the senses. I am not racing from work, through rush-hour traffic, and then trying to shift into a deeper awareness only to be leaving again in an hour. A workshop is time set aside just for Somatic Awareness."
During the workshop you will have time to apply these ideas and you will discover changes in
- Rushing. It seems we have so little time to pause and simply sense. When we do this, we change, our world becomes fuller, richer. It helps to have a structured time that allows the freedom to pause to breathe.
- Old Habits. Those knee-jerk reactions that happen before we have had time to think. It could be a thoughtless word, a stiff back, achy neck or grinding teeth. These change.
- Fear. Anxiety. Lack of Trust. Sometimes it seems that our life is controlled by them. One way to ease their strangle-hold on life is to learn to sense the support within the body, to trust it, contradicting the fearful thoughts.
- Moving with Confidence. Sometimes the difference is discovering how you can move with confidence.
Go beyond the limitations. Experience the exhilaration of a kind and straight spine. The joy or realization when the body lets go of pain and habits no longer needed, The sense of self deepens, the possibility of connecting more deeply with the self, with others, with the spirit.
This sounds a lot like the Feldenkrais Method. It is based on my learnings from the teachings of Dr. Feldenkrais over the past 30 years. The phrase "Somatic Awakening" is my way of describing the beginning steps of what I have understood from Dr. Feldenkrais. These beginning steps identify a process towards a more mature approach to thinking about ourselves, and ourselves in relation to the world. When we apply these beginning steps we find that the day-to-day aches and pains, long-term anxieties, frustrations with lack of ability ease, and instead people feel more cheerful and hopeful, they have more curiosity about their world, and experience more appreciation.
What students say:
... As a participant at a week long Feldenkrais retreat, I loved how current brain research guides the instructions in each session. Through a series of gentle movements I became increasing able to move with greater ease and confidence. To my surprise, this lead to confidence not just in large body movements but also a calming internal approach to life. It was an amazing experience and I look forward to my next opportunity to join a Feldenkrais session. -- Judy M, Edmonton
... I wholeheartedly urge anyone who would like to improve their ease of movement and/or self expression to experience Rob Black's teaching of the Feldenkrais Method. Rob is an incredibly kind, sensitive, attentive and highly knowledgable teacher who has helped me to find ease in the movements which give my life meaning, and to find strategies to become my own teacher. -- Alex C, Calgary
... What I enjoy about a workshop is that there is more time to really sink into the body awareness and to experience the senses.... It is really amazing what patterns and emotions can surface when time is taken to attend a workshop. Not to mention how much better the physical body feels when it has been pampered, recognized and respected over an extended period of time. -- Lucy N, Calgary
Watch a short video, below, about a past Somatic Awakening workshop - and a participant's experience:
