Feldenkrais worshop and series to run at Green St. Studios
By Susie Davidson
CORRESPONDENT
Are you waiting to exhale?
Indeed, familiarizing oneself with breathing options may well influence
quality of life, according to Awareness Through Movement teacher Jessica
Newman. By exploring varied capabilities for unrestrained, natural breathing,
she promises an increased sense of light yet profound mobility, along with pain
reduction, injury prevention and enhanced self image.
Her “Investigating the Breath” workshop, to be held at
Green Street Studios on Feb. 23, and her Introduction to the Feldenkrais Method
series, running from March 2 to April 6, will explore the Feldenkrais Method of
movement education.
“The gentle, easy movements will increase comfort and ease in
the activities of our daily life-bending, breathing, reaching, sitting, and
walking,” she said. The lessons, she stated, are ideal for people who are
either constrained by pain or looking to improve arts or sports performance.
Newman, who has studied the Feldenkrais Method for six years, the
last three in a professional training program, has taught Awareness Through
Movement at Green Street Studios over the last year and a half, and has guest
taught at Plymouth State University and Boston University as well. With a bachelor’s
degree in vocal performance from the
State University of New York at Fredonia.,
she has also performed in tri-state area opera companies.
In the late 1940s, engineer and physicist Moshe Feldenkrais, who
was born in Poland in 1904, emigrated to Palestine at 15 and received a
doctorate in physics from the Sorbonne, developed a healing system which
incorporated aspects of anatomy, physiology, anthropology, linguistics,
biology, prenatal development and athletics. The first European to earn a Black
Belt in judo, he had suffered a major knee injury, and through the study of
bodily mechanics and self-rehabilitation, taught himself to walk once again.
His modality is currently advocated by nearly 3,000 international
practitioners. In his writings, he professed that the aim “is a body that
is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through
muscular strength, but increased consciousness of how it works.”
Newman discovered Feldenkrais while in college for voice. “I
began studying the Method in a typical way, having injured myself dancing and
seeking relief from the hip and neck pain that hampered my
singing practice and the general quality of my life. I had stopped dancing
and was experiencing a fair amount of pain almost all the time.” A piano
professor suggested she take Awareness Through Movement classes; after the very
first one she was hooked. “Not only was I pain-free for the first time in
six months, I was fascinated by being asked to pay attention to myself and the
process of the way I moved,” she recalled. “That spirit of inquiry
and curiousity had been notably absent from my training in dance and
voice, which was based on a perfectionistic, results-oriented model.”
The Method was very effective at helping recover her comfort and
range of motion; she returned to singing and dancing with increased abilities.
“But the greatest gift that I received is learning how to be a better
learner,” she said. “In orienting towards the process, cultivating awareness of what we are
actually doing and then experimenting with non-habitual ways of moving, we can
discover more possibilities for moving and acting in the world.”
The lessons, she said, will both inspire curiosity in beginners and
continue the learning of those who have had prior experience with the Method.
Jessica Newman’s Awareness Through Movement workshop will be
held on Sunday, Feb. 23 from 1:30-5 p.m. at Green Street Studios, 185
Green St., Central Square. Cost is $35 for advance registration, $45 after. Her
Introduction to the Feldenkrais Method will meet on six Sundays, March 2 to
April 6, from 1:30-2:30 pm at Green Street Studios. Cost is $65 if pre-registered by
Feb. 20, $72 after.
The terms Feldenkrais, Feldenkrais Method, Awareness Through
Movment, and Functional Integration are service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild
of North America.