Feel more centered as you explore movement that helps refine coordination. A video course in 8 parts.
This class opened a whole new world for me. For me, it’s was a more comfortable first step than meditation, or yoga. This was a lot less intense. Overall the classes brought me into the present and changed my thinking in regards to tuning in to how I feel without getting overwhelmed. – Chana, 2023
“Centering” offers a trauma-informed approach to Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement classes, providing support to help you along the way toward feeling a bit more settled, centered and connected – more the way you’d like to feel in your everyday life as well as in challenging moments.
I’ve spent years working toward creating and refining the Roots of Resilience series of courses, of which Centering is the most recent offering. It is my attempt to provide you with the trauma-aware support and guidance I wish I’d had when I first learned Feldenkrais Method 30 years ago:
The core material of the class is taught in eight 1-hour classes. Each class contains a short discussion of trauma-response physiology, and a 30-40 minute movement exploration to lead you towards your nervous system’s natural inclination for feeling more calm, settled, and centered.
“Dan is very passionate about it in his quiet but enthusiastic way and cares deeply about students learning. After a few sessions I began to feel like I was far more present in my body which helped to ease my anxiety which was quite high before the course.” – Stella Robertson, Creativity and Mindfulness Guide
In this program we focus on three roots of resilience.
1. Coming home to the body. Find huge relief and more clarity for what you’re thinking and feeling. It comes when you succeed in finding a safe experience of your sensations and we’ll try several paths toward that embodied homecoming.
2. Tapping into Inner Resources. You’ll find how to have more access to feelings of calm when you are wound up or freaking out. And actually build capacity for being with difficult sensations or emotions.
3. Knowing thyself. Begin to clarify the specifics of your coping and override patterns. What stops you from appreciating being present in moments of life that are going well? Knowing yourself this way can help you both appreciated the good moments, and to weather the challenging ones.
“I joined the course because I was looking for an ongoing group to find and practice regulation.The sessions are full of opportunities to notice what’s going on for me, how I feel and move in my body with pauses for journalling, quotes, stories — all while working at my own pace.
Grounding and being grounded are such commonly used terms but physically quite alien to me. In one session, dedicated to exploring our feet, I actually found the feeling of being grounded. It was fleeting but powerful.
The sessions are all organized around supporting me to make choices, doing as much or as little as I feel. I’ve also made use the recordings to support me in times of stress when I want to practice in my own time. I’m really glad to have had this experience.“ – Michelle, 2023
Am I ready for this?
Feeling more present in the body is within your reach — it isn’t only for other people! You can find your way home to feeling comfortable with the sensations in your body. I know even the idea of this may sound challenging if you’ve often felt in as if something goes haywire when you tune into your body. It’s very common that tuning into the body for many of us can bring on a feeling of being on high alert.
To make progress means we’ll need to delve deep, but we’re not jumping into the deep end of the pool! We’re starting on the shallow side and we’re taking the stairs one at a time. Maybe even starting by dipping a toe! Because measured incremental change which feels safe, is what usually leads to real, lasting progress.
How we’ll get there: The course is a 3-part offering. (Optionally 5!)
8 Trauma-Aware Feldenkrais Movement lessons
Question and Answer time available with me after each lesson
Trauma “First Aid” recordings to use as needed
Optional individual session packages with me which weave together Feldenkrais and SE.
This course won’t do it all, here’s some of what it does not do:
1. It isn’t guaranteed to always relax or center you. Sometimes the movement sessions will be profoundly relaxing or centering, and…sometimes they won’t. Those times when they’re not so calming are important learning experiences if you can bring curiosity to the experience. (And I give ideas and practices to try to help everyone with that.)
2. It isn’t a comprehensive approach to process each person’s individual trauma history. It’s important to have support in place (or on call) if things come up for you during the course. That might be a therapist, a Somatic Experiencing practitioner, a spiritual leader, or whoever you find most helpful. We simply can’t get as specific in a group course about your experience in the way those individual sessions can and sometimes both are needed.
3. It cannot provide appropriate support for people struggling with addictions, suicidal ideation, or mental illness. These are outside of my scope of practice. If any of these are challenges you’re facing, there are many other groups out there that will be helpful in ways I don’t know how to be.
4. It probably isn’t the right thing if you feel you’re at your darkest hour (You’d be better served right now by the personal attention of a therapist)
The personal work I’ve done is what allows me to stay regulated and open to my clients as they work through their own learning process. My ability to offer this course, and the private sessions that I do only comes because I’m doing this work myself. I have been through my own version of what my clients are struggling with, and continue to work with the layers of my own experience to become more present myself and more connected with others.
Ever since I started learning Feldenkrais Method in 1991, I’ve been on a path toward learning to address trauma and anxiety: first for myself, and in the past 15 years, for my clients. That path brought me to study privately with Ruella Frank, creator of Developmental Somatic Psychology, and to partner with Stacey Klein LCSW, to offer Feldenkrais-based workshops for psychotherapists. When I began learning Somatic Experiencing, Peter Levine’s approach to trauma-renegotiation, it resonated with me in a powerful way — I felt a huge sense of being at home in that method and that community. Since the first days of learning SE, I’ve worked to weave Feldenkrais and SE into my own personal approach to working with folks. The Roots of Resilience, 2023 is the result of much study and experience in weaving those two approaches into a cohesive whole.
