FELDENKRAIS
Dear Daniela,
​
My Feldenkrais training changed my life. But, in my first teaching experiences, I also encountered all the many challenges of transmitting the work, and the reality of presenting it to the public in an era when it remains mostly unknown, and there are so many other streams of information competing for the time and attention of each individual.
​
I discovered that the path between today’s reality and my hoped-for tomorrow - where the work that fulfills my soul will also fill my bank account - was anything but a straight line.
Before I met you, I had already taken many important steps to re-organize my life into better alignment with my dreams.
But when you began to mentor me, suddenly there was more light along the path ahead.
Your emphasis on playfulness allowed me to reconnect with the sense of wonder that accompanied my very first Feldenkrais experiences. Your insistence on the importance of trusting - and testing - my own unique interpretations of the work encouraged me to bring more diverse parts of my life into my practice. Your critical questioning of the “rules” that I had been taught was a model that gave me permission to formulate my own critical questions in order help me begin to distinguish the true principles of our work from the dogmas of our community and it’s idiosyncratic history.
​
Most importantly, your unfiltered expression of pure joy in the experience of life, your unrehearsed interest in my own personal struggles, and your curiosity about my own ideas gave me the feeling of being your equal, even as I continue to learn from you.
​
You provide an excellent model of one of Moshe’s ideas that I cherish the most: that the teacher does not teach, but creates the possibility for the student to discern that he has many choices and that the teacher continues to be a student until the very last breath.
​
You created this experience for me in many simple ways: by helping me put together crucial pieces of the puzzle of my anatomy, by giving me countless examples of how to connect the experience of ATM to the daily experiences of each individual client, by teaching me individualized ATMs via Zoom that immediately expanded my self-image, and by suggesting on many occasions how I might use Feldenkrais principles to overcome obstacles in my life that are defined outside of the realm of movement.
​
And we have only just begun!
​
As I look ahead to the future, your partnership and friendship gives me every reason to continue imagining my own success and take confident steps forward on a daily basis.
Adelante!
Seth
