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Listen to several introductory talks, lessons and podcasts by Alan Questel. Each one discusses a different aspect of the Feldenkrais Method® to give you a better understanding of the Method and how you can benefit.

To listen to a mp3, click on the links below, which will open up your favourite media player and play the mp3. If you would prefer to download the mp3, on Mac you can hold down the "option" key and click the link and for Windows users you can right click on the link and select "Save Target As".


 

INTRODUCTORY TALKS

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Listen to the full introduction from Growing Young by Alan Questel

 

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Excerpts from May the Force Go Through You and Uncommon Sensing™ by Alan Questel

 

Learn how generating choices is preferable than knowing the "right way" of doing things, the importance clear skeletal support and understanding of the self image.

 

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Excerpts from The Moment Where we Begin and Pleasure of the Challenge by Alan Questel

 

Alan talks about the reasons people come to the Feldenkrais Method®, why movement is the medium of choice, when we decide to be comfortable and some guidelines for doing lessons.

 

▶ Listen to the MP3
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Excerpts from Balance by Alan Questel

 

Alan talks about Balance as a dynamic act and the challenge in attending to it and improving it.

 

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Excerpt from Falling... by Alan Questel

 

Listen to a short biography of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, gain an understanding of how thinking, feeling, sensing and moving all relate together and find out how Alan "fell" into the Feldenkrais Method®.

  

▶ Listen to the MP3

 

AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT® LESSONS

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"Threads and Gentle Fingers" from Uncommon Sensing™ by Alan Questel

 

In this lesson you will explore moving gently from your front and your back while developing a fuller engagement and distribution of action throughout the rest of your self.

 

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"Attention on the Return" from Reversibility by Alan Questel

 

In most movements we attend primarily to the action as its performed, in one direction. But we rarely look at how we bring ourselves back to a resting state and what we do before we begin to move again. In this lesson you will discover how much we are

 

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"Pressing and Lifting/Lengthening and Shortening" from The Moment Where We Begin by Alan Questel

 

Gain an understanding of how a change in initiation and attention can provide you with a totally different experience of the that same action.

 

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ARTICLES

From the Encyclopedia of Body Mind Disciplines

The FELDENKRAIS METHOD® is a revolutionary approach for improving both physical and mental functioning through the exploration of body movement patterns and the use of attention. It is based on the brain's innate capacity for learning and the potential for lifelong development and growth. Movement is used as the medium towards understanding our habits and identifying, learning and acquiring alternatives which promote ease and well-being. The applications of the FELDENKRAIS METHOD® range from reducing pain, improving neurologically- based difficulties and learning disabilities, increasing mobility, to enhancing performance of professional athletes, dancers, musicians, and actors. People who come to do FELDENKRAIS® are referred to as students, rather than patients, because learning underlies the basis of the method... Reprinted with permission of the Rosen Publishing Group, 29 E. 21st Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10010. For a listing of our reference books e-mail inquiries to www.rosenpublishing.com   → Read more 


From Movement for Actors, Allworth Press, NYC. Publication july 2002

The FELDENKRAIS METHOD® is a unique blend of science and aesthetics. Pioneered over fifty years ago by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, it is based on our innate human capacity for lifelong development and growth. It is the means to moving beyond our self-imposed limitations and uncovering our untapped potentials. While our ability to move more efficiently is definitely enhanced, movement is simply the medium for cultivating more effective ways of sensing, thinking, feeling, and knowing. Through movement and the use of attention, self-image is refined, sensory acuity is heightened, and natural curiosity is evoked. As you will discover, it is a process that brings the conceptual into the realm of experience. It is based in learning and gaining insight into how we have “learned how to learn.” Through the recognition of how our whole self is involved in everything we do, we can learn to more easily bring our intention into action. The method continues to find growing recognition and wider applications throughout the arts and the sciences.   → Read more 


Interview of Alan Questel by Tommie St. Cyr

Alan Questel teaches world-wide in FELDENKRAIS® Professional Training Program. An actor before becoming interested in FELDENKRAIS® work, Alan worked and toured with Jerzy Grotowski and Paul Sills. He taught FELDENKRAIS® for Actors for several years at the New Actors Workshop in New York, run by Mike Nichols, George Morrison and Paul Sills. Alan's specialty is applying the FELDENKRAIS® work to actor training and has taught numerous workshops for actors at major universities and around the world. Alan is one of the directors of two upcoming FELDENKRAIS® Professional Training Programs beginning in June, in New York and October, in Marin County, California. Tommie St. Cyr is an Assistant Professor of Movement, Voice and Acting. She has taught FELDENKRAIS® movement to the students in the University of Utah's Actor Training Program for the past 3 years. She also teaches FELDENKRAIS® to the general student body, including athletes.   → Read more


From Sensibility-Balance, Posture and Coordination

I’ve always been fascinated by falling. Long before discovering the FELDENKRAIS METHOD® I had dreams that I was falling. You’ve probably had them too. The ones where you suddenly wake up with a jolt, just before landing. Only now and then my dreams took a different course. Occasionally I would fall and land in my dreams. Sometimes gracefully floating downward, other times landing with a good thump, but always uninjured. In fact, not only was I okay, I also experienced a huge perceptual shift as well. The room I was in was the same room, only it now looked completely different. The side of the mountain I fell off of, now offered an alternative route to the top that I hadn’t seen before...   → Read more


Balance - The Feldenkrais Journal

Balance is fascinating...its up there with gravity...self-image...creativity...self-organization.  All are explanatory principles.  They describe phenomena but are actually intangible.  We can’t place our hands on them yet we know they exist. One of Feldenkrais’ biggest claims to fame was how he could make the abstract, concrete. By helping someone improve his or her balance we are making the abstract concrete. Our work is based in action.  We look to explore something that is intangible (like an explanatory principle) in a physical way.  While we include thinking, sensing and feeling, it is in movement where we mostly reside.  Reversibility and increasing the level of challenge are two significant ideas we employ that directly affect balance.  Our understanding of how these ideas can be utilized as tools can help us inform others and assist them to improve their balance. Is it about balance or about feeling unbalanced?...    → Read more


Humor - The Feldenkrais Journal

Humor is a topic that is close to my heart, actually closer to my mouth—a little too close sometimes. Humor has gotten me into (and out of) more trouble than any of the other crazy things I have done in my past. I was the class clown, the joker, and the smart ass. To be honest, humor was/is a compulsion . . . luckily one that I have learned to control and utilize. Out of necessity, I have come to understand humor in its many contexts and applications. What is humor?...     → Read more 


Habits... The Australian Feldenkrais Journal - November 2014

Years ago, when I would ask a class, “What are your habits?” they would say things like smoking, drinking, being late…almost all negative things. But the world has changed; now it’s brushing my teeth, cleaning my house, walking my dog…much more on the positive side. Either way, everyone still has habits and still needs them. Over time I began to ask another question, “What do you do that is not a habit?” This seems to come as a surprise to most people. At first they struggle to come up with an answer. They do find things, like coming to a Feldenkrais class (assuming it's the first time they are coming). But when they begin to examine this more closely they realize that “how” they come to something for the first time is abundant with all kinds of habits. A rich hierarchy that has developed over a lifetime of practicing doing things over and over again"... → Read more


 


 

PODCASTS

 .. So my big interest has been, how do I help people gain more confidence through the process so by the end they actually feel like they can go out and practice the work. One of the jobs of an educational director is to deem when someone is competent to practice. So people do it in different ways, but you watch someone’s progression over the course of training, and of course there is a range that people practice in by the end of the training, some are highly skilled, some less highly skilled and there are many in the middle. But still is does revolve more around a feeling of being able to do something, because look I can deem someone competent, but they don’t feel competent. So then the question is, what needs to happen in the course of the training so that they actually feel, they are ready to do so. And to me the difference really is one of feeling... now the question is, of course, how do you get people to feel differently ...o listen to a mp3, click on the links below, which will open up your favourite media player and play the mp3. If you would prefer to download the mp3, on Mac you can hold down the "option" key and click the link and for Windows users you can right click on the link and select "Save Target As".

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...I started out by trying to define creativity, which I pretty quickly found was antithetical to the idea of creativity, because its not something finite, it’s a process, its dynamic. So then I started to explore different concepts that exist within the realm of the creative process and then I looked for movement experiences that led people to have an embodied sense of the experience of it, rather than just a cognitive understanding of it... if I ask a group of people, ‘Are you creative?’ What happens is that some people’s hands shoot right up, and there’s others who their hands slowly come up, and then unfortunately there’s a bunch that look to the floor, and start to get depressed. So I’ll ask a different question, ‘Do you know someone who is creative or more creative than you?’ And everybody raises there hand, without exception. And I’ll ask the question, ‘What’s different between you and them?’ And the difference, the only difference that I’ve come up with was someone who is more creative...

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