Feldenkrais Method - Flexibility and The Way to Lightness

weekend 6 – 7 April 2024

A Feldenkrais Method workshop that allows you to transform your body image and free yourself from obstacles and dysfunctional movement patterns. Through gentle and sensitive exploration, you will discover more efficient and enjoyable movement pathways and a multitude of new movement possibilities in places you wouldn’t look. By transforming your mind’s strategy, you will discover and begin to better utilize flexibility in joints, muscles, tendons and fascia. This workshop opens up access to a wealth of movement qualities and associated kinesthetic experiences that we can’t do without in everyday life, and that we seek in the arts (dance, theatre). You will experience the alchemy of movement that enriches and enhances the sense of self.

We’re going to explore how to find the best and healthiest flexibility. We’re going to focus on how to connect all the parts of our body and use the properties and functions of our nervous system. We will discover naturally moving places that we haven’t used or have stopped using. We will discover ways to become noticeably more efficient so that we can abandon the strenuous stretching that not only often injures and de-flexes muscles, but is also unnecessary as muscles shorten and stiffen in an effort to protect themselves. We learn to protect our joints, muscles and tendons by using them organically.

We are going to change the way we engage the mind in movement as it often prevents us from being flexible. For example, we think of ourselves as inflexible, or we don’t know what we can bend, twist and stretch in our bodies, or we unconsciously feel that an area needs to be protected, or we have forgotten that an area can move… In all of these cases, our nervous system sends this message and the muscles stiffen. How we think of ourselves builds in us the opportunity to do something or not to do something. Once we acknowledge the possibilities and begin to explore them, the body itself will discover new ways. Moshe Feldenkrais said: „What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains. What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.“

The workshop is for anyone looking for a way to improve and will be of particular benefit to anyone involved in movement, dance or acting. We will see how precision of intention eases the execution of movement and frees us from effort. Not only does it allow us to conserve energy, but it also gives movement expressiveness and the ability to communicate non-verbally. We will develop the basic lessons to use the newly discovered relationships to better connect with the ground and engage the activated movement chains of joints and muscles in push-offs, rotations, spirals, bends and extensions. We will also touch on how to use flexibility to find balance, process momentum, cushioning and direct movement.

About the method

Feldenkrais Method is a new approach to understanding oneself. It is a natural learning process. Its effectiveness lies in the ability to make the processes of the nervous system change and thus improve their functioning. The Feldenkrais Method is recognized worldwide primarily for its remarkable ability to improve uprightness and body posture, flexibility and coordination. It uses organic learning, movement and perceiving to free us from habitual patterns, movement stereotypes, thus enabling the emergence and natural development of new patterns – both physical and psychological.

The effectiveness of the Feldenkrais Method and its great success is utilized worldwide in the artistic field (professional dancers, musicians and actors), in elite sports and, last but not least, in cases of treatment of various types of movement restriction, chronic tension and pain, as well as developmental disorders.

Carlomauro Maggiore (Italy)

A great teacher of the Feldenkrais Method, he developed his private practice in Palermo, where he founded the Centro Feldenkrais Carlomauro Maggiore. Here he has been spreading the method for almost 20 years in the form of group and individual lessons and theoretical and practical seminars. Since 2012 he has been working with Anna Maria Caponecchi as a tutor and recently as a candidate assistant trainer of her Feldenkrais Training of Rome. He will also be one of the assistant teachers of the upcoming International Feldenkrais Method Training Prague 2024 – 2028.

His deep interest in movement and detailed understanding of the movement system have their roots in his original profession – as an accomplished dancer and choreographer he worked with Carolyn Carlson dance company in Venice and Simona Bucci’s company in Florence. The Nikolais Louis dance technique, which he studied as a teacher in New York, combines the Feldenkrais approach in a remarkably creative way when working with dancers.

During many years of activity, he has experimented with the effectiveness of the method not only in dance, but in many different areas, with people of all ages. He also works with people with various motor difficulties. He has established collaborations with doctors, associations and public and private structures for whose patients he provides reeducation in the area of motor problems and difficulties due to chronic pain, fibromyalgia and genetic diseases.

The seminar takes place in Prague, Czechia.

The workshop is intensive: Saturday 10:00 – 17:30 and Sunday 9:30 – 17:00.

The seminar is going to be consecutively interpreted.

Price 197 EUR. For place reservation the deposit of 63 EUR needs to be paid in advance.