Your Moving Mind

A set of instruction as to how we should hold ourselves upright has become a cultural imperative. And it’s not doing us much good. In this episode we’re taking a critical look at what a “good posture” means, what it doesn’t mean, and what we can do to get closer to it. Michael’s YouTube channel has quite a few videos with an alternative approach to improve our posture, and more importantly, the wa...

Science is catching up with what Moshe Feldenkrais claimed 75 years ago. Neuroplasticity has become an established fact: Our brain can change and grow at any age. What changes it can be summed up with one word: Learning. In this episode Christine and I discuss different ways in which we can make this happen: How we can keep our brain young and active by turning on the learning mode. These are the...

Today’s guest, Candia Raquel, is a Mexican sensualist, scientist, artist and woman. She is the host of  The Sensual Sessions Podcast ; she enjoys contemplating trees and drinking tea. Candia is dedicated to helping workaholics overcome inhibition and embody sensuality through somatic movement. Candia invites us to reconnect with the sensual experience of pleasure through the three P’s: Posture, Pr...

Pain is a message. It signals that we must change something. Our work with mindful movement and the Feldenkrais Method ® offers us some unique and effective ways to respond to this message. My conversation with my co-host, Christine Germain (who had more than her fair share of pain) sheds some light on the ways we can move out of pain by creating a learning space, changing habitual patterns and fi...

In this episode we talk about Feldenkrais®, and especially how the method helps to create an inclusive environment in Frederick’s upcoming grand event: The Feldenkrais® Festival. The festival is the epitome of Frederick’s broader social and cultural world view. It makes a point of including and welcoming all sexual preferences, genders, races and other distinctions that too often create separation...

Today’s episode is the first long-form conversation in this podcast. I’m welcoming a very special guest, my dear friend and colleague Christine Germain. She shares with us her own journey of healing with the Feldenkrais method, her trials and tribulations as a dancer and choreographer, overcoming pain and injury, and how all this shaped her thinking and her ways of working with her clients and stu...

You deserve a pause. It’s not just that you can take a rest after working hard. You don’t just pause to rest. You pause to learn. Taking frequent pauses enhances learning. The pauses are where you integrate what you’ve been learning. Your brain doesn’t pause. We have been trained to push through, make more effort and never stop. On top of being very unkind to ourselves, it is not an efficient way...

Why is it so hard to stick with a habit even when we really want it in our lives? Why is it so hard to get rid of a habit even if we know it’s bad for us? Our habits are grooved into our brain. It takes time to create one, and once it’s created, it is quite resistant to change. It helps to know what makes a habit tick, how it works and what it is made of.  This episode goes into the 3 main compone...

“Flow is technically defined as an optimal state of consciousness where we perform our best and feel our best” Steven Kotler The Flow state has been researched quite a bit in the last few decades. You can actually see it in a brain scan. How does this relate to the exploration of movement?  Sometimes, when engaging in Mindful Movement, we can find ourselves in a state of Flow. We are completely ab...

How do we learn? We’ve been tamed into a certain way of learning: There’s an authority that knows the right answers and knows what we should be learning at any moment. We follow and obey. This is not how we learned as babies, when we went through the hugest learning process we’ll ever experience. It was a completely different learning process. In this episode we’re looking into that forgotten way...

My short explorations in movement seem like simple and straightforward body-work. But at the back of my mind I’m always aware of the deeper foundation to everything we do: We are on a spiritual journey, a journey of learning and growth. Moving mindfully is an essential tool that makes the journey possible. New to my work? Take a free 5-day introductory course that will show you what I mean. It lea...

This is a common distinction in the coaching world: Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset. This distinction is quite relevant to my work with Mindful Movement, which implies the ability of the brain to change, learn and grow at any age. To keep our mind-body young and active we must cultivate a Growth Mindset, and take regular steps to keep growing.  Persistent Growth is my modest contribution to that:...

We have five senses, right? Of course not. And today I want to highlight a forgotten and ignored sense that is at the foundation of our ability to move around and do things with grace and precision: Proprioception. It’s the sense (or a group of senses, depending on which expert you ask) we explore in detail in the first years of our lives. Without it, the whole process of child development would b...

Some people go through extreme endurance competitions, cross snowy mountains on foot, swim in freezing ocean waves, run, cycle, climb and overcome horrendous challenges, and are transformed by the experience. I can appreciate this type of journey, even admire it. But most of us ordinary humans try to avoid suffering and won't go for that kind of challenge. Does this mean we're lazy or medi...

Habits are necessary and we all have them. You want to improve, learn, grow, move better, be more efficient and powerful in your actions and interactions? Check your habits. In this short episode I describe the small and powerful 3-step habit I’m trying to implement in my own life and teach my students: A habit that only takes a few seconds each time, but can revolutionise your life if you stick w...

I'm making a bold claim in this episode: Our perception of limitations is a choice. We are fundamentally limitless.

Are you a spiritual person? Does your spirituality include your body? If not, you’re missing something…

Is intuition some kind of magic that pops up out of nowhere? Intuition is knowledge you come up with in your area of expertise. It is how a creative mind functions.

The space between intention and action is where learning, change and growth can happen. But first we must be able to perceive that space. It can be very small. There is only one way to open that gap to be able to maneuver in it: SLOW DOWN. Slow down and pay attention.

"All change, as you know to be true, comes from within, and it starts from you first." James Wedmore If we’re still on time to save the world, the change will come from within. This is the work I, you, we, can do and must do to make this a better world.

"Some people are more certain of everything than I am of anything." Robert Rubin It’s pretty obvious: I’m an introvert. It has a cost. The world around me tends to ignore me; it’s just too loud and moves too fast. I guess I’d have to raise my voice.

"Anyone who acts without paying attention to what he is doing is wasting his life.” Nadia Boulanger Boulanger taught her brilliant students (some of the most prominent composers of the 20th century) to pay attention. She thought of it as the most valuable part of her teachings. I believe it applies to you and me, not just to world-famous composers.  I teach my students to pay attention to the...

"Be sure your intention is clearly present in your movement. The movement organises itself when your intention is clear."​ Moshe Feldenkrais A little about what it means to have a clear intention, with a short Mindful Movement exploration, Feldenkrais style, to demonstrate it.

"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." Maya Angelou The deep meaning I’m getting from today’s quote is this: What I’m doing today is good enough. Tomorrow I’ll do better, which doesn’t mean that what I did today was too little.

If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want.