Creativity, body and mind.

The Feldenkrais Method, mindfulness and the Creative Process

En workshop med David Kaetz.

Lørdag og søndag 24 og 25. mars 2012 i Oslo

How can we move more freely, liberate our own creativity, and improve our capacity for relationship - all at the same time?

Of course, these three processes are actually one and the same. If the mind and body are one then moving more freely is inseparable from sensing, thinking and feeling differently. It follows that all social and artistic experience is affected by changes in the way we organize our own movement. 

That is the genius of the Feldenkrais Method: greater ease of movement, awareness and mindfulness can bring about a cascade of unforeseen improvements in all dimensions. 

In this weekend workshop we turn our attention - with mindfulness, playfulness, and curiosity - to ease and effort, to alignment, to breath, to gravity and to the world around us.

This workshop is for all who want to remove blocks to their own creativity, and find new inspiration in their work and art. All artistic experience is rooted in the body/mind, whether this is conscious or not.

Wherever the body/mind finds its presence, its balance, its grace in movement, its alignment, its easy breathing and its powerful connection to the earth, the creative life cannot fail to be affected.

The Feldenkrais method can help both aspiring and professional artists, musician, writers, dancers, actors, etc. to find, in their own core experience, the sources of creativity.

The sound we are looking for, the shape, the thought, the composition, the glance, the timing - these things are all in our inner repertoire.

The freedom to create emerges from being at home in our bones, in our breath - which is to say, not in our chronic muscular patterns and habitual reactions, but in a space where we are truly available for the new to appear in us.

We can get there surprisingly quickly through gentle, conscious exploration of the way we use our spine, eyes, ears, hands, legs, breath, etc.

Through such exercises, we develop and refine the awareness of how we “compose ourselves” - literally, how we put ourselves together for any and all action. Then we take this quiet and refined awareness into the activity of our choice - whether it is drawing or acting or music, etc.

The group itself becomes a tool for supporting this freshness in creation; there are experiential exercises in small groups and with the whole class.

The creative space opens up when we are not stuck in chronic muscular patterns and habitual reactions. We can get there surprisingly quickly through gentle, meditative exploration of the way we use ourselves in all our parts: spine, ribs, eyes, ears, legs, hands, breath, voice, shoulders, etc. This exploration is supported by the group itself - by learning together with other highly-motivated people.

David Kaetz is a Feldenkrais teacher, musician and author, who teaches in Canada and Europe. He has been presenting workshops on Feldenkrais and Music at NMH, Musikkhøyskolen i Oslo, for a number of years

Dato og tid: Lørdag og søndag 24 og 25 mars 2012.

Kl. 09.30 - 16.30 lørdag, og kl. 09.30 - 14.00 søndag.

Sted: Sagene samfunnshus, Kristiansandsgate 2, Oslo.

Pris: 2400 kroner.

Rabatt: Ved påmelding og betaling før 30. januar, 2000 kr. Studenter, 1500 kr.

Ververabatt: Du får 25% rabatt per person du verver. Gi beskjed per mail om hvem du verver.

Påmelding. Du kan melde deg på ved å sende en epost til Hans Holter Solhjell, hans@feldenkrais.oslo.no eller telefon 41318627. Du får da tilsendt en giro via epost. Husk å opplyse om fullt navn, adresse og telefonnummer.

Praktisk informasjon: 

Vi har matter og liggeunderlag, men du kan gjerne selv ta med din egen matte om du har en du trives godt med.

Vi kommer til å ha kaffe og te, frukt, nøtter og kjeks. Du må ha med lunsj selv eller spise på en av kafeene i området.

Du kan lese et intervju med David Kaetz under. Intervjuet er gjort i forbindelse med en annen workshop, men med et lignende tema.

David Kaetz speaks with Conference News about his workshop, “First, Tune the Musician - Radical Listening in Musical Improvisation”

CN: David, can you tell me a little about how you first had the idea for leading this workshop?

David: I've been a musician since I was a kid, and I've always had something of an issue with the idea that music is what's on the paper on the stand in front of you. It seems to me that music is intrinsic to who we are as people. And yet somehow many people, as they grow up, lose access to music - occasionally by way of the darker side of “music education.” It occurred to me that if we were taught to walk and talk the way we're sometimes taught music, we would not be able to walk without a map or talk without a script. Just as people with a sense of curiosity can walk without a map when they encounter a new landscape, likewise, can we not meet a new landscape musically, without instructions? Of course, study and practice are essential, but they are intended to liberate you, not to freeze you in dependence and the fear of errors.

“Awareness through Movement” suggests another way of working with the musical self. As learners, we proceed from one mistake to the other, and we learn from our mistakes, just as we learn to walk and talk by making one mistake after another. This is jazz: you fall lovingly from one mistake into the other, and you do that ever more gracefully, in good company, and soon you are in the flow.

I have been teaching music and improvisation since long before I was a Feldenkrais teacher. But the Feldenkrais Method takes us very close to the core of improvisation – how do we find the next harmonious move? We have to be present and listen. The method offers a context, and a set of tools, to refine this ability – in fact, a splendid set of metaphors for working with creativity in general.

CN: How do you do Feldenkrais work with musicians?

David: When Feldenkrais is mentioned with regard to musicians it's often considered a way of unwrinkling them: of addressing their wrist problems, helping with their breathing, or dealing with professional difficulties that come with repetitive movements. And all this is true, but it’s not the end of the story.

CN: So working with their bodies instead of their music?

David: Yes. With experience in the field, it becomes apparent that the music that comes out of a well- tuned musician is a different music. Just as the music that comes out of a well-tuned instrument is a different music. It would be funny for a fiddler to tune only two strings on a fiddle and then try to play. Yet often musicians play without tuning themselves. That's the poetic premise of the workshop: that the musician is where the music first comes from, so the musician needs to tune up first.

CN: So what does a "musical" ATM class look like?

David: First there is ATM – Awareness through Movement - and then there is MTA – Music through Awareness. We go back and forth from the mat to the instruments, the voice, and small group exercises, all the while building this quality of listening. The same quality of listening you get when you lie on the floor and you look for the harmony between the arm and the turning of the head. You're listening to stress or harmony, to how things go together, to relatedness. How does the movement of the leg affect the breath? How do these things go together? Musicians are used to listening to apparently disparate things and finding how they work together.

It's precisely this harmony that we're looking for in ourselves: when a movement gets more harmonious, more and more integrated, until the entire self is felt to be somehow part of that movement. You could even say that we are composing ourselves. To compose, at its Latin root, means to put together. We're looking at the spontaneous composition of music as we're puttingourselves together.

What would you hope that attendees get out of your workshop?

I would want them to get what they want. Of course, I presume most people want to feel more composed, more harmonious, more free, more able to deal with the moment. Musicians, music students, or amateur musicians who want to be better at what they do, usually want to remove impediments to their freedom to improvise, their freedom to play, to rejoice, to meet in sound and silence. Often those impediments or hindrances are the same ones that keep us from moving freely. They're learned hindrances.

Is there anything you’d like to tell prospective attendees?

Bring your instrument! Bring your voice, and bring your Feldenkrais mat. Comfortable clothes. These things, plus a bit of playfulness and curiosity and an idea of where you’d like to go, and we are fully equipped. I look forward to meeting you!