Today was our first set of practicums! Everyone brought in a guest, then handed that guest off to a classmate and received their own client, so we all worked with a stranger. We did two rounds of lessons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, so that if you were a practitioner in the morning, you were a facilitator in the afternoon for the person who facilitated you.
I was a facilitator first, so I got to start the morning sitting back and observing a lesson, giving tips when needed. The practitioner I observed got paired with a woman, bus driver by profession, who complained of having a tight lower back and hips while doing yoga. I found myself very surprised that she did yoga. Maybe it was the way she held herself (she was very tall and perhaps felt a little awkward about her height), maybe it was the bus driver uniform she was wearing, maybe it was the motorcycle gear she took off before her lesson... Whatever it was, she turned out to be a very different person than I would have guessed by first impression. By the time she was on the table, her practitioner realized very quickly that there was all sorts of holding going on in her torso and not a lot of movement available. I think it scared her off, so she ended up working from the woman's feet and legs instead, trying to free up her hips a little. It was a tricky lesson, and when the woman sat up she said she didn't notice any differences. What she did notice was that she had gotten a feeling of "universal love" through the practitioner's touch and had really enjoyed that sensation. Neither the practitioner or I really know what she was talking about, but she's coming back for another lesson next week, so she got something out of it...
After lunch, I became practitioner. My client was also a woman, although a very different one from the morning. She was tiny, talkative, had done a little Feldenkrais a long time ago and remembered the impacts, and was very sure of her self-awareness. She also knew exactly what she wanted me to do. After telling me "someone" had told her she had scoliosis in her upper back and neck (quite extreme, actually, I'm amazed it doesn't cause her pain), she said that she wanted me to straighten her spine. She also mentioned some deterioration of her lower spine, the kind that comes with age, and clearly would have liked me to reverse her aging and bring her lower spine back to perfect 20-year-old health. I explained to her that straightening a spine isn't something I can do, or certainly not in one lesson, but I could at least send her in the right direction.
I started the lesson not actually knowing what I wanted to do, exactly. I knew it would be about her spine, but I didn't decide what until I'd had my hands on her for a few minutes. At that point, it became completely obvious that where there should be a clear line of the spine, there was a major disconnect between her pelvis, ribcage, and head. Her head was forward and turned a little to the right, her ribcage was both shifted and turned to the left, and her pelvis also turned a little to the right. I spent the rest of the time helping her find connections between the disconnected parts of her torso along the line of her spine (ie. when your head turns right, so can your sternum and your ribcage and your shoulders AND your pelvis, imagine that), and by the time she sat up from her lesson, she said her spine felt straighter!
Ladies and gentlemen, the power of intention.
Later, already feeling pretty good about how it had gone, Angel came up to me and said that she hadn't wanted to overly compliment me in the group feedback session, but that I had done "really, really good work." Comments like that from her are excellent ego boosters. I feel pretty proud of myself.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Segment 7, Day 7: an experiment in progress
I'm not sure where to start with this entry. I should have written sooner this segment before my head was so full of information. It's been a busy seven days. I'm not actually overwhelmed yet, just trying to process what's happened so I can figure out what to write here.
In most Feldenkrais trainings, students have two opportunities to give FIs to non-Feldy people in class and get feedback from their trainers. They traditionally happen in the last part of a training, and they end up being very stressful and high pressure for the students. Then, after those two practicums, students are kicked out the door, out of the nest, off the cliff... Pick your metaphor, they're all bad situations leaving the students unprepared for starting a practice.
Angel and Richard decided that because our class did really well in the past two segments getting the hang of how to give an FI, we were ready for more than most trainings. In fact, they decided we were already ready to give public lessons and receive feedback, even though we still have two segments left. That means we have become guinea pigs for a new version of Segment 7 that has never been tried before. Instead of two practicums at the end of our training, we get four each just this month! To take the pressure off a bit, we'll be observed directly by a classmate who is there to help if we get stuck, and observed from afar by our trainers. Leading up to the practicums, we've been breaking down the structure of an FI and testing out pieces of it in a variety of imaginary and real client situations to get a handle on each piece. That way, when we get a stranger sitting in front of us with an odd request, we won't get stuck in the cycle of OH GOD NOW WHAT quite so easily.
Here's an example of the imaginary situations we've been playing with. My classmate, Gwen, as the client, goes over to a bag of slips of paper and picks one out. It says she's an airline pilot. She goes to the next bag, picks out another slip of paper, and this one tells her she has incontinence. She comes back to my table, sits down, and acts out the part. I, as practitioner, panic. Incontinence? I don't know anything about incontinence. I certainly don't know how to help it. This is really awkward. AAAAH!! I turn to another classmate, Kuniko, my facilitator, and ask her desperately for help. We chat a little. Gwen, who happens to know a little about what can cause incontinence, chimes in with what she knows (even though as client she's really not supposed to). Eventually I work out that this airline pilot sits all day on long flights. Incontinence comes from a lack of pelvic muscle control. If I give her a lesson on pelvic support while sitting, there's a chance it will increase muscle control and that might help the incontinence, and even if it doesn't, she'll be more comfortable at work.
If you were to talk to my classmate Kevin, he'd tell you that I start to glow when I talk about this segment. I got excited about it the minute I got the email introducing the idea of extra practicums before class started. Besides the fun of playing with an entirely new format, this is a very clear signal that Angel and Richard trust us. They trust that we can give them good feedback about the experiment. They trust that we have a good enough sense of how to use ourselves while giving a lesson without getting overwhelmed by the details of structure. They trust us in our ability to work with people we've never met before. I consider all of that an honor.
Our first round of practicums starts on Thursday morning. Off we go!
In most Feldenkrais trainings, students have two opportunities to give FIs to non-Feldy people in class and get feedback from their trainers. They traditionally happen in the last part of a training, and they end up being very stressful and high pressure for the students. Then, after those two practicums, students are kicked out the door, out of the nest, off the cliff... Pick your metaphor, they're all bad situations leaving the students unprepared for starting a practice.
Angel and Richard decided that because our class did really well in the past two segments getting the hang of how to give an FI, we were ready for more than most trainings. In fact, they decided we were already ready to give public lessons and receive feedback, even though we still have two segments left. That means we have become guinea pigs for a new version of Segment 7 that has never been tried before. Instead of two practicums at the end of our training, we get four each just this month! To take the pressure off a bit, we'll be observed directly by a classmate who is there to help if we get stuck, and observed from afar by our trainers. Leading up to the practicums, we've been breaking down the structure of an FI and testing out pieces of it in a variety of imaginary and real client situations to get a handle on each piece. That way, when we get a stranger sitting in front of us with an odd request, we won't get stuck in the cycle of OH GOD NOW WHAT quite so easily.
Here's an example of the imaginary situations we've been playing with. My classmate, Gwen, as the client, goes over to a bag of slips of paper and picks one out. It says she's an airline pilot. She goes to the next bag, picks out another slip of paper, and this one tells her she has incontinence. She comes back to my table, sits down, and acts out the part. I, as practitioner, panic. Incontinence? I don't know anything about incontinence. I certainly don't know how to help it. This is really awkward. AAAAH!! I turn to another classmate, Kuniko, my facilitator, and ask her desperately for help. We chat a little. Gwen, who happens to know a little about what can cause incontinence, chimes in with what she knows (even though as client she's really not supposed to). Eventually I work out that this airline pilot sits all day on long flights. Incontinence comes from a lack of pelvic muscle control. If I give her a lesson on pelvic support while sitting, there's a chance it will increase muscle control and that might help the incontinence, and even if it doesn't, she'll be more comfortable at work.
If you were to talk to my classmate Kevin, he'd tell you that I start to glow when I talk about this segment. I got excited about it the minute I got the email introducing the idea of extra practicums before class started. Besides the fun of playing with an entirely new format, this is a very clear signal that Angel and Richard trust us. They trust that we can give them good feedback about the experiment. They trust that we have a good enough sense of how to use ourselves while giving a lesson without getting overwhelmed by the details of structure. They trust us in our ability to work with people we've never met before. I consider all of that an honor.
Our first round of practicums starts on Thursday morning. Off we go!
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