somati.ca

Demystify the practice of gesturing with your hands, and reestablish your relationship with space itself, in this 2h workshop, based on Feldenkrais Method. No meditation or prayer is promoted, just a new way of exploring yourself. More details at SOMATI.CA. https://somati.ca/events/take-back-your-prayer-2/

I am a somatic educator, of the school named "Feldenkrais Method." "Soma" here is not simply meaning "body." That's how the concept is used in biomedicine, to d...istinguish it from psyche, meaning "mind." But somatic education schools are not directly based on biomedicine; they are based on various models of social ontogeny, or descriptions for how a functional individual emerges from a fertilized egg. We don't teach that body and mind can be distinguished from each other, or even from one's local surroundings. (Distinguishing all of these things is a cultural habit more than an accurate mapping of reality.) The philosopher and Feldenkrais Practitioner Thomas Hanna (founder of the school named Hanna Somatics) re-coined "soma" to mean something like, "the experience of body." That is the soma that can be clarified through Somatic Education. The soma of biomedicine still exists after death, whereas the soma of Feldenkrais Method changes every living moment. By clarifying the relationship between soma (the complex of body-mind and environment we evolve through) and purposeful (adaptive) actions, the individual gains new functional and creative options, expanding their self concept. The program is different from medicine (biomedicine or traditional ones), which have a model of disease and health; we have a model of individuation and functioning, not to supplant medicine but to rehabilitate ourselves into fully functioning beings. Sure, Feldenkrais Method can help "permanently fix your back" if what you mean is "learn how to comfortably incorporate your back into your actions." But it definitely doesn't treat the body; I work with eduating the individual as to their soma. It's not physiotherapy, it's somatic education, and the two things are profoundly different. Feldenkrais Method (and any somatics school I've studied enough to understand) is not an appropriation or mashup of other approaches to having a "healthy body." It's based on a unique model of the individual and their life-history, synthesizing mostly from the Natural Sciences and the Japanese martial arts (mostly Judo). Feldenkrais himself was a judoka, at times directly learning from Kano (the founder of Judo), and helping to popularize Judo outside of Japan (with the blessing of Kano's school).