Jeff Haller: How people come to the work (to the Feldenkrais Method®)

Jeff is our Wednesday and Thursday teacher JEFF: People come to the work through word of mouth, often by having intensive experiences that are meaningful to them and they find practitioners that continue to support their learning. Some of them find that they would like to go on and become practitioners of this work. This is not to say that all the people who come to our work don’t have the necessary ingredients or don’t have the background that they need, but in general, the work to come into being a skillful practitioner becomes possible for some. For example, my training is called ‘The Feldenkrais Training Academy’ (FTA). I completed one four year academy recently. I set up a minimum standard of education in that academy, a standard of graduation that requires the students to have documented that they have practiced (and taught) one hundred ATM® lessons before they can ask to do their ATM Practicum. The conventional training process only requires that students have just one ATM practicum, and no particular practice. I ask all my students to document that they have given one hundred FI® lessons before they can sit for their Functional Integration® (FI) Practicum - for the hands-with-work, I don't really like to call it hands-on-work because we don't treat a person as an object. We engage with a person. So, we are engaged with our hands with a person, and we are the environment, the two of us are the environment that we have built to learn from each other. Now, these I consider to be minimum requirements if we are going to have this work grow in a more and more professional manner. NOTE: ATM® is Awareness Through Movement® one of the two branches of the Feldenkrais Method. The second branch is Functional Integration® (FI®).