Newsletter #125 – From personal insight to shared practice

4 November 2025

Highlights

1. Announcement
• Advanced training with Choune Ostorero: Feldenkrais & le sport

2. The student corner
• A section to respond to students’ questions
• How learning becomes shared practice

3. Quote of the week

Announcement

Feldenkrais & Sports - Last chance to sign up

In one week, the advanced workshop ‘Feldenkrais & Sports’ with Choune Ostorero starts. (French only)

We will be working with athletes from the Louvain La neuve sports club.

Write to us to know more if you’re interested in participating!

If you’re an athlete or you practise yoga or dance regularly, you’re welcome to come for a free FI session on Saturday or Sunday (8–9 November). Just reply to this email if you’re interested.

Workshop Details:

🗓️ 8 - 10 November, 10:00 - 17:00
📍 Brussels, Forest Lighthouse
📝For more information, visit this page.: https://forest-lighthouse.be/en/event/feldenkrais-for-sports/

The student corner

Last week’s reflections brought up an important question:

“What is the practitioner’s responsibility in the possibility of instability after a personal Functional Integration lesson?”

It’s a good question. In Functional Integration, the practitioner’s role is not to correct or impose, but to support your learning. Still, the practitioner does carry a responsibility: to stay “close to home”.

What does that mean?
It means that the touch, direction, or suggestion during the FI lesson has to be close enough to what the student already knows of themselves — their habits, their sense of movement, what they can take in at that moment.
If what the practitioner offers is too far away from that, it can feel confusing or hard to grasp.

Learning always builds on something familiar. Think of how you learn a new movement variation in ATM: if it’s just a small variation of something you already do, you can sense the difference and explore it. If it’s too far out, you might not accept it, it just feels strange. In the same way, a child doesn’t go from crawling straight to sprinting — each step grows from the one before.

The role of the practitioner is to respect where the student is now, and then invite them just a little further — far enough that something new can appear, but not so far that they lose the thread of themselves. That balance is what allows the nervous system to expand its possibilities safely, step by step, lesson by lesson.

In this way, the practitioner stays close enough to the student’s experience that they can recognize themselves, while at the same time opening the door to discoveries they hadn’t yet imagined.

- Yvo Mentens, Feldenkrais Trainer

How learning becomes shared practice

Even though our 12 weeks conference series ended six months ago, the experience is very much alive. People from around the world continue to join the weekly classes; others come to our platform to (re)explore the documentaries; and some are devising inventive ways to make the most of the material.

Karin Horowitz, who participated in the 12 week series came up with a nice idea : go through the 12 weeks AGAIN! But this time she invited her colleagues to share the experience.

If you would like to organise something similar to introduce the method to students, or spark debates with fellow practitioners, please do let us know.

We would be happy to help you to set it up by : offering technical help, guiding you through the process, creating special offers for the participants, advising you on communication, and showing up during the event to exchange with the participants.

Just call us and we can brainstorm together!

Karin Horowitz wrote a bit about their journey and kindly agreed we share it with you:

“ When the wonderful three-month long programme ended in April 2025, it felt very strange to no longer have weekend Conferences and weekday lessons to attend. I joined the Neurosomatic Platform so I could watch the Conferences again and then I had the idea of inviting another group of people to watch them with me, mainly people who knew little if anything about the Feldenkrais Method: friends, some of whom were also yoga practitioners as am I, and others from a variety of backgrounds.
And so another three-month journey began all over again! …

Having watched many of the Conferences and had stimulating discussions after each one, we ventured into recorded lessons together. The first lessons we did were Yvo Mentens’ series called Profoundly light which accompanied the Conference on Presence on the stage and in life. As a group, many of us were naturally drawn to this theme and loved these lessons…
It was exciting when people from other somatic disciplines such as Tai Chi brought their experience to bear on a Feldenkrais lesson and we all learned from hearing each other.

Here’s some feedback:

‘I love how my way of thinking about part of the body - how the jaw opens for example – can be reconfigured.’ – Deborah

‘Each time, after watching a session, I felt refreshed. I would find myself sitting straighter, walking more balanced, just a heightened sense of self-awareness overall. Each session felt like a reset…”’ - Kim

“... I found the instructions very accurate and the manner in which they were delivered very mindful and relaxing. I am still at the very early stages of practice but am keen to continue…” - Lindi

“I was formerly a yoga practitioner and teacher (aged 85 in November). Initially I was a bit wary of this new way of teaching, understanding and moving...after the 50 minute practice, after coming to my feet, I felt unusually relaxed and refreshed. This was a lovely surprise!’ – Sophie

‘The lectures and examples of how the Feldenkrais system has helped people and animals were really interesting, I was surprised at the extent of the benefits, covering so many needs…I love the wisdom of not harming oneself and developing in a relaxed way.’ – Val

‘Fascinating to think about the ways that the body might know better how to achieve a result than the mind.’ - Victoria

Thank you from all of us to Feldenkrais Education for this amazing resource that brings the Feldenkrais Method to life in so many different ways!“

- Karin Horowitz

Quote of the week

“If you teach people how to stand in their own uprightness, and if they like themselves like that, you will be wanted in every part of the world.”

-Moshe Feldenkrais