Extend yourself: Feldenkrais for improving spinal extension
A 10 week Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement Series with Sarah Baumert
January 8th - March 12th, 2025
Wednesdays 6:30pm CST/ Sundays 4pm CST
Live classes will be taught on zoom*
The ability to extend (aka arch or backbend) your spine well is at the heart of upright vitality and posture. This 10 lesson series will take you from basic explorations of the extension pattern of the spine, to a more comprehensive skill set for combining and integrating the pattern of extension with everyday actions and movements. Our functional daily movements require the spine to blend movements of extension with rotation, twisting, and side bending.
The positions we’ll start from will be back-lying, side-lying and prone, sometimes with support from an inflatable ball. From there, you’ll learn to inhabit spinal extension with more integrity and use it for graceful transitions, including standing, walking, reaching and more...
We will use a small inflatable ball for a few of the lessons to provide us with a refreshing support for the spine while in extension.
Each lesson in "Extend Yourself" helps you explore how to arch your back successfully. If you are NOT a backbend enthusiast, this series is actually just for you! It will give you tools and new possibilities for sensing how the spine can extend (aka arch or backbend) with more ease and pleasure, and less pain and stiffness.
With this intention in mind, we will use a variety of positions for these lessons: supine, prone, all fours, supine lying over a ball, side lying, standing, and sitting. Working in multiple positions puts you in a variety of relationships to gravity and gives you a larger repertoire of experience to sense yourself in motion towards spinal extension.
January 8th - March 12th, 2025
Wednesdays 6:30pm CST & Sundays 4pm CST
Live classes will be taught on zoom*
* No class 2/16
$200 for the 10 lesson course
For scholarship options, please inquire directly with Sarah at sarah@body-matter.com
Pay-as-able and payment plan options available at check out.
What You'll Discover In This Online Course:
Masterful Movement: Discover the safety, strength and coordination of your back muscles. Learn the kinesthetic healthy ways to arch your back more effortlessly, a fundamental movement pattern for vitality and well-being. This series will include ten lessons. Two variations of each lesson are included, for 20 total classes.
Educational Talks:
• Pre lesson Anatomy Lessons
• The philosophical framework for ATMMindful Awareness: Cultivate a deep connection with your spine through gentle, focused and curious attention.
Improved Posture: Develop elegant and efficient posture that supports your spine and overall health. Learn how to evenly distribute your effort throughout the spine and limbs for efficiency and elegance in your posture.
Enhanced Mobility: Increase your range of motion and flexibility, reducing pain and discomfort.
Easy-to-Follow Lessons: Each lesson is designed to be accessible to all levels of experience, from beginner to advanced.
Flexible Learning/Ways to Keep Practicing: Learn at your own pace and on your own schedule.
• Stream recordings indefinitely
• Option to download recordingsSupportive Community: Connect with like-minded individuals and share your experiences.
• Q & A sessions
• Online forum to connect and ask questions if you are doing the recordings
• Optional 10 minute consultation with Sarah
• Email supportOnce you have purchased the course, you will have immediate access to the class recordings.
How to use the Marvelous software for livestream and recorded classes.
Don't miss this opportunity to unlock your body's full potential. Enroll in Extend Yourself today!
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
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Starting in the 1930’s, Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais began to develop a somatic form of neuromuscular re-education. Feldenkrais developed two practical approaches for exploring early developmental movements, as well as more advanced complex actions.
1) Functional Integration - manually directed, hands on, private lessons. Learn more about the 1:1 Feldenkrais approach here.
2) Awareness Through Movement - verbally guided mindful movement classes done in a group setting.
Both approaches are described as “lessons”, as they involve beneficial learning processes for the brain and body. In guided Awareness Through Movement classes you study your potential to act, and how you refine your self organization to make any movement. Feldenkrais is not stretching or straining, it is learning. The method uses gentle mindful movement and directed attention to help people learn new and more effective ways to move and be in the world.
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Yes! It’s not uncommon for students to feel taller and to stand more upright (with less effort) after a Feldenkrais session. Most all humans “hold” the body with a specific tone in the muscles. Over time this muscular tone habituates and becomes our “posture”, for better or worse. Using guided awareness and small movements in Feldenkrais lessons, the body can shed its unnecessary muscular tone, so that the skeleton can then find its more optimal place to be.
“Although we each have a fantastic skeleton and musculature designed to give us flexible support and hold us upright against the pull of gravity, we frequently develop postural habits that challenge our skeletal structure's effectiveness and cause muscular tension inflammation, and a gradual deterioration of our joints.” - Feldenkrais Trainer David Zemach- Bersin
With awareness, specificity, and practice, Feldenkrais lessons can give you the ability to free the muscles of the neck, shoulders, spine, and pelvis. As one moves towards more freedom of the muscles, one also moves towards a more easy, elegant, and upright posture supported by the strength of the skeleton.
Our aim in Feldenkrais is not a perfect posture, but a place of less tension and conflict in the body where our posture is fluid, not rigid. Everyone’s posture, or how they “use” themselves, isn’t always optimal. With the help of the Feldenkrais method, your postural habits can improve to make everyday movements more enjoyable and easy.
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Both practices emphasize listening to your body, respecting its limits, and unlocking its potential. However, their approaches differ, offering unique pathways to self-discovery. A seasoned yogi might find Feldenkrais deepens their internal awareness, while a Feldenkrais practitioner might discover greater strength and power through yoga.
While most yoga practices tend to focus on alignment and the shape of a pose, the Feldenkrais method differs, in that the emphasis is on the coordination and quality of movement, not in holding a pose for a set amount of time or reaching the limits of a stretch. Feldenkrais emphasizes ease and efficiency in movement and to never reach a point of strain or even stretch. The movements are always done within a range of comfort, creating an environment where the nervous system feels safe enough to learn and change. There are no shapes or poses in the Feldenkrais method, but instead we work with developmental movement patterns and mindful movement explorations.
Join this course and . . .
Receive access to 20 livestream sessions over zoom. All sessions are recorded for asynchronous learning options.
Learn from a gentle guide and experienced Feldenkrais practitioner.
Connect with a supportive community of like-minded individuals.
Register today and take the first step towards a more empowered and pain-free you!
About Sarah: Sarah Baumert is known for her thorough and diverse instruction and her dedication to holding space for individual personal discovery. She facilitates whole body alignment in her students as a way for them to access balance, strength, mobility and physical clarity. Through sensory rich movement experiments, she guides students in cultivating mindfulness and deepening their learning process. She works with a variety of populations including athletes, seniors, artists, dancers, musicians, and those experiencing injury or surgery recovery. Sarah is a certified Yoga Therapist, an Authorized Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement® Teacher and Feldenkrais Functional Integration® Practitioner. Her objective is to acquire the most effective skills for helping her students live with less pain and more pleasure in their bodies.
What people are saying about Sarah's teaching:
“I have never, ever felt my hands and lower arms as I did at the end of class tonight. They were glowing in a fuzzy, pleasant way. I can’t describe it otherwise. - Linda
I am so grateful that you continue to provide these life giving, body strengthening and soul nurturing classes. They are like an inner meditation for every cell in my body! - Rosie
After I switched to the ‘regular’ yoga class, I realized I missed how I felt during and after Feldenkrais. I experience an ease of being, a soft wholesomeness, in Feldenkrais. I meditate most mornings, and I sometimes find that same stillness after Feldenkrais. Also, ease of movement: I am always struck at how gracefully I can move a limb compared to how the limb starts out. -Elizabeth
What I love so much about your classes: when the unexpected happens, like a jigsaw puzzle falling into place. Keep surprising me! - Jane
I find your classes to be exceptionally supportive and illuminating, and I’ve so benefitted from the learning and the unlearning I’ve experienced. Drop by drop, this practice and what I’ve received from your teaching have radically changed how I am in my body and in my life. These online Feldenkrais courses have become some of my favorite practices ever, and I’m excited every time you propose a new series. - Betsy
After these lessons, I often feel like I am “floating”. I continue to realize, in real time and activities like walking, the connection between all parts of my body….the supple power that moves up and down my spine, from my head to my pelvis. - Helen”