Soften the System: Settle Your Body Whenever You Wish
An 8 lesson Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Series with Sarah Baumert
Our instincts RESIDE in the BODY.
The lessons in this series are not just exercises in relaxation, mindful awareness, or feeling good. They are ways to better know, experience, and understand your body. Most importantly they can help you develop the ability to settle your body whenever you wish.
These are not just tools that you can lean on during times of stress or anxiety. These are ways to practice what it can feel like to be settled. To get to know the sensation of a settled nervous system, so that you can return to that place when you need to.
This is an alternative view of what we can do to grow in how we relate to the world, to settle our own nervous system, to then be able to engage with the world and in relationships in a way that feels skillful, wise, and from a place of compassion.
We will approach these lessons as a call to action to recognize that in order to create change in larger systems such as our community, our country, our world, understanding our body and softening the system is an important step for that change.
“Few skills are more essential than the ability to settle your body. If you can settle your body, you are more likely to be calm, alert, and fully present, no matter what is going on around you. A settled body enables you to harmonize and connect with other bodies around you, while encouraging other bodies to settle as well. Gather together a large group of unsettled bodies - or assemble a group of bodies and then unsettle them - and you get a mob or a riot. But bring a large group of settled bodies together and you have potential for a movement - and a potential force for tremendous good in the world. A calm, settled body is the foundation for health, for healing, for helping others, and for changing the world.””
This is a non-judgemental, non-corrective, and liberating way to experience your body in motion. You will experience learning at your pace where noticing what makes you feel good is a priority. Notice what you are curious about, and recognize that experiencing pleasure and enjoyment in your body are measures of freedom. The lessons will be suitable for all levels, and will include a variety of positions, from lying on the back or side, to hands and knees, moving from sitting to lying, or rolling.
“Settling is not the same as healing, it is an all-important foundation for healing. A settled body invites and accepts efforts to mend it, an unsettled one tends to resist those efforts.”
$180 for the 8 lesson course.
For scholarship options, please inquire directly with Sarah.
We will practice listening that is not reactionary.
We will learn to settle the nervous system to be able to feel our bodies and hear our bodies.
We will learn to trust body signals.
No previous experience with the Feldenkrais Method is needed to participate. Practitioners and those with experience are welcome too!
What You’ll Discover In This Online Series?
Movement: This series will include nine (60 minute Awareness Through Movement Audio) lessons in total, addressing how our system relates to our environment and experiencing ways to settle our own system. Two variations of each lesson are included, for 18 total classes.
Lessons Included in This Series:
1. Intro Class: Relaxed Eyes with Rolling Hands
2. Opening and Closing Like a Flower - Soften the Hands + The Whole Self
3. Smooth Vision
4. Attention to the Middle - Breath, Belly, Back and Hips
5. Restoring Attention to the Breath
6. Humming, Breath, and Skeletal Support
7. Moving the Spine in Harmony
8. Calm Through Rolling - Connecting Shoulders and Jaw
9. Spreading the Softness with Hand Attention
Education:
• Pre-class Anatomy lessons
• Mini practices for settling the system in the moment
• The philosophical framework for ATM
Connection:
• Recorded Q & A to listen to questions, connect with the other students, and discuss the method and tools we are learning about.
• Optional 10 minute consultation with Sarah
• Online forum to connect and ask questions if you are doing the recordings
• Email support
Ways to keep practicing:
• Stream recordings indefinitely
• Option to download recordings
Once 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.
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 and this course:
“I haven’t done a lesson in a while and I felt like my body just immediately sunk into a relaxed state. I was able to stand up in a way that I have not been able to feel in a long time. -E
Dear Sarah, I wanted you to know who much I valued and needed your Feldenkrais lesson on Soft Hands!
I had a stressful procedure last Friday morning (2 days after the lesson). In my experience, the preparation for the procedure is the most stressful part! I realized that your lesson about softening the hands was a perfect way to prepare me. I turned the lights down, closed my eyes and sat with my hands focused on relaxing and softening them for 10 minute intervals and it truly made a difference in how my body coped with the prep and the procedure. I can’t even thank you enough for the ongoing body wisdom you share with us….your photos before the lesson that showed us how much neuro-space the hands take up was very illuminating and your lesson was so well constructed. -H
I especially like what you said at the beginning, to allow us to let go of expectations and to drop into a beginner’s mind. I’ve done enough Feldenkrais now that I know I am going to be prompted to try to feel certain things. But these ideas of being curious and letting things happen, and letting go of some control… Wow, I am always surprised at how much I need this every time. I appreciate these classes so much. - K”