wakeful body: the Blending Yoga & Feldenkrais
Monday nights Fall 2024
An 8 lesson course guided by Sarah Baumert blending the mindful movement of gentle yoga with the awareness of the Feldenkrais method.
September 15th - November 11th, 2024
Mondays 6pm - 7:15pm CST
These full body classes will awaken, stretch, and calm the body. As one student recently described Monday nights, "That felt like I just gave myself a massage!" These fall classes will be a continuation of some fan favorite stretching sequences that incorporate bolsters and other props to enhance the poses.
Each class is an original, innovative creation of Sarah’s teaching. She blends a more traditional gentle yoga practice with the novel Feldenkrais® awareness practices. But that’s not all, she incorporates joint specific training, functional range exercises, self-massage, breathing exercises, and a compassionate non-competitive mindset. It’s a true experience of movement therapy! You will train your sensitivity in such a way that you find yourself feeling more alive, vibrant and spacious.
In many yoga traditions, the teaching emphasis is on perfecting shapes (poses) and isolating movement at specific joints. In this blended class, attention is focused on treating your body as a connected system, moving beyond isolated exercises. The first part of class will mostly be on the floor, using bolsters and other props to develop an understanding of joint movements that will later be used in the more traditional yoga asana poses. The last half of class will be more active poses and stretching, concluding in a restful savasana.
For all of you who have been joining Monday nights, this whole body reset is like a maintenance plan! We will zoom our focus in for eight weeks on movements that will support the season change. For new comers, come with no expectations. Allow your body to be your guide. All levels are welcome. This will be a nonjudgemental, un-intimidating space to create friends with your body (yourself!).
Come explore mindful movement that is designed to be accessible for all. Experience this novel way to improve your body awareness, joint health, and functional mobility in a holistic way led by a passionate movement educator.
September 15th - November 11th, 2024
Mondays 6pm - 7:15pm CST
Livestream classes will be taught over Zoom
*No class Monday 10/7
$140 for the 8 lesson course
*This series is included in the Body Matter Library Membership
For full scholarship options, please inquire directly with Sarah at sarah@body-matter.com
What You’ll Discover In This Online Series:
Movement: 8 Yoga + Feldenkrais classes: Each session seamlessly blends traditional yoga postures with the gentle introspection of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement. Sarah's dynamic teaching adapts to the changing seasons and the needs of each student, creating a truly unique experience.
Educational Talks:
• Pre lesson Anatomy lessons
Connection:
• 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
Live classes and recordings will be accessed via the BODY MATTER studio platform using Marvelous software. Once you have purchased the series, you will have access to the livestream classes and recordings.
How to use the Marvelous software for livestream and recorded classes.
Different than exercise, these classes are an interdisciplinary adventure. Imagine weaving together yoga, Feldenkrais, joint-specific training, self-massage, mindful breathing, playful movement puzzles, and a deeply compassionate approach to self-care. This unique exploration empowers you to discover a profound sense of ease and comfort within yourself.
Kindness towards ourselves is not always soft and easy. It can demand courage to move into the quiet corners of our hearts and bodies, facing the resistance we feel within. This practice welcomes you, inviting patience, awareness, and a spirit of slow, mindful exploration.
Scholarships are available for this series. Please contact Sarah directly at sarah@body-matter.com for scholarship inquires. No questions asked.
If you cannot attend all of the live classes, each class will be recorded and the videos will be available for those attending the series. Space will be limited so that I can manage watching everyone, sign up early to hold your spot! There will be time for questions and community discussion after the livestream class, as well as an option to engage with Sarah and the other students in the class through the online comments following each lesson.
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 1:1 the 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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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 emphasized 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.
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Feldenkrais and Yoga help improve balance and prevent falls by retraining your body's response to potential imbalances.
Fear can be a major culprit behind falls. Fear can make us tense up and hold our breath, limiting movement and increasing fall risk. The lessons are gentle movement explorations that promote a healthy breathing and a calm nervous system.
Balance also relies on feeling your body's position in space. Feldenkrais explorations refine your body awareness and proprioception, helping you detect, respond, and adapt to potential imbalances more wisely. Focusing on coordinated movement patterns, the lessons train your body and mind to respond more effectively to unsteady situations.
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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.
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 love how the Monday night classes interweave and focus us on an evolving practice! The instruction is very clear and Sarah’s teaching style is calm, consistent, and precise. I feel the poses in a whole new way. I look forward to this class each week and when I can’t make it I do the recorded session as soon as I can.” - Mary
”Your wisdom encapsulates much of what I’ve studied and am still learning to apply, even at my age. May I be able to do so until I die. Now I have a fresh connection between Feldenkrais, Zen Buddhism, non-violent communication and psycho-therapy. I have experienced many unique and special moments of joy in your classes, Sarah, and they are precious to me.” - Elizabeth
”These online Yoga + Feldenkrais courses have become some of my favorite practices ever. 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. - Bonnie”