The Feldencast: Recent Episodes
Ethan Cowan
I met with Dennis Leri at his home in San Rafael at the end of March, 2015. In this second half of our conversation we talked about:
- the various phases of Dennis' career
- the shapes of the Feldenkrais community as Dennis saw them
- Feldenkrais in terms of art
- the East-Meets-West dimension of the work
- Feldenkrais as a community of inquiry
To record this interview, I met Dennis in San Rafael where he lived with his wife Maria in a small, cozy place, with a garden level studio where Dennis worked. We spoke upstairs in the front-room for a half an hour (part 1), then we went out to lunch. We continued the interview when we returned (part 2).
I found Dennis remarkably open and engaging, both in this conversation and in general.
I didn’t have a plan for releasing the recording we made, but when he died at the end of 2016, I shared it with people in the Feldenkrais community.
Now I share it here to make it available in a more ongoing way.
Dennis was one of the very important teachers in my life. I’m happy to share this conversation I had with him.
https://feldencast.com/season-2/dennis-leri-pt-2-interview
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, you can donate at https://feldencast.com/donate
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
I met with Dennis Leri at his home in San Rafael at the end of March, 2015. We talked about
- the role of recording in the Feldenkrais Method
- some of the concepts that Dennis used to think through what Feldenkrais work is about
- the various phases of Dennis' career
- the shapes of the Feldenkrais community as Dennis saw them
- Feldenkrais in terms of art
- the East-Meets-West dimension of the work
- Feldenkrais as a community of inquiry
To record this interview, I met Dennis in San Rafael where he lived with his wife Maria in a small, cozy place. They had a garden level studio where Dennis worked. We spoke upstairs in the front-room for a half an hour (part 1), then we went out to lunch. We continued the interview when we returned (part 2).
I found Dennis remarkably open and engaging, both in this conversation and in general.
I didn’t have a plan for releasing the recording we made, but when he died at the end of 2016, I felt it would be appropriate to share it with people in the Feldenkrais community.
Now I share it here to make it available in a more ongoing way.
Dennis was one of the very important teachers in my life. I’m happy to share this conversation I had with him.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
The first Feldencast interview! I talked with Feldenkrais practitioner and writer, Kim Hansen.
We discuss Feldenkrais and Kim’s recent writing project, and we cover a lot of interesting ground:
- how Kim got into Feldenkrais
- how she got into writing
- the process of learning to articulate somatic experiences in language
- current topics like learning online and the various ways to use our attention
I’m excited to present a conversation about Feldenkrais here in the feed because there has always been more to Feldenkrais work than just the movement lessons. There’s a conceptual framework that goes along with it. As Kim will talk about, it’s about more than just sensations!
If you want to read a transcript of our conversation, you can visit the episode page here. I had a lot of fun talking with Kim and I hope you enjoy listening!
Reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Both this episode and the previous episode are based on AY16, the Four Points. The Four Points are a theme that Feldenkrais introduces here, early in the AY series, but they appear again later and get developed in quite a few ways. Four Points is a theme that Feldenkrais riffs on quite a bit. In my opinion, what's interesting about this particular riff is how he uses the movement theme as a way to dynamically get the student into a position that he's already introduced earlier on the reel.
Actually, this second reel of lessons keeps coming back to this specific position, sitting with one leg long and the other leg bent with the foot standing on the floor. It's in the shoulder stand lesson at the beginning of the reel, and there's more exploration to come in later lessons as well. This particular approach shows one way of getting into the position, which is very different than just starting in the position.
Hope you enjoy!
Visit this episode of the Feldencast website: https://feldencast.com/season-2/four-sit-legs-long-bent
You can always email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast)
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This lesson is based on AY16, Four Points. And this episode is the first installment, just the first half of AY16 plus a little bit that I thought was relevant. I'll do the second half of AY16 in another episode soon.
I posted a video of myself doing a little bit of AY16 on my facebook stories, and another practitioner gave me some tips. Cool! Then he mentioned a lot of these early AY lessons are based on judo groundwork that Feldenkrais knew very well because of his extensive experience as a judo practitioner and teacher. I think my colleague was pointing out that a lot of these early AY lessons don't have a lot of frills or many of the pedagogic techniques Feldenkrais would develop later. So maybe the early lessons aren't chunked down into bite site pieces as much as they might be? That's part of why I broke this lesson into two.
I also decided to make AY16 into two lessons because I'm finding it nice to work with a 30 minute framework.
Hope you enjoy!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
What makes a lesson a lesson?
One of the things I am trying to do with the Feldencast is to go through all 550 AY lessons of Moshe Feldenkrais. And that's because I'm interested in the historical study. But I am also interested in learning more about his compositional strategies because I want to learn to compose lessons myself!
This episode is an attempt somewhat along the lines of the previous episode - both are some of my early attempts to understand lesson composition by trying to make my own. These are attempts to participate in the history of making movement lessons.
Episode 19 will be back to the regular programming of the AY lessons, but for now I hope you enjoy this one!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
I've had a few people request shorter episodes, so here's a short one!
Making shorter lessons gives me an opportunity to compose my own, which is a fun challenge for me.
I've been calling my original lessons in this feed "breathers," which has a double meaning: 1) they all involve breathing and 2) they are little breaks from the AY lessons.
Let me know what you think! Also, I don't know what to call it, so please write in a let me know if you have a suggestion for a title.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast)..)
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
I had a rap lyric in my head where this guy says, in a very specific way, "Burning the candle at both ends..." I know that's a very common phrase, but while I was doing this lesson, I started hearing that rap cadence but thinking "Doing the flexion at both ends." Of course, this isn't about the overdrive implied by "burning the candle at both ends," but it IS about doing the flexion at both ends.
This is based on AY12, which is called "Sitting with straight legs." That title is fine, it describes the some of the starting positions in the lesson well enough. But "doing the flexion at both ends" gets closer to the functional gold in this lesson.
Also worth noting, I think I'm gonna go through the lessons on reel 2 in order, so this lesson does follow the previous lesson in the original Alexander Yanai sequence.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This is based on AY11, another one called "preparation for a shoulder stand," so it's similar to Episode 13, themes that have been introduced already, and they're themes that will continue to develop.
This is the first episode of season 2. The line between seasons 1 and 2 is a somewhat artificial distinction, but I'm organizing the podcast based on the reels of the AY lessons so this is the first lesson on reel 2. And at least part of this lesson is a riff on a theme that will continue through season 2. It's a theme of sitting with one leg long and the other bent, then doing variations of flexion with twists led by the elbows, but really controlled by the spine. The so-called "creative spine."
So consider this another course in a long meal, with variations of flavors that you've maybe tasted before and that you might taste again.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
The last episode of the first season is just a little bit different. It's based on AY5 so it's part of the first reel just like all these other lessons so far, but you'll be doing some sound production with your voice! So set yourself up in a place where you can make some sound.
I'll be working on season 2 very soon and I would like to make season 2 an improvement on season 1, so please give me feedback. Let me know what's going well and what could be better.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This is the second to last episode in season one of the Feldencast. Season one corresponds to reel one of the Alexander Yanai lessons of Moshe Feldenkrais. You'll remember, he recorded lessons on reel-to-reel tapes, and I don't know how much sense it makes to organize my podcast seasons by reel [because I don't know how much he thought of his compositions in terms of reels], but that's what I'm doing!
You know how in TV shows, the second to last episode of the season is where the climax comes? I'm hoping that you have an experience like that with this lesson. Not presuming you will, just hoping.
Take it easy with this lesson, no need to overdo it.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
There have been two 'To See or Not to See' lessons already, and both of those dealt largely with movements on the stomach. The 'To See or Not to See' part was looking over the shoulders to see the heels, and the whole thing was that you didn't NEED to see the heels, it was more about the direction you were looking.
This lesson, in contrast, is mostly about movements of the eyes both with the eyes open and closed, so it's fun for me to present it with a title that suggests connections between this lesson and those previous 'To See or Not to See' lessons, but it's a very different lesson.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Another installment of my set of "Breather" interludes - ways to give you and myself a break from the AY series. I wanted to record a short, easy lesson.
This one is based on a memory of a lesson I did in my training. I did my Feldenkrais training from 2009-2013, and this is not even a full lesson but part of a lesson that Dennis Leri taught, probably sometime in 2012. I'm teaching this one from the impressions I have left over from that one experience.
I'm experimenting with a looser recording style, so if you have any feedback about the lesson I'd love to hear it.
Enjoy!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This one is based on AY4, originally titled "sitting indian fashion." I'm a white person living in North America, and there used to be a lot of Native Americans here, and there are still some, but we wiped out a lot of them. And we also made the mistake of calling them indians when we got here. But I think Feldenkrais probably meant people from India.
This lesson is about some of the more obscure of subtle aspects of sitting with crossed legs.
Enjoy!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
The 7 C's are the seven cervical vertabrae! This is an adventurous (read challenging) lesson, so please take it easy on yourself. There's no need to be heroic, unless you're starring in your own adventure where you need to be heroic.
There may be points where you're not sure how to enact the instructions. In those moments, don't worry. No need to get it right. It's an adventure, just see what happens.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
As the name suggests, this covers some themes that might feel familiar from Episode 4, but then there are some surprising new directions. To me, it almost feels like 3 lessons in one. Very distinct compositional sections to the lesson. See what you think!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast)..)
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
I grew up skateboarding in the late 90s and early 2000s, and there are quite a few skateboard tricks with names like Hand Plant, Footplant, Egg Plant, Texas Plant etc. Basically, you plant some part of yourself at the top of a ramp and do a trick from there. I wanted this title to have some of that flavor, and I also wanted to draw a connection between this lesson and The Elbow Wheel.
This lesson is based on AY1 which originally had the title "Bending the head to the side when sitting." That title does a fine job of describing the movements at the beginning and end of the lesson, but all the stuff in the middle seemed related to movements from AY3, originally called "rolling to sit with the elbows," (The Elbow Wheel). So I wanted to bring out those connections with my title and presentation.
I've heard it said that Feldenkrais himself didn't necessarily order or title the lessons in the AY sequence. I don't know how true that is, but I don't feel too bad about coming up with my own titles and my own sequence. But it does blow my mind that this is AY1 because of how weird the movements are. It makes sense to me to put it here in the middle of season one, after I've already presented some other movements that I think are more introductory.
If you're a purist and you're starting here with AY1, then welcome! And if you're following along with my sequence, I think you're adequately prepared. In either case, please enjoy The Elbow Plants.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This lesson is a recapitulation or starting over, but starting again.
I think it's safe to say that there are some challenging aspects to all of the lessons in the first reel of AY lessons (which will correspond to the first season of the Feldencast). And depending on skill/experience level, it can be hard to feel successful during challenging lessons.
So I put this lesson in here as another breathing lesson (a "breather"). I hope it reminds you of episode 2. At this point in the season, hopefully there is benefit to revisiting certain themes that we've already touched on. In Feldenkrais lessons, as in life, there's a balance to be struck between adding novel experiences that will pique the attention and enriching previous experiences by revisiting. With the right mix, hopefully old things start to seem new again.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This lesson employs an oft-used Feldenkrais conceit, where you do one movement in many different orientations to gravity and in various configurations of the different members of your body. Sometimes I think of lessons like these as a series of questions about, "What is a function?" which I also asked in a previous episode.
In this context, the function is rolling the head--not turning the head, but rolling the head--and in contrast to the transitional function from episode 3 which involved the whole body going from lying down to sitting, here, it's more about seeing how robust the function of rolling the head can be... In how many situations does it stay functional? Where does it stop functioning?
Another word we use a lot is "organization." In how many situations can you stay well organized to roll the head? If you try to bring one organization (like rolling the head) into another activity (like bending at the waist), what do you learn about the organization of rolling the head?
All food for thought and improving action.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast)
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This episode is based on AY2 which was originally called "Seeing The Heels." I've taken the opportunity with my title to emphasize that you might see the heels, you might not see the heels.
For a lot of this lesson you'll be asked to lie on the stomach. I'm aware that for some of us lying on the stomach can be uncomfortable to do for any length of time. So for this lesson (and for any Feldenkrais lesson), I want to give you a big, fat permission slip to stop doing the movement whenever you feel uncomfortable. Just stop. Before you even start the lesson, just imagine that there will come a time during this lesson where you'll think to yourself, "My neck doesn't feel so good right now. Should I keep going? Well he said I could just stop... Maybe I should just stop."
It seems counter-cultural, but maybe one of the things to learn from a lesson like this is what it feels like to be uncomfortable and NOT push through, but instead just stop, roll onto your back and come back to the movement whenever you're ready... even if that's tomorrow :)
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This one's called the Elbow Wheel and it's my version of AY3.
It takes quite a bit of floor space if you want to do it in a comfortable way. When my girlfriend did it she kept going around in circles, changing where she was facing and having a blast. Give yourself some room. It's really fun if you don't feel hemmed in.
I wanted to put this lesson next in the sequence after the first breathing lesson because I think this is a good introduction to the idea of a function. Breathing is an always-there kind of function, but this lesson looks at a transitional function: how do you go from lying down to sitting up? You can imagine there's a practical application of a lesson like this. "Now that I've practiced sitting up like this, if I had to sit up tomorrow, I could do it this way."
As with all treatments of functions in the Feldenkrais method, it's not that this is the correct way to sit up. It's just a relatively systematic exploration of one way of sitting up.
Enjoy!
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast).
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
This episode poses me with an interesting question: Where does one start a project like this? Or maybe it sounds like a dumb question, because I should just start with AY1, right?
But there's a problem with starting with AY1... It's not so easy!
AY1 is also not so hard (all things considered), and it will be here in the feed very shortly. But as far as the first thing, I don't think it's the right thing.
In a previous incarnation of this podcast, I did start with AY1 and my girlfriend's mom listened and said she gave up after the first 5 minutes because the sitting position was too hard on her hips. I'm trying to avoid turning people off in the first 5 minutes! I want the first episode to be doable by most people, so this first lesson doesn't have anything to do with AY1, or AY at all. This first lesson is a breathing lesson.
As someone who's been doing Feldenkrais lessons for a while, I think I haven't done nearly enough breathing lessons myself. Breathing is so fundamental. We started doing it the moment we were born and we'll keep doing it until the moment we die, and it's in the background of every single thing we've ever done or will do, including all these Feldenkrais lessons. So I thought it's a cool place to start!
If you're hardcore--like I would be if this weren't my podcast--and you're thinking "What!? Not starting with AY1? I'm not interested anymore..." DON'T WORRY. You can go to AY1, it's just farther down the feed. I put the AY sources in the titles, so you can go in your own order.
When you're done, please reach out and say hello! You can email me at ethan@feldencast.com
I offer the Feldencast in a spirit of transparent generosity. If you enjoy your experience and want to give back, please check out the Patreon page (www.patreon.com/feldencast)
If you'd like to help the Feldencast grow, please share this episode or any other episode that you've enjoyed, especially with family and friends.
Thank you for listening :)
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★
Welcome to the first episode of the Feldencast!
If you're already familiar with doing Feldenkrais lessons and you just want to start doing some Awareness Through Movement, check out the second episode. On the other hand, if you'd like more context before getting stared, this episode might be perfect for you.
This introduction is a little more than 15 minutes long and it's all me talking, so just in case your attention doesn't span that long, here's the too-long-didn't-listen: I talk about myself, how I got into Feldenkrais. Then I give some information about WHEN to do the lessons. Then I finish by talking about the scope and goal of the project.
THANK YOU for listening to this episode. Feldenkrais lessons have made a huge difference in my life, and I think they're some of the most interesting things out there. I'm really glad that you're taking a moment to check out the project to find out if it might be interesting to you, too.
Happy listening. I hope you find something worth your while.
If you'd like to support the project, please visit https://www.patreon.com/feldencast
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★