Paris Kern writes: “A feature of our consciousness is a tendency to compartmentalize our thinking, usually without our knowing it. This becomes a problem when we practice the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education because our goal should be to assist the student to function in a coordinated fashion. When you remember that you are working with the nervous system which works as a unit, your thinking changes. When your thinking changes your work changes! Your lesson will encompass the movements, thoughts, emotions, and the state of vitality or health of the person you work with.
Some years ago I was teaching a workshop and I kept finding that people were thinking in terms of the shoulder, or the hip, or the flexors, or the extensors. I came up with the term BRAIN HANDLES when I explained to them that wherever you are touching in FI®, you are touching the brain. You can affect change in the nervous system from any one of the brain handles, whether it’s a toe, a jaw, or a rib.
Working with some familiar FI forms, we will stimulate one of these aspects of a person: reorganizing to alleviate pain, introducing new possibilities of movement, helping someone find a neutral place in which to learn and grow. We’ll use working with the jaw, mouth, and head to find neutral and then move into other places from which we can touch the nervous system. This will be a springboard to go into other FI forms to create new possibilities for a person.
At all times as Feldenkrais® practitioners, it behooves us to remember we are working with a person via the nervous system. No matter where we touch, it is a handle into the nervous system. What we think about affects what we sense which, in turn, affects the results when we work with our students.”
This three-day training will address the needs and questions you bring from your individual practice and will include a Functional Integration® demo with a person from the public.”
About Paris:
Paris Kern has been a Feldenkrais Practitioner since 1992, and has attained the highest professional certification as a designated Feldenkrais Teacher trainer. She and her husband have recently moved from Baltimore, Maryland to Saxtons River, VT where she has established the Feldenkrais Center of Southern Vermont. Building on her thirty-year practice in Maryland she is excited to bring this work to a new group of people. She will continue to see private students in Maryland with bi-monthly visits and online lessons. Paris also travels to train the next generation of Feldenkrais practitioners, teach workshops in Your Body Sings and Riding with the Whole Self. Her teaching has taken her to New York City, Santa Fe, Austria, Germany, Holland and Sicily.
Paris is a steady and inspiring presence, who brings a compassionate and light hearted manner to her work. She has the ability to simplify complex theories and principles of the Feldenkrais Method. Through stories and demonstrations, she de-mystifies challenging concepts and brings a common sense approach to her work.