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

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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 :)

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.

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!

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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 :)

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!

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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 :)

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!

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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 :)

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!

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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 :)

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.

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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 :)

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.

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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 :)