Highlights

1. Announcements:

    • 6 minutes animation about Feldenkrais - now in Italian and Spanish !

    • Spanish classes coming soon

    • Last chance to book your spot for voice workshops

    • Free Q&A with Choune Ostorero - Advanced training ‘ Feldenkrais for Sports’ (in French) 

2. A note from Robert Sussuma - part 3

3. Book of the Week

    • Complexity - A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell

4. Quote of the Week

What is Feldenkrais? In 6 minutes… now in Italian and Spanish!

When we first released our animated short “What is Feldenkrais”, we shared it in English and French. Since then, many of you have told us how valuable this little film has been for introducing the method in a clear, engaging, and accessible way.

We’re excited to announce that the video is now also available in Italian and Spanish.:

Italian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TmKzXon2rw
Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxIXBTymNJs

Whether you’re a practitioner introducing Feldenkrais to new students or someone curious about the method, this short animation offers a concise and engaging entry point.

By offering it in multiple languages, we hope it becomes more widely accessible and helps share the Feldenkrais approach with an even broader audience.

Spanish classes online!

Starting on 25th September, you can join online Feldenkrais lessons with Betzabel Falfan, every Thursday at 5:00 p.m. (CET), (at 8:00 am Pacific time, 9:00 am in Mexico City). Each week we’ll explore a new lesson as part of an ongoing theme.

Betzabel is a Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner® and co-founder of the Forest Lighthouse Center, where she leads weekly Feldenkrais classes and offers individual sessions. Since 2019, she has helped organize and guide students in the Feldenkrais professional training program in Brussels. Drawing on her dance background, she teaches with an exploratory approach that deepens body awareness, mobility, self-confidence, and sensory perception. She is studying the Child’Space method to enrich her developmental learning work.

💫 The classes are offered on a pay-what-you-can basis.

📩 Sign up here to stay updated, receive the latest news, and get reminders.: https://feldenkrais-education.com/en/leccion-espanol/

Voice workshops with Robert Sussuma 

There are only 2 spots left for the Brussels workshop. The Paris workshop is full, but you can write to us if you would like to be added to their waitlist.

Learn more about the workshop and register here: https://feldenkrais-education.com/en/workshop-with-robert-sussuma/

‘Feldenkrais for Sports’ and Q&A with Choune Ostorero (in French only)

There will be a free online Q&A with Choune Ostorero (in French only) on 21st September, starting at 18:00 CET. You can ask questions about her work and the upcoming workshop.
Sign up here: https://feldenkrais-education.com/qa-avec-choune-ostorero/

The advanced workshop for practitioners, ‘Feldenkrais for Sports’ will be held from 8th to 10th November in Brussels, in Forest Lighthouse. (in French only)

Choune has a professional background in various sports disciplines. After several injuries, she had to rethink her way of doing and moving. This led her to discover the Feldenkrais Method, which radically transformed her sporting practice.She has been working as Feldenkrais practitioner since 2009, offering high level athletes her experience and skills in body awareness, helping them optimize their performance and enhance their sports practice.

Workshop details: 

- When: 8th-10th November, 10:00 - 17:00 CET
- Where: Forest Lighthouse - Brussels 
- Language: French

For more information about the workshop, you can visit this page.: https://forest-lighthouse.be/en/event/feldenkrais-for-sports/

Thought of the week

A note from Robert Sussuma - part 3

In recent editions, we introduced our collaboration with Robert Sussuma, a voice teacher and Feldenkrais practitioner who shares unique insights into the connections between somatic practice, experiential learning, and vocal transformation. 
As announced above, Robert will soon be in Brussels to teach two 4-day workshops, and he is also contributing to a special newsletter series—this is the third edition. 

A note from Robert: 

Hi there,

As you know the workshops in Brussels and Paris are coming up:

Brussels: LA VOIE/X SQUELETTIQUE (A Feldenkrais Approach to Singing), Oct. 2-5

Paris: LA VOIE/X DU CHANTEUR (A Singing Approach to Feldenkrais,) Oct. 18-21

The idea is this:

If "every vocal challenge has a skeletal solution," then let's start with a skeletal approach to vocal understanding and organization and from there look at singing as it is understood in the field of voice and work out from there in a Feldenkrais/skeletal way. These two workshops together are like "two sides of the same coin" or "two halves of the same whole" or "two ways to arrive at the same place".  Whether you can attend one or both, the field of inquiry is one field, how we navigate it is the difference, but both ways work!

Starting with the Skeletal Way is important for several reasons: 1. it's concrete, yet ephemeral - like singing is - and can also be applied to every other human function and endeavor and 2. it's a powerful alternative to many of the more mechanical and fitness-based approaches to vocal improvement.

Here are some words from students/colleagues of mine regarding the skeletal approach:

- Listen to Anupa Paul, a Voice Teacher and Singer in Esslingen, Germany (anupapaul.com) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9DQndWtBkU

- Listen to Darren Forbes-Kindlen, Feldenkrais Practitioner, Vocalist and Voice/Movement Facilitator in Perth, Scotland (movementimprovement.co.uk): https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Mtk0WARHfww?feature=share

From the foundation of thinking skeletally, we can take any vocal task, sound, idea or function and look at it differently.

My motto is: "Create a learning experience by which a student is most likely to say - for themselves, in their own way, with their own words from their own awareness - what we as "teachers" could have told them from the beginning, but would have had no useful, personal relevance or systemic meaning to them."

This is my aim, in the second workshop, to bring this all together so that not only do new sounds, experiences and understandings emerge from individuals and the group, but also a new way of thinking and approaching any vocal question or sound with awareness, creativity, connection and intelligent experiential interiority that can be applied to singing, learning and life, again and again and again!

Both workshops are almost full, but if you're thinking of joining us, for one or both, let us know! We'd love to have you be a part of the learning.

Looking forward to it all, 

Robert Sussuma, GCFP, MMus.

www.thesingingself.com

Book of the week

Recommendation from Robert Sussuma:

Complexity - A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell

This book was very influential in my understanding of how systems interact. And looking at a system of learning, like Feldenkrais, and a system of understanding, like singing and vocal science, together was not easy to understand at first. But, the ideas in Complexity Theory as outlined in this book gave me clear strategies and frameworks for how to organize, reorganize and even reinvent an approach to singing that didn’t only incorporate a deeply somatic method, but also Existentialism, Experiential Learning, Human Relationships, Group Work, and more. If you're looking to take your thinking, feeling, sensing, moving, sounding and learning to new levels of sophistication, this is a great place to start! - Robert Sussuma

Quote of the week

“The harder you push, the harder the system pushes back.”

― Peter Senge