Amy Herring
Charleston, SC
Tensegrity PractitionerTM and Pediatric OT
David is my favorite provider.
Conversation with Valerie Simosko
Louisville, KY
Artist, former Principal Flute of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra,
soloist, teacher, former President of the Chicago Flute Club
https://www.valsart.net
DR: Was there a particular reason you started coming to my classes?
VS: I had done some Feldenkrais®work about 20 years ago in Charlotte when a friend who is a Feldenkrais practitioner lived there for a while. A year ago after a very long, stressful period in my life I was not feeling well physically or mentally, and I knew I had a lot of tension. My Feldenkrais friend was living in Charleston, SC and she suggested I try out your live, online classes to see if they would help. Since I knew about Feldenkrais work and I knew it was good stuff I tried it out.
You have helped tremendously, both from a relaxation standpoint and getting to know my body again because I had lost track of my body in that period. I was pretty aware of myself when I was playing flute, but I used to have terrible shoulder aches which remained after I stopped playing.
Not very long after I started with you I was sitting eating and I asked myself, “What are my shoulders doing up around my ears? Why am I holding them like this?” At that point it really clicked in and I knew the classes were doing good work for me. That’s why I’m continuing on, and I really don’t have any pain in my shoulders any more. It’s terrific.
DR: You felt just noticing how you were holding your shoulders was an important step in progress.
VS: And in believing in the progress.
DR: How long after you started classes was that?
VS: Just a few weeks. Plus for me, the classes are a meditation in some form. It’s just really relaxing. After a class I always feel like my life is in order and I’m on the right path.
DR: Do you find that you maintain a greater sense of calm and relaxation now than a year ago?
VS: Absolutely. Much better. I feel very good. My blood pressure has come down. I find it hard to believe I’m going to be 73 and I feel like I’m 30. I feel terrific. Because I’m relaxing.
Sometimes I go through some of the sequences from the classes. If I do them when I’m going to sleep it’s not very long – all I have to do is a couple of them and I’m out!
DR: I’m glad you’ve been able to take away elements from the classes as tools to use on your own.
VS: The steps in the classes are easy to remember so I feel those places we’re working on. All the repetition, adding to them, then coming back to the first movement. It’s like when I was practicing the flute. It makes the pathway into the brain a little bit better to have that kind of repetition.
DR: The idea came from my own oboe practicing, because when we practice it’s not just rote repetition. You repeat the same thing, but you keep looking at it as you repeat it. We know now from quantum science that observing something causes both the observed and the observer to change, so we improve automatically. I’m glad you recognized that.
Is there any particular issue you would like to work on in the future?
VS: I developed serious TMJ while I was playing, so I’m looking forward to your classes on the jaw. I think it will be great for wind players because it’s impossible not to get tension in your jaw when you’re playing.
DR: I’ll be doing a course to Free Your Jaw soon!
Kathryn Scheldt
Charleston, SC
Singer/songwriter, Guitarist, Author, Educator, and Feldenkrais Teacher®
www.KathrynScheldt.com
I moved here in 2017, and I was excited to find a Feldenkrais Teacher nearby. I have such admiration for the Method. It has been a part of my life for many years and I wanted to get back into it. I went to see what it was going to be like studying with David.
Then I had several accidents. One was when a huge panel of glass fell on my shoulder and neck causing vertigo and all kinds of stuff. The classes were invaluable. And at that time I was also having individual sessions with David, . . . another big help.
I have shoulder issues because of my many years of playing the guitar. And I’ve had neck injuries, a head injury, and several car accidents. These injuries limited my musical expression and were the reason I started studying the Method. I graduated from my Feldenkrais training in 2000.
I would say that just knowing that David’s classes are available has helped with my overall level of fear – fear of moving because it might hurt . . . or plain old anxiety. It’s worth noting that the classes can be attended in the safety of home. These classes have reinforced the knowledge that I can continue to move through injuries without getting stuck. If something doesn’t want to move, I can always figure out another way to move it or move around it. I haven’t had to stop moving while injured. I haven’t had to stop living.
After the first class with David my sleep deepened. By taking time out to tune into myself and see what was going on, I noticed not only immediate improvement but also a continuum of improvement over time.
One of the big changes was that I stopped thinking in certain ways like, “Oh, my neck is bothering me” or “Oh, my shoulder is bothering me.” Instead, I could see the results of the whole of myself working to support whatever I needed to be improving. In other words, if I had an injury and then was fixating on “Oh, this part of myself is bothering me,” I found that by doing the lessons my attention would shift away from the injury, making it less painful, and less prominent in my awareness, and sometimes even disappear. I became less fearful of it.
My confidence grew as I acquired skills. Over time a new way of thinking emerged . . .”OK, I’m going to have things happen, but I don’t need to be afraid that even as I’m getting older I have to be losing function. I’m gaining an awareness of how to move in other ways so I don’t have to slow down.”
In David’s series “Freeing Your Body,” I particularly enjoy the way the four classes in each course build and explore different relationships. For me, there are those Aha! moments, where things click and you think, “Oh, now I see why I was doing that . . . or maybe why I wasn’t doing it!”
In the course “Free Your Head and Neck 101” I find looking at the relationship of the tongue really, interesting, especially as a singer. I tend to have a short tongue and I get kind of tongue- tied. The ability to tune into that relationship of the tongue to the head and neck has been very freeing, very interesting, and very different. Just by making small movements and tuning into the inception of these movements, I can travel miles in one place.
David’s classes in “Free Your Hips 101” where you rotate your hips and then do the different combinations has become my current go to. I have seen that my upper body gets so much information from those classes. It may be because I had done “Free Your Head and Neck” and “Free Your Shoulders” beforehand. It’s fun to notice that just by moving my hip information travels through the rest of my body. Those classes are extremely useful and calming for me.
This week I pulled a muscle in my back. If I lie in bed and do one particular hip class really small, even in my imagination, I can feel all kinds of shifting and new levels of comfort, oddly enough, up in my chest, neck, and shoulders where my chronic problems are.
“Free Your Breath 101” acts as a lesson in anti-anxiety where breathing in new ways delivers real freedom from fear. I love these lessons and find them invaluable for many reasons.
The Feldenkrais Method®is an art form. David is an artist of the Method in his work. As a classically trained musician, David understands the value of dedication to excellence, and of patience. I think there’s an art to living in the now . . . like the art of getting out of bed without hurting yourself. Our body is a work of living art, but everybody doesn’t know that. David’s classes definitely provide a manual to learn about it.
Janet Paduhovich
New Jersey
Retiree
Your instruction and guidance are always soothing and consistently helpful.
Your words keep me engaged.
You provide an experience of trust.
I forget the range of movement available to me until you ask me to move deliberately.
It’s always good to move, and to move in ways I would not move myself.
What might be my “mind’s” resistance to continuing the class is overcome by your even and supportive voice and guidance.
When I relax into your guidance, I notice movements I don’t usually notice.
When I relax into your guidance, I notice my core engaged, centering my spine and body in solidarity with my neck, head and jaw as they move.
When I relax into your guidance, I am not afraid.
Joyce March
Knoxville, TN
Retiree
I took Feldenkrais classes from David the last couple of years I lived in Charleston. Then I moved and couldn’t take them. A trainer I’m working with in my new location in Knoxville has been surprised at my flexibility (I am 76). I attribute this flexibility, still evident more than a year later, to the Feldenkrais classes. After David began offering classes live online, I resumed taking them. I’m really glad he has made these recordings of Freeing Your Body available now so I can practice on my own schedule as well. I highly recommend these classes for anyone wanting to increase flexibility and head off pain due to movement problems.
David Rowland
Guild Certified Feldenkrais PractitionerCM
&
Tomatis PractitionerCM
7 Lombardi Lane
Hanahan, SC 29410
415-264-2199
David@FreeingYourBody.com
The Following are service marks andcertification marks of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America® in the US: Feldenkrais®; Feldenkrais Method® ; Feldenkrais Teacher® ; Guild Certified Feldenkrais PractitionerCM