Angela

I'm a dancer, Choreographer, Feldenkrais Practitioner, and entrepreneur.

The secret superpower – Feldenkrais for Entrepreneurs

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Being an entrepreneur is a practice in the art of self-awareness — learning to manage your strengths and build on your weaknesses. Balancing your sense of self as you drive your business is an art. Learning to be present within yourself by staying balanced and grounded enables you to close deals and move the needle on your business forward effortlessly.

The Feldenkrais Method® (Feldenkrais) is a universal method for improving human life through better movement, sensation, posture and breathing. Neuroplasticity is central to the effectiveness of the Feldenkrais Method.

The way you interact with the world and communicate with those around you is an outward expression of your inner self. When stress rises in your body or you are tired, it shows on the outside. What’s on your mind shows through your physiological cues.

Why do entrepreneurs put self care on the bottom of their to do list?

The Feldenkrais Method’s approach to learning is about re-wiring our bodies awareness, getting out of our heads and into our movement. Bringing it back to the basics and re-learning the movement patterns we have forgotten, so we become more effective in all our choices both conscious and unconscious. Developing a new state of conscious awareness.

Coming from a dance background I look at sales similarly as performing on stage. The best dancers are able to improvise within a complex choreography and clearly express their desires and emotions.

Feldenkrais enables you to break through the physiological manifestations of your inner emotional perspective. Learning to breathe easier reduces stress, and lessens the tension held throughout your body. Creating shifts in your attitude, focus, and building a greater awareness of self. Helping you to perform the choreography of business with more efficiency and less effort.

In our modern world everything gets escalated; thinking bigger-bolder-brighter is better. The faster and harder we exert ourselves, the less sensitive we are to subtle changes, to the loud and the soft, to light and shade.

How does Feldenkrais break through this noise?

Let me explain: “The law of the least amount of effort”. If carrying a piano and a fly lands on the piano you won’t feel the difference. Alternatively, carrying a feather and a fly lands on it, you will feel it. Feldenkrais allows you to sense subtle differences in your system.

We each have the power to choose. Let’s take a look at some choices you might want to think about and implement as strategies to start to begin to be more aware of what you are doing:

Let’s start with one of the most fundamental ideas when implementing this method. This has to do with pace, how fast or slow you work. Moving at the speed of sound doesn’t necessarily mean you will be successful. Moving too fast may mean your personal wellbeing suffers. Know when your self requires a slower pace and when you have the momentum to move a little quicker.

Learn your way of doing things. Just because the strategy worked for someone else doesn’t mean it’s the right way for you. Learn from those before you but remember everything is in a state of change. What worked one time for them may not work for you, the environmental conditions may have changed.

Eliminating unnecessary distractions allows you to attend to the entire situation, your body, your surroundings, becoming aware of any change of difference, to be able to notice the important things.

By doing one task at a time, have one tab open at a time, answer one email at a time. Sit comfortable with shoulders dropped, breathe….Resist opening another tab until the work in the tab open is complete. Commit completely to finishing the first task, you will soon notice how you get more done in less time. Because you’re not content switching and your body will be more relaxed and in flow.

Those are 3 of the basic Fundamentals to the Feldenkrais method when you are starting to build awareness:

Check your pace; move slowly with attention on what you are doing.
Find your way of performing your movement.
Eliminating parasitic action; actions that don’t need to happen to perform the task you are working on.

Let’s look at a few steps you can take everyday towards building your awareness.

Observe yourself in your work environment.

Do you always stand the same way?

Do you turn the same way to get things on your desk, like answering the phone?

Change things around in your environment to give yourself some variety.

Observe your breathing.

Do you notice you hold your breath when doing something difficult?

How deeply do you breathe?

Where do you feel your breath, in your belly or chest?

Notice where your shoulders are:

Reach up with your right arm then extend it down the back of your neck. How far can you reach?

Now reach around behind your back with your left arm towards your right arm. How far can your fingers go up your back? Can your hands reach each other?

Do this at least once a day and see how your shoulders become free.

Remember self-awareness is a skill it is something we continue to develop, not a state we arrive at. Learning to navigate the complexities of life with emotional intelligence is an art. Feldenkrais offers you a way to move effortless, calm your system and build your awareness so your emotional state can glide through challenges that life throws at us.

At Last You Can Unlock The Secrets Of The Hip Joints

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When we are looking to improve the functionality of the hip joints stretches and corrective exercises only help to reinforce our bad habits. Looking instead at what we are doing and change our behaviour patterns. I’ve seen my hips lessons improve and change my students very quickly, some see changes after only one lesson.

Often we blame the hips, back or neck as being the problem especially if we have been to stretch classes to ‘fix’ the problem or tried other corrective exercises with little or no ongoing relief. Blaming the bad hip, bad knee or bad back for the discomfort, pain or stiffness.

Let’s look at a few things you can do right now to make changes.

How do you sit?
Bring yourself forward on a chair and separate the knees shoulder-distance apart, directly above the feet. If you keep your knees together you are tightening in the hip joints, stiffening the lower back and which likely pulls you into a slumping forward posture. The chair height must be so that the hips are a little higher than the knees. Please avoid bucket-type seats, like the old primary school chairs. As these force the knees to be higher than the hips and scrunch up the hip joints.
To have some functionality in your seated learning to sit with a dynamic pelvis, meaning that the position you sit gives the pelvis independent freedom so that it can move forward into extension without stiffening your back. This movement is one of the first to teach my new students. Without being shown how to you may find that you are gripping and fixing your deep hip flexors and compressing the hip joints.
How do you stand?
When you are standing:
Do you shift weight slowly from side to side?
Do you practice this every time you are standing like a gentle slow dance with a relaxation response in the non-weight bearing leg?
If not, then you are standing forever without any end, on two legs, neither one will ever be able to relax. Meaning that both of your legs and that includes all the muscles around your hip joints are getting tighter.
You can learn a lot about side shifting in standing. While standing quietly, more weight should be over the heels, not the ball of the foot. Be calm, patience and present within yourself as you stand. Don’t be thinking what’s next or jumping ahead of yourself. Even a little bit of impatience (as in I can’t be here I have other things to do) while standing will tighten the muscles surrounding the hip joints and may move your weight into the ball of the foot. While standing be aware if you are grabbing in the hip joints and let it go. Above all don’t sit into one hip, resting all the weight on the hip because you are balanced over one leg. Stand tall on the standing leg don’t push the weight too far to the opposite side.
How do you walk?
Where you engage in walking there needs to be a little shifting of your weight from side-to-side There needs to be a relaxation response (one leg free) in the non-weight bearing leg. Do not thrust your moving leg in front of you as many people do. By doing this you are placing undue stress on the hips, ankle and knee. It tightens the low back and pushes your head forward. Not the most elegant and efficient way to walk and a major cause of hip pain.

Want to make real changes?

CLICK HERE to sign up to the Free Happy Hips Video Program

Reclaim Your Power

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Reclaim Your Power

Correct posture can not be possible without the pelvis being able to move freely in all its articulations. Meaning that the hip joints and the small of the back can sway and move in all the areas they are designed to move in. If the one of the motions of the pelvis is restrained, the fluency of action is broken. One’s ability to move freely in any chosen direction from any position was defined by Moshe Feldenkrais as acture.

 

Currently due to our contemporary fashion in regards to our bodies we have this idea that a  “good figure” is to suck the belly in. Rejecting the fat rounded natural belly shape. The requires most adults to suck the belly in around the hara area and often means tucking the sacred tailbone in as well. Instead of allowing us to move the belly and pelvic in all planes of action it's designed to move in.

 

The prejudiced against any belly whatsoever. Places the body in a tucked in, sucked up position which means the body imprisons the large muscles which are necessary for potent movement: the core abdominal, the gluteal muscles, the hip and back flexors and the deep muscle of the pelvic floor.  Impacted in addition to this fashion statement we making with our sucked in flat belly, is the various life experiences: of our education and parental influences, including any trauma and socialization while growing up. These all impact on the habits we ingrain into our movement patterns.

 

Not only do we find the largest muscles inhibited but the sphincters tighten, buttocks gripping and the groin muscles restricted. All this tension as a result of unexpressed fears, performance anxiety and habits held onto since childhood. This tension impacting not only the muscles of the pelvic area but causing as into an awkward stance and movement, which can lead to tension in the jaw, neck, shoulders and even back pain.

 

Whats curious is this current fashion standard dis-empowers the individual by placing them in compulsion, nervousness, impotence (both sexual and in action), and insecurity. These “anxiety patterns” as Feldenkrais terms them reflects a movement pattern that holds back the individual to reach their true potential.

 

When you unleash the power of the pelvis it can initially be accompanied by the emotions the first entrapped it. By reclaiming your pelvic power so to you can reclaim your potency and influence over your own life.

Your Spine Health

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Your spine health….who takes notice of their spine? What I mean by that is; do you know where your spine moves the most and where is doesn’t move?

You may listen to your spine during a yoga/fitness lesson but what about doing everyday tasks. You will also notice your spine when it gives you pain feedback. But then what do you do about it?

Most people who have back pain move differently. This is a normal response, which should be a temporary adjustment to discomfort. Yet when this compensation becomes a habit, as it often does, other problems arise. And with them usually more pain.  

So what’s the answer?

Connecting the nervous system into what it is you're really doing with your spine. We have 24 vertebrae. The thoracic area is designed to move in all directions flexion, extension, rotation, and sidebending. With the lumber area really only designed to do a fraction of these movements, infact it really only flexes and extends.

People I work with that have lower back pain don’t move very much in the thoracic spine or middle back. One thing they have been told is ‘don’t twist’, what would be of more benefit for them is to be told and shown is to twist in the areas that are designed to twist.

Let’s go a little deeper here as to reasons why people don’t move their thoracic, this is where the emotional health comes into play. This area of the body people hold in accordance whom they are. The way we hold ourselves is made up of our habits and is an individual as a thumb print. It’s how we recognize our friends and family members from a distance. So if we are caught up in this holding pattern, these habits and it’s causing us pain what can you do about it?

As I mentioned by changing the neurological pathways, the buz word NEUROPLASTICITY!

Coordinating the role of the brain, in order to move without pain, means learning to inhibit the strain you are putting on your body. By attending to the qualities of your movement and in your breathing, such as flow, ease, smoothness allows you to organize and create new, pleasurable and comfortable movement patterns.

This rewriting of these ‘bad’ movement habits is, as mentioned previously, a process of discovery. Like most things that actually work, it take time. It takes commitment to learning about yourself, as awareness takes time to build. Just the same as learning to taste the subtle refined differences on the palate that you learn when becoming a wine connoisseur.  

In Moshe Feldenkrais own words….

“We do not achieve by repetition, using force, muscle exercising, or by increasing speed or force but by widening and refining the cerebral control of the muscle range.”

In other words…..

By coordinating role of the brain in our actions, in order to move without pain, you need to learn how to inhibit the strain you are putting into the system.

Give Back in a Grand Way

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By having a stronger connection and awareness of yourself you’re better able to contribute to your family and your community. I believe this method can help people contribute to the world in a grand way. This is something I know is Moshe Feldenkrais talk about a lot.
Some of you that have been listening to me for some time already know my passion about helping people improve their movements and lower their stress levels. But this part to my story I don’t share with many. It’s this part that to me is fundamental to many human interactions and to our very human existence.

When you take responsibility for yourself you’re better able to connect with others, to contribute to society and be available for your family.

Learning in the way The Feldenkrais Method® teaches you is about building responsibility for yourself. By building a functionally integrated system means you can be a greater contributor to your community.

It’s this connection to yourself that shows you how you are doing what you are doing. Allows you to notice in detail how you are using yourself. Asking how you can use yourself with less effort or if there is another way to move. Giving yourself options and allowing yourself to make informed choices. Therefore increasing your own responsibility.

My “Why” I teach this method isn’t just about help people have effortless movement but also about building a community that has self awareness, empathy for each other and strong loving families

3 Little Known Ways to Whole Body Fitness

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Fitness these days is more than getting fit and having a slim, toned body. It’s become a lifestyle choice, and forms part of our identity. With so many choices available to us, our friends telling us to try this class it’s the best, new novel classes popping into the market weekly to grab our attention and fitness guru’s pitching to us to strengthen this area, stretch out and in order to achieve results the rule is; No pain, no gain!

 

How do we find out what feels right to us? Which fitness routine calls us to join in and try it out? What will keep us coming back for more? Does it have to be such hard work to see and feel results?  

 

With access to technology and information at our fingertips we have the means to research but without the experience of doing how do we really know if it’s right for us?  We are all different and have a unique way to move.

 

The beauty of The Feldenkrais Method® is two fold. Firstly there is no ‘hard work’ before you see results and secondly there is no right way or a good way to move, it’s about how ‘YOU’ move. Only problem is for us who market the method is you can read all you like about the benefits, the theory behind the method and how it makes you feel after. BUT just like dancing and sex until you try it you really don’t know what’s it’s like.

 

The term ‘Functional Fitness’ is the new buzzword in the Fitness industry. A quick google search will inform you that this type of training is used to incorporate multiple muscles and joints at the same time to improve endurance, strength, balance, posture, coordination and agility. To build real world strength. All this movement is great as long as you’re building on a functionally integrated system.

 

Functional Integration® is the name of a Feldenkrais 1 to 1 lesson. As practitioners we have been working with functional fitness for years. The difference being Feldenkrais uses the mind/body connection by tapping into the nervous system which brings alignment, strength and flexibility to the skeleton. In an easy and non invasive way. Different to the current fitness trend which trains the muscles and joints. For a “Full Fitness Diet” combining the two will work wonders for your health and fitness levels.

 

Your brain will help you to understand what you are doing with you body.  To enable you to build on a fully functional integrated system. If your skeletal structure is out of whack in any way an unable to support you, then adding load, force or intensity will only create more problems.

 

3 ways the nervous system helps in a ‘Whole Body’ fitness to build better movement, better living and ultimately better function. It’s the nervous system that governs it all, flexibility, strength, alignment and moods:  

  1. Function

While the nervous system is wired for staying alive. Without mastery of certain body functions  the body will continue to live with tension, discomfort and nagging aches and pains. Limiting not only our movements but our quality of life. Two main functions to have mastery over: orientation and reaching. These are the basic movement we began with as a baby. The ability to look around then reach for what we want.

 

  1. Safety

The nervous system senses if you are safe. If there is a threat to you it goes into fight, flight or freeze mode.  Which triggers the sympathetic nervous system, and floods our system with cortisol. It’s not a great place to live. Yet many of us live in this place, on high alert. If the nervous system has us living in this place there is simply no way to perform at our best.

 

  1. Curiosity

The brain thrives on novelty and gets stimulated by giving it interesting things to engage with. This is how it forms new movement habits and rewires over old bad movement patterns. Therefore it’s not going to learn anything if you repeat the same repetitive movements over and over again and then expect a different result. Building on an already dysfunctional system will only bring about more pain and discomfort.  
Pushing through the pain not matter what we have been told is not good for you, it will eventually break you down and you won’t be able move at all without pain. When you push through the pain all your body learns is to protect itself from further pain. Hence why, the “No pain, No gain” rule is detrimental to our bodies.

 

The idea to move the whole body as a complete complex system has been missing in some fitness routines. In order to find balance within our bodies starts with understanding how the body works as a whole system. Firstly taking into account driving force the nervous system.

 

Doing Feldenkrais enables you to tap into the nervous system and starts the groundwork for more complex movements. If you know what you are doing you can do what you want. By understanding what the brain and nervous system can do will ultimately help you in whatever else you do with movement and in life.