“Movement as nature meant”… “Biological optimism”

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“Movement as nature meant”… “Biological optimism”
— Ruthy Alon, Founder of Movement Intelligence

Please click for our invitation:
Bones for Life® with Cate Thomas & Katarina Halm & Marie-Paule Wiley Spring/Summer 2021

Enjoy: be with us simply as may interest you each day

Certification:  Spring/Summer 2021 ALSO provides 90 hours towards the 210 hours
for completing  BFL teacher training
(with Cate and Katarina and/or other Movement Intelligence Trainers).

Drop-Ins: welcome by prior arrangement

TIME 10:30 am -12:00 pm PT for all classes

Welcoming your questions/wishes:
[email protected]
Telephone: 1-604-263-9123
Vancouver BC, Canada

Bones for Life® ‘Basic Principles’

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An intriguing composite image by Elizabeth Keith
‘What Texting does to your spine’ from Elizabeth Keith

Ten Bones for Life® Basic Principles
~ Welcoming you to ponder, practice, and post your notes!

BFL Principle #1: Explorations of options: The system chooses what is right for the situation present (Organic Kinaesthetic Learning)

BFL Principle #2: Multi-Angle Pressure

BFL Principle #3: Learning through Passivity

BFL Principle #4: Use of Polarized Movement

BFL Principle #5: Awareness of the Posterior

BFL Principle #6: Proportional Flexibility
~ Sense when you move with a flexibility that is proportional throughout your whole body and being … perhaps it brings you a feeling of being sturdy, delicately gentle while being strong … turning a little this way and that way from your very center.

BFL Principle #7: Use of surface contact

BFL Principle #8: Cultivating the memory of the pathway of pressure

BFL Principle #8: Accumulating consensus

BFL Principle #10: Deprogramming the compulsive addiction through selective inhibition

The list of BFL Principles, immediately useful and inspiring, is now ordered numerically to enhance the flow of reflections and teaching strategies which we will explore during the coming weeks and months.

*CREDIT:  The original list of principles was provided by Carol Montgomery during the Bones for Life® 3 training she taught in Phoenix AZ 2011 as a part of the Integrated Learning Center of Mid America’s (ILCMA )BFL training program.

Adaptive responses

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Adaptive responses can become gateways to learning. Sometimes these responses appear extreme and the key may be to simply listen. 
The medical community may become more and more aware of new ways to view ‘Obsessive Compulsive Disorder’ (OCD) in light of the work of Stephen Porges. Jan Winhall, following Porges’s work, developed “A Felt Sense Polyvagal Model of Addiction”.  An excellent article is at https://somaticpsychotherapytoday.com/addiction-from-the-bottom-up-a-felt-sense-polyvagal-model-of-addiction/. Winhall will be joining Porges in a teaching a programme. 
OCD may sometimes be an ADAPTIVE response: a tendency to ‘fight/flight’ or ‘freeze’ in the face of a challenge perceived or real, followed by haphazard and repetitive action in efforts to resolve the challenge. The challenge may be perceived as threatening, even life-threatening.  Therefore the SURVIVAL aspect calls for a special understanding of the collaborative student/teacher situation. 
The habitual nature of the ‘OCD’ pattern lends itself to compassionate listening during a Feldenkrais lesson or a Sounder Sleep System® class.  A historical source for healing the ‘OCD’ pattern could be seen as “the fittest may also be the gentlest because survival often requires mutual help and cooperation’ (Dobzhansky, 1962).  (notes/quotes at https://thinkinginmovement.ca/porges-dobzhansky/)
During my Feldenkrais® lessons and Sounder Sleep System® classes I often refer to Jan Winhall’s charts Felt Sense Polyvagal Model of Emotional Regulation: FSPM_Clinician-Model-ER Jan Winhall ©2019 PDF  / FSPM_Client Model ER Jan Winhall ©2019 PDF
Paris Kern has been teaching the Sounder Sleep System® for a worldwide teacher training this week.  She continues to create skilled variations beautifully modulating, slowing, and softening those hyperactive responses while appropriately engaging the creative spark of sympathetic liveliness.  Sounder Sleep System cultivates hypo-metabolic states to foster ease and rest at appropriate intervals – a juxtaposition of ‘fine motor movements’ with ‘gross motor movements’  can restore a balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic states of the nervous system. 
Also noting an excellent “Webinar for Feldenkrais Practitioners The Biology of Fight/Flight and Freeze and how we as Feldenkrais® Practitioners can work with that” Prepared by Violet van Hees, Feldenkrais ® Practitioner; TTouch® Equine Practitioner 1; Somatic Practice (Kathy Kain’s program)  (www.violetvanhees.com). 
Additional resources for Poly Vagal perspectives:  https://thinkinginmovement.ca/polyvagal/.