Focusing your Touch

Advanced Training in the Feldenkrais Method^Ž
An audio recording with Ralph Strauch

Your eyes take in a tremendous amount of information. You use only a small fraction of that information, selectively filtering and attending to what seems important to your current functioning. Your tactile and proprioceptive systems also provide much more information than you actually use. You selectively filter that information as well, though perhaps less well than you filter visual information because you are less conscious of using it.

As a Feldenkrais Practitioner, the quality of your Functional Integration depends heavily on how you use tactile and proprioceptive information. This workshop will help you learn to focus your tactile/proprioceptive awareness and attention more consciously, to enhance your Functional Integration. You will feel the positive difference that this can make in the quality of the FI experience for both you and your client.

Specific issues and skills we address include:

Consciously focusing your attention where it serves you best, irrespective of where you are touching your client. Exploring different questions with the same movement by changing your focus of attention.
The nature of the cultural agreement which creates the collective illusion we call reality, and ways we create unnecessary limitation within that agreement. The distinction between pushing on and moving with your client, and the difference it makes in the resulting experience.
The perception of pattern, as more than the relationship between isolated parts. Using the perception of pattern in FI. Enlarging the pattern you work with to encompass yourself as practitioner as well as your client, and working with the conjoined system that results.
The distinction between treatment and exploration as tools for facilitating change, and the role of exploration in Functional Integration. The practice of the Feldenkrais Method as an exercise in not-knowing in contrast to the knowing about which characterizes other forms of contemporary professional practice.

This 2.5 hour recording is an edited version of a live presentation at the 2005 Feldenkrais Annual Conference. Periods when participants were practicing and no verbal instruction was occurring have been eliminated, and additional comments added where necessary to clarify meaning. The material has been divided into chapters to facilitate review of specific sections.

Listen to an audio excerpt.

Chapter titles
Focusing Touch Disk 1 1-1. Introduction 1-2. Controlling your focus 1-3. Controlling focus (cont.) 1-4. Pushing and moving 1-5. Functional Integration practice 1-6. Creating limitation 1-7. Moving with vs pushing against 1-8. The perceptual shift 1-9. A different reality	Focusing Touch Disk 2 2-1. Perceiving pattern 2-2. Pattern in Functional Integration 2-3. Treatment vs Exploration 2-4. Enlarging the pattern 2-5. The conjoined system 2-6. Asking different questions 2-7. The nature of Feldenkrais practice 2-8. Training soft focus 2-9. Working with impulses

The recording in available both in physical form as a set of two CDs, and in downloadable form in either AAC (mpeg4), or mp3 format. The AAC file has chapters and and is bookmarkable. When played on a recent iPod (third generation or later) or through iTunes or Quicktime Player on a Mac or PC. this will provide navigational access similar to what the tracks provide on the CDs. The mp3 file does not contain any navigation aids, but should be playable on any computer or mp3 player.

Both downloads are large, about 18mb for the AAC version and 26mb for the mp3, so they are best downloaded over a high speed connection.

The CDs may be purchased through ccNow, my e-commerce provider for my books and tapes. The downloadable files must be purchased through PayPal. I have not produced audiotapes of these recordings, but that's easy to do if there is a demand. If you would like tapes of this advanced training, please contact me.

Focusing Your Touch 2 CD set -- $25 -- Buy It From CCNow

Focusing Your Touch downloadable AAC -- $20

This format will play on an iPod, or using iTunes on either a Mac or PC. It has navigation features that will allow you to start listening where you left off, or to go directly to individual chapters.

Focusing Your Touch downloadable mp3 -- $20