I have a few ideas to share around teaching, working online.

In my opinion, it is possible to teach Feldenkrais lessons and movement intelligence processes online. Many practitioners around the world are.

 

As you know also, I have taken Feldenkrais advanced trainings and I been able to teach classes online, mostly on zoom from 2010.

Then, the group was using Skype. That was because there were students in Australia, New Zealand, all parts of the United States, Canada.

The course was often 12 weeks long and it was impossible for those students to travel and take the courses in the given timeline. The trainer went online to take advantage of an international market of participants who either could not or would not be able to travel to the location.

 

The advantages outweighed any disadvantages, in my opinion. We could attend the training and still carry on with our lives outside of the class, and work too.

 

Even the collaborative cooperative models of group analyzing Feldenkrais lessons or movement intelligence processes with a group of four (usually four) could through doodle find common times to meet and work together.

 

That was the easy part. The challenging part was to learn to put together a meaningful presentation with often two or three people presenting the material. The collaborating took all so much longer than we thought it would. 

 

When agreed, I often converted the presentation into a workable script that we all had cooperated on and refined to presentation ready.

 

We switched to <zoom.us> from <Skype> as the former was so much more reliable at that time. We had gone through too many frustrating dropped calls on Skype.

 

During feldenkrais lessons taught on <zoom.us> there is often challenges changing from gallery view to speaker view and back again, while attempting to keep one’s attention on the working through of the lesson.

 

When one uses gallery view on zoom, you can see what the participants are doing in general.

However, to check on a point of clarification, occasionally a speaker will ask a question during the lesson.

Usually, rare with the rarefied feldenkrais professionals. I am glad they do.

When zoom changes to speaker view, a close up of an action can be viewed or demonstrated.

 

The last time that I taught a feldenkrais lesson to this professional group, there were 78 participants in total and around 20 of which had their cameras on to assist me in my timing and pacing of instructions.

 

The group generally has the microphone off unless the participant wants to speak.

 

I found it easier to take in the whole group that I could observe than actually being present in the studio and having to quickly move around the room to make sure the participants could understand the instructions. 

 

In the teaching of the lesson on <zoom.us>, it is easier for me to see who is not following the instruction. The person may be confused.

It just might be a tricky feldenkrais instruction, so rewording,  so repeating, so re-instructing. 

 

In this group, each participant has her/his name and location on the screen. So I can say, for example:  “Rita, bring your RIGHT knee up with the right foot standing and keep the left leg long.” And when the person self-corrects, we can provide encouraging note: “That’s it.”

 

In December, I will be teaching a very long lesson and I am preparing for it already. The group wants to keep it within the hour time-frame for the teaching. The discussion afterward is often even more intriguing, fascinating and professionally developing.

 

Also in my researches, I am attempting to take hour-long lessons and pare them down to 30 minutes. What to include or what to exclude?

The movement intelligence processes, created and developed by feldenkrais trainer, Ruthy Alon, are often already in a shorter format.

Therefore, I am definitely searching for both of these formats and looking at those that allow for getting the material across in the following time frames:  60-minute format, 30-minute format, and 20-minute format.

 

Those are my thoughts, weighing-in. I am open to more chatter on the matter.

 

Zestfully,

Peter.