Feldenkrais ®

create A revolution in your moving and thinking

• Transform your movement by removing habitual blocks and frictions.
• Invigorate your week with new ideas in your moving and thinking (in-person or online).
• Astonish your inventive self by activating your innate sense of curiosity.
• Exercise your right to be able to move as freely and easily as you can!

My name is Alan Caig Wilson. I am a senior practitioner of Feldenkrais®.

I have been teaching since 1999, and have led classes and workshops in Poland, Austria, Finland, India and the UK. I currently give classes and one-to-one lessons in Edinburgh, Manningtree (Essex) and Mumbai. My online classes run three times per week..

My practice is based at:

• St Margaret’s House, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE (classes at Studio 6.02, one-to-ones at Studio 6.27).
• Lawford House Pool, Grange Road, Lawford CO11 2JD
• The Seventh Sense Centre, Chowpatty, Mumbai

I first encountered Feldenkrais in the early 1980s during my training as a physical theatre performer at the Ecole Lecoq in Paris. I believe that a human being – at whatever point they find themselves – is functionally limitless. As a species we possess the skills of adaptation, granted to us by a brain that continues to grow as we encounter the world, finding its way around numerous obstacles, discovering solutions that are both everyday and momentous.

Previous to opening my practice, my work was in the performing arts, as a performer, performance maker, director, teacher and producer. Initially I studied psychology, with a research interest in animal behaviour and child development. Later I went on to study Artistic Direction. Currently I continue a parallel career as director of a UK national creative engagement programme for young writers.

Whatever I do, Feldenkrais is at the heart. I have worked with a huge range of people, of all ages, from children as young as less than 1 year old to elders. I have worked with people experiencing severe physical limitations, to those who make extreme and high demands of their physical selves, to those who simply feel that they are capable of more. In my parallel working, Feldenkrais informs my own engagement with participants.

We humans are, first and foremost, creative. Curiosity is hard-wired into our cells, making it practically impossible for us to stand in the way of the force that makes us explore, try things out or look around the next corner! Indeed, if we try to stop this force, all sorts of negative things (big and small) will happen to us. Think about it!

Moshe Feldenkrais founded his method, in part, on his research into himself following a sports injury and his rejection of the rudimentary medical intervention offered him. He used his expertise as a mechanical engineer, and later as a judo practitioner, to devise the principles and concepts that now inform the work of all Feldenkrais practitioners. To this he added research into the development of movement ability in infancy and childhood.

Two years ago I was diagnosed with an invisible disability – multiple sclerosis. Following the example, and standing on Moshe Feldenkrais’s giant’s shoulders, my own physical challenges are generating and developing new directions and material in my Feldenkrais practice.

I invite everyone to engage with and enjoy themselves as they research into themselves, and celebrate the solutions that they find.

(More about me here.)

How it is done.

You can choose to come along to a live or an online Feldenkrais® class, called Awareness Through Movement®. One-to-one lessons, called Functional Integration®, explore specific issues you might be experiencing. An online one-to-one consultation possibility also exists.

This link will take you to a more detailed explanation of how your encounter with Feldenkrais® might play out.

further down this page you can find the times and locations of my current online and in-person offers:

• My bank details are at the bottom of the page.
• All sessions are payable in advance.

My invitation to you

Here’s a taste of some of the feedback from a participant who has been attending online regularly for the last two years.

Just to say again how much I am loving the sessions and finding them really beneficial. As we build up the movement towards the end I just find it so ‘voluptuous’ (Strange word maybe but that’s how it feels!). All the work recently on the upper ribs and neck have really sensitised me to this area and how ‘dead’ it was before.

JG, Isle of Arran

So.

I invite you to spend some time in the company of your inventive, creative, limitless self! Join one of my classes, or visit me for a one-to-one lesson.

Let the calm of simple curiosity descend all around you. In this quiet place, accompanied by my voice, you will discover new parts and capabilities of your personal real-estate – curling, folding, opening, twisting, turning and reaching. You will encounter ways of doing and being that you might not have experienced since you were ever-so-young and in the process of building knowledge about your world for the first time.

This is the perfect place to explore how you might re-imagine and re-configure your world.

By the end of a class, it is very often the case that some deep changes have occurred. Our explorations together will have changed your breathing, your balance, your speaking, your looking, your touching. You will be in the here-and-now of re-imagining, perhaps re-organising, your relationship to the world around you of things, people and happenings.

Your image of yourself – as Feldenkrais himself would say, the way you describe yourself to yourself – will have begun to alter.

The more you experience the unique and highly personal environment that a Feldenkrais lesson creates around and within you, the more your own voice, your own signature, becomes available for you to experience once again.

Each class is different, starting with a focus in one area of your body. By the end your whole self is in movement. And your limits are expanding. Forget comfort zones, you begin to take up the space in your world in a different way.

In-person and online classes each week will follow a broad movement theme, set at the beginning of the term. The approach of each individual session differs from group to group as I adapt to a new assembly of individuals. This means that if you were to chose to do three classes in one week, for example, you would experience the same material from very different perspectives – further extending the range of your thinking and moving.

If change has occurred, even for a fleeting but visible second, then your nervous system has registered the fact that change is possible. This process of active noticing of change is quite simply revolutionary – many people have said liberating. You have with your own – your very own – abilities altered your way of responding to the world you live in.

A window is opened on a world of limitless adaptation – a world that many of us haven’t experienced since we were seven or eight years old.

AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT®

(ATM)

Online classes

23 JANUARY to 11 APRIL 2024

Zoom classes in The Feldenkrais Method® are doing something that is more profound than many of us expected. The aim of a class is to return you to your everyday life somehow changed, more resilient, more aware of who you are and how you do you.

In your own space, which you can configure to your own comfort, you begin to go very deep into your experience of yourself. You become deeply interested in yourself. As you open your eyes again after a class, in your own space, you are able to notice how possible it is to experience your living differently.

Moshe Feldenkrais’s ideas and inspirations help you tell the the true story of yourself to yourself.

So, why not come along:

• clear a you-shaped space where you can lie on the floor, have a towel handy that can become a pad to support your head,
• wear something easy to move in and that can keep you warm if you need it,
• angle your camera so that I can see you well to enough to adapt my guidance.

Payment details can be found by scrolling down to the bottom of this page.

IN PERSON CLASSES IN EDINBURGH

SPRING Term 2024

WEDNESDAYS 17 JAN to 18 April (14 weeks)

10.30 – 12 noon.

Studio 6:02,
St Margaret’s House,
151 London Road,
Edinburgh, EH7 6ae

https://goo.gl/maps/EoC5SJzWbS3KfiKJ

If you haven’t experienced the special atmosphere of an in-person Feldenkrais® class come along and try it out. You won’t be disappointed!

Studio 602 is a rather special place – quiet, nurturing, comfortable and dedicated to the kind of exploring that Feldenkrais® represents. Here you can retreat a little from the city and explore new ideas in a friendly space.

The movement processes of Feldenkrais® respect your body where it is, bring improved and deepened awareness to what you are already doing, then begin to expand and enhance your capabilities.

You do not have to prior movement skills to explore and benefit from Feldenkrais®. Whatever movement discipline you engage with, or whatever use you put your body to will be enhanced by slow, patient time spent understanding how to create, ease, flow, extension and calm confidence in your moving. Feldenkrais® can help you find solutions to nagging issues in your everyday movement. Moshe Feldenkrais suggests that by spending time doing less in this way we achieve more.

The secret to improve the performance of your moving body is to refine your ability to observe yourself in action. This allows you, over time, to throw off the restrictions that life, living and past decisions place upon you. Your own self has the possibility to astonish you with its hidden potential – whatever your life has been up to this point, and wherever you start from. No previous experience is necessary only your natural ability to ask questions and to be astonished at the answers!

How can you begin to tell yourself a different story about yourself, to yourself?

By the end of a course of lessons, you will have a very much richer sense of how you move. You will be noticing some profound changes in how you adapt to your world, how you overcome obstacle and even in how you think.

Cost:

• £150 for 10 weeks
• £60 for 5 weeks
• £15 Drop-in.

I AM COMMITTED TO OFFERING CONCESSIONS:

Low Income/visible or invisible disability/ in receipt of State Benefit.

Please contact me to talk about this.

FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION®

one-to-one, in-person

Studio 6.27, St Margaret’s House, 151 London Road, Edinburgh, EH7 6AE

Cost: £60 per session, bookable in advance. Payment in advance following the instructions below.

Functional Integration® is the one-to-one technique of Feldenkrais®. It is used to identify and work with specific questions and challenges you might be experiencing in your moving self.

During an FI® session you lie on a low, wide and long table, fully dressed in comfortable clothing. In some cases, you lie on the floor, or sit in a chair.

An initial conversation with you concerning the pattern of needs and concerns that brought you to me in the first place, will allow us to establish a beginning plan.

Then, using calm and non-invasive touch, I will gently guide your body through sequences of movement. Occasionally I will ask you to participate in movements.

You will be fully clothed, fully conscious and aware of what is to happen.

• Functional Integration® is not a medical procedure. It is an intensive process of co-learning between you and the practitioner, through which new possibilities and solutions emerge for you in your moving and thinking. My work with you is based on supporting you to develop more detailed knowledge about how your moving and thinking deal with the physical challenges you identify. Expect changes.

The benefits of Functional Integration® build up. You will always feel calm and easy, but I recommend that you consider signing up for a minimum of five sessions. By the end of this sequence your nervous system will have built up a store of memories that allow the insights from our sessions to begin to establish themselves in your daily life. The aim is to build confidence in your resilience to the many destabilising things that the world can throw at you.

In many cases, people complete a ‘course’ of FI® and go on to attend Awareness Through Movement® classes to continue exploring by themselves.

Feldenkrais can bring about deep changes in the way that you relate both to yourself and to the world around you. You progressively give yourself permission to carry on exploring, in often quite unexpected ways.

• Session 1a: detailed conversation around your particular needs and wishes concerning your moving being. We note any important events in your past that have affected your moving and your ambitions for your moving. This will lead to an agreement between us about how to proceed.
• Session 1b: Based on our conversation, we embark on a journey. The Method has a philosophy of progressive approximation as you and I move towards a greater sense of integration of your movement with what you wish to achieve. The process of removing restrictions and obstacle to free movement takes time, discussion, play and patience.
• Sessions 2 to 5: as your nervous system becomes familiar with the approach and the environment of FI®, the sessions become increasingly focused on the needs and concerns that brought you to me.

IN-PERSON CONSULTATION TIMETABLE

Edinburgh – Studio 6.27, St Margaret’s House, EH7 6AE – by appointment

FUNCTIONAL AWARENESS

ONE-TO-ONE, ONLINE

Cost: £60 per session, bookable in advance. Payment in advance following the instructions below.

Functional Awareness is a more intensive, more targeted version of Awareness through Movement®. It has proved very usual for some of my clients who require a more personalised approach in their own home atmosphere, focused on what might be happening with them and in their moving.

I aim to support you to find a more free, satisfying and playful relationship with the world you move around in your everyday.

These sessions are preceded by a detailed conversation between us to give me an idea of the challenges you are facing and to allow us to devise a strategy.

Functional Awareness sessions are based on the process of guidance by my voice and the development of calm curiosity and somatic exploration. I bring to you the full intuitive background of a Feldenkrais practitioner to observe and offer solutions

As with Functional Integration®, I recommend that a course of 5 individual lessons be followed, as it takes time for the ‘message’ of Feldenkrais to embed itself firmly in your perceptual, cognitive and motor processes. During your programme, I encourage a process of journaling to facilitate change and energise the discussions between us.

• Session 1a: detailed conversation around your particular needs, noting any important events in your past that have affected your moving and your ambitions for your moving as we progress through a short programme of lessons. This will lead to an agreement between us about how to proceed.
• Session 1b: A short, exploratory ATM – we embark on a journey, as you tell me how it is that you sense your moving to be affected in the present moment.
• Sessions 2 to 5: specially tailored ATM explorations designed around our initial conversations.

TALK TO ME!

I love introducing people to Feldenkrais®.

In my experience, people come to Feldenkrais when they need it.

Tell me why you are drawn to it now. Let’s discuss how it can help and support you. There is no obligation attached to our conversation – no pressure ever!

07782 190615

Paying for classes and sessions