March 2023 | Palpate — Oceana Mariani

NOTE: This was originally published as part of my newsletter in March 2023. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.

As you may or may not know, I am well and truly in the thick of becoming a Feldenkrais practitioner, having recently delved into the third year of a four year training. Often when I pepper snippets of this movement practice into our yoga classes it sparks a lot of curiosity. So in a way this newsletter is a small insight into what this method offers us that complements our yoga practice and, our everyday movements.

Feldenkrais falls under the umbrella of ‘somatic movement’ alongside the Alexander technique, Body-Mind Centering and many more. The term was coined by Thomas Hanna in 1976 and refers to the Old Greek word soma, meaning ‘of the body.’ I’ve always found it curiously interesting that in ancient Vedic traditions, which are closely linked to yoga’s earliest incarnations, a very sweet ceremonial drink known as soma is consumed. This Sanskrit word translates into English as ‘nectar’ so, to me, this way of moving the body has always felt akin to drinking in the delicious freedom of movement that is unleashed by this more playful, exploratory approach.

In practice the method encourages us to return to our simplest and earliest movement patterns that connect us back to the playfulness of childhood - when our ability to move was less affected by a lifetime of daily habits and our idea of how we should move was less set in stone.

These early, more primal movements form the foundations upon which even the most intricately challenging physical expressions are built. Each movement pattern overlaps the next, carrying with it elements from the previous, to form the building blocks that support us to freely move and be in the wider world.

This leads us back to the understanding of how the many makes the whole: billions of individual cells make a whole organism, individual bones and joints form a skeleton, individual waves make an ocean and small actions create full healthy movement, motion and flow.

As we actively seek to map movement through the body we forge a stronger mind-body connection and expand our sensory awareness. Initially this often involves re-sensitising ourselves to slower, more subtle motions - a process that can unlock new possibilities, more efficient patterns and an expanded sense of Self gifted to us by our bodies, which hold so much hidden potential.

Occasionally I come across people in the world of somatics who were, once upon a time, also yoga teachers. Sometimes these people have an air of ‘finally knowing better’ about them, which I find irritating to be quite Swissly blunt about it. For me, the framework of yoga still forms an important container for my many explorations and inquiries.

Equally, I don’t think yoga would have reached the ripe old age of +3,000 years if it hadn’t constantly evolved throughout every generation of practitioners and teachers. My hope is that in this iteration, we can think of the poses and practices of yoga as jumping off points from which we have permission to dive deeper into our individual needs and interests. Supporting ourselves in a more informed way will then hopefully spill over into how we engage with our daily environment. So, whether it’s in class, online, on retreat or in a workshop setting, let’s continue to explore and stay curious together.

With love,

OM x

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“Life is not a stable process. My ability to recover is my greatest quality.”

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March 2023 | Palpate

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