Feldenkrais is about learning to do less, so you can feel what you're doing that isn't helping you. Then you can develop better ways of moving which allow you to do what you want with ease.
Join Thomas and Shana Ritter as we sit down with Feldenkrais Practitioner, Catherine McCrum, for this FREE* 3-part series of Video Trainings.
Instant access! You can binge watch all three episodes all at once, if you like!
Lessons also available in German as an audio.
(*Totally free. No credit card required. There will be an invitation at the end of the series to register for a more intensive program, but there is no obligation whatsoever. Please join us and soak up as much as you can. We want to share this with you, regardless of whether you sign up for our paid program or not. That's just how we roll!)
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The Episodes:
Developing Rider Feel
Feldenkrais "Awareness Through Movement" Lesson: Surgeon's Hands (lesson also available german as an audio)
Shana and Dr. Thomas Ritter discuss with Feldenkrais Practitioner, Catherine McCrum, how you can develop feel as a rider. In order to develop feel, it is important to reduce your muscular efforts. A simple example is how much effort do you need in your fingers to hold a glass without it dropping. When you can reduce the stimulus, you are able to sense small differences in quality. It's about finding quietness and composure in yourself which enhances your awareness as a rider
The Dynamic Seat
Feldenkrais "Awareness Through Movement" Lesson: Rolling Knees (lesson also available german as an audio)
Why do riders struggle with their seat despite knowing what's correct?
If your pelvis is not organised then everything falls apart, BUT everything above and below also needs to know how to organise around the pelvis.
We talk about:
- the seat as the centre for powerful action.
- developing sensitivity
- refining your balance
- finding the least effort for what you're doing, rather than thinking that you need to be stronger
- Noticing the small ways that you hold and fix yourself more than you need
- Finding “stillness through motion“, i.e. a visually quiet seat is the result of moving in sync with the horse, whereas trying to “sit still“ results in stiffness and excessive motion in the wrong places.
Discovering Balance and Harmony
Feldenkrais "Awareness Through Movement" Lesson: Circling the Head around a Clock (lesson also available german as an audio)
Shana and Dr. Thomas Ritter discuss with Feldenkrais Practitioner, Catherine McCrum, how riders discover and develop Balance and Harmony in riding.
- Developing sensitivity and refining balance
- Do you know what you are doing?
- Does your proprioception match reality?
The Instructors:
Catherine McCrum
Catherine McCrum is an accredited Feldenkrais practitioner and has been teaching sport, fitness and movement since 1986 as first a ski instructor/coach and then as a Personal Trainer. In 2002 she finished her Feldenkrais training. She is also a rider and is joining us in this course to help you learn how to recognize how the way you use your body can be interfering with your ability to progress in your riding. She is also a Gestalt psychotherapist with a particular interest in working with developing awareness of how her clients embody their emotional and psychological patterns. Catherine participates as an Assistant Teacher in our Artistic Dressage Online Courses Program.
Thomas & Shana Ritter
Thomas is an International Clinician and author of two books (Dressage Principles based on Biomechanics and Long Reining: From the Beginning through the Levade) and countless articles in many publications. Shana is a USDF Bronze and Silver Medalist. Together they create and orchestrate the Artistic Dressage program.
How can Feldenkrais help riders?
Inherent in every person is the capacity to learn new ways of doing things. Riding is a learning activity, and if you are straining and forcing while riding, you aren't learning. The less effort you use in your action, the more you notice, and the more you notice, the more you can change your action.
Feldenkrais is mindfulness in action, and this is what it can do for your riding:
• Develop science-based strategies to learn what the talented riders just "Do."
• Change your movement patterns and improve your riding.
• Address your habitual way of moving and open up for the new.
• Learn how to make choices with awareness while riding.
• Begin acting with choice rather than compulsion.
• Experience how the smallest movement in one part of the body changes the whole body, and how doing less can get you more.
• Achieve better coordination, focus, and harmony with yourself and your horse.
When you know what you do, you can do what you want. In the words of Moshe Feldenkrais, make the impossible possible, the possible probable and the probable automatic.
Become the rider your horse is waiting for.
Sign up for Instant Access.
Includes complimentary addition to our email newsletter. You can unsubscribe from either of these at any time. Instructions on how to unsubscribe are in the confirmation email.
