Year 2 seg 5 Learnining activitiesYou will once again find an overall ‘plan’ for you to undertake your learning between now and the next segment in April 2015. This includes 2 compulsory activities for you to do, PLUS your learning journal.
The plan is to give you ideas to explore in different aspects of both your personal and professional development. Again feel free to follow your own process if the ‘plan’ does not suit your learning, or your questions and explorations take you on another track, however it would be appreciated if you can share with your colleagues in your learning group how you’re going, and what your challenges, questions and reflections are.
You will also now have the facebook page that has been set up, as an additional resource, to share your thoughts.
OVERALL LEARNING PLAN
1. ATM Teaching preparation. ****this is a compulsory activity****
The following notes are to help you in your preparation of the ATM you are to teach next segment. They are a guide only to how you could go about this process. Feel free to explore any processes that you both feel facilitate your process.
I am mainly concerned with how you create a learning environment and guide the learning process for this exercise, rather than on your understanding of the ‘mechanics’ of the lesson.
A. Several times on your own, go through the ATM you and your partner have selected to teach from the ATM book –
· What was your experience of doing the lesson?
· Did you ‘experience’ the learning Feldenkrais described at the beginning of the chapter – did his description help/hinder your learning experience?
· What did you observe/sense differently about yourself at the end of the lesson?
· What did you learn about yourself and your learning abilities?
· What were you interested in?
· On reflection – What do you think the lesson was about?
· Share your experiences with your teaching partner – how were they similar/different?
B. In preparing your ATM to teach to a small group of friends/family, what strategies can you use to enhance the learning process of the group – We will discuss many of these in more depth in the next segment, so for now see what you come up with on your own and with your partner –
· Can you develop a scan appropriate to the lesson, as you did with Arlyn in the last segment?
· What are the learning principles/attributes that could be specifically used in this ATM to facilitate the learning?
· What language could you use to elicit increased sensory awareness?
· What language could you use to bring attention to the groups learning process?
· What are the important relationships for them to sense in the lesson?
· How do you prepare your notes in a way that they enhance the learning and don’t distract your attention from the group?
C. Teach your lesson to a group of people, and if possible video the lesson and watch it back as an observer –
· What did you learn from teaching the ATM?
· What were your general observations/reflections on both your teaching and the group’s involvement/learning?
· What did you do well, what would you try differently next time you teach it?
· How well do you feel you created a learning environment, and how were you able to facilitate people’s learning during the lesson? What would you try differently next time?
· How did you use your voice and self use to facilitate the learning environment? Remember back to the learning experiences you had with Arlyn – where you able to utilise any of them in your teaching?
· What feedback did you get from the participants – will that influence how you teach the lesson next time?
D. Share with your partner (and your online learning group) your experiences and reflections on teaching the lesson –
· What did you both learn from preparing and teaching the lesson?
· Did you have different strategies in your preparation?
· Did you focus on similar/different factors in your teaching?
E. Teach your ATM to another group of people incorporating any changes you wanted to explore – or teach it to the same people and see how that influences their learning.
· What did you learn by teaching the ATM again
· How does teaching the same ATM several times increase your understanding of the lesson, and your ability to teach the lesson?
F. Again share your experiences with your partner and your online learning group. Plan how you and your partner will teach the lesson TOGETHER so that the experience of the participants next segment is of a ‘unified’ voice teaching them.
G. You will teach the ATM to 2 other people in the next segment.
2. READING ****this is a compulsory activity***
Read the chapter ‘On Learning’ taken from ‘The Elusive Obvious’. You will find it on the knowledgebase.
· what do you find interesting?
· was anything clarified for you about Feldenkrais’ ideas on learning?
· would you add any other ideas to what he talks about?
· what do you agree/disagree with OR what would you like to think about more?
· how much of what he says feels part of your experience?
Be prepared to share your observations next segment.
3. WATCHING AMHERST FI VIDEOS
A. Watch from the IFF website the FI video of KEN #5 – 9th July 1980 –
http://feldenkrais-method.org/archive/collection/ken-lesson-5/ (Remember you need to be registered on this site and logged in to see it. It is not the Feldenkrais Institute site.)
1. Observe the FI – what movements do you recognise from the ATMs we did last segment?
2. Could you recall on yourself the sensation/feeling of going from lying to sitting and how all the lessons we had done previously on finding freedom of your head to move, the power from your pelvis, and the ability to move through all orientations in space contributed to the ease of this movement.
3. Go through the lesson again – can you imagine the lesson from Ken’s perspective? It will really help if you can ‘enact’ as much as possible being Ken – a good lesson in sensory motor empathy!
· Can you imagine Dr Feldenkrais’ hands on you and how they would give you information about the movement?
· Can you sense what Ken ‘understood’ from the lesson as it progressed?
4. Observe the FI again looking at how Dr Feldenkrais organised himself – how did his self use contribute to Ken’s learning?
B. You may also want to observe the FI lesson of BILL #1 – 23rd July 1980.
Bill was the sportsman Dr Feldenkrais was describing in the talk you saw – “Accidents are not Accidents” where he was talking about the person who had damaged his knee, and it was contributed to by the way he moved his head.
This is a great example of a lesson including both ATM/FI components. Again you may recognise many of the ideas you were working with last segment with the head circles series.
Again, I would really encourage you after watching the lesson through to get down and do the movements that Bill is doing, and to imagine Feldenkrais’ hands on you as you do them.
4. ATM PRACTICE
Continue to do regular ATM practice. Again to remind yourself that ATM practice is the hall mark of our continuing learning – make it a regular part of your practice.
· What is the difference between doing an ATM you have done before and one you have never done?
· What is the difference being ‘immersed’ in doing several ATMs each day – as you do in the training – or doing a lesson only once or twice a week?
· Does it change how you enter into the process – what benefits are there to either approach in terms of YOUR learning?
· What is the difference in doing an ATM that is part of a series of lessons – as you often do in the training setting – and a ‘one-off’ lesson?
· What do you learn from all ATMs, and specifically from a particular ATM?
· how do you go about transferring the lesson into your daily life – is it in terms of a thought/idea, or a sensory motor experience, a feeling, or a combination of them?
5. HANDS ON/FI PRACTICE
Some of you find practising the ‘hands on’ work a great way to further clarify your learning, both of your own organisation and the possibilities and options you have to move more efficiently, easily and elegantly. It can also increase your understanding of the many ways of organising ourselves, based on your observations (both visual and tactile) – we often find our horizons can be expanded by observing how other people move and organise themselves, often causing us to question our assumptions and ideas of what is more efficient.
You have now been presented with several ways of exploring your ‘hands on’ work.
The constants that always remains are the same –
· giving yourself time to observe the person and see what comes to your attention – their shape, the way they contact the floor, their breathing etc
· observing yourself and being aware of your self use and comfort and your ability to move your attention between yourself and them
· being aware of how your organisation/self use influences their learning
· how do you position yourself to aid both your and their exploration
· ‘entering their space’ – doing it in a way that allows both of you to be comfortable
· making contact with your hands – taking your time; finding a handle that feels as if you’re touching them, not just a part of them (how much of them can be in your image of touching them); feeling their skeleton, feeling for the ground.
· making observations, making distinctions, asking questions – being process not goal oriented
· having rests – giving yourself and them time to reflect and notice differences
· looking for ‘quality’ in their movement – reduced effort, reduced resistance, reversibility, easy breathing
· looking for relationships between the parts – the ‘big’ picture of their organisation
· an awareness of TOM (the timing, orientation and manipulation) in every movement
The different ways that we have explored your hands on practice include
1. giving you a particular sequence of movements to explore
2. ‘going along for the ride’ as person does a movement from an ATM and then taking over the movement from different handles
3. exploring relationships between different parts in different positions – how does the position influence what is available?
4. exploring a specific plane of action in different positions (eg side bending),
5. looking for kinematic linkage – having a movement idea and moving from one joint to the next kinematically to see how the movement progresses through the person – where are the places that are clear in their self image, and where are the places that they often pass over
Continue to practice all of these – which do you prefer? Some of you will like a lot of structure, some of you will enjoy more improvisation. Notice your tendencies. However in all of them continue to be most interested in the ‘constants’ outlined above.
********REMEMBER when you practice with someone at home to set up the learning situation for yourself and them so there is clarity about what you are doing ie what you are EXPLORING –
· I am interested in exploring the relationship between your shoulder and the rest of yourself
· I am interested in ‘going along for the ride’ as you move and then see if through my hands /voice I can direct your attention to making the movement easier.
REFLECTION JOURNAL – TO BE EMAILED IN BY 2/4/16 FOR STUDENTS ATTENDING SYDNEY, AND BY 16/4/16 FOR STUDENTS ATTENDING MELBOURNE, TO YOUR GROUP LEADER.
What we’re interested in is your process – HOW your learning is going and how you direct your learning – it’s really valuable feedback for us and gives you the opportunity, by writing your process down, of bringing the work to another level of ‘understanding’.
We’ll again be looking forward to reading them and discussing them with you.
So within the learning activities find what works for you – it’s the process we’re interested in. Reflect on your process – we would love to hear about it.
Have fun exploring and continuing the learning!
Julie
