Where is home?
San Diego, California for the past 7 years. Much of my formative years in New York City. Born in Maputo, Mozambique in Southern Africa.
Can you explain a little about your work with somatic therapy/Feldenkrais method and how you became involved with it?
I am a practitioner of The Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education a learning based movement method that influences the nervous system to create sustainable change in a person, physically and mentally. The Feldenkrais Method facilitates learning through the most inherent evolutionary advantage of the human being by stimulating the Pre Frontal Cortex which helps the nervous system adapt to be in the unknown. There are two parts of the method Awareness Through Movement® (ATM®) , these lesson work intimately with the prefrontal cortex – the curious part of the brain that seeks novelty. This kind of learning modulates the limbic system to feel safe, so that we can then have the resiliency for life’s transitions and challenges. The second part of the method is the private hands on lessons called Functional Integration® . In Functional Integration, the teacher guides an individual student in movement lessons using gentle, non-invasive touch as the primary means of communication. Each Functional Integration lesson relates to a desire, intention, or need of the student. The student learns how to reorganize their movements in new and more efficient ways through the experience of grace, elegance, and ease of their movement.
Before teaching Feldenkrais, I had taught movement in various modalities for over a decade. I was never all that goal driven as movement person myself, but rather process oriented. It was this quality of attending to the experience of myself that was most intriguing part about living in my body in a way that I was attentive in an expansive way, so I began to just notice more.
When I first experienced an Awareness Through Movement lesson, I knew I found a profound concrete process to bring someone into awareness that was not outcome driven, the work is extraordinary. I feel extremely lucky and privileged to teach this method.
