Watched my 1st year students teaching Feldenkrais to a group of FE drama students as part of their PSA module. The assignment was a 10 minute warm up which incorporated their understanding of Voice, Movement and Feldenkrais. I was pleased that they all intepreted Feldenkrais as "a way of focusing on your body and what you do and how you stand" - which at their level of experience seemed good enough for me. I will comment on the individual recordings elsewhere.

This week has been all about finally tackling the final edit for TDPT article. One of the editor's notes prompted me to check how many Feldies are now working in HE Performer training in the UK and I was surprised to see that this number had grown considerably since November when I found 21 Guild members who identified themselves (including a couple of people I knew were doing the work e.g. Finborough Edinbourgh). The number has risen to 30 - many seem to be new graduates from various trainings and in the case of Canterbury, more than one Feldy in a department. This will help focus on who to interview for more in-depth analysis.

Had supervision session with Catherine Hayes on 09.03.15 and made hand written notes. Realised it would be useful to continue this blog archive to include my sessions with her as all will (probably) form part of the final portfolio.
We discussed Methdology. Catherine particularly discussed Phenomenology and Auto-ethnography in relation to my research. Specifically Modes of Reflection, reliability, authenticity. She mentioned Theological research which uses Reflection on Self to a great degree. Here is an extract from an email from Catherine as follow up to the session:
"It was great to catch up earlier. Adele Clarke's work develops Grounded Theory and is called 'Situational Analysis'. The other two I think we mentioned were in relation to Existential and Interpretive Phenomenology and are philosophers called Heidegger and Husserl. We mentioned them when we chatted about Phenomenology being a philosophy as well as a method"
I have a note about Butcher and Interpretative Phenomenology ...also found interesting reference to

Quinney, R Beyond the Interpretive: The Way of Awareness. Trying to gain access to this!

I've managed to blag an Inspection copy of Adele Clarke's book. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do over the next few months! I'm keen to start some form of interviews and observations towards the  summer and hope that Thomas Kampe's Symposium in June will kick start this as well as the publication of the journal article around the same time.

Spent this morning with my Yr.1 students who are preparing for an assessment next week on their Performance Skills Analysis module. They have to run a 10 minute warm up that incorporates Feldenkrais, voice and movement. They have been panicking about how to teach Feldenkrais and I had to be quite clear that I didn't expect them to become Feldenkrais teachers after six months' of weekly classes! Instead, I asked them to think about how bringing awareness and focus to the body would help in a warm up for performers. When each student then ran through their proposed warm up, I was extremely gratified to notice their careful use of language, asking participants to focus, notice and investigate. I was also very happy to feel that they truely encouraged and were interested in this type of work rather than doing this because " we have to - its for an assessment". Interesting to note that the majority of them elected to do the initial body scan in a standing position - this obviously connected for them and I was reminded of Kene Igwenou's experiments with this whilst teaching his students at Canterbury. I look forward to seeing the workshops next week and discovering how the participants respond!

Publish and unpublished

I began this blog as a record of my research and explorations for my Prof Doc. I have been advised to not publish some of my research until I get my doctorate so this will continue as a private blog. If anyone is interested in discussing any of my work on The Feldenkrais Method, please email me at diannehancock9@gmail.com

It's one week away from when I have to present my work-in-progress on my reflective practice assignment. We have been asked to reflect on a "critical incident" from our professional life and I have to say that I have been spinning with this as I belong to three separate but overlapping professional communities. I have managed to dampen down the panic and let myself mull about the meaning of meaningful incidents. This has produced a lot of writing, some of which has been useful, some rambling and some merely repetitive. A breakthrough was this week when I found myself writing about a major professional incident that happened 18 years ago. I realised that I had not dealt with the feelings that emerged from this and I suspect it has had an effect on how I have approached my work since that time. Arts practice calls for dedication and commitment but sometimes that commitment can translate into self sacrifice to quite a damaging degree. This reflection occurred at the same time as a visiting theatre company ran a session with my undergraduate students. In our tea break discussions, swapping (as theatre pros do) stories, news and gossip, one of the visitors mentioned a director who had struggled endlessly with her company until someone said to her: "you know, you don't have to do this any more. You're a creative person, why don't you go off and create?" She did just this and felt a huge weight lifted from her now that she had permission to stop. The fear of failure had kept her on a difficult and unrewarding path. Moreover, once she had left, her colleagues could review the company's work and take a completely different direction without guilt or challenge.

Reflective practice in everyday living

I am currently writing and reflecting on the "critical incident" as part of my Prof Doc. I'm surprised how problematic I'm finding this considering the three strands of my professional life require constant evaluation and reflection. As a theatre director, I started to use notebooks as part of my preparation process for every production. These can contain initial ideas, sketches, photos, articles that somehow seem relevant to the concept of the show. As a Feldenkrais teacher, part of the training consisted on making copious notes, drawings and reflections on the whole somatic process involved in using Feldenkrais as a means to explore physical and psychological habits. In teaching, I explore my own knowledge constantly and also, when planning and preparing lessons I try to find the most effective way of engaging the student. This often calls for self reflection when a session either goes unexpectedly well or fails to activate any responses. More recently, I have become more confident about asking students for feedback as learning seems to happen in the most unexpected circumstances and sometimes unbeknownst to me. I always over-prepare my sessions as I have a dread of running out of material ( a legacy from my original training at CSSD) but recently and unexpectedly I had to run a session with only two students. I quickly realised that I couldn't do some of the exercises and we burned through the rest of the material very quickly because of the small numbers. I didn't want the pair to lose out on their session and in desperation asked them to go through some of the work in minute detail. At the time, I felt I was "blagging" but afterwards both students said how much they appreciated being able to work on small aspects very closely. It was a reminder to myself that I still have a default button of over-preparation - a habit that lurks in my own psyche that is born of a lack of confidence. On reflection, I realised that although I function very independently, I do need regular feedback to adjust my negative perception of my own abilities.