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.

Self image and decision making

I spent Thursday working with Dance students and chose to create a lesson around Moshe Feldenkrais' article "Bodily Expressions" as published in "Embodied Wisdom" (Beringer E (ed.) 2010 North Atlantic Books). The article deals with (amongst other things) the topic of self image and how that can affect how we move, as well as how we move can affect how we feel about ourselves. This is an important issue for dancers who spent a great deal of time moving in order to please others and striving for perfection as perceived by others. Alan Questel, a  well known and respected Feldenkrais teacher and trainer, has recently created a Facebook page entitled "Like Yourself More" and has created two videos posing questions to viewers on this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTv-eW1etns. So...I feel this ties in with my enquiry around decision-making, self confidence and professional self image....