Honoring Closure

No.12, December 31, 2016 THE WELLNESS SALON Musings on wellness from Donna Simmons, Feldenkrais ® Practitioner SENDING WISHES FOR ABUNDANT HEALTH, PEACE, HAPPINESS, LOVE AND LAUGHTER IN THE NEW YEAR. MAY 2017 BE KIND AND GENTLE TO US ALL. NAMASTE, DONNA As 2016 (2559 B.E.) comes to a close I invite you to reflect on […]

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Fads, Passing Fancies and Other Societal Ephemera

No.11, November 22, 2016 THE WELLNESS SALON Living in an age of temporal contraction Musings on wellness from Donna Simmons, Feldenkrais ® Practitioner We seem to be living in an age of temporal contraction1. Whether this is a symptom of obsessive interconnectedness, or whether the obsession springs from the dislocation of time that accompanies binge-watching, […]

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Equilibrium and Balance

No.10, July 3, 2016 – Equilibrium and balance: how do we get there? The words equilibrium and balance are often conflated to mean the same thing. A typical definition for equilibrium includes the word balance…Read More>>

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Gratitude

No.9, November 29, 2015 – “Piglet noticed that even though he had a Very Small Heart, it could hold a rather large amount of Gratitude.” A.A. Milne Winnie the Pooh is a magical tale that many of us have either read or, more likely, had read to us. Read More>>

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Are we our bodies?

No.8, September 28, 2015 – Henry Marsh, the British neurosurgeon and author of Do No Harm*, reflects on his mother’s death (from metastatic cancer) and muses on the nature of consciousness. He refers to ‘the binding problem’ in neuroscience, “…the extraordinary fact, that nobody can even begin to explain, that mere brute matter can give rise to consciousness and sensation.” Read More>>

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Spring and new beginnings

No.7, April, 25, 2015 – Welcome to Spring, a time for new beginnings. And even though we are now officially “in drought” here in California there are many things we can be grateful for, including some things associated with the limitations imposed by the lack of rain. We can’t remove (or ignore) the drought but we can do many small things to change our habits; sound like a familiar idea? When it comes to our own limitations it is our ability to mindfully change our habits that leads to personal freedom. Read More>>

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The body as machine

No.6, October 20, 2014 – Aside from the oddity of so much wealth being assigned to a thing whose sole function is typically restricted to the transport of one person to and from work, I am struck by how much attention we pay in general to the machines in our life (cars, computers, coffee makers); how much energy we expend on their care and the understanding their idiosyncrasies, their needs. Read More>>

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Solstice

No.5, June 23, 2014 – Did you note the occasion of the summer solstice? The word solstice is Old French, 13th century, derived from the Latin solstitium = sol (sun) + sistere (stop), the point at which the sun stands still. Read More>>

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A Session

No.4, May 21, 2014 – I am often asked what actually happens in a Feldenkrais session. While I am a certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method®, I also integrate other modalities, depending on your needs. In fact my sessions are usually tailored to the requirements of the individual at the moment in time that they present themselves in my office, regardless of what we had been working on in a previous session, what my session notes may indicate, etc. A “typical” session does not exist. Nevertheless, what follows is a representative description of how my practice works for new clients. Read More>>

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Life expresses itself in movement…

No.3, January 15, 2014 – Moshé Feldenkrais (1918-1984) was a Russian émigré to Palestine who worked variously as a laborer and a cartographer before moving to Paris to study civil engineering. There, he earned a doctoral degree at the Sorbonne. Along the way he took classes from Marie Curie, and was a research assistant to Frédéric Joliot-Curie. He also met Jigoro Kano, founder of judo, in Paris. (Moshé had studied jiu-jitsu while in Palestine.) He eventually acquired a second-degree black belt in jiu-jitsu. Read More>>

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