Are you a movement teacher who would like to integrate a more holistic way of working with your clients?
Have you certified in a Somatics training but feel the movements you learned are not enough or not quite bringing the intended results and you don’t know where to look or how to come up with different variations?
I offer mentoring sessions for fellow Pilates, Somatics and Yoga teachers, who would like to either deepen their knowledge or include somatic principles into their teaching practice. My main aim is to help people understand what they are doing better in order to make adjustments as necessary, whatever the movement modality they use as a lense.
I have been mentoring students in training since 2018 as part of the teaching team at Essential Somatics, as well as offered teaching advice in a collegial and experiential way to many Pilates teacher colleagues as well as Somatics teachers from different training schools.
My style of teaching is led by listening and observing, my endless curiosity about how we organise ourselves in movement, and practical thinking and creativity, which I have honed in over 20 years of teaching movement. Teaching ballet and contemporary dance has taught me about spatial awareness, coordination of the limbs and torso as well as the importance of rhythm and timing in a movement, Pilates gives accessible ways to work with strengthening and Somatic Movement creates a deep connection within ourselves, our awareness of lines of force, weight, rest and engagement, and efficiency, agency and resourcefulness.
Fellow movement teachers have described my work as ‘very clear and precise while being warm and supportive’, ‘shop-floor problem solving’, ‘amazing cues and energy, I could see the change in their bodies straight away’, ‘love your sequencing and how you break down the movements’, ‘I finally understand what this movement is about’…
A mentoring session can be done in different ways. If you are local to Dublin, we can meet in person. If you live elsewhere or it is more convenient to you, we can use zoom or google meet. You bring your difficulty and we look at it from a practical, somatic perspective that goes beyond repertoire and modalities.
We might need to clarify a movement you might not understand by doing it, so we can see what your own ‘blind spots’ in it are, which will have an impact on how you can explain and see clients do the movement.
Sometimes you might invite me to teach your Somatics client with you observing, adding guided hands on feedback etc, so we can problem-solve together and I can give you further ideas how to progress in your sessions. This works really well if you are in person with your client while I join you via video conference (you will receive a recording of the session).
I can give you ideas of how to look at a movement from a different angle, for example working with a little less tension rather than trying ‘make things happen’ by engaging more and more – this is an especially helpful shift of perspective for Pilates teachers and will help your clients access rolling, rotation, extension etc in a more fluid and coherent way. Learn movements you can incorporate in your classes, so you don’t have to repeat your ‘drop your shoulders!’ over and over again – rather give clients the experience of moving with less excessive and unintentional tension and let them incorporate this information independently!
If you want to spark some new ways of thinking for yourself and do what you do best even better, helping clients to move better and feel better after working with you, get in touch!
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