Workshop: Feldenkrais mit Katja Münker
Learning & development – with ease & awareness – moving & relaxed
Making the impossible possible, the possible easy and the easy elegant was Feldenkrais' vision of body- and perception-oriented learning. He assumed that we only ever exploit a fraction of our potential, but that it is not more effort that leads to change and more choices, but rather focusing on the easy way. The decisive factor he worked with was attention.
Dr Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) – physicist, engineer, educator and judo expert – developed his method over many years, based on his own explorations of a knee injury on the one hand, and questions about the development of a “mature self” on the other. To this end, he investigated the beneficial interaction of action, perception, the nervous system and orientation in the social world. He began to intensively study the physiology of the skeleton and movement sequences and the effect of finer control of movements. He placed his research in the broader context of behavioural science, developmental psychology, neurophysiology, functional anatomy, physics and cybernetics. In this way, he developed his method, which has a self-experiential research character with moving, feeling and questioning attempts at movement steps.
The Feldenkrais Method is a gentle movement and awareness practice. It promotes the ability to recognise and change movement habits. The underlying movement sequences have their origins in motor development, judo and everyday functions. Despite its work with movement and its astonishing effects on individual movement possibilities, the Feldenkrais Method is not gymnastics. Rather, it is a method for learning how to learn. It creates access to unused abilities of the brain, thus enabling development and expansion for the entire organism.
AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT is the work with groups. Participants are guided verbally through movement experiments, which they actively follow. Accompanying questions direct their attention to the sensation of contact with the floor and bodily processes. The sequences mainly take place lying down. However, depending on the movement theme, they can also take place sitting, standing or moving. The lessons are relaxing and invigorating.
Trained as a physiotherapist and Feldenkrais teacher, studied contemporary dance, (contact) improvisation and instant composition. Curation and management of somatic training and further education at the Somatic Academy Berlin. Solo and collaborative performance projects, performative walking projects, somatic and artistic research, conference contributions, curations and publications on the topics of
- Networking of choreographic & somatic practices
- Walking & performativity
- Participation, perception & environmental awareness
- Embodied understanding, meaning-making & agency
Conscious and lively learning, the connection between individual freedom and collective connectedness with the environment, as well as joy and ease in movement are at the centre of my teaching. Teaching is a living part of my ongoing movement and development research and my artistic work. This is characterised by the search for a sensory-reflective penetration of our common human potential, as well as the search for ways of constructively and socially developing our individual potential.
I have been teaching groups and individual clients in dance and movement since 1990.
Since 2000, I have also been working in artistic performance and artistic research.
I completed my Feldenkrais training with Mark Reese in Milan from 1996 to 2000, with further training with Roger Russel, Ulla Schläfke, Angelica Anke Feldmann, Eilat Almagor and Anat Baniel. From October 2018 to August 2022, I accompanied Petra C. Koch's Hamburg VI Feldenkrais training as a training practitioner. Since June 2024, I have been a Feldenkrais assistant trainer.
Since 2013, I have also been trained as a mountain guide with a licence from the Styrian Mountain Guide Association and lead mountain and city hikes with a special focus on a present and tangible connection with everything that is.
Since 2015, I have been a trainer for somatic practice & research, experiential anatomy, improvisation/composition and body-based teaching/didactics in the Somatic Yoga training programme at the Somatic Academy Berlin, and since 2016 in the training programme to become a somatic practitioner.