Reimagining Aging: Deepening Strength, Sentitivity, Mobility and Rhythm as You Ripen With Years

“Movement is life, life is a process. Improve the quality of the process, and you improve the quality of life itself.”

-Moshe Feldenkrais

“What next step can I take to be the ancestor of my future self’s happiness?”

-David Whyte

 

Feldenkrais with Erin and Carl of BodyHappy.com

Do you move with greater ease, grace, and coordination than you did 10 years ago? 30 years ago?

Often, when it comes to aging and movement, there is a sense that we peak somewhere in our twenties or thirties and from there it is a long, slow decline. Yet that does not need to be the case. We are moving beings, we are learning beings, and when we can learn through our movement, we can deepen and refine our strength, mobility, grace, coordination and connection as long as we are alive.

There is a story that poet David Whyte tells about a very old sheep herding dog named Kumro. Kumro didn’t have the endless energy and strength of the younger dogs, but he was the most effective of them all. Kumro was so clear in his intent, so precise in his movements and gestures that one step in a certain direction could be more effective than the younger dogs running back and forth many times. We can age and move like Kumro.

 When we bring play, curiosity, and self-respect to how we move, our movement repertoire can continue to refine and grow as long as we live. 

 

 

 

In this course, we will explore how bringing more play and curiosity into our movement can support lifelong learning, deepening our strength and mobility while attuning us to the world within and around us.

 

This class is for all ages and body types.

 

 

“I loved Carl’s Animal Body and Strength and Mobility courses. For me, both were a movement laboratory in which I became aware of my habits, discovered new ways to move, and always experienced myself as a more efficient, elegant, and spontaneous mover. Now, I’m a way “over the hill” being and movement lover, so am thrilled that I continue to add to rather than subtract movements from my repertoire. I have been studying for many years with Carl and Erin and wholeheartedly attribute my body’s vitality and love of learning to their teachings, humor, and kindness. Bottom line, go ahead, give it a try, you might just discover something new and delightful about you. ” – Kristen Paul

 

 

 

 

Some of the things we will explore include:

 

 

  • Growing strength and mobility in a context of play, spontaneity, and relationship with the world around us
  • Learning how to learn through our movement (which changes everything)
  • Steeping in principles that support embodied presence in our movement practice and in our daily lives
  • Remembering and reclaiming functions that humans performed daily over the long arc of our evolution, including squatting, climbing, jumping, lifting, crawling, etc.
  • Learning how to have access to the intelligence of the head, heart, and guts simultaneously
  • Growing quality of lightness and sensitivity in how we move.
  • Experiencing musicality and rhythm in how we move
  • A deepening of self-organized, integrated, animal body strength-soft, supple, and strong
  • Growing our skill and lightness in our transitions, like getting up and down from the ground and in and out of chairs
  • Learning ways to improve our balance and agility
  • Moving in a way that is in intimate relationship with the living world around you
  • Embodying a quality of grace and elegance in our aging

 

 

Each class will include a weaving of Feldenkrais-based floor work and standing natural movement explorations based in Fighting Monkey and internal martial arts, all of which will help you deepen your movement intelligence and embodied sensitivity.  Recordings will be provided, with short guided practices that can support your movement practice after the course is complete. 

 

 

 

 

 

These natural movement explorations will support you in embodying your own grammar of spontaneity in movement. We will practice principles of natural movement that can be a beneficial addition to an existing practice like yoga, Pilates, or martial arts, and that can help support you in learning to grow your own unique playful, spontaneous movement practice. There are so many ways that you can move like rolling around on the floor, or standing at the airport, during a pause on a hike, or when your back is tweaked. We will be learning how to listen to the ways the soft animal of your body wants to move. Rather than shrinking our movement repertoire as we age, we will learn how we can keep expanding it, with reverence and curiosity, at any age. 

 

 

“Carl creates a friendly and sacred space where the functional, playful, natural, and sublime intersect.
He shares various potent yet accessible somatic practices with an animist lens, inviting you to study and awaken the terrain of your own body while also taking your rightful place in relationship with an alive world.
Carl’s classes assert our (as humans) innate blueprint for ease in movement. He offers a way back to this ease that’s fun, functionally responsible, stress-relieving, and community building. He then helps us remember what’s most important by addressing our embodied humanness in entirety, weaving in beautiful readings and teachings on longing, emotion, lineage, and our relationships with the wild and each other.
Carl teaches with humor, confidence, respect, and love. His mastery of many movement and spiritual traditions is evident, and yet he seems to be continually learning along with his students, curious about our findings.”
—Ruthie Fraser, Somatic Educator & Founder of Body Rewilding

Course details: 6 live Zoom calls, Mondays, beginning November 16th

(11/16, 11/23, 11/30, 12/7, 12/14, 12/28)

 

10-11:30 am Mountain Time

(Recordings are provided for all attendees and work great if you are unable to join live.)

 

Cost $185 

 

 

 

Please read our cancelation policy here before registering.

Looking forward to moving together!

Carl

Don’t know me? You can find out more here 

 

 

 

Carl Rabke is a Somatic Naturalist, Embodiment teacher, and a tender of soul and living culture. For the last 25 years, he has practiced and taught where the streams of somatics,  soul-work, and a deep love of this living Earth meet. He is a Feldenkrais Practitioner and Rolfer, and loves to support people in returning to, and remembering our natural, inherent intelligence in movement, meditation, ritual, song, rhythm and community. Carl has studied at Bobby McFerrin’s Circlesongs School and is a Musica do Circulo practitioner. He has studied voice work with George Grant, Judi Vinar and Zuza Goncalves. He has mentored with Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey and with Russell Delman of the Embodied Life School.  Carl also hosts the Embodiment Matters Podcast with his beloved wife, Erin. You can find out more about him here.