Marilla Homes - Performance & Movement Specialist

Exciting news! I am running an incredible retreat in September this year, in the heart of the Peak District in the UK.

Do you want to:
- find joy in your own voice?
- connect to your own voice?
- fall in love with your own voice?
- connect with others using your voice?
- want to be able to speak with confidence?
- want to like your self more?
- want more confidence?
- connect deeply to your inner voice?
- speak your truth? With confidence, assurance, strength and love?

Have you ever been told to be quiet? To stop singing? That you can’t sing?

Have you lost your confidence in your own voice?
Too scared to speak up? Shy? Afraid to speak your truth? Afraid to express who you are?

Do you want to lift your voice in harmony with others, in joy, and love and truth?

Join us for three days in a small group with experienced facilitators, exploring voice, movement, energy, embodiment, silence, sound, creativity, expression, connection, play and healing.

This is a deep dive into developing self expression, connecting to your deep sense of self, and finding the confidence to be YOU in today’s society.

Find your self expression, connect deeply to your soul and leave with greater confidence, assuredness and sense of self.

Fully catered, fully accessible, single ensuite rooms.

Bookings and enquiries: info @ marillahomes.com

Do you know anyone who would like a more functional pelvic floor? Let them know about this online series :)

I'm loving teaching a regular Awareness Through Movement class again! So much fun, and plenty of scope to work through participants' individual requirements in a gentle and methodical manner.

I love watching people have their 'a-HA' moments, where the penny drops and some new learning is thoroughly integrated into their nervous system.

I love the sense of exploration, of reacquainting ourselves with our Selves in such a powerful way, and the deeply centred manner of students at the end of each class when they get up off the floor and start integrating their learning in a different orientation to gravity.

And I totally love sharing the joy that is the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education with new people.

So. Much. Fun! 😁💜

Wanna join us?

Every Wednesday at 11am, at .fire.studios

Message me to book in. Casual attendance very welcome.

See you tomorrow???

Or next week, perhaps 😁💜

Also, join my FB group Feldenkrais with Marilla

This coming Wednesday 6th September I am finally starting regular weekly Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement lessons in Sheffield! I've been saying for years that I will, and now I AM 😁💜

11am-12 noon every Wednesday, and if I am not available, someone else will teach anyway.

Upstairs at Soul Fire Studios, 7 Edgedale Road, S7 2BQ. No disabled access, sorry!

What is Feldenkrais?

The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education was developed by Dr Moshe Feldenkrais through most of the 20th century. He lived 1904 to 1984, and was an extraordinary man.

It is easier to experience the method than explain it, so if you are curious, come to a class. Otherwise, here is a rambling explanation.

My singing teacher at uni told me to go and try this weird sounding thing, because it would help me sing better, learn faster, move better and sound better. I tried it, and she was right, so when the opportunity came up to train a few years later, I became a practitioner (after completing the four years of study, at the same time as doing my Master of Music Performance (Voice) and my Diploma of Remedial Massage). A few years later I returned to teach Feldenkrais to the dance and drama students, and to the Foundation Music students at the Victorian College of the Arts and Music.

I feel very privileged to have come to this method through performing rather than chronic pain or injury, which is where many people discover its many uses. It has definitely influenced my singing, learning and performing.

Feldenkrais is a learning method based in movement. It works on the neuroplasticity of the nervous system, even before that term existed. It looks at patterns, generally in movement but everything can be applied elsewhere as well, breaks down those patterns into component parts, explores them out of context and out of order, then when they are put back together again, we have more choice in how we move (or think, learn, behave etc).

Anything we are good at, we can get better at. So this method has been used by elite level athletes, dancers, actors, singers, musicians and acrobats. Because it retrains the brain, it is also fabulous for people recovering from strokes, surgery and injury. In short, anyone can benefit, if they so choose.

Do you want more ease sitting at a desk? Are you a weekend athlete who wants to step up a notch? Are you a climber who wants to have a greater sense of the connections across the body? Are you hyper mobile and want to feel a greater connection to your skeleton?

There are two forms of teaching Feldenkrais Method. And it is teaching your nervous system to change itself, not a therapy.

The 1:1 sessions, often hands on, are called Functional Integration lessons, or FIs. I currently offer these as home visits, or online.

The voice-led classes, often taught in groups, are called Awareness Through Movement lessons, or ATMs. These are what I will be teaching on Wednesday mornings.

To book, please use the form in the link, which is in the comments :)

The pelvis is the power centre of the body. Look at the mechanics of the skeleton - right in the middle, between the head and the feet, is this great big heavy bowl of bones, the pelvis. It is the fulcrum of skeletal movement.

Connecting to these bones are lots of muscles, both big and small, known and unknown. Some are obvious, like the re**us abdominus (think 6 packs), and the gluteal (bum) muscles, and the big muscles of the thigh - quadriceps and hamstrings. Could you identify any others? What about the tiny ones that run from the base of the spine, the coccyx, to the ischial tuberosity (the sit bones)? Or any of the sling of muscles that hold our guts up in our body?

Come and explore how all these muscles can work together with the skeleton and the nervous system, to give you greater ease of movement, and more confidence to laugh and jump and cough, without leaking. And so much more, besides.

https://forms.gle/D2HBeaVKr97mwDAi8