I began Movement & Creativity Library in 2018 after my private practice filled and I wanted a way to make the Feldenkrais Method accessible to more people. I searched and searched for the right membership platform but I didn’t like the way anything looked.
I looooove making images and creating beautiful spaces and I felt limited by the computery feeling of all the platforms I saw and tested, like Teachable, Kajabi, Thinkific or other LMS platforms. I landed on Squarespace. I created a membership before they had their current membership features. I changed the password each month it each month inspired by a different Feldenkrais principle or theme.
I’d open up the library the last few days of the month for free to anyone. It’s been an amazing 4 year journey, growing the library to 40+ courses, with 400+ lessons with dozens of somatic and creative teachers from around the world. It’s been an evolving, enjoyable, enlivening experiment.
About a year ago I went down a rabbit hole researching platforms that could be the next iteration of Movement and Creativity Library + be a home for our self-paced online Feldenkrais courses. I settled on Wordpress and Acessally because that would give me the flexibility to create the beautiful site I imagined. I hired someone to help me and long story short—-it didn’t work out… (at all) :(
That drove me down another rabbit hole searching for a solution. Maybe something I hadn’t tried yet? Or maybe something I tried before that would be somehow different now? I had no idea that it was actually possible—- I found something marvelous!
Hey Marvelous (affiliate link) was originally created for yoga teachers. I had actually looked at their site in my 1st online course platform wormhole dive— but since then they’ve made some major changes and updates. A miracle emerged—- this could actually be a place I could play, grow, collaborate! And it’s true:
Hey Marvelous is Marvelous
1) Beautiful, Simple, Intuitive
Hey Marvelous is beautiful, simple, clean, intuitive—- super easy to get around and works great on mobile! I felt like I could easily create a home filled with my images/ aesthetic and begin to create the website I imagined (and beyond that to what I haven’t yet imagined!)
2) Membership + Courses
I now have my membership & courses all in one place! People can navigate easily between all their courses and the website only gives you access to what your have purchased/ registered for. (I moved over 400+ lessons from my old site! It was epic!)
3) Search by multiple tags
This feature is at the center of Movement & Creativity Library. You can choose lessons based on parts of the body, positions, movement patterns, teacher, amount of time or different ways to orient to the process. You can also narrow your search results, so you could can a teacher you like, with a lesson on your back with breathing in the 15-30 min range… Exciting!
4) Favorites
This is one of my favorite features. You can add and remove lessons from your favorites so you can easily go back to them. And they are searchable!
5) Playlists
This is what made it possible for me to go all in. Playlists are the way that I structure all the series in Movement & Creativity Library and they have this adorable little menu on the side that helps you orient to where you are in the order of lessons in that series.
6) 1 click event sign up and Zoom Integration
There’s a super cool calendar feature that integrates with Zoom where students who click on events inside of their membership or course, they automatically get emailed a confirmation are sent the Zoom link and hour before each event.
7) The backend is as beautiful as the front end (this is truly marvelous)
I know where I am. Everything is beautiful. Clean, Simple. Intuitive.
8) Their team is supportive and responsive
They have practically 24/7 chat with some down windows during the weekends. Very friendly & helpful. I have reported several bugs and the issues were quickly resolved. There are other things I am waiting for and fingers crossed they will happen. Overall there is a feeling of trust and mutual respect.
9) There are many things I want to change but it feels so worth the wait
I’ve got a wishlist of tweaks here and there + what they have on their roadmap is super exciting! I’m looking forward to growing alongside them :)
Because I love Hey Marvelous so much, I’ve signed on to be an affiliate for them. If you sign up for Hey Marvelous with this link you can get a 1/2 hour Zoom call with me to connect about creating/ setting up your site (or anything else Feldenkrais/ nervous system/ creative process related)
