“Feldenkrais work changed my life and nothing since then has got my attention so strongly as Jeremy Krauss’ JKA Solvents & Glue.” -Margaret McIntyre
There are two main reasons I first became interested in JKA Solvents & Glue with Jeremy Krauss — This all relates to the work I have been doing since the 80s, applying The Feldenkrais Method® to skiing.
1) His reason for embarking on his path of discovery with this work stemmed from a knee injury and he was keen to rehabilitate himself so he could continue skiing.
2) Most of JKA Solvents & Glue is done in standing - I use standing in my Dynamic Skiing for Life programs, as well as more traditional Feldenkrais work lying down or sitting.
The movements and the variations that Jeremy offers in his course are deceptively simple but are in fact, extremely profound, leading to concrete and important changes in movement patterns.
He has a systematic approach and an ability to analyze and breakdown complex movements into simple components.
As a Feldenkrais practitioner I have always been deeply interested in how people can create change in their lives at any age. I find Jeremy’s work is giving me fascinating new insights into this process.
I believe that it is important to give you some of my background so you can understand why S & G sparked my interest so strongly:
When I embarked on my own Feldenkrais training back in 1983, I was teaching skiing full time in Colorado, and in those days our training blocks were 8 straight weeks in the fall and then I went straight to the mountains and skiing and I made many astonishing discoveries about my movements, my habitual patterns and much more, when working with my students. This all led to my creation of “Integrated Skiing” and “Integrated Snowboarding” programs which later changed name to “Dynamic Skiing for Life”. My first skiing article was called Unlock the Trunk, and again, this all fits for me with Jeremy’s work.
Traditionally skiing was taught as mainly to do with the feet and ankles and the legs needed to be strong. The role of the trunk was to stay relatively uninvolved with the legs moving underneath. By understanding Feldenkrais, I introduced incorporating the trunk into the overall movement patterns of skiing. Jeremy has taken the standing movements further and more generalized so that it encompasses all aspects of human movement.
As another point of interest, I learnt to ski as an adult, not as a child, and this also affected my approach to learning these multi-dimensional skills.
Feldenkrais work changed my life and nothing since then has got my attention so strongly as Jeremy Krauss’ JKA Solvents & Glue.
(I have to note that I don’t like the name, I understand how it came about, but I love the work itself. )
Last, but not least, working with Jeremy has made an enormous difference to how i use my right shoulder which had chronic problems and more recently an injury. My shoulder now feels incredibly good, better range of movement and no pain!
I am looking forward to wherever this is taking us as the new group of trainee teachers and how I will incorporate it into my life and teaching.
Some important points:
working in standing to create change
varying positions and planes of movement of the limbs relative to the trunk
how to take and use traditional lessons in lying up into standing
his creative use of everyday objects to give different fixed points or fulcrums around which to play with basic movements
working with symmetry and asymmetry, so much of this I relate back to skiing, a main reference point for me.
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Margaret McIntyre is Feldenkrais Guild® certified assistant trainer and practitioner, physiotherapist, certified ski instructor.
