For over ten years I have worked internationally with adults, children and babies, and specialise in working with children and babies with special needs. I am a certified Feldenkrais Method practitioner, and have additional postgraduate certifications for working with children in the Feldenkrais lineage: Advanced Training for Feldenkrais practitioners with Theory and Techniques from Anat Baniel Method for Children (ABM), taught by Nancy Aberle, and the Jeremy Krauss Approach for Child Development (JKA). I work from my base in Vienna, Austria, throughout Europe and the Nordic countries, and on return trips to New Zealand where I was born and raised. I offer individual sessions for adults, children and babies, group classes and workshops for adults, and workshops for adults, carers and educators of children and babies with special needs. I also mentor practitioners and assist on postgraduate training programmes for working with children, where my responsibilities include supervising practitioners as they work with children and babies. I was previously based in Paris, France from 2011 to 2018, where I also studied Clean Language with Jennifer de Gandt. Clean Language offers a template for directing attention and asking questions without imposing the facilitator’s own interpretations, suggestions and presuppositions on a client’s experience: allowing for their own insights and knowledge to emerge of their perceptions and behaviour. I have a background in dance and theatre as a dancer, writer and director andhave been involved in helping people learn through movement since the age of 14, when I began to teach dance to adults and children. My work also draws on a wide range of somatic movement and dance practices which, like the Feldenkrais Method, privilege the self-organising intelligence of the body: where given the right conditions for learning we can overcome challenges to grow and transform.
“No matter how closely we look, it is difficult to find a mental act that can take place without the support of some physical function.”
One of the most inspiring and rewarding aspects of my work is witnessing the transformations in people’s lives that occur, whether it’s an adult learning to free themselves from chronic pain, or a baby learning to do things that medical professionals said they would never learn. I first discovered the Feldenkrais Method when seeking to change my own challenges with chronic pain, tension and stress. From my first experience I knew Feldenkrais would help me the way nothing else had to date. I began to learn, with surprising ease, new foundations for moving through life, free from the chronic pain I suffered, and with much greater resilience and choice in my emotional and psychological life. It has helped me to realise more of my potential and live a life of greater choice. This realisation of potential, greater choice and empowerment is at the heart of what inspires me in this work. I feel privileged to play a role in helping people learn to create new possibilities for themselves, and in turn for their families and communities.
Email: sophie@movement-works.com Phone: +43 (0)670 404 72 23
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