For the third year in a row, I returned to Bethel bei Bielefeld where I gave individual sessions and taught a three hour Feldenkrais workshop to caregivers who work in Bethel bei Bielefeld. Bethel is a community of over 3,000 inhabitants where persons with a wide range of varying abilities and challenges live and work together. Bethel is a very special community offering many different kinds of services for people who face challenges in their lives. Bethel has a huge research facility for children and adults with epilepsy, where families come to live for extended time periods while they visit the clinic daily. Bethel also has hospitals and homes providing mental health services for both short term and long term care. Over 25 years ago, I did an internship in movement therapy in Bethel. It is a very special community and it is a pleasure to return to Bethel and teach here.

Every Spring, Europeans from Germany, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Greece, England, Wales… gather in Solingen, Germany to attend an annual workshop with Stanley Keleman, the founder of Formative Psychology.

I study with Stanley Keleman in Berkeley year round, but it is always a special experience for me to attend his workshop in Solingen and visit with the European community. The depth, richness, and layers of Stanley Keleman and his work are unique. In my ongoing studies with Stanley, I continue to deepen and grow my relationship with myself in ways that profoundly impact on my life.

My mother is from Germany and I lived for 2 1/2 years in Germany as a young adult. I speak German and though Stanley Keleman’s workshop is in English, I spend most of my time speaking in German when I am in Germany. It is such a clear experience for me of how I gesture, how I form the words in my mouth, throat, and face, how I breathe differently to articulate different sounds, how I bring words together to create meaning — how all this fundamentally effects how I think, feel, and relate to myself and others. Speaking two languages gives me two worlds in me with distinct ways I generate my thinking, gather my thoughts, express myself and experience myself. It is wonderful to have my worlds meet, mingle and form a richer, more layered  sense of myself.