NOTE: This was originally published as part of my newsletter in July 2026. Subscribe to my newsletter to receive the next Om Letter direct to your inbox once a month.
In the second-to-last segment of my Feldenkrais practitioner training, after having spent around a thousand hours in each others company, the somatic equivalent of an uproar broke out. One half of the room confronted our teachers and teaching assistants, stating that they couldn’t explain what they had learned over the past four years, nor how to use it. The other half of the room was perfectly clear on both counts.
To understand why, it might help to know that Feldenkrais trainings don’t follow a syllabus. Every training is shaped around the particular group of people that shows up – different lessons are taught, different things are emphasised, different teaching strategies are used. There are some core ideas that the teaching staff hope will emerge within every group, but they're almost never stated outright. Nobody says, "In Feldenkrais we believe this," or, "This is the right way to do this." Instead, students are invited to discover principles rather than be told them.
Knowing this, it might seem less surprising to you that some people didn’t respond particularly well to this pedagogy. Many of us thrive in environments with clearly defined ideas, boundaries and rules. These environments give us the reassuring sense that we’re walking along a defined path, one where we can avoid putting a foot wrong.
After the dust had settled on that riotous discussion, our course leader wandered over to the table where my pal Darren and I were working.
"This looks like a table of people who are comfortable with improvising," she said. "I think I'll hang out here for a while." And she was right.
Early on in the training, Darren had confessed to me that he'd been approaching this whole Feldenkrais thing as though it were an improvisation game. My own instinct had been to look for a "Yes!" while teaching - a response in someone's body that unmistakably signalled I was on the right track. As the first rule of improv comedy is to respond to every situation you’re presented with ‘Yes, and…’ (so that the momentum of the sketch keeps going), I felt that our approaches came from a shared point of view.
Within my group of Felden-pals, we had a lengthy discussion about what had triggered this collective panic. Partly, it was down to the simple fact the training was coming to an end, but we also concluded that it had something to do with how comfortable people were with sitting in the mystery.
‘The mystery of what?’ you might ask. The mystery of not always having all the answers, the mysterious process of figuring it out, the mystery of living life without anticipating what might happen next, the mystery of responding to whatever unfolds before you, and within you, moment by moment.
I gained a lot of clarity from that discussion, and the conversations that followed, which has allowed me to cultivate a responsiveness in how I teach, practice, and approach life. It’s allowed me to be looser, more playful. Rules and boundaries only give us the illusion of predictability and control, but in reality, the only way through is by surrendering to it all.
With love,
OM x
Monthly Mantra
“People like you and I, though mortal of course, like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. What I mean is we never cease to stand like curious children before the great Mystery into which we were born.”
Albert Einstein
Thank you for reading - if you have any questions please feel free to reach out via email.
Copyright © 2026
Oceana Mariani
