Hours:  Sat., 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Lunch will be 1.5 hours.

Early-bird tuition by Jan. 4:  $105.

At the Feldenkrais Institute of San Diego, 3680 6th Avenue, San Diego, California 92103.

About the workshop

We are please to be hosting a guest instructor from Italy at the Feldenkrais Institute this January. Mara Della Pergola will be offering an unusual application of the Feldenkrais Method in a one-day workshop. Mara will lead participants through an experiential investigation of the relationship between perception, movement and art based on her recent well received book La Sguardo in movimento. Arte, trasformazione e metodo Feldenkrais, roughly translated as: Vision in Movement: Art, Transformation and the Feldenkrais Method. It is "a guide to discovering interior spaces and new ways of perceiving and acting."

What happens when a work of art strikes us and captures our vision? A reciprocal movement occurs. While observing, we enter the piece of art at the same time as it enters us. It transforms our sensations and modifies our being. What changes occur in our bodies and our perception when we immerse ourselves in a painting or when we feel related to a sculpture?    

The dialogue generated between an observer and a work of art is, in fact, introspection, a journey in self-knowledge and self-awareness.We will explore and perceive certain fundamental experiences while observing a work of art through our senses – in other words, feeling, moving, or imagining movement.

To support our learning, we will view works of art by van Eyck, Calder, Raffaello, Cézanne, Munch, Moore, Rothko and others, whom we associate with some fundamental experiences embodied by all because they make up part of our human heritage. Brief sequences of uncommon movements are used to make it possible to improve perceptive skills and obtain a more articulated, precise and personal understanding of the chosen artwork. We will try to recognize our body’s expressions when we feel them, and to understand how we “complete” our body-mind experience with our thoughts and emotions when we encounter a piece of art. 

MARA DELLA PERGOLA was Moshe Feldenkrais’s only Italian pupil. She introduced the Feldenkrais Method in Italy through workshops, courses and individual lessons in the 1980s. She founded the Istituto di Formazione Feldenkrais in Milan, where hundreds have studied and experimented with the Method. Mara has a passion for art and has often taught the Feldenkrais Method in the context of the arts including conducted courses for music conservatories, drama schools, art programs, universities and schools in psychomotor training. She has organized and directed numerous Feldenkrais Professional Training Programs since 1988 in Italy in addition to teaching throughout Europe, and in North and South America. She lives and works in Milan, Italy.