Wonderful article about my teacher

Felicia Marie Tomasko, RN wrote a terrific article in LA Yoga Magazine about Linda Lack my teacher.  It accurately describes the technique and my teacher.  Please click here to read.

What is The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®

My teacher Linda Lack PhD created The Thinking Body-The Feeling Mind®.  She was recently interviewed by Backstage Magazine. Below is an excerpt from the article where other techniques are also discussed.

Performer, Heal Thyself

Exploring movement systems to prevent and repair performing aches and pains

By Lisa Jo Sagolla

August 20, 2009

Strains, sprains, breaks, aches, and pains are all-too-familiar results of the extreme movement work required of many professional performers. If you’re a dancer, aerialist, cirque artist, stunt actor, or physical comedian you undoubtedly push your body through challenging and repetitive movement regimens that may lead to serious injuries or debilitating conditions. Yet we seem to have a basic human need to move, and in many cases, movement itself can be an impetus for healing. When performed in an informed fashion, certain forms of body movement can prevent physical injury. Various movement systems have been designed specifically to promote physical well-being, rather than to meet athletic demands or fulfill the needs of artistic expression. So what are some of these more therapeutic, healing, and preventative-care movement techniques?

The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind®

“I am in my mid-60s, and because of The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind, I am still performing onstage. As a matter of fact, last year I was nominated for one of our West Coast dance awards—it’s called the Lester Horton Award—for solo performance,” says Linda Lack, the inventor of The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind. Based on the principles of hatha yoga, movement therapy, and kinesiology, Lack’s technique serves to identify and correct an individual’s physical weaknesses or imbalances, helping to reduce pain, movement limitations, and chance of injury. The technique includes the practice of traditional yoga postures but blends them into a nonstop progression of movements that feels more like a dance class, incorporating modern dance–influenced floorwork and standing sequences that allow movement through space, extending beyond the perimeters of an exercise mat.

“The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind was created because I saw so many performers—dancers, actors, musicians—pushing themselves to the edge, to the point where they used up their natural resources and had to stop performing by their mid-30s,” says Lack. “The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind was conceived as a technique that creates sustainability for those pursuing professional careers in the performing arts.”

Lack teaches her body-mind integration technique in individual sessions and classes at Two-Snake Studios, in Los Angeles, and also travels the country lecturing on anatomy and training other instructors in how to teach her work. “My work has much kinship with Feldenkrais and Pilates, but neither of those practices go on to a developmental stage that actually teaches what we need in the performing-arts world: the ability to integrate and sustain challenging movement sequences. Feldenkrais and Pilates are wonderful for John Doe and Mary Doe and even professional dancers who have injuries, but they really just teach the basics of how to live inside your body and do a task. The teaching isn’t taken into very, very high-level movements, like the inversion postures used in yoga or the complex phrases you would do in an advanced ballet class. So The Thinking Body–The Feeling Mind endeavors to go beyond that. It starts with the basics that Feldenkrais and everybody else does but then takes you on to the very heights and depths of your movement possibilities.”

For full article backstage magazine