15 for Fibro*
* Possibly open to people with other types of chronic pain—check with Carie
“Carie is the first practitioner of bodywork (yoga, physical therapy, etc) who understands the condition of chronic pain and fibromyalgia. …I am getting much relief from the fatigue with this training. ”
Impossible to possible, possible to easy, easy to pleasurable…
Join the Group & Attend these mini zoom-classes whenever you wish.
Here’s the concept:
The classes last less than 20 minutes and include
a time to check in with each other (which you are welcome to skip),
a brief and ssssssslow movement class taught by Carie, and
a few minutes to regroup and reflect on the experience (ditto on the liberty to skip!)
You register, schedule a free, one-on-one mini- class with Carie via zoom, and confirm whether this is a good modality for you
Thereafter you drop in on the classes whenever that makes sense to you.
You can lie on the floor, sit, or lie in bed
And about the cost?
From $0 to $15 per session depending on what feels right to you.
Carie Fox has been mediating for 25 years. She has classic ‘some sort of inflamatory disease with acronym’ problems, including fibromyalgia, that nearly torched her career and devastated her life. Body awareness approaches have lowered her chronic pain dramatically, and after many years of increasingly easy and conscious movement, Carie has become a somatic educator—which doesn’t so much mean teaching you how to move as helping your inner teacher to explore how it wants/you want to move.
Carie has found that the same principles that have helped her body have also improved her life in all sorts of ways—family relations, mediating, meditating, coping with annoying medical professionals! You name it. Life is easier.
Note: probably the most common phrase you’ll hear from Carie is some variation on ‘could you maybe do a little less?’ In body awareness, the idea is to move as fast or as far as your inner teacher needs in order to feel what’s going on. And usually that’s not very fast and not very far.
True, of course, it is better not to tire yourself out and certainly this is a no-injury space. But that’s not the main reason for the ‘go slow’ approach. The main reason is that you are here to access your inner teacher, and your inner teacher usually prefers slow movements that let you notice what is going on.
This is not a pilates class! This is a spa for your inner teacher.
Does it drive you crazy when?
Sometimes well-meaning people will suggest that your fibro is a blessing in disguise. I could write a whole book about #@! those interactions and how boneheaded tthat advice can be—probably you could, too.
I won’t do that.
But I will say that in some ways people with fibro symptoms have a leg-up on ‘healthy’ people (whatever that means). When I work with, say, athletes, it takes about 40 minutes to facilitate a transition to a learning zone. For people suffering with chronic pain, it is more like 40 seconds.
Once a chronic-pain-ripened person is in the learning zone, there’s an incremental change that can happen in a short time. And that’s enough. One incremental change is enough for the athlete who needs 40 minutes of transition before she can take her first sip, and one incremental change is enough for the person with fibro symptoms who is right at the boundary to the learning zone from the get-go.
Yes, to some extent the classes are short because 20 minutes of anything can be a lot for a person with fibro symptoms or other chronic pain. But that’s a ‘less than’ story. Remember that there is an even stronger ‘more than’ story here: you probably have more access to your inner body wisdom than people with less pain. You don’t need that 40 minute warm-up. It wasn’t fun learning it, but you have a skill, a wisdom, that we can build on.
Everything in these classes is about respecting what you know. And if you have been in chronic pain, you know a lot.
About Carie
Carie Fox has been a mediator and conflict coach for 30 years and is also an accredited Feldenkrais™ teacher with more than 300 hours of formal training.
Wear loose, drapey, preferably not-black clothes, have enough room on the floor to lie on your back and extend your arms to the sides, and try for good lighting—or else just come as you are! For a 20 minute class we can be easy about details. A few small towels or flat-ish pillows might also be useful to have on hand. You can sit, lie on the floor or lie on a bed. These will be small classes and we’ll adapt to your needs.