Sounder Sleep System™

"Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." - Thomas Dekker (1572-1632), writer

I'm delighted to share writing from a few of the participants of last month's first Sounder Sleep System™ module.

Beth Stewart, a certified Feldenkrais practitioner based in the Hudson Valley writes:

"The first module of the Sounder Sleep System™ training was impressive in the amount of information I learned about sleep as well as techniques designed to improve one’s sleep. I came away feeling enriched with knowledge and incredibly refreshed and rested. It was an excellent combination of didactic and experiential learning."

The Sounder Sleep System has wider practical applications outside of sleep. Here's a miraculous example from T.S.:

"After five months of Feldenkrais lessons and one module of Sounder Sleep System™ training, I had a remarkable experience while getting a 50 minute brain MRI. The practices of attention and attunement to breath and micro-movements while lying 'still' allowed me to drift in and out of sleep in a meditative and relaxed state - even with the blaring 65-130 decibel noise of the machine. What a contrast to my last MRI, where I could barely contain my anxiety and body discomfort!"

June LaPointe, certified Feldenkrais practitioner based in Winchendon, MA writes:

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"As someone for whom restful sleep has been elusive, I had a wonderful transformative learning experience last weekend at a three-day Sounder Sleep System™ training, led by Paris Kern and organized by Eve Boltax.
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I am happy to report that I have slept more soundly this week than I have in years, maybe ever.
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I learned helpful information that has changed my narrative when I can’t fall asleep or when I wake up in the middle of the night. At the heart of this workshop are a number of simple and delightful somatic practices which helped me lower my cortisol stress hormone levels so that I could rest and have a sensory experience of calm, to which I can reliably return.
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Although I signed up for the Sounder Sleep System training primarily for my own learning and health, incorporating simple, soothing and lulling Sounder Sleep System Mini-Moves into my Feldenkrais practice widens my repertoire and makes me a more responsive and effective practitioner.

Special note for my Feldenkrais colleagues:

I encourage my colleagues to sign up for the training for personal and professional enrichment. I believe understanding and experiencing for yourself, how the Sounder Sleep System works, will give Feldenkrais practitioners a deeper felt experience and facility with what is at the core of our learning method:
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How to cue the excitatory and the inhibitory responses of the nervous system by coordinating a particular timing of mini-movement with a particular moment of the natural breath cycle.
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When you understand how to experiment with these excitatory and inhibitory levers in different combinations, then you can artfully facilitate a student to change their state of awareness or consciousness in any direction: toward more wakefulness, or in the case of Sounder Sleep System, to lull themselves to sleep.
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It’s simple, yet profound.
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On a personal note: I had the conceptual understanding of this before, but until Sounder Sleep System I was somehow always slightly altering my breathing to coordinate it with my movement. What was the difference that made a difference?
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During the Sounder Sleep System training, I was cued to witness my “natural breath,” or to accept however I was breathing, as natural. Only after that mind shift to radically “accept however I was breathing as natural,” was I then invited to move a tiny amount—to match and time my mini-movement to my natural breath (and not the other way around.) That was the game changer, the elusive obvious, that I had never quite somatically experienced before.
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Put another way, you know all those moments in your four year Professional Feldenkrais Training when you were invited to rest?
And over the course of four years maybe you did pause and rest and maybe you didn’t, or maybe some rests were more profound for you than others? The Sounder Sleep System gives you a deep dive in exploring the distinctions, the science, and the clinical practice of experiencing and facilitating the vital resting aspect of our learning method."