Detta Howe’s movement practice began as a freelance contemporary dancer and choreographer. Alongside this professional work, she developed her teaching practice at the University of Chichester for 12 years as an Associate Lecturer followed by a further 14 years as a Senior Lecturer. During this time Detta qualified as a Feldenkrais Practitioner and designed Somatic based movement modules for the University’s BA and MA dance programmes in order to inform and develop the students’ movement understanding. She recently stepped back from lecturing full time to enable time and space to bring her knowledge and experience of the Feldenkrais Method to benefit the wider community.
Detta says
‘Even though through my dance career, you could say I have been moving all of my life, it was not until I experienced the Feldenkrais Method that I became aware of what it felt like to move. I became conscious at the moment of moving which made each moment more vivid. I realised how I could do so much more without effort and tension and my dancing as well as my everyday moving became so much easier, lighter, richer.
Injuries that had plagued me throughout my dance career and threatened to lead me towards hip replacements, all dissolved as I learnt more from the practice, listened to my body and learnt how to move again.’
We all develop habits in our history of moving, most of which we are not aware of. The Method enables you to become aware, to be conscious of what you are doing, how you are doing it and leaves you with a choice to make changes that you didn’t know were possible.
Detta has now been practicing as a Feldenkrais practitioner since 2015 and learns something new from the Method every day, and it is this that she wants to share with you.
‘…the work is the teacher’
Steve Paxton