About Jeff Bickford

continued...

I began a practice of awareness and movement while training to be a professional dancer with Alwin Nikolai in New York City. The Nikolai theory and technique provided a training that lead to an almost magical articulation of movement and intention. It had roots reaching back to the explosion of awareness that took place in Europe and Russia in the early 20th century that fostered movement and theater geniuses like Rudolph Laban and Mikael Chekov. It was a training primarily directed to creating extraordinary movement performers and creators; I realized it was incredibly valuable to anyone wishing to vitalize their experience of living.

I continued my exploration and development of awareness and movement while working as a choreographer, director, lighting and sound designer, performer, and teacher over the next 30 years. During this time I entered into in-depth study of Rudolf Laban's movement and space philosophy as well as Irmgard Bartenieff's theories of the fundamentals of movement that underlie all experience. I wove these together with Nikolai theory to train potent performers and as tools in the creative process of generating works for the stage.

At the same time I began adapting these tools to use with people in other walks of life to help them learn how to be more awake and present in their lives.

To broaden my ability to work with people I entered into a study of Creative Causality Theory with it's creator, Dr. Charles Johnston. During this time I was part of a think tank involved in the further articulation of his theory, which involved viewing all life processes, from personality development to product development as creative processes that essentially went through the same steps in their growth.

I began to encounter people running up against blocks in their thinking and emotional lives. In an effort to gain greater understanding of the structures underlying thinking, feeling, intention and outcome I embarked on a study of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, receiving Master Certification. This lead to a certain degree of ability to help people move through those blocks. It was a useful tool, but it was limited by being too divorced from the concrete reality of sensory experience.

The Pilates Method presented a relatively simple method to give people an experience of greater stability in their embodied lives. I was certified by Jane Erskin, one of the early developers of advanced training in the method. While Pilates offered useful tools, it had many shortcomings, even when used in combination with Movement Fundamentals, Laban and Nikolai Theories. This lead me to a four year study of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education.

By this time my interest in awareness and movement, the energetics of life, had broadened to include work with people from all walks of life; performers and athletes wishing to continue to improve as they aged, people who had suffered strokes wishing to regain their abilities, business people running into walls in their thinking, people slowly loosing functions as they aged, people involved in focused spiritual practices, and people wanting to develop greater awareness and mindfulness in all areas of their lives.

The Feldenkrais Method provided a way to bring much that I was drawing upon together. As a method, its primary rule is to use 'whatever works' to help people learn more functionally useful ways of organizing themselves to fulfill their intentions in life.