A Pathway to Easier Movement

Here is my teaching schedule for this fall!

Qigong, Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement®
and Bones for Life® in October and November 2025
with Liz Monnier
Qigong
Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30 p.m. (*note new time!) October 7, 21, November 4, 18,
at the DNA Awakening School, 1615 S. Calhoun Street, Fort Wayne, IN
Fee: $15 Free parking on the street and across the street in the fenced area.
Registration encouraged at https://www.dnaempowerment.com
Drop-ins also welcome. Qigong combines movement, breath, self-massage and meditation. Participants should wear easy to move in clothing and can be barefoot or wear socks or soft shoes. The class can also be done seated.

Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement Classes
Holistic Integration of Body and Mind with Liz Monnier, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner®
Tuesdays, 5:30-6:30 p.m. October 14, 28, November 11, 25 at the DNA Awakening School, 1615 S. Calhoun Street, Fort Wayne, IN inside the Art and Awakening Center. Fee: $15 Parking on the street and across the street in the fenced area. Registration encouraged at https://www.dnaempowerment.com Drop-ins also welcome.

About ATM Classes: We begin our class with “Please lie on your back.” You will then be verbally guided through small and slow mindful movements to interpret in your own way without any demonstration. It allows you the time and space to be with yourself, without judgement, while becoming aware of unexpected and interesting connections within and between the movements. As you attend to improving the quality of your movement, unnecessary muscular tensions throughout the body can reorganize and release. Students are often amazed at the quick and clear changes that occur through the neuromuscular repatterning that happens in an Awareness Through Movement lesson! Unique to the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education, these lessons tie directly into functional movements of daily life, such as walking efficiently, safely lifting objects, and improving one’s posture in sitting or standing.
You will need a comfortable surface to lie on that you will be able to slide on. A blanket or sleeping bag over a yoga mat for example. You might need a little support under your head. You’ll remove your shoes, glasses, and anything else on your body (watches, earrings etc.) This keeps your brain from having to consider anything else except your movement. This is not an exercise class but rather a somatic practice of movement re-education. I also offer private Feldenkrais Functional Integration® lessons. www.Lizmonnier.com
My personal story: When I started my Feldenkrais® training in Seattle, WA, I stayed with a family, sharing a room with another student. We shared a bunk bed, with me being on the top. To get up to the bunk, I climbed on a chair, then a dresser and then up to the bed. After many Awareness Through Movement lessons, I looked at the upper bunk and thought, “I no longer need that chair and dresser!” I easily climbed up to the bunk like a monkey to a tree!
Bones for Life® on Zoom, Tuesdays at 12 noon -1:00 p.m. October 7, 14, 21 and 28 and November 4, 11, 18 and 25. Classes are recorded and available for two weeks. This month’s series is “Freeing the Shoulders.” For more information contact me through my email address: [email protected], Only $40 for 4 classes.
Dancing in your Seat, Mondays 12:30-1:30 p.m. at the Fort Wayne Dance Collective, 437 East Berry Street. $16 drop in. Fun, upbeat and interactive movement with your favorite music!

Instructor, Liz Monnier was a founding member of the Fort Wayne Dance Collective and served as Artistic Director for 37 years. She continues to be an Outreach Teacher for the Fort Wayne Dance Collective and is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner as well as being certified to teach Bones for Life®. She has studied T’ai Chi and Qigong with a variety of teachers including local instructors Sandy Gebhard and Nancy Woollacott. She also attended classes at the Rochester T’ai Chi Chuan Center in Rochester, NY and at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, CO. She has taught classes at the Botanical Gardens, the YMCA, many local libraries, the Veterans Administration and on the shores of Lake Michigan in addition to her legacy teaching for the Fort Wayne Dance Collective. www.lizmonnier.com

Connecting the Dots
A Bones for Life® Series
on Zoom with Liz Monnier
Four Thursdays in September, 12 noon -1:00 p.m. (EST) September 8, 15, 22, 29
Take time now to improve your coordination!
(Can’t make this time? No worries, classes are recorded and available for two weeks!)
In this next Bones for Life® segment we will experience processes that encourage us to see the bigger picture. Integration of relationships of our many parts helps to make our movement more organized as we give our body the message to build and maintain healthy bones. Let’s do it!
Message me your email address and I'll send you the information!

Hello Everyone,
I’m very happy to announce that I will be offering online Zoom classes in Bones for Life® (BFL) as a Teacher in Training! Ruthy Alon created this method designed to strengthen bones through movement. She was one of the original 13 students of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, founder of The Feldenkrais Method®. If you would like more information please message me with your email address. Please check out this website for more information: http://movementintelligence.org/bones-for-life/

‘Slowing Down to Feel’: Moving Our Minds Around Our Bodies It’s cold outside. The pandemic is getting worse. It’s time to look inward with the help of movement practices that create healthy bodies and minds.

This summer I had the opportunity to continue my studies of the Feldenkrais Method® through an organization from Cincinnati called “Future Life Now.” I along with 40 other people from around the world participated in a 21-hour online immersion into “Bones For Life.” Ruthy Alon, a long-time Feldenkrais Practitioner® and student of Moshe himself, developed a series of 90 movement processes to support bone health. This immersion introduced us to the first 30 processes. I have to admit that I have been shocked at seeing my own posture begin to stoop forward despite my life-long dancing life as well as completing my certification in the Feldenkrais Method®.
Ruthy Alon, using the concepts of the Feldenkrais Method®, designed this user-friendly system to help us continue to stand and walk upright throughout our life. Each class begins with her classic, “bouncing on heels.” Using the rhythm of your heartbeat and using only 20% of what you can do, we lightly bounce on heels to the audio sound of “pum pum.” The sensation of feeling the vibration travel up through my skeleton was riveting! An added bonus of “bouncing on heels” is the surge of the circulatory system bringing blood back to the heart. Cynthia Allen, founder of Future Life Now reminds us:
“We can begin to invest in upgrading our nervous system and movement habits, so we engage in way more wear and repair. Quality movement, and particularly quality walking, really is quality medicine. This is where movement systems such as the Feldenkrais Method® come into play. Instead of trying to reach a goal, somatic education systems return you to the origins of sensation, movement, and pleasure. Feldenkrais® helps you learn to attend to yourself in ways that can lessen pain and discomfort in the moment, but also help you invest in the future.”

I look forward to offering “Bones for Life,” at some point in the future, in addition to Awareness Through Movement® and private Functional Integration® lessons!

Hello Friends,
I am temporarily moving my Feldenkrais® Practice to Rochester, NY from June 27- July 12, 2019. I will be located in a lovely artsy space in the central part of the city at 2 Upton Park, Rochester, NY 14607. To make an appointment please call or text me at 260-445-4742 or email: [email protected].
Having a private hour-long session is the greatest gift you can give yourself to relieve aches and pains, move with greater ease and improve your coordination. Liz Monnier

I am excited to begin another session of Feldenkrais® Awareness Through Movement classes at the Fort Wayne Dance Collective starting January 7, 2019 on Mondays from 6:00-7:00 p.m. We’ll start the semester slowly with gently reconnecting to ourselves with organizing our hands and arms. Then every other week through March, we’ll begin a more intense understanding of “Standing on our hip sockets.” What better function can you imagine than walking and standing with grace and ease? The week’s lessons in between will supplement our understanding and help to connect the dots. Give yourself the gift of improved movement this year!

In honor of my good friend, Eileen Lee, who first introduced the Feldenkrais Method® to the Fort Wayne Dance Collective.

Felden what??
By Liz Monnier, Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner
A Pathway to Easier Movement

Feldenkrais (no “t” at the end) is not a religion. It is a somatic approach toward movement re-education developed by Moshe Feldenkrais. The classroom version of the method is called “Awareness Through Movement.” So, do any of these names or definitions mean anything to you? If not, you are not alone. The students of Moshe wanted to stay true to his titles and name, but it makes for a difficult sell.

When I first started learning the Feldenkrais Method®, the first hurtle was learning “how” to do it. How do you move slowly, do less than you can do, not approach movement with an ambitious mind? Perhaps a more pertinent question is “why?” It all goes against everything we’ve been trained to do. We’re told to stretch, feel the burn, pump it up and don’t stop till you drop. No attention is paid to how you move with intelligence.

With my years of background in many forms of dance, the Feldenkrais Method® has been the best way for me to know my body from the inside out. For many, our bodies are simply used to carry our brain around from one place to the next and it’s only when something hurts that we begin to pay attention. Our bodies don’t come with a set up instructions: “the best way to operate your hip socket.” Through this method we can learn the best way to operate every part of ourselves through carefully guided lessons that allow us to explore possibilities and then rely on the brain and the nervous system to adopt the most efficient path. For me, I no longer have a “good side” and a “bad side,” which most people will say they have. Both sides function at peek capacity together creating movement that is easy and light.

This method reduces injury. A few months ago, with arms full of props, I tripped over a four inch landscaping fence. I could see which part of my knee was going to hit the pavement, followed by a trip to the hospital. But it only took that split second for my other leg, hips and ribs to get organized, whip around and save me. You also learn to listen to yourself when you are using too much effort that could result in strained muscles.

As Feldenkrais said, “Without movement, life is unthinkable.”
For me, it feels like the “Fountain of Youth.” Classes in Awareness Through Movement are offered at the Fort Wayne Dance Collective on Mondays from 12 noon -1 p.m. and 6:00-7:00 p.m. Join a class now and experience a pathway to easier movement.