About Feldenkrais Education of New England
Our History
Our Mission
- Increasing public awareness about the benefits of the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education
- Organizing and conducting Feldenkrais Method classes for the public
- Organizing and conducting programs to train individuals to become practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method
- Developing visions for the future of the Feldenkrais Method and its practice, informed by diverse cultures and ways of thinking
- Engaging members of the Feldenkrais Method community in the development of social and scientific thought
- Supporting research and development in the Feldenkrais Method
- Fostering a culture of continuous learning among Feldenkrais practitioners
- Providing low-to-no-cost learning opportunities to a broad spectrum of New England’s diverse populations
- Providing scholarships for low-income people wishing to participate in training to become Feldenkrais practitioners
- Engaging in any other educational, charitable, and scientific endeavors that regard or inform the Feldenkrais Method.
Board of Directors
Lindy Ost: Board President
After working four years as a physical therapist, Lindy became interested in exploring other educational pathways that would enable her to work more holistically with her clients. Through that exploration she was introduced to the Feldenkrais Method. Her curiosity was piqued following a discovery of a small difference in movement that up until that moment had been absent in her awareness. That discovery was the initial impetus to continue her studies in the Feldenkrais Method, becoming a practitioner in 1994.
Over the past thirty years Lindy has integrated the Feldenkrais Method® with physical therapy, creating ways to work with adults and children so that learning, ease of movement and comfort are more accessible in their daily lives.
Lindy joined FENE in order to expand her reach in providing opportunities for others to experience the transformational effects of the Feldenkrais Method.
Misha Forrester: Founding Director, Secretary/Clerk
Misha has been involved in the Feldenkrais Method® for almost three decades, originally as a client and then as a transcriber for advanced Feldenkrais® trainings, including Bones for Life® with Ruthy Alon in the 1990’s. Her attraction to the Method began as curiosity about its directed language that emphasized exploration, gently nuanced movement, and the potential to awaken reflective self-regulation and continues today due to its transformative potential. Misha was the Feldenkrais practitioner at the Kushi Institute Center for Natural Healing until its closing where she worked with many of international guests, many with serious digestive issues and cancer. Her private practice continues with a focus on cancer thrivers, stroke, and orthopedic rehabilitation.
Misha has serves as the volunteer regional representative of the New England Feldenkrais Region since 2012 as well as on the FGNA Nominating Committee. In 2017 Misha received the Volunteer of the Year Award from FGNA. She acted as the offsite administrator for FENE’s Boston #3 Feldenkrais Training Program. Misha holds a BFA in textiles and illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA in ceramics and MA in American Studies from the University Massachusetts Amherst, and a teaching license in elementary art education.
Matty Wilkinson: Founding Director, Treasurer
In 2001 Matty Wilkinson joined a Feldenkrais Method® training program and began teaching preschool. He was immediately struck by the overlap in these two professions. The connection between perception, movement, learning, and human development has fascinated him ever since. Matty completed his Feldenkrais training in 2003, the Anat Baniel Method for Children Mastery in 2006, earned a MA in Child Development from Tufts University in 2009. Matty is a founding member of the Massachusetts General Hospital Pediatric Stroke Parent Advisory Board, and maintains a private Feldenkrais practice serving children with neurological injuries and other disabilities in Arlington, MA.
Matty became a founding FENE Board member because he was inspired by the opportunity to help make the profound benefits of the Feldenkrais Method more widely available. Matty sees FENE as a powerful means to support the practice, availability, and development of the Feldenkrais Method in New England.
Olivia Cheever: Founding Director, President Emerita
Olivia, who trained with Moshe Feldenkrais and Ruthy Alon, has been a long time practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method® and is a Bones for Life® Trainer. While practicing many years as a Harvard-trained trauma psychologist, her interdisciplinary career path included studies with Indigenous healers in the US and doctoral studies as a therapist/educator. Her cross-cultural research looked at holistic emphatic, ethical Indigenous healer education in relation to Western allopathic education of psychiatrists. Olivia is also a certified Leadership Embodiment Coach using Aikido principles to work with individuals and groups to foster inclusivity, centered listening, and speaking up without aggression.
Olivia has been committed to sharing these embodied approaches widely with underserved communities and those with special needs as well as with athletes, performing artists, healthcare workers, educators, and businesses. As faculty, she has taught Feldenkrais-influenced courses at Longy School of Music of Bard College and to Dance Movement Therapists in the Lesley University Expressive Therapies Division in Cambridge, MA.
Olivia helped form FENE, serving as Board President since 2015, to sponsor affordable Feldenkrais® trainings, and to spread the Feldenkrais Method more widely, including partnering with those in marginalized populations.
She conducts her professional practice: Spontaneous Movement and Embodied Leadership in Needham MA and Bristol, VT. She and her husband divide their time between both locations to be near the Sunray Peace Village Land Trust in Lincoln, VT, an NGO of the United Nations where Olivia serves on the Council of Trustees..
Founding Director, Vice President Emerita
Miriam Schwartz recognized the benefits and potential of the Feldenkrais Method® from the receiving end, both personally and on behalf of her autistic son. As a result, she has actively championed exposure to the Feldenkrais Method and equal access across all demographics, and hopes that one day medical insurance will cover Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration® lessons. Her broad experiences working toward tikkun olam (repair of the world) with other nonprofits such as Massachusetts Advocates for Children and Kids for Peace Boston have deeply impacted her vision of FENE. It has been her pleasure to participate as a Director, promoting FENE’s initial Feldenkrais Training, celebrating an impressive cohort of trainees, and imagining future projects..
June LaPointe, Founding Director
June LaPointe has a background in performance, learning, and perception. She first became a student of Feldenkrais over thirty years ago in a professional Educational Therapeutics training program which incorporated Moshe Feldenkrais’ Awareness Through Movement lessons, in addition to Dr. Milton Erikson’s hypnotherapeutic understanding of perception and learning, physical analogs from Ki-Aikido to verbally diffuse conflict and redirect opposing forces, and creative process interventions to support people to recover from physical and emotional trauma.
After a head and neck injury, June had a life changing hands-on Feldenkrais lesson with renowned Feldenkrais trainer Ruthy Alon, and became a Feldenkrais Practitioner and Movement Intelligence® Trainer.
June credits the generosity of her colleagues with making her a better practitioner over the last two decades. In that spirit, she was drawn to become a founding member of FENE. June values its mission to support the life-long learning of our New England Feldenkrais professional community, along with serving the public who want to learn ways to help themselves and others.
June has a private practice teaching online lessons and mentoring new practitioners where she lives in rural Massachusetts with her partner who is a Feldenkrais Practitioner.