9. Responses among practitioners, IFF and its member organisations

Flow of information in small medieval villages was easy. Now our global digital world is faster than ringing next door. Nevertheless: individuals and organisations still have to find and create means to interact with their clients/members. Otherwise efforts, offers, achievements are blowing in the wind and one never will know if seeds may have blossomed elsewhere. Knowing its dependency on responses, the IFF Academy has been implementing concepts with built-in feed-back loops and participation where responsibility is taken for small scale duties to facilitate a culture of responsiveness. Over time a whole variety of means have been tried out, set up and readopted.

Examples of responding tools

§       Creating and maintaining websites (2000, 2003, 2006);

§       Providing regular digital Info-updates as part of IFF’s update system accessible via the intranet part of the IFF websites.

§       Ongoing reporting on Academy progress to IFF Board and Member Organisations;

§       Producing an IFF Info CD (English/German) for online and offline information, introduced at IFF Assembly 2006, hard copies sent to each Member Organisation for further local distribution;

§       Providing articles for publication in Member Organisations’ national newsletters (several languages);

§       Academy Newsletter on Academy Website;

§       Presenting the IFF and Academy at national, regional and local face to face meetings of Member Organisations or their Boards using interactive  Academy tools like Role Play, Modes of Attention Process or Academy Project Workshops;

§       Locally introducing the IFF and its Academy at each Academy project activity (Academy Days, Workshops);

Personal experiences

• Setting up these tools was demanding in terms of technical, conceptual, practical, verbal, organisational and publicity skills including translations. Doing so we co-created and practised our own ongoing self and peer taught further education. We improved in understanding, reflecting and presenting the Feldenkrais Method in different cultures and countries and at home in our private practise.
• We could not really find out what in particular hinders Feldenkrais practitioners to click the reply button to respond to E-Mails, nor Feldenkrais Member Organisations to forward messages and articles provided, nor to spread the IFF Info CD produced for them to benefit their practitioners who through subscription are the sole funders of the IFF.
• We met wonderful colleagues participating in co-developing the Academy, especially Academy Coordinators and Academy project members.