Dear European (Israeli) Feldenkrais Practitioner,

We often hear questions about what kinds of expectations the EuroTAB has when we read an assistant trainer application. We recently spent a day with our educational consultant, Pieter Mostert, with the goal of refining our description of these expectations to the point where they could be listed in a written form.

Although this may seem to you as though it should be a straightforward process, it turned out not to be self-evident what we should present to the community. This was not the first time a project of this sort had been discussed. In the past, we had had concerns that publishing such a list would lead to a situation where some applicants would use it in essence as a checklist. We did not want the list to be used as a tool which would have tended to limit, rather than enhance or support, the development of the applicant.

The challenge, then, was to formulate each element of the list in such a way that it could lead to further thinking and reflection. To a sort of self-assessment process and hopefully to some questions which were not trivial to answer. Our intention in presenting this list is not only to make our certification process more transparent, but also to offer a tool which begins to ask the question: "What does it mean to develop as a practitioner in the direction of becoming an educator of Feldenkrais practitioners?"

So, where some elements of this list may not yet be clear to you, we invite you to enter into conversations with peers and also with those more experienced than yourself in training situations (experienced assistants and trainers) in finding your own answers. You can be designing new learning situations for yourself--an appropriate stepping stone to taking on the role of assistant trainer, where you will be assisting others in finding their own best learning pathways.