Overview over all activities of the ETAB in 2023-July 2024
5th August 2024
The ETAB annual report can be downloaded here.
In the past year, between September 2023 and June 2024, the EuroTAB was involved into closing up issues that had started in the year before, working on new issues and also in preparing a significant turnover of its members which actually happened in June.
Following the purpose of building more connection between ETC and EuroTAB it was suggested that Nicola Zollinger, the Swiss representative at the ETC who joined the Board of Directors, would be a liaison between the two groups.
Nicola actually took part in the last zoom meetings of the EuroTAB with the purpose of illustrating the main items upon which the ETC is currently working. In particular he highlighted the following main points:
- the need of differentiating the guidelines according to the particular situation of each country
- a committee should be created for TAG changes
- the work of members of the ETC and EuroTAB should be remunerated;
- the need of a standard committee
- ATM only: which position should the ETC take.
The topic of ATM-only trainings covered a significant part of the meetings (including the one in presence in Barcelona). The requested start of an ATM-only pilot program in Italy had to be discussed in detail since an organiser has handed in a training application. It was decided that another pilot program was not needed: those which already started in the USA and Germany presented enough information about starting and running such trainings. It was up to the Italian Guild to approve or not such a Training Program. And in case it was approved the EuroTAB would have been involved in setting up guidelines.
The documentations about NATAB’s pilot programs and DTAB’s ATM-only program have been studied at length; pros and cons were spotted. On a pedagogical level some questions arose and were discussed such as
- specific criteria to measure both the quality of the training and the skills or the ability of the trainees,
- individual ATM or verbal FI: how do they differ from an individualised ATM shaped on a specific person
The group agreed on the necessity to set serious standards before the beginning of any ATM-only Training Program. Such standards would include a protocol of ATM skills and a sort of “replacement” of FI skills. But whether ATM-only programs will happen in future has to be decided by each Guild.
The TAG review process continued from previous years, though it was observed that the changing already appear obsolete. A future further development could be a differentiation between guidelines for trainings, trainees, organisers and countries.
Since April our new website is online. It has been a long process starting in 2021 that turned out even more complex than expected in order to set up a dynamic platform for the European and Israeli Feldenkrais community. Project Manager and ETAB chair Ohad Nachmani and ETC/ ETAB Office Manager Julia Kirchner have collaborated with the Israeli website company Simply Smart and the joint working group (Julia Ahamer from the ETC and Scott Clark from ETAB) to implement this big project.
The new website contains searchable lists of Professional Training Programmes, Advanced Trainings, Trainers and Trainer Candidates (worldwide) and Assistant Trainers (within the ETC jurisdiction). You can also find information about the international structure of the Feldenkrais world, about the ETC, its representatives, Guilds and mission as well as about ETAB and its members and mission. Applicants find useful material for personal applications to become Assistants or Trainers and can benefit from the library of Case Studies, whereas Training Organisers can read about how to set up a Feldenkrais Professional Training Programme and what the European & Israeli Guidelines are to run such a training. An important part of the new website is the News section. It is worth to have a look regularly since it contains relevant information you might not want to miss.
Currently, our Israeli website company and a CRM team are working on the online forms for personal registration (before submitting applications to be Assistant Trainer or Trainer), Training Applications and Training compliance reports. Parts of this information will be linked to a new database that we will build up to store all the relevant data about Training Programmes, graduates and Trainers.
Last year the TAB dealt with a number of Assistant Trainer applications which in some cases were considered insufficient or not yet ready for an accreditation at that moment. This led to revisit the very purpose why practitioners should apply for AT and the need to review the guidelines for such applications.
The role of an AT in Training Programs was discussed. Assuming that ATs are supposed to be working in the training, some pillars were set on how an application should look like and what it should reflect.
A change in the minimum number of hours of work in a training could possibly be a strategy to have more AT really involved in trainings and cut off those applications coming from practitioner who see the status of an AT as a sheer progression in the career.
Following such considerations, the TAB questioned itself on how to raise the level of writing case studies and describing ATM work in AT applications. A new possible procedure in the AT application including a preliminary interview was suggested.
With the purpose of facilitating the writing of AT applications the TAB prepared a guide for writing case studies.
The issue of reapplication also needed to be revisited to avoid situations where candidates would reapply too fast with no real and effective improvement. It was decided that a minimum timeframe before sending additional material would be given in the future.
As to Training Applications the TAB faced some innovative formats which have been scrupulously analysed and checked, in particular in the number of online days. In cases that caused doubts in terms of online days the TAB personally contacted the organiser and made sure that no trainee would exceed the online days fixed by the latest TAGs proposal, which means that no trainee would become a certified Practitioner with more than 30% of online training days in year 1 and 2 and 25% in year 3 and 4.
A considerable time was also used to discuss the role of Feldenkrais Practitioners as professionals.
The little number of Practitioners who make a living out of Feldenkrais, compared to the much larger number of graduated, calls for a better understanding of what is missing after the training. In fact, ongoing mentorship is currently missing, no structure is there for a development after graduation as well as continuity. This important topic needs further reflection.
Some European countries, like Italy, are in the process of an acknowledgment of Feldenkrais Practitioners as fully fledged professionals.
Starting from the live meeting in Barcelona in February 2024, the TAB discussed the future of the group in regard of two leading TAB members finishing off their second mandate, Ohad Nachmani and Simone Rohloff. Valeria Bedon and Kristin Fredricksson accepted to go for the second mandate but the group still remains understaffed.
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Accreditations 2023
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Accreditations 01.-07.2024 |
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Assistant Trainers Nili Ariely (Israel)
Trainer Candidates Yvo Mentens (France)
Trainers Eitan Sarig (Israel) Monika Praxmarer (Germany)
New FPTPs Bar 8 (Israel) Jerusalem 9 (Israel) Saint Petersbourg 1 (Russia) Paris International 1 (France) Madrid 6 (Spain) Barcelona International 4 (Spain) Sussex 13 (UK) Stockholm International (Sweden) Wien 3 (Austria) Euskadi 1 (Spain, basque country) Lisbon 3 (Portugal)
Accredited through AIIMF: Roma 9 (Italy)
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Assistant Trainers Patrizia Leonet (Italy) Avi Bino (Israel) Lionel González (France)
Trainer Candidates Susanne Braun (Switzerland) Sheri Cohen (USA)
Trainers /
New FPTPs Prague 3 (Czech Republic) Prague International 1 (Czech Rep) Cantal 5 (France) IFELD 9 (France) Biel 5 (Switzerland) London 5 (UK) Wien International 2025 (Austria) Moscow 3 (Russia) Zurich City 3
Accredited through AIIMF: Strigara 6 (Italy) Palermo 5 (Italy)
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