About Alex
Alex is a somatic practitioner, nature connection mentor, community-builder, social change-maker, facilitator, visionary, song-keeper, and writer.
She is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner and holds a Master of Music in Bassoon Performance from Ball State University (2017) and a Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance from Arizona State University (2015). In 2019 she completed her four-year Feldenkrais Professional Training Program in New York City with David Zemach-Bersin. She developed her love of beauty, learning, and critical thinking from her 14 years at Cranbrook Schools, where she graduated in 2011.
Alex currently teaches forest school with Firefly Forest School and Nature Learning Community. She spent five weeks in the summer of 2020 in the Rising Earth Immersion at The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain in Chapel Hill, NC, studying arts activism, community-living, consensus process, collective liberation, decolonization, and social permaculture. She leads a backpacking trip for high-school sophomores each March in the Smokey Mountains with Cranbrook Schools’s Wilderness Expedition. During her two years in Bloomington, IN, she taught forest school at The Wild Nature Project and lived at Green Acres Permaculture Village.
Alex is skilled in fermenting, cooking, wildcrafting, fire-starting/bow-drill, resourcefulness and thrift, somatic self-care, fertility/menstrual cycle tracking, and wilderness first aid. She feels most at home barefoot in the forest, is a lifelong learner and voracious reader, and loves to sing, dance, and move. Alex grew up on occupied Anishinaabe, Potawatomi, Mississauga, and Peoria land, also known as Bloomfield, Michigan.
She is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® Practitioner and holds a Master of Music in Bassoon Performance from Ball State University (2017) and a Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance from Arizona State University (2015). In 2019 she completed her four-year Feldenkrais Professional Training Program in New York City with David Zemach-Bersin. She developed her love of beauty, learning, and critical thinking from her 14 years at Cranbrook Schools, where she graduated in 2011.
Alex currently teaches forest school with Firefly Forest School and Nature Learning Community. She spent five weeks in the summer of 2020 in the Rising Earth Immersion at The Eco-Institute at Pickards Mountain in Chapel Hill, NC, studying arts activism, community-living, consensus process, collective liberation, decolonization, and social permaculture. She leads a backpacking trip for high-school sophomores each March in the Smokey Mountains with Cranbrook Schools’s Wilderness Expedition. During her two years in Bloomington, IN, she taught forest school at The Wild Nature Project and lived at Green Acres Permaculture Village.
Alex is skilled in fermenting, cooking, wildcrafting, fire-starting/bow-drill, resourcefulness and thrift, somatic self-care, fertility/menstrual cycle tracking, and wilderness first aid. She feels most at home barefoot in the forest, is a lifelong learner and voracious reader, and loves to sing, dance, and move. Alex grew up on occupied Anishinaabe, Potawatomi, Mississauga, and Peoria land, also known as Bloomfield, Michigan.
My Feldenkrais Story
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Growing up as a classical musician, I was trained to be constantly looking for ways to improve. An academically bright student, I put a lot of pressure on myself at school. No matter what I accomplished, I never felt good enough. While studying bassoon in college, I stumbled upon Feldenkrais®, and had the experience for the first time that I was okay exactly as I was. I realized that with all the excess effort I was exerting and the pressure I was putting on myself, I was actually getting in my own way. I started to be less stressed about school, developed a strong sense of self, and my interpersonal relationships began to improve.
I began studying Feldenkrais in 2013, first at Bay View Music Festival, then at Arizona State University, including a graduate seminar on transformational leadership and embodied activism. My passion with Feldenkrais is how the movement lessons allow us to reexamine our patterns and habits and find new ways of thinking, feeling, and acting. When we are able to be present, in our bodies, and sensing ourselves in new ways, we are able to profoundly change the way we relate to ourselves, each other, and the world around us. "Alex has such an intelligent and gentle manner about her that it was with full confidence that I put myself in her hands. She helped ease my movement and made me aware of the body’s alignment and how to adjust it. She and Feldenkrais really made a difference." |
"When touching I seek nothing from the person I touch; I only feel what the touched person needs... whether [s]he knows it or not, and what I can do at that moment to make the person feel better." |
Workshops & Publications
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Feldenkrais Training
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Musical Background
Alex studied Bassoon Performance at Ball State University (BSU) with Dr. Keith Sweger, earning a Master of Music in 2017. In addition to being a member of the the BSU Graduate Woodwind Quintet, Muncie Symphony Orchestra, Ball State Symphony Orchestra, Ball State Wind Ensemble, and East Central Indiana Chamber Orchestra, she has played in opera and ballet orchestras for The Marriage of Figaro, La Périchole, Die Fledermaus, The Nutcracker, and Falstaff. As a Graduate Assistant for the bassoon studio, she coached chamber groups, helped teach bassoon techniques class to music education students, and taught private lessons. She studied contrabassoon throughout graduate school and has played contrabassoon in orchestras and wind ensembles since high school.
Alex pursued undergraduate studies as a National Merit Scholar and Barrett Honors College student at Arizona State University with Dr. Albie Micklich, graduating cum laude in 2015 with a Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance and minor in German. During undergraduate, she spent two summers studying chamber music at Bay View Music Festival with Jill Marderness. While in Phoenix, she also played with Arizona Pro Arte Ensemble, North Valley Symphony Orchestra, San Tan Orchestra, and Scottsdale Arts Orchestra.
Alex grew up in metro Detroit, attending Cranbrook Schools, studying with principal bassoonist Bob Williams, and playing with the Detroit Symphony's Civic Orchestra.
Alex pursued undergraduate studies as a National Merit Scholar and Barrett Honors College student at Arizona State University with Dr. Albie Micklich, graduating cum laude in 2015 with a Bachelor of Music in Bassoon Performance and minor in German. During undergraduate, she spent two summers studying chamber music at Bay View Music Festival with Jill Marderness. While in Phoenix, she also played with Arizona Pro Arte Ensemble, North Valley Symphony Orchestra, San Tan Orchestra, and Scottsdale Arts Orchestra.
Alex grew up in metro Detroit, attending Cranbrook Schools, studying with principal bassoonist Bob Williams, and playing with the Detroit Symphony's Civic Orchestra.
