Sheri Cohen
Sheri’s yoga classes are organized around select themes that guide participants to reflect on how their physical practice intersects with daily life. Her precise alignment instructions support ease and self-awareness while moving. “I prefer to think of the yoga asana as movements, rather than postures, so we experience them as constantly changing landscapes for the journey of our attention, rather than as destinations. This may imply to some that my classes are vinyasa; or flow, style, which is not the case. I do include flow sequences most days, but my classes also include stillness. In stillness, we have the time to develop awareness and tune into subtler sensations and the movements of the breath.”
Sheri is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Teacher since 2000, and began teaching hatha yoga in 2001. An award-winning choreographer and performer, she has been teaching movement arts to diverse students since 1992. To see more information about Sheri’s Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement classes, please click here (link to class descriptions ATM class). For more information on Awareness Through Movement and the Feldenkrais Method, please contact Sheri at SheriCohenMovement@gmail.com, or go to www.SheriCohenMovement.com
Sheri’s Yoga Quiz…
How did you 1st find Yoga? Or What 1st brought you to Yoga?
I was a movement junkie when I was younger, especially for anything that would fall in the category of “somatics”. I tried everything I could find for a while. The first few times I tried yoga I HATED it — until I stumbled into class with Denise Benitez in 1994. She directed my attention like a Feldenkrais teacher, taught me the importance of strength to balance my flexibility, connected the silly shapes we made in the studio to my life outside, and helped me discover my deeper self-abiding in every pose. I love to feel my aliveness by sensing my body in stillness and in movement. I love the enormous fabric of yoga poses that we weave ourselves through in our practices, and how each one is like a different flavor in a meal. I like the whole meal. (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)
What is your favorite Yoga book?
There’s a great new collection of writing by Moshe Feldenkrais out (not about yoga, but about his own method), called Embodied Wisdom. I just finished, The Heart of the Yogi, by Doug Keller, which is a deep narrative of yoga philosophy. For getting into concepts, I love George Feuerstein’s Encyclopedia of Yoga. However, the one book I go back to over and over again is Judith Lasater’s Living Your Yoga. The title says it all.
What feeds your soul?
Movement, stillness, open-ended artistic expression, my family, ghee, kale, and my students.
What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
I spend waayyyy too much time reading the New Yorker. Also, I don’t work as much as I could, because I prefer to hang out and play with my kid.
Who or what most influences your teaching?
#1. My students #2. My practice #3. My teachers
What is on your Yoga playlist? Or What is on your all-time favorite playlist?
Actually, I have never preferred music accompanying my practice. I think I like music too much, because I find it distracting in class. I occasionally listen when practicing on my own, but it usually turns my yoga into dancing. On my all-time favorite playlist are friends and collaborators Dave Knott www.sonocern.org, Andrew Drury www.AndrewDrury.com, Stuart Dempster Stuart Dempster and MANY more.
What is your favorite quote?
“Movement is life!”
Moshe Feldenkrais
