Our final instalment of discussing Elsa Gindler's work was an experiential session on breathing. What did others in Gindler's time have to say about breathing, and what do we know about Gindler's take on this important element of her work? RECORDING from June https:
16 Aug 2025
It's my pleasure to share with you today's interview with Dr. Magdalena (Lena) Kraler, author of Yoga Breath: Prāṇa and Prāṇāyāma in Early Modern Yoga. The book discusses the yogic breathing practices (prāṇāyāma) between 1850 and 1945, and includes an analysis of the influence of Euro-American
16 Aug 2025
As part of The Work, I like to raise my head from the history books once in a while and talk to contemporary artists of all kinds about their personal approach to craft and method. My guest this week: Rami Schandall, an artist who works in a wide range of
06 May 2025
One of the stories you may hear about Elsa Gindler is that she didn't write much, and/or that her writings were all destroyed in a fire at the end of the Second World War. This is not true. She wrote a lot, she got her students to
25 Apr 2025
Have you ever heard of Leo Kofler? Here's my podcast on Kofler, and some of the He was an Austrian-born singing teacher (1837-1908), who spent most of his career in the United States. His ideas were later taken up in Germany. You may hear the story that he
24 Apr 2025
Kate Gies's wonderful (and devastating) memoir, It Must Be Beautiful To Be Finished shows that the mainstream medical profession has a lot to answer for when it comes to deciding which bodies are "attractive," which ones need "fixing," and how all that should take
24 Apr 2025
The work, life and legacy of Weimar movement teacher Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) will form the uniting thread for our conversations in Spring 2025. To head up this section, I deliberately chose a grainy picture of Gindler, reproduced many times and appearing as part of someone else's story. To
26 Mar 2025
In 2024 and early 2025 we worked our way through a silent film from 1925: Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit created at the famous Ufa studios in Berlin. This documentary gives a cross-section of German physical culture in the mid-twenties – from outdoor living, to dance, to sport to that fascinating
24 Mar 2025
This week, I scaled technology-mountain and published my first podcast: @Work. It's the here-and-now version of my exploration of craft and method, where I invite artists of all kinds to reflect on their practice. Technically it's, well, a Work in progress, but the guest makes up
20 Sep 2024
The Work: Straight Talk on Craft and Method launched in the fall of 2023 with a series of three talks called Breathing in History. Of course, there's much more to say, and the theme will come back, but here's a list of the talks you can
19 Mar 2024