A Vignette in the Spirit of Thomas Hanna
for those who recognize his voice in writing
and a point of interest to those who don’t …
The Wave 1 training was held in a large, carpeted lounge room on the
campus of Dominican College, in San Rafael, California. The walls of
the room were lined on three sides with lounge chairs. A low, padded
“Feldenkrais” table stood at the center, a low, four-legged stool, next
to it. The stool had a circular cushion on it that always made the sound of escaping gas as one sat down on it. That was Dr. Hanna’s stool.
left of the rolling blackboard, Dr. Hanna (everyone else called him,
Tom) had placed a stand from which dangled, suspended by a short chain, a
human skeleton, who, he told us, was named, Darwin.
It happened
that on the fourth of July, that summer, as we filed into the room for
the beginning of the days training, we noticed something different about
Darwin. There, at the far end of the room, next to the rolling
blackboard, Darwin wore about his shoulders, an American flag.
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Thomas Hanna was the first developer of the form of clinical somatic education known as, Hanna Somatic Education — and, a total rascal. He was known for once having had dinner guests wait for dinner until midnight, while he played the guitar and sang — only for the chili con carne to be too hot to eat.
More written about Thomas Hanna in, A Paean to Thomas Hanna
by the same author.