Learn how to walk
with pleasure, poise, power and peace.
Grace of Sense – Bruce Fertman’s
Learning Community
This year in Grace of Sense our theme is Walking as a Way of Life. Knowing how to walk well can change you physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, creatively, and spiritually. But very few people understand the methodology behind walking well. Knowing how to walk pleasurably, powerfully, peacefully, with poise and purpose is walking well.
What does
Grace of Sense offer?
In a nutshell
Free Events
Free events are a perfect way to get to know Bruce, what he is like as a person, how he is with people, how he teaches, and what he teaches.
What’s striking about Bruce is not just what he teaches but how he teaches it. He has a way of making everything simple and accessible. At the same time, he touches people’s souls, speaking to who people are and to their possibilities.
Online Courses
Jump right in and get started with a 5-week online course, this year on Walking as a Way of Life. You not only get to take live online classes with Bruce, you get great class notes every week, and you get all the recordings from the course for an entire year.
If you want to study with Bruce but cannot make it to one of his Northern New Mexico Summer Gatherings this year, this is a great option.
Wokrshops
There are other ways to study with Bruce too. Invite him to teach at your place. He loves teaching weekend workshops. It’s a great way to work with Bruce in person and to share his work with your community. Bruce offers workshops in Walking as a Way of Life, in the Alexander Technique – Introductory and Post Graduate, and in Grace of Sense.
The great advantage to working with Bruce in person is that you get to experience his touch, how he works with his hands, which he has done for 60 years.
Retreats
Walk along this path with Bruce at one of his Northern New Mexico Summer Gatherings. A summer gathering is more than a workshop, more than a course, more than a retreat. It is a journey into another world, a world made of movement, touch, nature, and art. A world inspired by the raw beauty that is northern New Mexico.
In his gatherings you not only learn his work, you are welcomed into his home, you get to experience his world. These gatherings are nothing short of transformative.
1-on-1 Coaching
Bruce has selected talented teachers who have studied with him for years and have a deep understanding of his work, to help you if and when you feel you could benefit from some individual coaching.
These teachers have particular areas of expertise. They are available online and in person. Click the button below for more information about who they are and how they can help you.
Books
Bruce’s books explore the intricate braiding between body and being, between movement and meaning, and between sensory life and spiritual life. His writing is simple, clear, deep, and moving. You can hear him speaking to you ∼ softly, kindly, honestly. Anyone who has a body and wants to know, physically, how to live comfortably and peacefully will learn much from Bruce’s books.
Walking Well: A New Approach to Experiencing Comfort and Vitality in Every Step, is Bruce’s current book, co-authored with Michael Gelb. It is due out in September 2024.
Community Blog
“Bruce’s writing is full of emotion – love, peace, joy, sadness, curiosity, but quite remarkably, he manages to express this emotion deeply, beautifully and without sentimentality. His stories draw us into his classes, and then almost without realizing it, we are learning alongside his students.” – Karen Evans, Alexander Teacher, UK
Now, our entire Grace of Sense Faculty will be contributing as well. Collectively, Grace of Sense is a true center for embodied wisdom.
Upcoming events
in-person and online.
Online Classes
*Classes this spring will be suspended so that Bruce can give his time to the publication of his upcoming book, Walking Well, the renovation of the Walking Way Guest House and to the Summer and Fall Walking Way Gatherings in Northern, New Mexico. Write to Bruce at bruce@graceofsense.com for more information.
Retreats & Workshops
June 14, 2024 | New Mexico 9-Day Retreat
Aug 23, 2024 | New Mexico 9-Day Retreat
Sept 20, 2024 | New Mexico 9-Day Retreat
Oct 18, 2024 | New Mexico 9-Day Retreat
What’s class like?
Sneak Preview
Do you remember?
In this short excerpt of last year’s walking class Bruce talks about how at some point in life we start disliking parts of our body and how it effects our coordination and the way we feel.
When you speak, I feel it.
“Bruces classes are an amazing package of joyfulness, childishness, wisdom and beautiful images that speak directly to my body, mind and heart. When he speaks, it’s easy to feel and follow.” – Karin Hall
Physically, Mentally, Senually transformational
“It’s so beautiful how the poetry of images Bruce uses for teaching are physically, mentally, sensually transformational.” – Elizabeth Garren
Being with Bruce.
Student Voices
Here are ways to encounter Life’s blessèd unexpectednesses. And be invited to experience the familiar in different ways. Finding a certain newness – and surprise – just where we are.
”Grace of sense is a real treat for anyone wanting to connect the subtle with the substantial. Bruce has a way of playfully connecting poetry to movement and physiology. And to create lasting results, through creating awareness about how one conducts oneself through everyday life”.
Bruce’s imaginative use of visual metaphor linked to movement lit up my sensory experience in new ways and landed this mysterious integration solidly into my practice of the Alexander Technique.
A sense of grace permeates Bruce’s teaching. His clear, sure, soft verbal touch guides with curiosity and rich imagination, encouraging ease of movement and exploration in ever deepening growth.
Bruce has a deeply thoughtful and unique way of organising his teaching and experience. He…keeps to a contemporary language that makes a complex range of material easily accessible and open to anyone, all the while inviting curiosity and a spirit of adventure to the age-old journey of life learning.
Bruce’s touch is like a butterfly settling down on the very turning point of your soul. And then you know, ‘That’s who I am, that is who I could be.’
In Bruce’s class you feel as if you are sitting by a deep, soft lake. His pace and patience, his quiet confidence, allows people to unfold and open layer by layer. The superfluous falls away, leaving only life’s inner vitality effortlessly expressing itself through you.
Grace of Sense has offered me a wonderful opportunity to perceive how I relate with myself and the world with an alertness I had not experienced before: To listen and to think with my entire body, not just my mind. Through Bruce’s gentle, deep and precise pedagogy, I’ve experienced a vast neutralization of judgement (right & wrong), when it comes to work with students or myself. Grace of Sense has made me be and act more gently with myself, physically, intellectually and emotionally.
Bruce’s vision
of a learning community.
Vision & Biography
Let’s study together.
An International
Community-School
Knowledge and nurturance both are necessary for us to grow, to mature. Knowledge alone is not enough for us, certainly not enough for our body. Nurturance is what makes us, makes our body feel safe and comfortable and free. This is why touch is so much a part of my teaching and has been for 60 years. Touch that is once, nurturing and educative.
But even knowledge and nurturance are not enough. We need each other. Existence is co-existence. Collectively, we know a lot more than we do individually. Collectively, we are much older and wiser. Collectively, we can support one another. We cannot do everything by ourselves.
There’s a time to walk in solitude and there’s a time to walk side by side with others. Solitude and fellowship are like two wheels of one bicycle. Together, they make it easier for us to remain in balance, easier for us to move forward through our lives.
Being part of a learning community, a caring community, that’s a big part of my vision as an educator. It’s not just about what I teach and how I teach it but about creating an environment truly conducive to growing and maturing into who we are and who we are meant to be.
About
Bruce Fertman
A Short Biography
Bruce brings 60 years of study as a movement artist and educator to his work having trained in gymnastics, modern dance, ballet, contact improvisation, the Alexander Technique, Tai Chi Chu’an, Aikido, Chanoyu, (Japanese Tea Ceremony), Argentine Tango, and Kyudo (Zen Archery).
He founded the Alexander Alliance in 1982 in Philadelphia, eventually beginning sister schools in Germany, Switzerland, England, Japan, and Korea. In 2019, Bruce began his online community/school, Grace of Sense. Author of Teaching by Hand, Learning by Heart, and of The Way In ~ The Way Out – Rendering of the Tao Te Ching, Bruce is currently co-authoring a book with Michael Gelb for New World Library entitled, Walking Well – A New Approach for Experiencing Comfort and Vitality in Every Step. In the Summer of 2024, Bruce will launch his new program, the WalkingWay, dedicated to learning how to live a physically contemplative and lively life.