Deborah Fortston, Instructor

Certifications

Gods Playing In The Clouds Chi Gung - Basic Movements
Energy Gates Chi Gung - Level 1

Bio

Thread it through” is a direction Deborah Fortson was given by BTC founder Bill Ryan some years back. She has been studying tai chi and chi gung since 1992, give or take a few breaks, and is starting up teaching this session (Gods chi gung). Ryan was talking about letting energy trickle down from lower back through backs of the knees to feet. Deborah has used the threading idea to find the path through sticky life situations as well. “The image helped me sense my way along the pathway, the way water finds a way,” she says. “Water subtly changes direction all the time but it still keeps its own nature.”

Deborah came naturally to Chinese movement arts from having trained in movement and acting for the theater. She taught tumbling, alignment, and mask work at Boston University. Currently she is a playwright and the director of Tempest Productions in Brookline, a nonprofit theater company.

In teaching, whether theater or movement arts, she is happy to see the 'aha' feeling when students make a connection. Her approach? “I try to go from where people are and relate what we're doing in class to daily life.” Deborah has been apprenticing over the past year and a half with director Dan Kleiman and completed the 2007 Gods teacher training with Bruce Frantzis.

She expects in her BTC teaching to be passing along some of the techniques and practices that have taught her to “release and change my own holding patterns.“ She came to tai chi originally with back pain, a knee injury, and a habit of “going too fast.” Dragon & Tiger especially gave her movements that are quiet and internally focussed. She became able to enjoy movement again, she says. Tai chi and chi gung are something she loved right away. “My body felt like it was smiling when I finished a chi gung set,” she says of how she got hooked on the feeling of chi flowing. “When I do my standing practice, it feels like coming home.”