It is a great privilege as a Feldenkrais practitioner
to get to witness my students’ growth. I’m
always amazed at their courage and heartened by their
creativity with each new reminder that no limitation
is set in stone. This I can’t take credit for,
although I put them on the path. Feldenkrais Method
is about self-help, not what I think students should
be learning but what their bodies come to recognize
as a natural way to be. My students tell me that this
work makes the possible practical. A few stories:
Here is a student who cut strings of
dependency to begin anew in North Africa:
“It was the first time in 20 years that I was
able to consider leaving the Boston area and my various
trusted practitioners. For a very long time I was
completely frozen; I had body parts that didn’t
move either at all or as they should. Olivia worked
on reintegrating my brain with each part of my body
and reconnecting me into an integral whole. Eventually
it was easier and easier to move about. I felt that
inside my body was not such a bad place to be.”
This musician took on the stress syndrome
that often plagues performers:
“Two months shy of my Master’s recital,
I was one tightly wrapped ball of tension. I couldn’t
sing without this incredible force closing down my
larynx — far from an ideal situation when I
was singing seven hours a day. In desperation, I signed
up for Functional Integration with Olivia. I learned
to recognize my patterns of tension, especially in
the jaw, throat, neck, shoulder region, and find ways
to create space there. Most importantly, I learned
to expand my mind to accept this heightened awareness
and use it to move in ways that are kinder to myself.
I feel like I know myself better and what’s
more, I like who I am.”
Awareness Through Movement gave this
student a time-effective bag of tricks:
“I rarely wake up with stiffness any more but
if I do, I can work it out before I get up by rolling
around in bed. That’s a far cry from thinking
I have to go to a gym and lift weights, and it’s
pleasurable instead of a chore.”
Elizabeth Natenshon I can name because
she is already famous in the Feldenkrais archives
as the baby who worked with Moshe Feldenkrais to learn
to move at all, as well as with his early students
who pioneered the Method:
“I was born with an underdeveloped cerebellum
so I was a shell of a person, with no involuntary
movement. My parents were told to put me in an institution
and be done with it, that at best I’d always
be profoundly retarded. When they found Moshe he knew
the potential was there. He believed that the brain
can create new pathways, so that other parts can compensate
for an underdeveloped area. Not long afterwards I
started to creep. Because I didn’t originally
move myself, all my movements are Feldenkraisian.
If I get stressed, I sometimes need a reminder. Last
time I got off Olivia’s Functional Integration
table, I felt, “Wow, I got my body back.”
The Feldenkrais experience has played out in my life
as: There’s always a way. I really want my experience
to be someone else’s, for people to know they
don’t have to settle for no hope.”
