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At first glance, this work can look a lot like garden-variety
exercising. In a Feldenkrais class, I guide students
through slow sequences of gentle movements, often done
lying
on the floor or maybe rolling around much as a baby
does.
What you can’t see is how the repetition of seemingly
simple, nonhabitual movements is
actually working to radically reeducate your nervous
and muscular systems, by waking up your brain to new
possibilities.
There are two complementary ways to work with the Feldenkrais
Method. Awareness Through Movement®
(ATM) is the verbally-guided, group lesson form. Functional
Integration® (FI) is a hands-on individualized
session. In both, you learn to be aware of what you’re
doing as you’re doing it. This means noticing
nonjudgmentally where you’re carrying needless
tension and exploring alternate ways to move with efficiency
and ease.
Moshe Feldenkrais, the genius
who invented this system of somatic education, used
to tell those of us he trained that the flexibility
he cared about was first in our minds and only later
in our bodies. Since we were learning how to be our
own teachers, he called himself the last teacher we
would ever need.
The Feldenkrais Method is a passport to independence.
One of my students calls it a “get out of jail
free” card. Worth noting: Feldenkrais practitioners
(some 3,000 trained worldwide since 1969) think of the
people we work with as students, not patients. This
is meant to be an educational modality, not a medical
treatment. Paradoxically, when you focus on learning,
healing seems to happen on its own.
Awareness Through Movement and Functional
Integration are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais
Guild of North America.
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