Feldenkrais

The Feldenkrais Method® is for anyone who wants to reconnect with their natural abilities to move, think, sense and feel. Whether you want to be more comfortable sitting at your computer, playing with your children and grandchildren, or performing a favorite pastime.

Learning to move with less effort makes daily life easier. Because the Feldenkrais Method focuses on the relationship between movement and thought, increased mental sharpness and creativity accompany physical improvements. Both forms of the Feldenkrais Method access the sensori-motor system of the body or the feeling center. By recognizing the interdependence of sense, movement and emotion, these gentle lessons can help develop compassion for one’s self and improve your overall well being.

We improve our well being when we learn to more fully use ourselves. Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn on our own. This self awareness leads to more fully expressed, dynamic living.

Ordinarily, we learn just enough to function. For example, we learn to use our hands well enough to eat, our legs well enough to walk. Our abilities to function with a greater range of ease and skill, however, remain to be developed. The Feldenkrais Method teaches—through movement—how we can improve our capabilities to function in our daily lives. The Feldenkrais Method is expressed in two parallel forms: Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration®.

Awareness Through Movement Classes

Awareness Through Movement consists of verbally directed movement sequences presented primarily to groups. A lesson generally lasts from thirty to sixty minutes. Each lesson is usually organized around a particular function.

In Awareness Through Movement lessons, people engage in precisely structured movement explorations that involve thinking, sensing, moving, and imagining. Many are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities. Some are based on more abstract explorations of joint, muscle, and postural relationships. The lessons consist of comfortable, easy movements that gradually evolve into movements of greater range and complexity. There are hundreds of Awareness Through Movement lessons in order to address all levels of movement ability, from simple in structure and physical demand to more challenging lessons.

Awareness Through Movement lessons attempt to make one aware of his/her habitual neuromuscular patterns and inflexibilities and then expand options for new ways of moving while increasing sensitivity and improving efficiency and functional organization.

Functional Integration Lessons

Functional Integration is another form of the Feldenkrais Method. Just as Feldenkrais practitioners can guide people through movement sequences verbally in Awareness Through Movement, they also guide people through gentle, non-verbal movement sequences.

Functional Integration is usually performed with the student lying on a table designed specifically for the work. It can also be done with the student in sitting or standing positions. At times, various props are used in an effort to support the person’s body con-figuration or to facilitate certain movements.

Functional Integration is a hands-on form of tactile, kinesthetic communication. The Feldenkrais practitioner communicates to the student how he/she organizes his/her body and hints, through non-invasive touching and movement, how to move in more expanded functional motor patterns. Through rapport and respect for the student’s abilities, qualities, and integrity, the practitioner/teacher creates an environment in which the student can learn comfortably.

In Functional Integration, the practitioner/teacher develops a lesson for the student, customized to the unique configuration of that particular person, at that particular moment. The practitioner/teacher’s intention is instructive and communicative.

By experiencing the details of how one performs any action, the student has the opportunity to learn how to:
· attend to his/her whole self
· improve posture and breathing
· ease pain and stiffness
· mobilize his/her intentions into energy efficient actions
· learn
· overcome limitations by dissolving habitual patterns of action
· enhance the quality of life

Keeping the hips still
Making the sacrum stiff
Dangerous
The heart suffocates
– the "I Ching"

® The Feldenkrais Method, Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration are all registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA