What is the Feldenkrais Method?

The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education® is a remarkable learning experience that can lead to a change in your actions, a change in how you think, and a huge change in how you feel. Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc., (1904-1984)- a physicist, engineer, martial artist, and educator developed the Method by studying the direct relationship between bodily movement and the ways we think, feel, learn, and act in the world. We improve our well being when we learn to fully use ourselves. The Method is a gentle, respectful way for people to learn -through movement- how to function in a more efficient and less painful way. It is taught by two complementary modalities.

Awareness Through Movement® lessons are generally in a class setting. Students explore movement sequences according to the verbal directions of the teacher/practitioner. As a student, you discover how you do the movements and notice the quality of changes in your body, your self. You learn to relax and to abandon habitual patterns. Through the subtle ATM movements, you learn to expand options for new ways of moving while increasing sensitivity and improving sensitivity.

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
  • Eliminate unnecessary energy expenditure
  • Mobilize his/her intentions into actions
  • Learn

Functional Integration--lessons are more individualized learning experiences between the teacher and the student. This modality involves a non-invasive hands-on approach. Through this gentle touching, the student gets information that can help him/her perceive what he is doing that is causing him discomfort or is interfering with what he wants to be doing.

As humans we learn how to move by the time we are two years old. After that, we learn to increase our skill in an activity, but our general strategies have already been learned. As we age, experience an accident or trauma, overuse parts of our self, or develop a disease, the strategies that we learned as children no longer work for us. We must develop new strategies and new options for function. The Feldenkrais Method® gives us that opportunity, to move like children, to learn to move with comfort and pleasure again.

Benefits of the Feldenkrais Method® include:

  • Increased flexibility and agility
  • Improved posture, coordination, and balance
  • Ease of chronic pain
  • Reduction of emotional and physical stress
  • The ability to overcome and avoid injuries
  • Refinement of skills for atheletes,musicians and dancers
  • Improved energy efficiency and breathing
  • Improved ability to learn
  • Increased self-confidence and quality of life