Overview

The Feldenkrais Method teaches - through movement - how we can improve our daily lives. Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn on our own. The self-learning leads to full, dynamic living.

History

The Feldenkrais Method was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais (1904 - 1984). Born in Poland and spending several years in Palestine, Feldenkrais settled in Paris in his mid twenties.

After suffering crippling knee injuries, Feldenkrais used his own body as his laboratory and merged his acquired knowledge with his deep curiosity about biology, perinatal development, cybernetics, linguistics, and systems theory. He taught himself to walk again and in the process developed an extraordinary system for accessing the power of the central nervous system to improve human functioning.

Feldenkrais studied intensively in psychology, neurophysiology, and other health-related disciplines, and in 1949 he returned to Israel where he continued to integrate and refine his ideas into the system known as the Feldenkrais Method.

Benefits

The Method enables people to include in their functioning, movements and parts of the body unconsidered, forgotten or excluded from their habitual actions or images of actions. By allowing a person to learn how their whole body co-operates in any movements, it assists people to live their lives more fully, efficiently and comfortably.

Procedure

The Feldenkrais Method is expressed in two parallel forms - AWARENESS THROUGH MOVEMENT (group classes) and FUNCTIONAL INTEGRATION (private lessons).

Awareness Through Movement lessons consists of verbally directed movement sequences presented primarily to groups where the students engage in precisely structured movement explorations that involve thinking, sensing, moving and imagining. Many are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities (reaching, standing, lying to sitting, looking behind yourself, etc). 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 combined in the Feldenkrais Method that vary, for all levels of movement ability, from simple in structure and physical demand to more difficult lessons.

Functional Integration is a hands-on form of tactile, kinaesthetic communication. The practitioner communicates how your can organize your body and, through gentle touching and movement, conveys the experience of comfort, pleasure and ease of movement while you learn how to reorganize your body and behaviour in new and more expanded functional motor patterns.

In Functional Integration the practitioner/teacher develops a lesson for you, custom-tailored to your unique configuration at that particular moment, relating to a desire, intention or need you have. Through rapport and respect for your abilities, qualities and integrity, the practitioner/teacher creates an environment in which you can learn comfortably. The learning process is carried out without the use of any invasive or forceful procedure.

Source of information: Feldenkrais Guild of North America