The Feldenkrais Method® is for anyone who wants to reconnect with their natural abilities to move, think and feel. Whether you want to be more comfortable sitting at your computer, playing with your children and grandchildren, or performing a favorite pastime, these gentle lessons can improve your overall well being.
"..make the impossible possible,
the possible easy,
and the easy elegant."
-Moshe Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method is a form of somatic education that uses gentle movement and directed attention to improve movement and enhance human functioning. Through this Method, you can increase your ease and range of motion, improve your flexibility and coordination, and rediscover your innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement. These improvements will often generalize to enhance functioning in other aspects of your life.
The Feldenkrais Method teaches -- through movement -- how we can improve our capabilities to function in our daily lives.
The Feldenkrais Method can be taught throught 2 approaches - ATM's (small group settings) or FI (individual, customized lessons). Awareness Through Movement (ATM) 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 contained in the Feldenkrais Method that vary, for all levels of movement ability, from simple in structure and physical demand to more difficult, physically challenging lessons.
The other approach of the Feldenkrais Method is called Functional Integration. Just as Feldenkrais practitioners can guide people through movement sequences verbally in Awareness Through Movement, they also guide people through movement with gentle, non-invasive touching in Functional Integration. 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 gentle touching and movement, how to move in more expanded functional motor patterns. In Functional Integration, the practitioner/teacher develops a lesson for the student, custom-tailored to the unique configuration of that particular person, at that particular moment. The lesson 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 configuration or to facilitate certain movements. The practitioner conveys the experience of comfort, pleasure, and ease of movement while the student learns how to reorganize his/her body and behavior in new and more effective manners.
