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What is the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education?

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The Feldenkrais Method is a form of somatic education that uses gentle movement and directed attention to improve
movement and enhance human functioning. With this Method, you can increase your range of motion, improve your
flexibility and coordination, and rediscover your innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement.

By expanding the self-image through movement sequences, the Method enables you to include more of yourself in
your movements. Students become aware of their habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities, and learn to move
in new ways.

What does the Feldenkrais Method® do?

The Feldenkrais Method uses movement as a resource for learning how to achieve a pain free existence, better
musical, artistic and athletic performance and recovery from trauma and neurological impairments.

It was developed by physicist and judo master Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. Through research and through the process of
recovering from his own debilitating injuries, he found a way to utilize principles of human movement, development
and learning to create new, more efficient patterns of self-use.

Who Benefits from the Feldenkrais Method®?

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Everyone can benefit from the Method. The Feldenkrais Method helps those experiencing chronic or acute pain of the
back, neck, shoulders, hips, legs, or knees, as well as healthy individuals who wish to enhance their movement
abilities. The Method has been very helpful in dealing with central nervous system conditions such as multiple
sclerosis, cerebral palsy, and stroke. Musicians, actors, and artists can extend their abilities and enhance their
creativity. Seniors enjoy using it to retain or regain their ability to move without strain or discomfort.

After experiencing Feldenkrais® lessons, people often express feelings of relaxation and ease. They may breathe
more freely and find their thoughts have more clarity. The learning process is full of pleasant surprises and personal
breakthroughs.

Here is a list of benefits students of the Feldenkrais Method® have experienced.

• Reduced pain

• New ways of coping with stress

• Increased range of movement

• Enhanced athletic and artistic performance

• Prevention of performance related injuries

• Greater ease and pleasure in physical activities

• Quicker recovery of abilities following trauma

• Increased mental clarity

What Happens in a Feldenkrais Method Session?

In group Awareness Through Movement® lessons, the Feldenkrais® teacher verbally leads you through a sequence
of movements in basic positions: sitting or lying on the floor, standing or sitting in a chair. These precisely structured
movement explorations involve thinking, sensing, moving, feeling, and imagining. By increasing awareness, you will
learn to abandon habitual patterns of movement and develop new alternatives, resulting in improved flexibility and
coordination. Many lessons 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. There are hundreds of ATM lessons, varying in difficulty and complexity, for all
levels of movement ability. A lesson generally lasts from 30 to 60 minutes.

Private Feldenkrais lessons, called Functional Integration® lessons, are tailored to each student's individual learning
needs. The teacher guides your movements through gentle non-invasive touching and words. The student is fully
clothed, lying on a table, or in a sitting or standing position. At times, various props (pillows, rollers, blankets) are
used in an effort to support the student, or to facilitate certain movements. The learning process is carried out without
the use of any invasive or forceful procedure.

How Does the Feldenkrais Method Differ from Massage and Chiropractic?

While all of these practices touch people, the Feldenkrais Method is very different. In massage, the practitioner is
working directly with the muscles, in chiropractic, with the bones. These are structural approaches that seek to affect
change through changes in structure (muscles and spine). The Feldenkrais Method works with your ability to regulate
and coordinate your movement, which means working with the nervous system and the whole person.

Why is movement important?

Dr. Feldenkrais used to say: “movement is life. Without it, life is inconceivable.” Even sucking, the first action a baby
takes to ensure its survival, is a movement pattern involving the muscles of the face. Like all human activity, it has to
be learned. Movement is the first object of our brain’s remarkable capacity for learning.

As babies, we all went through this learning process – moving and learning, developing our brain through the
process, and achieving constantly new levels of mastery over our environment – and the success or failure of the
process determined the quality of our life. We had no teachers and no verbal instruction. Sensing, feeling and moving
were but one action that had one biological purpose – becoming a functional, healthy and fulfilled human.

This magnificent kind of learning - involving feeling, thinking and moving - is available to us throughout our life. But the
introduction of language and schooling into a child’s life creates, along with the benefits it brings, an interference in
this organic process. If teachers and parents are not careful, it can sometimes stop it altogether. By using movement
instead of words, the Feldenkrais Method makes the model of learning we developed in the beginning of our life
available to us again.

How does movement lead to improvement?

With each new movement we learn as infants, the connections in our brain multiply to create a map of ourselves,
literally a self-image, which in turn is used by our brain to send signals to our muscles when we want to do
something. Our nervous system constantly solves new problems and evolves to meet the world we live in. Muscles
don’t think, bones don’t think, human brains do. If we have pain – back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, etc. – we need
to learn to move differently so as not to put the same pressure on the same joints all the time. If we want to hone a
performance skill – playing an instrument, acting, dancing, swimming, playing baseball – we need to learn how to
better use ourselves. If we don’t find a way to change the map in our brain so that the orders given to our muscles are
more efficient, every other solution will be temporary and will not enhance our life. Solutions that do not engage our
basic self-image will not bring lasting improvement.

The Feldenkrais Method is unique in its approach to solving these problems of self-use. Through carefully developed
movement lessons based on developmental stages it accesses the brain’s innate capacity for learning and
adaptation. It uses the language the brain understands best – the language of movement. While the results may
seem miraculous to us, they are no more miraculous than the learning a baby does in its first years of life. Improved
self-use and better adaptation to the demands of a given task are natural outcomes of returning to an organic way of
learning.

How are Feldenkrais Practitioners Trained?

All Feldenkrais practitioners must complete 740-800 hours of training over a 3 to 4 year period. Trainees participate in
Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration lessons, lectures, discussions, group process, and watch
videos of Dr. Feldenkrais teaching. Newtonian mechanics, physics, neurophysiology, movement development,
biology, and learning theories are presented in the training programs.