Feldenkrais

A short Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Lesson:

Lie comfortably on your back with your knees bent. Turn your attention to your breathing (without making any conscious changes) and notice which parts of your body move as you breathe. Now turn your attention to your upper back and shoulders. How they are contacting the ground? Does one shoulder feel heavier, bigger, flatter, more pointed or comfortable than the other?

Start by rolling your head, gently and slowly one way, bring it back to the middle, and then roll it the other way. Just roll your head as far as it is easy and comfortable for you without force.

Repeat this rolling a few times to discover:

i. Which way do you roll your head first?

ii. How far can you roll effortlessly?

iii. Do you roll more easily, or further, one way than the other?

Now roll your head right, then centre, a number of times. What are your eyes doing? They will probably be moving in the same direction as your head. This is very normal.

Next, find a point on the ceiling. Keep your eyes on this point as you roll your head to the right a few times. This is an unusual movement, so take your time and move slowly.

Now try rolling your head right and turning your eyes left.

Again, just roll your head right and left letting your eyes move freely.

Again, ask yourself the questions above.

Did you notice a difference?

When experiencing the Feldenkrais Method we discover how mindfulness in motion can enhance the quality of how we move and feel.

Feldenkrais combines interesting sequences of small movements with awareness of inner sensations and experience, improving both action and relaxation. It can be a great resource for most people.

Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) developed this practical method after being advised to have knee surgery with a low success rate. He understandably wanted to avoid this and set about helping himself. Already an atomic physicist, engineer, and Judo black belt, he also studied anatomy, physiology, neurology and psychology. He became an educator who believed that all of our muscular-emotional habits are learnt in response to our lives. This capacity to learn stays with us forever, and Moshe found a way of re-teaching learning in order to discover enhanced ways of being.

Feldenkrais is a way of working with the body where we use many combinations of little movements to give the nervous system and the whole body a fuller understanding, as well as a lasting experience, of easy, strong, refined and pleasurable movement.

Feldenkrais is like a lesson in ‘the language of movement’. When we want to express ourselves fluently with spoken language, we need to have an extensive vocabulary and we need to know how to put it together with grammar. If we want to use our bodies ‘fluently’ and easily we need a large variety of movement possibilities available to us and we need to know how to use them . In Feldenkrais we communicate with the body giving it an experiential practice of the ‘vocabulary’ and ‘grammar’ of moving.

There are two ways of having a Feldenkrais lesson. One is in a group class, an ‘Awareness Through Movement’ lesson, where you are guided to do the movements yourself. The other in a one-to-one Functional Integration lesson, where the Feldenkrais teacher mostly moves your body.

The Feldenkrais Method