About Feldenkrais®
The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education®
Feldenkrais® is a movement education system that will teach you how to improve your functional movement in a deep way. People discover Feldenkrais® for a wide range of reasons, including looking for solutions to physical challenges or to improve in an art or sport. The method is gentle and accessible to all people. You will learn how to sense your individual movement patterns via guided, functionally based movements. Learn to move simpler, lighter, and with more ease - whatever your unique challenges may be. When you learn to move easier, you also feel and function better. The idea is that your movement isn't separate from you —it IS you.
The Feldenkrais® method was invented by Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), a successful physicist, engineer, and the 1st European Judo master. With his unique mix of expert knowledge in a variety of fields and forward-thinking sensibility, Moshe Feldenkrais developed and shared his method over the course of decades, writing 9 books and holding 3 teacher training programs in the process.
Feldenkrais® addresses your functional movement from an integrated perspective, including such topics as calming your nervous system, using your brain to make lasting behavioral changes, developing one's kinesthetic skills (knowing where you are and how you move in space), the physics of human movement and skeletal structure, and creating an environment in which experimental sensory learning is encouraged. So instead of giving you a symptom/diagnosis-based, one-size-fits-all prescription, Feldenkrais® improves your movement through a personalized learning experience in which your nervous system is given ideal circumstances for challenging habits. You will learn to sense yourself in space more clearly, improve the quality of your movements, increase your movement choices, and better coordinate between the many parts of you with more confidence and clarity.
There are two ways to learn Feldenkrais®: in the group class format known as Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) and in the one-on-one format known as Functional Integration® (FI). ATM and FI use the same principals and overall approach, the main difference is that in ATM, you are verbally guided to do your own movements/ move yourself, and in FI, you are gently moved by a guild certified practitioner.