“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains.
What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.”
Moshe Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method
The Feldenkrais Method is a movement practice for developing self-awareness and self-mastery. It is the creation of a brilliant Israeli scientist and Judo expert named Moshe Feldenkrais.
People all over the world use the Method to remove back, neck or limb pain and find relief from many other problems. Performing artists, speakers and sportsmen at elite levels also use the method to improve their performance.
The method harnesses your innate ability to sense, explore, learn and grow. You listen to your body as you move, looking closely to see yourself as you really are. In the process you discover habits of tension that reveal the underlying causes of your stress or limitation. As the lesson unfolds you discover ease of movement and the path of least resistance.
Awareness Through Movement & Functional Integration
Functional Integration is a modality for working with individuals. A practitioner, primarily using their hands, guides a person through a sequence of movements that are all related to a specific functional theme. The function chosen is often one that will highlight how some habits of movement may be contributing to the particular concern you may have, whether that is a pain or a skill you want to improve.
The focus is on minimal effort, ease of movement and learning. You don’t stretch or strain in Feldenkrais lessons. You seek greater freedom and ease through awareness and understanding. In this way the benefits felt in lessons are repeatable and immediately applicable to other life situations.
A Feldenkrais Practitioner will have undergone a four-year training. Feldenkrais trained his first protégés in the 1960s. Today there are several thousand practitioners around the world whose professional development and training is administered by affiliated societies in twenty separate countries.