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Feldenkrais method

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The Feldenkrais Method is an educational system intended to give a greater functional awareness of the self. The method uses body movement as the primary vehicle for learning. It is perhaps due to this focus on body movements that the Feldenkrais Method is often classified as a complementary and alternative medicine. The Feldenkrais Method attracts the attention of those who want to improve their movement repertoire (as dancers, musicians, artists), who want to reduce their pain or limitations in movement, or who want to use the method as a way to improve their well-being and personal development. Advocates claim the Feldenkrais Method often improves movement-related pain (e.g. pain in backs, knees, hips, shoulders), and leads to better functioning in cases of stroke or cerebral palsy. A central tenet of the Feldenkrais Method is that improving ability to move can improve one's overall well-being. Practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method generally refrain from diagnosis, or referring to the Feldenkrais Method as therapy.

Contents

Overview

The Feldenkrais Method was originated by Dr Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), an Israeli physicist and judo practitioner of Eastern European descent. Among his many published books was Awareness Through Movement where he presented a view that good health is a matter of positive functioning. Although many don't consider this a radical idea, it is in opposition to the standard medical definition of health that states good health is an absence of illness. Feldenkrais asserted his method of bodywork exploration resulted in better functioning bodies and minds and created healthier people. He was more interested in the goal of holistic functioning rather than merely physical treatment.

This goal is reflected in the code of ethics of the [Feldenkrais Guild of North America] that states practitioners of the method do not undertake to diagnose or treat illness of any kind. Most proponents of the Method consider it to be a form of self-education and mind-body development rather than a manipulative therapy.

Feldenkrais himself was a friend of Ida Rolf, who established the rolfing method of bodywork. Feldenkrais' approach was more cybernetic and informational. Some of the influences on Feldenkrais' work include Gustav Fechner, F. Matthias Alexander, Gerda Alexander, G. I. Gurdjieff, Emile Coué, Milton Erickson, William Bates, Heinrich Jacoby and Jigoro Kano, all of whom were more concerned with awareness than with simple physical exercises.

Techniques

The Feldenkrais Method is applied in two forms by practitioners, who generally receive more than 800 hours of formal training over the course of four years:

Awareness Through Movement

In an Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lesson, the teacher verbally directs students through movement sequences. Usually this occurs in a group setting, although ATM lessons can also be given to individuals. There are more than a thousand ATM lessons in existence. Most of them are organized around a specific movement function, and teachers lend their particular style to each lesson.

Moshé Feldenkrais gave the name to a series of demonstrations he devised when some of his scientific colleagues wanted to know how he was learning to walk normally with a seriously damaged knee. Being an experimental scientist himself, he gave them concrete directions on how to move to discover for themselves what he was learning.

Here is a small example: Cup your hands so you could drink from them and bring them to your mouth. Observe how you place your fingers. Which set of fingers lies inside the other? Perhaps the edge of this palm is also a bit inside the other. Now cup your hands again but reverse the way you place your fingers. Put the fingers that were inside to the outside now. Bring your hands to your mouth with the fingers reversed and observe how different it feels to do it this way.

This simple observation could become the first step in a lesson that would lead to a marked difference in your overall ability to move.

In ATM lessons, students temporarily set aside habitual patterns, thereby enjoying freer, easier movement, and gaining more accurate and complete perception of the body and movement in general.

Feldenkrais understood these changes to be improvements of the body image, which can be conceived in one sense as an arrangement of areas of the motor cortex relative to the body. The body image was depicted by Dr. Wilder Penfield in the form of a homunculus. Since activity in the motor cortex plays a key role in proprioception Feldenkrais realized that changes in our ability to move are inseparable from changes in our conscious perception of ourselves as embodied. This relationship is clear and open to introspection. Make a quick list of body parts you know you have but which you cannot feel consciously and compare it with a list of those you can feel. Which list contains the members you can move?

Thus Awareness Through Movement lessons are intended to do just what their name says. They improve awareness by using and improving the student's ability to move, and they do this by way of demonstration. Beyond the specifics of a lesson, students learn to simply exlore, as children do in play.

Functional Integration

In a Functional Integration lesson, the practitioner uses his or her hands to guide the movement of the student, while the student lies on a padded table or floor. All of the movements are done in a range and at a speed that is comfortable for the student. This allows the student to feel safe, and allows the opportunity for the student to observe the movement in detail. Through precise touch and movement, the student learns how to eliminate excess effort and strain and thus move more freely and easily. Lessons may be very specific in addressing particular issues brought by the student, or can be more global in scope.

History

Feldenkrais first taught the method in Tel Aviv to 13 students. He later came to the United States in the early 1970s, where he taught at Esalen. He subsequently gave two professional trainings in the US, in San Francisco (1975-77) and Amherst, Massachusetts (1980-83).

Influence on Somatics

Somatic-oriented techniques influenced by Feldenkrais include: Hanna Somatics, Rubenfeld Synergy, Tellington Touch (for animals), [Anat Baniel Method], [Sounder Sleep System].

See also

Resources and External links

 

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