The Feldenkrais Method
The Feldenkrais Method studies the organization of the body through movement along the skeleton.
Perceive the body as it is. Become aware of it. Move it and learn.
Focus and grow.
In a nutshell: In the Feldenkrais Method, you study precisely how a movement travels through the body or through the skeleton. The more precisely one can identify the skeletal connections during a movement study—that is, what exactly the hip joint, the shoulder blade, etc., are doing—the more effectively the nervous system learns and reorganizes the control of the muscles surrounding the skeleton. This leads to improvements in physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning.
The Feldenkrais Method was developed in the 1940s by Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais, an engineer and the first European to earn a black belt in judo, after he suffered a knee injury. Although surgery was an option, given the medical capabilities of the time, his knee might have remained stiff. So he decided against surgery and began conducting his own research.
His academic colleagues began to take an interest in his work. He couldn’t explain it. He just knew that it worked.
He took his colleagues’ interest as a challenge, familiarized himself with neurophysiology, neuropsychology, and learning research; and so, little by little, he was able to explain why his body—and thus his brain—could learn particularly well through the exercises he had developed.
To this day, the results of research in neurology are consistent with the principles of the Feldenkrais Method. Moshé Feldenkrais was a pioneer.
He wrote five essential books:
Moshé Feldenkrais - Awareness through Movement
Moshé Feldenkrais - The Potent Self
Moshé Feldenkrais – The Elusive Obvious
Moshé Feldenkrais – Body & Mature Behaviour
Moshé Feldenkrais – The case of Nora: Body Awareness as Healing Therapy
The method assumes and courses as well as trainings prove again and again that the body can learn throughout life. Physiologically, this is most easily proven by the fact that the nerve cells remain at largely the same number from birth to death.
Through Feldenkrais lessons, you learn to use your body more effectively, as if “learning to move better” were in itself a skill that can be acquired; this has a lot to do with directing your focus and effectively applying all the strategies of the method.
The goal here is to move away from the concept of athletic performance. The goal is to treat yourself as gently and kindly as possible, to respect your own ideas about movement and your own limits, and to take breaks whenever you want. Then the body learns quickly, which means that your limits expand and, as a result, your movement patterns improve. (see also: Body Control).
The Individual Treatment and a Group Lesson are essentially equivalent and both offer advantages. In group classes, you can move your arms and legs simultaneously and independently of one another. In individual sessions, the practitioner can perceive things from the outside that you might repeatedly overlook in yourself—what is often called a “blind spot.” Furthermore, it takes a lot of practice to achieve such depth in your movements when practicing the method on your own. As a result, beginners typically make faster progress with one-on-one sessions.
Many course participants confirm that as long as they practice Feldenkrais once or twice a week, they can live without back pain during that time—and often for a long time afterward as well.
After completing Feldenkrais training programs—where the number of exercises is high and the impact is correspondingly significant—people in their sixties very often move with astonishing suppleness; more supple than many young people, and they also become more flexible in their approach to life and their outlook, choosing different paths. They let go of fears, break out of their shells, set out to make changes, and actually put them into practice. (see also: The Psychosomatic Way).
Some people say that for a long time, they didn't even realize how much their lives had been gradually changing.
The method can be excellently integrated into the context of modern psychosomatic holistic therapy approaches. Technically speaking, it works through the body, primarily based on biomechanical principles along the skeleton while taking individual structures into account. It can therefore be described as a somatic method. It does not attempt to establish a connection between physical and psychological patterns. However, by influencing the body, it also triggers changes in brain waves and, consequently, in external perception and thus in the psyche. Moshé Feldenkrais always assumed that body and mind are one.
Moshé Feldenkrais thus managed to remain a vital, physically strong, and mentally sharp person well into his 84th year—a man who walked somewhat peculiar due to his bad knees but who felt no pain and was able to practice his martial arts. He recovered from a stroke on his own using his exercises.
Continuously “updating” the body’s software—which, from the perspective of this method, means examining the intermuscular organization in interaction with the brain—and thus accommodating the body as a dynamic, constantly changing system, most likely allows one to live a more dignified and healthier life.
Is this now something like Physiotherapy?
The method is so far difficult to classify in the social context. Many of the clients are chronic pain patients who cannot be helped by medicine. However, to understand the method as something medical leads in the wrong direction. It is a learning method, a development method that everyone, whether in good or bad physical condition, can use to improve their body control.
The Body Control he can use for himself wherever he likes - in the cognitive area, the emotional or the physical.
For this read with pleasure my article about Feldenkrais and performance - sports, dance, mathematics, music, etc. , Acting .
In a single treatment, the setting from the outside looks almost the same as in standard physiotherapy. However, the grips, the sequence and thus the effect are different.
