New Item - Feldenkrais Method

This beautiful practice can be studied on it's own or blended with Therapeutic Yoga and Somatic Therapy

Offered via Internet for group sessions, and Internet or home visits by me to your home at no extra charge for Private Sessions

Feldenkrais Method, how do you pronounce it, and what does it mean?

Pronounced Feldencrise, is the name given to a practice of experiencing  "awareness through movement", and the name of the originator of this practice Moshe Feldenkrais.

The Practice is based on the principle that we all need to have habits, to have patterns, to have an acquired sense of self that we identify with.  We need to give ourselves a sense that we are whole.  If we learn to sense our tonic state, meaning the minimal amount of muscular tone that we need to have to be upright in the world of gravity, if we can have that quality, in a particular moment, then we're not bound by our "muscular habit", the way we know ourselves, our muscular preferences, what is familiar. Essentially, as long as our pathway is one of continual maintenance of a sense of safety, and sense of one's self, we are not going to give up behaviors unless there is something better to replace it.

So, what do we do with "Awaremess Through Movement"?  We begin to discriminate.  What do you descriminate?  Not your normal habits, on the contrary, we descriminate the differences, in sensation and the way in which you initiate movement.  Moshe taught that the most important thing that happens in a class is not the movements themselves, but "what did you notice"? What did you find out about yourself that was new?

We are exploring possibilities, of how we habitually move within our body, while breaking movements down into the smallest segments, experiencing and being curious about what other parts are involved, and what we can do with that through exploration of whether these things make movement easier, or are they unecessary and something to get rid of.  A part of this learning process is not just acknowledging, but feeling and knowing that due to our life styles and habits formed from early on, and effects of events through the years, we have adapted to make things work by using those habits, and what feels normal for you, and as a result, have formed an  image and sense of our body, and of who we are based on that.

So, the point is that until we can recognize the nature of our habits, step back and outside of those habits, we aren't able to free ourselves from our conditioning and patterns of anxiety and insecurity.  It's the process of keeping things as simple as possible, experiencing that simplicity, and learning that there  other ways of doing things.

The dance is in discriminating the differences in the sensation and the way in which you initiate the movement.  Without complicating this idea, this discriminatory process, inhibits the normal flow of the thinking process.  It brings composure and quiet to the limbic system, you will experience profound change in the story about you and your body, that the mind is maintaining.  What happens as a result, is that as the wholeness of a sensation and movements takes place, your entire system reaches a level of integration and synthesis that is greater than where you came from.

In the words of Victor Frankl:  "Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom". 

Every time you dance and play between sensation and movement, you are in a space where you can choose your own way.  It's a profound micro-second of time, that very gradually, very easily, we can widen.  There is a quietness here, in this space, that is not the conditioning that you or I experience in this world, where you can choose your way in any given set of circumstances.

 Healthy means people can restore their physical integrity, recover their emotional dignity, and become healthy.  Healthy means you have the internal means to meet ongoing changes in the world and sense that you have the resources to meet those needs.  This can transform your life by finding a way to care for yourself, rather than focusing on supporting the accumulated sense and image of yourself.

The Feldenkraise Method can be a means to that end.