What is the Feldenkrais Method?
Feldenkrais - first off, how on earth do you say the word? Feldenkrais….rhymes with rice!
It’s called the Feldenkrais Method because it’s named after the engineer who developed the method over his lifetime, Dr Moshe Feldenkrais.
It is a challenge to encapsulate in words the essence of such an experiential and multi-layered discipline. You really need to have a go and then you’ll know. It is widely considered the original somatic education from which the many others have sprung. Fundamentally, it can be described, at it’s simplest, as awareness through movement. Yes, you will be moving, but it is not exercise. The emphasis is on the awareness, not the movement. It is you, as the student, who studies the ‘how’ of your movement. It’s the process which is examined rather than achieving any particular movement goal.
A student of the Feldenkrais Method will be improving their kinaesthetic sense. In other words, getting better at sensing yourself through movement - this allows you to know exactly what you are doing. Once you have that information you have choice. It is surprising how much of what we do is so habitual that we may have far less real choice than we might expect over our actions. With a little more choice most of us would choose to move with greater ease and efficiency. Of course, learning to act habitually is vital for each of us to get anything done in a day - habits free up your neurones to tackle the many other decisions we face. But habitual actions or reactions which were once the best fit for your situation can become, over time, less than ideal.
Feldenkrais coined the phrase ‘parasitic movement’. What is meant by this is neuromuscular recruitment that hinders your function - often this superfluous strain and effort, working in conflict with the rest of you to move or to act how you choose, is not apparent to you until your awareness is increased. It is not always an action that is the problem - it may be an inaction or I’ve heard it referred to as a movement amnesia. Some parts of you may be a challenge to sense - for instance are you aware of all the vertebra in your spine? Can you sense your individual toes? How does this differ between your left and right foot?
It is not unusual for these parts to be a little opaque in your self image and for certain parts of you to only move as one ‘block’ despite being separate bones with individually innervated muscles. Can you flex each of your toes individually? Can you sense the distinct movement in your collar bones or the back of your ribs or shoulder blades as you breath? Until you know what you are doing, you really can’t effect any change at all.
One major distinction I would make between somatic practices like Feldenkrais and other movement coaching, mind/body practices or physiotherapy, is that your teacher is not correcting your movement, healing or fixing injuries. The student of Feldenkrais somatic movement is learning for themselves, with slow movements and guided attention, what they are doing and then how to seek out the path of greatest efficiency for themselves. This is done in the present, right now, understanding that their whole self is constantly learning but has arrived in the lesson with the influences on them from that day, that week and historically. And that those influences (the environment in which you live and have lived) play a major role in moulding their physiology and psychology. In order to effect change in how you move ( again the movement process rather than achieving any pose or sequence) the student improves how much of themselves they can sense, gaining a more accurate self image.
Self image should not be confused with self esteem. Self image is quite literally an embodied sense of self. I tend to use the following metaphor with my students to explain how I feel Awareness Through Movement lessons help you with your self image. As a student of the feldenkrais method think of yourself as an artist, over time creating a self portrait. Every lesson you experience allows you to add a little more light or shade to the painting you are creating of yourself until you have something that resembles a more accurate representation - some lessons may be more shade, others will be joyfully full of light, but each lesson will give you some more paint for the brush.
The Feldenkrais Method consists of two types of classes: Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration. In the Feldenkrais world these are shortened to ATM and FI.
