WHAT IS THE FELDENKRAIS METHOD?
One word: Learning.
An Awareness Through Movement® lesson. Photo by Rosalie O'Conner.
Two words: Expanding horizons
Three words: Awareness through Movement
Four words: Learning how to Learn
Five words: Move, think, feel, breathe better
Six words: Expanding horizons thru Learning and Awareness
- This is a system of mind/body whole self learning based on how we learned when we were a genius, which is to say, how we learned to roll over and sit up and crawl and walk and talk when we were babies.
- This is a way of learning how to learn, based on the primacy of movement in life in general and human life in particular.
- Our brains are set up to learn, and moving is the most primary way our brains were set into motion (literally and figuratively) to learn, and learning by moving with awareness is the quickest and sweetest way to radically improve almost anything in our lives.
- We are alive and amazing and have a brain that loves to learn.
- By going slow and minimizing effort and looking to reduce unnecessary effort and concentrating on the process rather than achievement, we can radically improve the quality of our movement and our being.
- This work, being about learning, consists of lessons and these lessons can be with verbal instruction, as Awareness Through Movement® lessons, or touch guided lessons, called Functional Integration®
- A man named Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) had a smart and curious nature and loved sports and thinking and wrecked his knees and set about learning how to heal himself.
- He succeeded.
- The ways he discovered involved returning to a discovery and playfulness as well as understanding that we function as mind/body unities and that connection and relationship and inner functioning/organization were what brought about change.
- He discovered, and created ways for others to discover, inner learnings and possibilities of transformation, for both "body" and our whole lives, that had previously been considered "impossible."
- Human beings, more than any other creature on this planet, are dependant on learning to become who they are in life.
- Some of what we learn is stupendous, to walk, talk, play dodge ball, find a mate and some of what we learn is "bad habits," ways of moving and interacting and thinking and feeling that contradict our having a rich and full life.
- A man named Moshe Feldenkrais, 1904-1984, discovered, in the course of healing his own wrecked knees, that by focusing on the learning that takes place in the brain and the brain/body, he could achieve spectacular results in people as varied as children with cerebral palsy and star professional basketball players or world class musicians.
- Freedom from being stuck in habits and patterns that aren't working, can be achieved by learning OPTIONS in ways we move, think and go about living.
- This system can seem "slow," because it focuses on the little places that are missing in our inner connection and awareness, and yet, because it fills in these missing areas, is much "faster" at achieving real and organic and long term improvement and transformation.
- Learning How to Learn copyright 1997, by Dennis Leri, my Feldenkrais Trainer. Maybe read this one first.
- What the Feldenkrais Method Is and What Does it Do? via the Feldenkrais Guild
- Felden What?, by Larry Goldfarb, PhD
- Overview by MaryBeth Smith
- Walking on Volcanoes a poetic exploration of the Feldenkrais Method by Lynette Reid
- The Legacy of Moshe Feldenkrais by Anat Baniel and
- How Long Does is Take? by Gabrielle Pullen
Who was Moshe Feldenkrais?
A New Way of Learning: What Is, Possibilities and Feldenkrais
Feldenkrais and our Big Self
Intro Number Four: Learning as the Core
Intro Number Two: The Elusive Obvious, Movement is Central to Life
Feldenkrais Work as Science, Judo, Learning
Feldenkrais and Judo and a little history
What is the Feldie Method, Differentiation and (always) more- If you do a blog search of SlowSonoma.com on Feldenkrais, you
are bound to find many more essays.
For a List of Many
Fantastic Benefits,
see:
The Glories of Feldenkrais
If a picture is worth a thousand words,
scroll down the page and watch a three minute
video on the two facets of the Feldenkrais Method,
especially as the world's most intelligent and effective
way to transform pain.
And now for a sequential building
of viewpoints on the question:
What is the Feldenkrais Method?
One sentence:
Two sentences:
Three sentences:
Four sentences:
Five sentences:
And here's what some others have to say. It's a big system, kind of like ( in many, many ways) answering the question:
WHAT IS LIFE?
Here's some prior, longer versions I've written over the last couple of years:
And the only way to really savor and enjoy and benefit
from all these wondrous possibilities
is to come on in
and try it for yourself.
