When people are considering working privately with me with Feldenkrais, one of the first things they want to know is HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
Of course the answer depends on several variables — your specific concerns and history, how long you’ve had the particular issue(s), your consistency in coming as recommended, your commitment to practicing the “homework,” and so on.
A good place to begin is as follows: if your quality of life is being impacted by whatever physical or stress-related issue you’re experiencing, and the outcome you want is to eliminate chronic pain. For more information about how often to schedule your sessions, click here.
Having said this, here is my general recommendation:
Phase 1 - Introduction
(once or twice/week for 4-6 weeks)
This work is cumulative. In your first few sessions, we’ll begin with small, gentle movements and teach you to sense your own comfort. In this way, we’re actually working with your nervous system to identify and begin to release the first layer of unconsciously held muscle tension patterns.
Ideally, sessions are fairly close together so that the old, unhealthy patterns of tension don’t have a chance to take hold again.
If you’ve been holding these tension patterns in your body for years, then it takes a bit of time to let them go. But because we’re working with your brain and nervous system, as long as we reinforce the new neural pathways that are created each session, the old patterns won’t have a chance to go back to their old ways.
These private sessions are effective both in person and on-line.
Phase 2 - Reinforcement
(every one - two weeks for the next 1-2 months)
By this time, you’ll know if this work is helping you. I recommend that as you begin to spread the in-person sessions out, you add in a home practice. There are several options for this:
practicing short movement sequences a few minutes each day that you learn from our sessions together
class recordings I can share with you
attending weekly group in person or online classes
The idea is to reinforce what we’re doing together in your private sessions, at home. The intention is to gradually move the responsibility for your wellbeing back into your own hands and give you tools to empower you.
Phase 3 - Maintenance
(once/month or whenever you feel it’s needed)
Once you’re through the first two phases of this work, you’ll find that you’re moving more freely and your chronic pain is gone or much less. Your nervous system is much more regulated. This means that you don’t react to stress as dramatically as before, you feel less anxious, you can begin to add things back into your life that you had to give up because of pain, exhaustion and feeling too overwhelmed, like walking and hiking, cycling, working out, yoga, and so on.
By now, you’ve realized the amazing benefits of this method and are either taking weekly group classes or practicing recordings on your own a couple of times each week to complement our in- person sessions together.
The key is to provide the environment for your brain cells to continue to wire together in a healthy way and not slip into old patterns. It took you many years of practice to get where you are now — it may time several months to practice and reinforce the new patterns. To learn more about how Feldenkrais works, click here.
Photo Credit: © 2005, Rosalie O'Connor. Used with permission of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America.