The Feldenkrais method
When a person has experienced a stressful life event that has left them holding relentless tension in their body, chronic musculoskeletal pain and chronic anxiety often result. We think the only way to relieve this tension is to stretch or get deep massage. What we don’t understand is that the brain is responsible for directing all bodily functions, including directing our muscles to tense and “hold” our bones when it perceives instability or a lack of mobility.
In addition, when we’re in a sympathetic state of fight, flight or freeze, our nervous system dysregulates and we might feel constant anxiety and/or disconnect from our body. We try to meditate or rest as we’re told to do, but it’s almost painful to be still. We lose connection with ourselves, physically and mentally and our emotions can be all over the place.
Emotional tension = physical tension.
The Feldenkrais method is a process that helps a person reconnect to themself by identifying and changing chronic tension patterns, and shift out of them for good. To learn more about Feldenkrais®, click here.
This method helps a person identify and change habits that might be causing pain and discomfort in exchange for long-term healing and relief.
Feldenkrais® is a method of "learning" for the brain and nervous system that uses physical movement to help identify and then permanently change a person's musculoskeletal patterns or biases that cause chronic discomfort or pain.
This allows permanent relief for chronic pain and tension so that a person can move more freely and with ease, breathe more deeply, and regulate emotionally when stress arises. Feldenkrais gives a person back her life so that she can begin to participate in activities that she thought were out of reach and that make life worth living!
There are two aspects to the Feldenkrais method:
group classes
"Awareness Through Movement®” (ATM) classes are practiced in a room or on Zoom with other participants, similar to a yoga class, often lying on a mat while led through a series of movements by the instructor. These classes are cost effective and help empower individuals by giving them tools they can apply in their every day lives to make changes little by little.
Unlike other types of activities most of us are used to, in these classes students do the movements very slowly, make them very small, and avoid any and all discomfort. There is no stretching, forcing, straining or doing lots of repetitions. In fact, improvements happen after only two or three movements done with focused attention on ones’ own comfort. It’s a paradox — the smoother and easier a person makes a movement, even if they’re barely moving, the quicker and bigger transformation they experience!
Private in-person sessions
The other aspect of Feldenkrais is private sessions (called "Functional Integration"), that are done on a table, similar to a massage table. But that’s where the similarity to massage ends!
During these sessions, the practitioner moves the client very slowly into movement patterns that have been intelligently sequenced based on human physical development. We never force, stretch or impose any agenda on a person. In fact, as patterns of tension emerge in each person, we follow their body, and in a sense, do the work of their muscles for them so that these chronic unconscious musculoskeletal patterns of stress and tension unwind on their own.
I often suggest beginning with one session to see if it’s a good fit, and then move on to a series of ten sessions done fairly closely together so that the unwinding of these unconscious habitual muscular patterns and the creation of new, healthier neural pathways can be reinforced. Each person responds differently, which is why each person will have a unique treatment plan for the desired outcome. For more information about how to determine how often to schedule sessions, click here.