How the Feldenkrais Method® Helps to Alleviate Stress and Chronic Pain
The Feldenkrais method is a process that helps a person shift out of old patterns for good. It helps you identify and change habits that might be causing you pain and discomfort in exchange for long-term healing and relief.
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.
How to Relax Your Back and Relieve Stress with Blanket Roll Practice
This is a daily practice to help release all the muscles along your spine, as well as head and neck. It balances working out, sitting at a desk for hours, standing, being stressed and holding tension in neck, shoulders, and lower back.
This is a daily practice to help release all the muscles along your spine, as well as your head and neck, pelvis and legs. It balances working out, sitting at a desk for hours, standing, being stressed and holding tension in neck, shoulders, and lower back.
If you suffer from chronic pain that includes back, neck, shoulders, jaw, pelvis… this simple self care practice is designed to help you! To learn more about how to personalize your own self care practice, click here.
During this practice, I recommend that you give your arms, hands and eyes a rest from scrolling on your phone. Listen to your favorite relaxing podcast or music, or simply clear your mind. Use the time to relax.
Try it each evening for 15 minutes for 3 weeks and see what you notice. You can use this during the day to restore yourself or at home before bed.
Roll a dense blanket up so that it is the length of your head/torso and lay it on the floor perpendicular to a chair or couch. Make certain your entire head and pelvis fit on the roll. (The roll does not have to be large. It is simply a reference point for your spine. Do NOT use a foam roller. A yoga blanket is perfect.)
Place two bed pillows on the floor close to blanket roll for your arms and shoulders.
Lie down on the roll so that your head and tailbone are on the roll. Rest your lower legs (calves) on the couch or a chair. (Your knees should be at a 90 degree angle, parallel to the sofa; your feet are neither lower or higher than your knees.)
Rest your shoulders and arms on the pillows. Push the pillows close to your spine/the blanket roll so that your shoulders are fully supported.
Optional: place a small rolled up wash cloth underneath your neck (not as a pillow, but as a support for your cervical spine only). The towel roll should “kiss” your neck, not lift it— simply touch it so that your neck muscles can relax and feel supported.
Imagine that all the muscles of your entire back body are "draped" over the blanket roll.
When you are ready to come out of this resting pose, roll to the side and remove the blanket roll, then lie flat for a few minutes on the floor and notice the how your back feels on the floor. Do you feel flatter? Wider? Does your back feel as if it’s “spreading” onto the floor?
This is the feeling of relaxed muscles that are not in contraction.
The more you practice this, you will prime your brain. And the more quickly your muscles will release.
Enjoy!