The Feldenkrais Method

Pain Relief, Good Posture, Strength and Fitness with Easy Movement

Oct 24, 2007 Victoria Anisman-Reiner

Unlike most fitness and pain relief programs, Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement classes focus on gentle, painless exercises to retrain the body's habits.

Most cures for tension, stress, or strain involve stretching or intense movement that can be painful. Not so with the Feldenkrais Method, developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, where “if it hurts, you aren’t doing it right.” (Jensen) Feldenkrais techniques relieve tension by teaching the body small movements that retrain better posture and graceful, relaxing ways to move.

Habitual Movements

One of the fundamentals of the Feldenkrais Method is to retrain the body to move in more natural ways – but first, most people need to become aware of the ways in which they move and use their bodies habitually, without thinking.

Even a minor injury or a bulky purse can lead to ingrained habits that affect posture and cause tension. Over time, you may not even be aware of them; the injury heals or the purse gets retired, but the unconscious habit stays. Likewise physical habits of an emotional or psychological nature.

Feldenkrais movements are small and are done gently, “below the usual threshold of awareness,” (Jensen) to improve awareness of the body and to program new, optimal movements that replace the old ways that created pain or tension.

Learning Feldenkrais

The Feldenkrais Method is taught in two parts:

  • “Awareness Through Movement” classes, where Feldenkrais movements are learned and practiced as exercises, and
  • “Functional Integration” private sessions in which a practitioner gently manipulates the body to teach new postures and ways of movement

The two components work together to change body habits about the most reflexive or habitual way to move. In this way, Feldenkrais is a preventive as well as restorative practice. Ideally, the teacher for the classes and the Functional Integration practitioner should be one and the same.

Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais

Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais was a physicist, Judo expert, and mechanical engineer. When a bus accident in the 1940s aggravated an old knee injury and he was offered a 50 percent chance of walking again after surgery, he chose to step outside the models he was offered and experiment with something new.

The result of careful exploration of his own body’s movements was the system that would become the Feldenkrais Method. There are currently over a thousand Feldenkrais practitioners in the United States and Canada, helping athletes, martial arts experts, musicians, actors, and anyone experiencing stress, tension, or injury to connect with their bodies in new ways. Feldenkrais Method has helped many with chronic pain, disabilities, and even eating disorders. (Weil)

Dr. Feldenkrais believed in the body’s innate tendency to heal itself, and rejected the popular notion that “no pain, no gain.”

“...When the body hurts, it does not learn. It resists and defends itself. Thus [Feldenkrais] students are encouraged to make movements smaller, lighter and slower, because it’s not what you do, but how you do it that is most important. In Fendenkrais the watchwords are, ‘if it hurts you aren’t doing it right.’” (Jensen)

References:

  • Jensen, Phyllis Marie, “The Feldenkrais Method: Gain New Vitality and Freedom of Movement,” brochure (date unknown).
  • Weil, Andrew, “The Feldenkrais Method: Moving with Ease,” Dr. Andrew Weil’s Self Healing, May 1998.

The copyright of the article The Feldenkrais Method in Natural Medicine is owned by Victoria Anisman-Reiner. Permission to republish The Feldenkrais Method in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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