What is the Feldenkrais method?


First and foremost, Feldenkrais is not an exercise: it is cleverly applied neuroscience.

The method, founded by Moshe Feldenkrais, is well established with thousands of practitioners worldwide. Good summaries of the method can be found at, for example, Wikipedia and the New Zealand Feldenkrais Guild. Fine summaries of the method include this article by Dennis Leri, and this talk by Jacek Paszkowski. Other useful articles are here and here. And if you understand Italian or don't mind subtitles, try this.

The many other web pages on the method are of varying quality, so I recommend reading the literature on the subject: a summary is kindly provided by Amazon's Quick to look inside feature on, for starters, and Feldenkrais's Awareness through movement, and Wildman's Busy person's guide to easier movement.

Many tube clips relating to the Feldenkrais Method including group classes (known as awareness through movement) - albeit of varying quality and relevance - are available at YouTube. These might give you an indication of what's involved in a group class, and the huge variety of class lessons.

A personal favourite is a video advertising the Alexander technique, the first seven minutes of which is an excellent introduction to how the way we hold and use our selves deteriorates over time. In my view (I've tried both), Feldenkrais is a much more effective (and interesting) method to strip away those bad habits and reset your self, but see at least the first seven minutes of this video. And here is a shorter classic: how we learned to move as infants is, fundamentally, how we need to re-learn to move effortlessly as adults.

It is difficult to describe the Feldenkrais Method uniquely and concisely, because there are so many dimensions or facets to it. So here's one:

Changing states

Do you remember the last time you had a sprain or bruising that made you sore and limited your movements, and how one day you woke up and it had gone? Probably, you wandered around in this pain-free state for a while before you released that yesterday’s discomfort had evaporated. Phew, you thought, on with life…

What you experienced was a change in your experience of yourself. Your system imposed a constraint on your movement to protect you from an injury (‘injured state’), and then lifted it when no longer needed (‘normal state’). You felt lighter, freer: your body followed your intentions.

So, your state changing from ‘injured’ to ‘normal’ hugely improves you abilities and sense of wellbeing. Now imagine if you could improve your state by a similar magnitude from your current ‘normal’ to ‘a new you’. How would you feel? As light and effortless as when you were a child perhaps? We were once in that state (our normal then), but somehow the vagaries and habits of life over time have limited our movements (to our normal now). How can we revert to that blissful state, that others cannot see but is ours alone to enjoy? Meet the Feldenkrais Method.

But all said and done, the Feldenkrais Method is experiential - you have to experience it to appreciate it. My best advice: try it. It's changed my experience of life in ways that I literally could not image before.

The Feldenkrais Method has two modalities:



Conrad