Feldenkrais

“If you know what you are doing, you can do what you want”                        -Moshe Feldenkrais                                -

The Feldenkrais Method® is for anyone who wants to reconnect with their natural abilities to move, think and feel. In a supportive learning environment, we investigate habitual movement patterns, and find new ways to act and perceive. Feldenkrais is gentle, calming and educational, as it brings attention to the interaction of one’s whole self. You can try it out for a wide range of interests – from improving physical activity and finding your curiosity around physical challenges, to learning more about the Method, itself.

The impact of Feldenkrais can relieve stress and chronic pain, focus attention and permit a deeper experience and understanding of oneself in the world. Feldenkrais provides an intriguing opportunity for anyone to experience embodied movement that is fundamental and vital.

• Private Sessions: Functional Integration®

Functional Integration (FI) is an hour-long, hands-on session tailored to your specific interests. It is a collaborative learning process. In these unique sessions, you find new ways to act and perceive. The impact of FI can support long-term understanding and change, and is useful for people with a wide range of concerns and interests. These sessions allow for a personal program that can be applied to daily life.

• Group Classes: Awareness through Movement^®

Awareness through Movement (ATM) classes are 45 minutes to hour-long lessons taught in a class setting. ATM’s help you develop efficiency and vitality in movement. Through ATM classes, you gain an understanding of your unique habitual movement patterns, and learn new movement choices, gently. These lessons can improve your overall well-being, relieve chronic pain, and bring you more engagement in your daily life. Classes range from 45 minutes to an hour long, and some lessons are taught in series, based on a particular function or movement pattern.

“The point of my work is to lead to awareness in action, or the ability to make contact with one’s own skeleton and muscles and with the environment practically simultaneously. This is not ‘relaxation’, for true relaxation can be maintained only when doing nothing. The aim is not complete relaxation but healthy, powerful, easy and pleasurable exertion. The reduction of tension is necessary because efficient movement should be effortless. Inefficiency is sensed as effort and prevents doing more and better. The gradual reduction of useless effort is necessary in order to increase kinesthetic sensitivity, without which a person cannot become self regulating.”                 -Moshe Feldenkrais

We improve our well-being when we learn to fully use ourselves. Our intelligence depends upon the opportunity we take to experience and learn. This self-learning, fostered in the context of the Feldenkrais Method, leads to full, dynamic living.

• Testimonials:

“As a violinist, the work has not only sped my recovery from injury, but greatly enhanced my sense of physical integrity, ease and grace—even with an activity as “unnatural” as playing the violin!”        –Ingrid Matthews, performs on Baroque and classical violin and is the Music Director of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra

“After years of back problems, the Feldenkrais Method has given me the ability to remain free of pain.  They are by far the most effective and pleasurable exercises I have ever done.”                  -Joseph Batkin, M.A.

“I have been intrigued by this subtle form of retraining the nervous system, which I recommend to patients whose movement has been restricted by injury, cerebral palsy, stroke, fibromyalgia, or chronic pain.  I find it to be much more useful than standard physical therapy.  I also believe that the Feldenkrais Method^® can help older people achieve greater range of motion and flexibility, and help all of us feel more comfortable in our bodies.”                  -Andrew Weil, M.D. Author of Spontaneous Healing and Natural Health, Natural Medicine

all photos on this page by Rosalie O’Connor