The Feldenkrais Method
The Feldenkrais Method studies the organization of the body through movement along the skeleton.
Perceive the body as it is. Become aware of it. Move it and learn.
Focus and grow. Because it happens without effort, some people call it magic.
In a nutshell: In Feldenkrais, you study precisely how a movement goes through the body, or through the skeleton. The more precisely one can hit the skeletal connections in a movement study - that is, what the foot, leg, pelvis do .... - the more effectively the nervous system learns and reorganizes the control of the muscles around the skeleton. This brings improvements in the physical, emotional and cognitive areas. Feldenkrais also includes coordinative aspects that, at first, without a precise anatomical sense, simply require the body to do something unfamiliar for a change. - Take your toothbrush in the evening and brush your teeth with the other hand, cleanly, without rushing and without tensing up. Then you have basically done a Feldenkrais exercise.
The Feldenkrais Method was developed from the 1940s by the engineer and first judoka with a black belt from Europe, Dr. Moshé Feldenkrais, after he had a knee accident. There was the possibility to operate, but then the knee might have remained stiff according to the medical possibilities at that time. So he did not have the operation and began to research on himself.
His academic colleagues began to take an interest in what he was doing. He couldn't explain it. He only knew that it worked.
He took the interest of his colleagues as a challenge, read books on neurophysiology, neuropsychology and learning research, among others; and so he was gradually able to explain why his body, and therefore his brain, was particularly good at learning via these exercises he had developed.
To this day, the results of research in neurology are consistent with the principles of the Feldenkrais Method. Moshé Feldenkrais was a pioneer.
He wrote five essential books:
Moshé Feldenkrais - Awareness through Movement
Moshé Feldenkrais - The Potent Self
Moshé Feldenkrais – The Elusive Obvious
Moshé Feldenkrais – Body & Mature Behaviour
Moshé Feldenkrais – The case of Nora: Body Awareness as Healing Therapy
The method assumes and courses as well as trainings prove again and again that the body can learn throughout life. Physiologically, this is most easily proven by the fact that the nerve cells remain at largely the same number from birth to death.
With Feldenkrais lessons one learns a better use of oneself, as if moving itself were a 'sport' that can be learned, and the field where it is performed is life itself.
However, one tries here, which can certainly be misunderstood in relation to the word 'sport', to go away from the idea of performance. Here you should handle yourself as well and gently as possible, respect your own ideas of movement and your limits, take a break when you want. Then you stay relaxed and the body learns quickly, which means that the which means that the limits expand and thus the movement processes improve (see also: Body Control).
The Individual Treatment is in itself equivalent to the Group Lessons. Here, however, the Feldenkrais Practitioner can perceive things from the outside that one might repeatedly ignore as 'blind spots' in oneself. In addition, it takes a lot of practice to achieve such depth in the movements with the practice on oneself. Therefore, one usually progresses faster with a single treatment.
Many course participants confirm that as long as they do Feldenkrais once or twice a week, they can live without back pain for that time and often for a long time afterwards.
After the Feldenkrais trainings, where the number of exercises is high and the effect correspondingly great, people around sixty very often move amazingly smoothly, softly, more supplely than many young people, and they also become more supple in their way of life and attitude, take different paths. They reduce fears, break open, take on changes and also implement them (see also: The Psychosomatic Way).
Sometimes this happens quite unconsciously, but via rational reflection you can definitely judge that you make more changes in your life when you practice the method.
The method can be excellently integrated into the context of modern psychosomatic holistic therapy approaches .Technically, it works through the body, essentially according to biomechanical aspects along the skeleton (How does the client's skeleton move, taking into account its individual structure.). Therefore, it can be called a somatic method. It does not try to establish a connection between physical patterns and psychological ones. However, by influencing the body, it also triggers changes in brain waves. Moshé Feldenkrais always assumed that body and mind are one.
Moshé Feldenkrais managed to remain a vital, physically strong and mentally clear person until he was 84 years old, who only walked a little strangely because of his bad knees, but who had no pain, could do his martial arts and who regenerated himself from a stroke with his exercises.
Updating the body's software, i.e. the intermuscular organization, from the point of view of this method, and thus accommodating the body as a dynamic, constantly changing system, will most likely allow one to live a more dignified and healthy life.
Is this now something like Physiotherapy?
The method is so far difficult to classify in the social context. Many of the clients are chronic pain patients who cannot be helped by medicine. However, to understand the method as something medical leads in the wrong direction. It is a learning method, a development method that everyone, whether in good or bad physical condition, can use to improve their body control.
The Body Control he can use for himself wherever he likes - in the cognitive area, the emotional or the physical.
For this read with pleasure my article about Feldenkrais and performance - sports, dance, mathematics, music, etc. , Acting .
In a single treatment, the setting from the outside looks almost the same as in standard physiotherapy. However, the grips, the sequence and thus the effect are different.
