The Feldenkrais Method
On the surface - the Feldenkrais method is about movement. A slow, gentle and somatic practice, where one mostly lies down on the floor and train in doing tiny movements with less and less effort. A modality where one looks for comfort and ease in a very detailed way and in a variety of physical contexts. A way to improve one's bodily organization, to relieve pain, etc.
But the Feldenkrais method has much wider scope. At its core, it is a pedagogical approach, a learning and teaching manual. An attempt to relate practically and concretely to the following questions: What is learning? How could one learn (and teach others) how to learn? What conditions support learning and how to provide them? How could I teach myself a skill without relying on external feedback, without looking up to someone who will show me what and how to do it? How to become this authority for myself, my own Master, even in subjects I don't yet have any proficiency in?
And so, despite the fact we use movement in Feldenkrais, our goal is global. What we aim to develop, through these kinesthetic explorations, is the capacity to use ourselves and to adapt to situations we don’t yet know how to handle, where we are not yet able to do what we wish for.
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Let's clarify this with an example. Please sit for a moment in a comfortable position - on a chair, on the floor, on any kind of surface. Imagine, that in a moment you will bring your head towards your knees, trying to bring them into contact. How is that, before actually trying? Do you imagine it will be easy for you? difficult? impossible? Do you already feel a strain in the back, in the neck? Did you stop breathing?
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Now do this movement a few times, and see how it is. How far do you go? what actually happens in your back and neck, your breath? Does it get easier from time to time? or harder? When you finish doing a few of these movements - do you feel more at ease than before or more tense? Did you learn something? What?
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Maybe you can bring your head to your knees easily. But, for most people this is rather difficult or even impossible. And precisely this difficulty or impossibility is a potent learning opportunity. Because it’s not really important that you bring your head to your knees. In Feldenkrais, the movement is just an excuse, or rather a concrete frame for you to explore yourself and develop your learning and self-teaching skills.
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The way to develop this capacity offered by Feldenkrais, is to become more attuned and with one's own organic feedback, while doing a movement (or any other action). To learn to speak the language of sensations, to become more and more fluent in somatic dialects of different actions. In other words, to let your own organic response to whatever you are attempting to do - guide you and become your teacher in learning how to do this very action. To learn to navigate to unknown places by orienting according to the internal feedback you find within yourself.
​​​​​​​​​But how could one learn these languages and navigation skills? Well, this is the actual subject matter of Feldenkrais. Not movement. This precisely is what it aims to teach, how to facilitate organic learning processes for oneself and others.
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For various reasons - movement is the medium, the training field, the playground; but the principles of organic learning are applicable in every other context of life as well. They could be used when encountering a mathematical problem (a theorem I try to prove, a code I want to write, and have no idea how to even start), music (singing this line in this pitch), when encountering difficult emotions (how to express anger, how to go out of the house when I feel overwhelming anxiety), in sexuality (learning how to find pleasure, what to do with this void feeling after orgesam, how to set boundaries). Everywhere where there is an internal feedback, where there is sensation and response (everywhere), these principles could be applied.
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What a Feldenkrais practitioner does (me, in this case), is to provide a safe and stimulating learning environment. I offer simple tasks where one is likely to encounter difficulty, and accompany them while they look for their own way of relating to it. Tasks that will challenge you and highlighten certain aspects of the action you attemt to do, but without demanding you will execute or solve them in a specific way. I don’t give recipes, I don’t show you how I do something, because the whole point is for you to find your own unique way of using yourself, to develop your own skill in paving a way - not to copy me or invite me to build the road for you. The only concrete content I am teaching you is principles of organic learning, tools for self reflection and strategies of working with yourself, of listening and looking for your own solutions.
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Tradiationally this is practiced and taught through two different but related modalities: group movement classes (called: Awareness through Movement, ATM), and one on one bodywork sessions (called: Functional integration, FI). My own work is based and grounded in these modalities and principles, but aims to expand beyond them.
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