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The Feldenkrais Method

for movement & learning

The Feldenkrais Method is an approach to improving human function through body awareness and movement learning. It helps one to expand the quality, range, ease, and variety of movement that she makes, while growing healthier movement habits.

Throughout a lifespan, our experiences, environment, and habits shape us. We develop particular ways of holding ourselves and using our bodies. Over time these learned patterns can come to define us, limit us, and even cause us pain. The Feldenkrais Method posits that our awareness and experience can change our patterns of self-use, and that by engaging our capacity to learn sensorially and kinesthetically, we can change our habits and improve, no matter our age or circumstance.

In a Feldenkrais class, we explore gentle but precise movements, in order to develop greater agility and coordination, and reduce pain and stress, and cultivate a sense of well-being.

who was Moshe Feldenkrais ?

Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) was a leading innovator in the field of human education and improvement. Primarily a scientist, Feldenkrais was an experimental physicist and electrical engineer trained at the Sorbonne during the development of Quantum Mechanics.

Prior to creating his method, he was a leading researcher working in the famous Curie Laboratories in Paris. During World War II he was instrumental in the development of sonar under the British Admiralty. Feldenkrais was also one of the first European proponents of Judo and other martial arts.

His efforts to rehabilitate his own injuries from soccer and Judo led him to apply his keen mind to a study of human movement and learning. His first book on his method, Body and Mature Behavior, a Study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning, appeared in 1949. In the 1960’s, believing he had developed a revolutionary way to improve human functioning, he left his job as the head of electrical engineering for the Israeli military to devote himself full time to teaching the method he invented. During his lifetime people suffering from a wide range of severe and seemingly incurable problems sought out his help from all over the world.

Benefits

The Feldenkrais Method can help: People with chronic pain, people suffering from injuries, performing artists and athletes who want to improve their performance, people who want to feel better in their bodies and minds and sleep better, people with neurological concerns, and people who are just curious.