The aim is a person who is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular effort, but through increased consciousness of how movement works.
- Moshe Feldenkrais, D. Sci., 1904-1984
The Feldenkrais (rhymes with "rice") Method is a 60-year-old form of neuromuscular reeducation with applications similar to physical therapy, but it's a more holistic approach.
It’s for anyone seeking more comfortable, efficient, sustainable movement and greater self-awareness for purposes of pain reduction, performance enhancement (day-to-day/athletic/artistic), self-discovery, and quality of life improvement.
Feldenkrais is taught in two forms:
Awareness Through Movement
Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons are verbally led and can be taught to groups or studied alone from recordings, text, or memory. We have over 120 ATM lesson recordings. For live study try our online class. For in-person study, find a teacher.
Functional Integration
Functional Integration (FI) lessons are one-to-one lessons taught hands-on, with the practitioner using a gentle, non-invasive touch, and the student fully-clothed, usually lying on a low, comfortable table. Find a teacher.
Students describe lessons as pleasurable and relaxing. While following our study guidelines, we expect you will discover reductions in pain, specific improvements to how you feel and function in your day-to-day life, and potent learning tools for continuing to improve yourself.
When someone wants to reduce pain, recover from an injury, or improve aspects of themselves (usually movement, balance, posture, flexibility, or performance related), a Feldenkrais lesson addresses the whole person – not just the symptom – by eliciting changes in the nervous system. Scientists call this process “neuroplasticity," which is the brain’s extraordinary ability to acquire more efficient patterns of movement and action if given the right learning environment. Nothing creates that environment like the Feldenkrais Method.
With this method, you can improve your comfort and ease, increase your range of motion, improve your flexibility and coordination, and rediscover your innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement. By expanding the self-image through movement sequences and directed attention, the method enables you to include more of yourself in your movements. Students become aware of their habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities, and learn to move in new ways.
Please explore The Feldenkrais Project website to learn more. Here's a few places to start:
- Our homepage is your gateway to 50 hours of freely offered, donor-supported high quality Feldenkrais class recordings, edited with the home user in mind, available to all.
- What is the Feldenkrais Method, in more detail? In response to student questions, I wrote this more scientifically-detailed bullet point description of the method, its background, and the principles of biomechanics, neurology, learning, and human improvement that make it work.
- Learn How to Learn is a hub for other great written informational resources on our site.
- Read Testimonials from Feldenkrais Project listeners, as well as their own tips and tricks for study.
- Here's a link to the Feldenkrais Guild of North America's website for a research bibliography about the efficacy of the method.
- Finally, Dr. Norman Doidge’s The Brain’s Way of Healing, published in early 2015, provides an in-depth introduction to The Feldenkrais Method. It's written by an MD neuroscientist who is not a Feldenkrais practitioner. This scientific view of the method is a fantastic resource to all students and would-be students. Here's my blog post with an excerpt and introduction to the book.
Feel free to contact Nick with questions.