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Patron Treasures

Welcome! Everyone can browse our Patron Treasures below. Click lesson titles for more info.

 

90+ lessons (and counting) for our Patron-level donors.

Many Patron Treasures are part of our Deep Dives. Many are not. Almost all can be studied on their own.

The list below is organized by date. To search, filter, or sort these lessons by duration, use our Search & Filter tool.

Why be a Patron?

The Feldenkrais Project's 50+ free lessons are a crowd-funded labor of love. If you believe, like we do, that Feldenkrais makes the world a better place, please join the Project as a Patron to support our work and access over 80 Patron Treasures lessons below, plus other Patrons-only lessons. You'll also get full access to our Deep Dive courses.

A Patron-level membership costs about what you'd pay to attend a single Feldenkrais or other movement class per month!

Join the Project as a Patron

Our annual costs are typically over $25,000 for technology and our part-time staff – plus 50-100 hours of Nick's time each month – as we improve this site, spread the word about our vision, and add new lessons and features to our industry-leading resources. Your support really matters!

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New for Patrons

59m

Long Belly, Long Back, Psoas to Lengthen and Lighten a Leg (Patrons)

Lengthen your abdomen, spine, and legs through specific coordinated engagement of the hip flexors and waist, and discover easier upright posture and lighter, more powerful legs for walking and running. Along the way you'll integrate your scapulas and ribs, and explore new options for your spine and the carriage of your head.
42m

Long Belly, Long Back, Psoas to Improve Walking (Patrons)

Further escape cultural constraints of belly-shortening, and get to know the miraculous direct muscular connection from your legs to your spine. Awaken and integrate your psoases, discover how they can lengthen and erect your spine in any position, and improve standing, walking, running, sitting…and basically everything.

All Patron Treasures

33m

Essence for “Experts”: Flexors and Extensors from the Hips and Waist (Patrons)

A distillation of Moshe Feldenkrais’s classic Coordinating the Flexors and Extensors lesson. Great for review and for finding a more specific understanding of the role of the hip joints and waistline muscles as conductors of turning actions. When we listen deeply to Moshe and ourselves, we learn that tipping triangle arms and crossed legs further and further is not the point of this famous lesson. The most profound benefits for spinal health, posture, and gait are hidden in the details.

Average Challenge   back-lying 
April 30, 2025
 
60m

Curiosity, Not Mastery: Three Dimensional Shoulder and Hip Circles (Patrons)

Familiar ATM explorations are cast in a new light as we discover how the torso interacts with the ground and reshapes itself three dimensionally to generate action in faraway parts of the body. Later, a few playfully elaborate variations humble us all, but the goal is curiosity, not mastery. Notice how much change takes place, how much more ease and control is created, when “failure” is lighthearted. Framed with brief explorations of the diagonal relationships of walking.

Average Challenge   back-lying  side-lying 
March 19, 2025
 
31m

Essence for “Experts”: Whole Body Arms (Patrons)

A review version of this lesson. Organize action from your head, spine, and tail, and refresh their functional relationships with your shoulders. Then it’s time for the arms: twist, roll, reach, and circle them while sustaining whole body awareness.

Average Challenge   side-lying 
February 12, 2025
 
63m

Long Belly, Strong Back: Expanded Workshop Version (Patrons)

A 3-minute talk introduces the workshop. Then, after a few explorations in standing, you’ll lie down and dive into quiet, precise movements of your pubic bone, sternum, scapulas, and sitbones designed to organize your spine and hips for powerful action and easier uprightness. Late in the lesson, juxtapose your new skills with common movement habits that diminish our abilities and confidence: do you press the ground or lift up and through? Are your hips in front of the action or behind it? The more clearly you sense these differences in all that you do, the better life gets.

Average Challenge   back-lying  standing 
January 1, 2025
 
10m

Long Belly, Strong Back Workshop Discussion 1

Nick and students discuss the emotional overtones of this workshop, the difference between lifting up and through from your standing foot and simply pressing it, ground reaction forces, and more.

Most Accessible 
January 1, 2025
 
32m

Head Under the Gap, Supine: Workshop/Review Version (Patrons)

Designed to clarify and distribute the image of arching and turning your whole self after you’ve explored the Long Belly, Strong Back lesson. Explore the unusual support of a bridged hand and its fascinating extension implications for your scapulas, shoulder girdle, ribs, and neck. Great for posture, breath, athletics, confidence, and groundedness.

More Challenging  back-lying 
January 1, 2025
 
6m

Long Belly, Strong Back Workshop Discussion 2

Nick leads a little postural experiment and speaks to the “psycho-social-sexual stuff” of this material, and a student offers wisdom from a female perspective.

Most Accessible 
January 1, 2025
 
60m

Head Under the Gap, Supine (Patrons)

A new approach to a classic Feldenkrais lesson originally designed to clarify extension patterns in your shoulders, thoracic, and neck. After briefly introducing its challenges, this version backs up and uses the context of our Long Belly, Strong Back lessons to build pelvic and spinal support for the eventual return of arching and turning your scapulas and sternum with a bridged hand. Great for posture, breath, athletics, confidence, and groundedness. Framed with brief standing explorations.

Average Challenge   back-lying 
December 10, 2024
 
38m

Long Belly, Strong Back: Short Version

This simple, powerful lesson is designed as an antidote to pervasive cultural messaging about flat stomachs. The truth is that tensing and withdrawing your abdomen severely limits freedom of movement, contributes to anxiety, and negatively impacts digestion. This lesson helps you question – through your own experience – popular assumptions about the use of the “core” and the associated withdrawn posture of the chest, shoulders, and pelvis. Feel for yourself the ease and potency of a long belly and well-organized back, and unlock profound benefits for spinal health, hips, shoulders, posture, confidence, athletic skill, and everyday actions. Framed by explorations in standing.

Most Accessible  back-lying  standing 
November 30, 2024
 
60m

Advanced Connecting Arms and Legs: Equal and Opposite (Patrons)

In this version, this classic side-lying lesson is framed by back-lying riddles designed to more explicitly connect your learning to gait and ground reaction forces. As you integrate various actions of your feet and legs with your pelvis, torso, and arms, you’ll rediscover the buoyancy and joy of walking with your whole self!

Average Challenge   back-lying  side-lying 
October 28, 2024
 
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Deep Dives with Patron Treasures

To enjoy some of our Patron Treasures in larger learning contexts, try our Deep Dives, where we integrate Patrons-only content with other Feldenkrais Project lessons in specialized study sequences. Patrons have full access.

See Our Deep Dives

More Collections Just for Patrons

12 Lessons from Awareness Through Movement

Developed from Moshe Feldenkrais’s 1972 book, written to introduce his method to the world.

Legacy and Alternate Lessons

Some listeners prefer the classics. When a lesson is replaced or updated the original goes here.

8 Comments

  1. Nick Strauss-Klein on March 5, 2019 at 3:57 pm

    As you explore our Patron Treasures please leave comments and questions on the lesson pages – they build our community, improve our visibility on the web, and refine my teaching and which lessons I choose to add.

    You can also leave a comment right here to request lessons or topics of study.

    Reply
  2. Margit on March 24, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    I like lessons with a rolling part in them, they are so much fun! This lesson maked me especially aware of my Sternum and that I usually direct it “backwords”. I will pay attention to a more balanced direction (in the mid of backwards and forwards) of my Sternum after doing this lesson. Thank you Nick for sharing your Knowledge with us.

    Reply
  3. jean kirk on April 4, 2021 at 5:05 pm

    Rib basket and shoulder cloak lesson is great. Taught me a lot about being upright.

    Reply
  4. Helina Karvak on June 18, 2022 at 7:43 am

    Hi! I’m interested in voice as topic of study 🙂

    Reply
    • Nick Strauss-Klein on June 20, 2022 at 12:00 pm

      That’s great – me too! My wife is a singer and I’ve wanted for years to develop my own ease in speaking. Lessons for the voice are on the back burner right now, but I think I’ll get to it!

      Reply
  5. Trudy J on May 2, 2024 at 3:56 am

    Hi Nick
    What pathway would you go down to help correct a scoliosis of the spine. I am unsure where to start. Thanks so much.
    Cheers Trudy

    Reply
    • Nick Strauss-Klein on May 2, 2024 at 10:12 am

      Most scoliosis is caused by patterns of action, movement habits we’ve unconsciously developed over the years that shorten our spines unnecessarily in asymmetrical ways. Lessons that bring awareness to your integrated use of your whole spine in your actions are great. Admittedly, this is basically all Feldenkrais lessons! A few ideas to try to answer your question more specifically:

      • – Try our Little Dip called Spinal Support
      • – Search our lessons for “spine” and follow your curiosity. You can filter by clicking “show advanced options,” or uncheck the “courses and video lessons” option if you just want to see specific lessons.
      • – Collections #2 and #4 are also really relevant.
      • – The Anti-Gravity Lesson (the finale of collection #2) can be very useful for some folks for scoliosis, especially if they’ve done a lot of Feldenkrais lessons like the ones above prior. Go very small and slow. You’re looking for the sense the that up-your-mat forces might naturally align your vertebrae, like how pushing a line of slightly disordered dominoes laying flat on a table can “straighten them out,” bringing their edges into full contact, if done with patience and precision.
      Reply
      • Trudy J on May 2, 2024 at 1:15 pm

        Fantastic response Nick. It’s funny. Whilst I waited for a response I I intuitivley just headed to start on collection #2 as I felt sure lessons for the spine would help but I am glad I asked anyway because I love your response. Thanks again!

        Reply

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