Deep Dives
Wondering how to structure your Feldenkrais study over time?
Deep Dives are the perfect solution for me. They offer the direction and continuity I think I’ve been missing.
- Josh Horvitz, 48, actor
In the courses and content guides below we've gathered lessons from our collections into specialized learning contexts, combining free and donors-only content.
Our Patron-level donors have full access, but every Deep Dive includes one or more free lessons. All users can click on Patron lessons to learn about them.
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Action Heroes: Spine, Hips, Sternum, & Scapulas
Activate your superpowers! Celebrate and elevate basic biomechanics of being human, and take hold of your birthright as a powerful, upright biped. Features Long Belly, Strong Back learning that's great for back and hip pain, balance, confidence, athletic skill, and so much more. For everyone.
Grounding for Liftoff
Connect to the ground so clearly that you move as if weightless. Learn to draw the earth’s buoyancy up and through yourself and into action.
This course is great for everyone, and it's essential study for super-movers like somatic teachers, athletes, dancers, actors, and musicians.
Better Balance
Since we do everything in gravity, learning to balance more skillfully improves every human function – and makes us safer, too!
Breathing with Vitality
Enjoy more ease and vitality. Improve your breathing and posture. Calm your nervous system.
The Pelvic Floor: Less Is More
Supple Feet, Powerful Legs
Explore, improve, and enjoy your edges, arches, ankles, knees and hips, and integrate them with your whole self. Helps with hamstrings and low back pain too.
Jaw, Neck, and Shoulders
Melt tension, reduce pain, and quiet the anxiety pattern. Improve TMJ symptoms such as jaw tightness and teeth grinding.
Shoulder Cloak, Rib Basket, Sliding Sternum
Escape your shoulder "girdle" and rib "cage." Let go of pain, tension, anxiety, and ideas that limit you.
A Pelvic Clock "Primer"
Essential learning based on (and including) Moshe Feldenkrais' famous "Pelvic Clock" lesson.
Walking from Your Spine
We think of legs doing the job, but our axis is more responsible for walking and running than most folks think.
Rock & Roll! (and Rotate)
A peek at the unique neurological benefits of rolling. Fascinating, fun, and richly rewarding!
Free While Constrained
Lessons learned in quarantine: supportive somatic metaphors for encountering limits with sensitivity, curiosity, and grace.
The Illusion of Isolation
In dance, athletics, and even everyday life we often think of movements as isolated, but that’s an illusion. These sophisticated lessons dive deep into differentiation and integration practice, and improve coordination and control of complex actions.
For all experienced Felden-fans. This course is essential study for super-movers like somatic teachers, athletes, dancers, actors, and musicians.
Little Dips
Content guides and reflections on studying Feldenkrais with links to related lessons, including at least one free lesson.
These posts originally appeared in our monthly newsletter.
Got a request for a future Deep Dive or “Little Dip”? Let me know by replying right here!
Hi Nick, a friend has extreme RSI in hands and has been told an operation is necessary. Is there anything feldenkrais can offer to alleviate RSI?
Regards Priya
Probably, but this would be a question for a 1:1 consultation with a Feldenkrais Practitioner, since it’s impossible to understand the nature of the injury from a distance. There’s a good chance our “bell hand” lessons (available through our Patron lesson search) would be helpful, but again if your friend has no experience with Feldenkrais yet 1:1 is the better way to start in this situation.
Thank you Nick
Thank you for the amazing work! I’m a vocal coach exploring Feldenkrais with my students and would love to see a curated Singers’ collection. As you likely know already, these key areas for singers often include: breath support and respiratory muscles (diaphragm, intercostals, ribs), posture and alignment (spine, shoulders, hips, pelvis, knees, feet), larynx and vocal mechanism, jaw, mouth, and tongue for articulation, and overall core and head-body coordination for resonance and expressive movement. I’d love to hear your perspective on a what would be a great collection and deep dive for singers! 🙂
I am married to a professional singer and I myself would like to experience easier speaking, so more vocal production lessons have been on my list for a long time. A lot of that ATM work is quite specialized, and my purpose at The FP has been to fill out our “all-purpose” collections first. I’m closer to that now (and thus being able to create more specialized material) so it’s possible I’ll get to this eventually!
Also, as you may know, all-purpose lessons are extremely valuable for high performance people in athletics and the arts, because generally organizing the body and mind more economically in gravity and action frees up muscular and breath resources to, for example, learn to sing more naturally.
Here are lessons and courses that are applicable to your breakdown of topics:
Thank you so much for your thoughtful reply, Nick! I agree about the benefits of the all purpose lessons and appreciate you highlighting several lessons that are initial places to start. I’ll be sure to direct my students here for exploration. I look forward to future offerings and commend you for the great work you’re doing here. 🙏🏻😊🎶
Would love something to free up hip flexors.
That’s a great topic. Our Deep Dives (and the Feldenkrais Method) are usually more functionally oriented than body part oriented, but specific parts do tend to improve when particular functions improve.
For hip flexor help you might enjoy Supple Feet, Powerful Legs (above), particularly the blue box in that Deep Dive. Our Pelvic Clock “Primer” should also be useful.
Finally if you haven’t already I recommend working through Getting Oriented and/or Lessons for Standing, Walking, and Running in our primary collections.
Thanks you so much. I’m on it!
Anything you can recommend for thight hamstrings and calves ?
Yes, would recommend very much the first two boxes (yellow and red) of Supple Feet, Powerful Legs, particularly 1B, 1C, and 2A. The goal is to build functional habits where those habitual tightnesses are unnecessary, so your brain learns to let them go. The rotation of the lower legs in 1C can be particularly useful for calves, and getting buttocks tuned up often helps hamstrings quiet. There are a lot of unknowns without observing you, but this line of learning typically helps those challenges.
Thank you Nick, I’m doing lots of hiking and cycling so that’s maybe one of the reasons. I’m going to do the lessons you recommend and see where they bring me
Hi, I missed Deborah Bowes ‘Core and Floor’ series. Will it be available in the deep dive section anytime soon?
Thank you!
Thanks for the question. No plans for that right now but I’ll put our community support specialist in touch with you about how to buy those Zoom recordings.
Length.
We’ve got a “hidden” length Deep Dive! See lessons 4A, 4B, and 4C in the red box in The Illusion of Isolation, above.
Can we do something that leads to a head stand? I am working on it in my yoga so I am very interested in the FK approach.
There are fascinating sequences of lessons that lead up to a head stand. At least for now they’re not high on my list because we skew our content toward being as accessible as possible for as many people as possible, and it would be a very limited set of users who would be interested in this. But…noted!
Hi Nick, could you do a deep dive for meditation posture? Maybe something which helps with the full lotus? Thank you
That’s a cool idea, will keep it in mind. A bit more specialized than my other Deep Dive focuses so far, but for now have you checked out The Illusion of Isolation? The first box in that Deep Dive could be very helpful for meditation posture and full lotus.
Update: There’s also a sequence in The “Morning Prayer” Lesson (Patrons) that I have personally used for this purpose by doing the seated parts of that lesson on my own meditation “cushion” (I use a yoga block, actually). Check the lesson notes on that one for ideas.
Also I really like the foot/knee/hip explorations in Connecting Arms and Legs for full lotus and half lotus.
Hi Nick, do you have any functional squat lessons?
No, but the sequence that begins The Illusion of Isolation is very helpful for squatting.
Thank you Nick, I will check it out.
Update: I also thought of More Precise Hips and Spine for you, and The “Morning Prayer” Lesson (Patrons).
Dear Nick, I appreciate your classes very much! I’m currently pregnant and would like to prepare myself for the birthing process with a Feldenkrais approach by getting to know and relax my pelvic floor muscles. I’m very familiar with the pelvic clock already. Do you have other recommendations? Thanks so much!
You have impeccable timing! Keep an eye out in the next few days for a new Deep Dive. I’m guessing you didn’t plan your pregnancy based on new FP content becoming available, but it kind of seems like it! 😉
For anyone wondering: it’s The Pelvic Floor, Less is More course above.
Hi Nick! I am about to dive into your wonderful page again after a longer break. I am looking for lessons that can help inprove lateral organisation of brain and body. I only recently disoverd that I could be a forced right hander and have a cross eye-hand donminance. And I do have problems with balance, concentration. Since ATM has helped me a lot before, I do believe there will be many benefits in a lot of lessons. Maybe it could be an idea to bundle them. Or maybe you could be so kind an point out where to look. All the best!
That’s an interesting question. A wide variety of types of ATM lessons, studying very regularly (at least 2-3 per week) will be very helpful. If you want to try something that is more “on the nose,” I wonder about the hand/eyes differentiation explored in this lesson? You can also search our lessons for “eyes”.
Another thought is to explore your primary spinal bias (this is one of the “Little Dips” above). It may be fascinating and integrative to dive deeply into your natural asymmetries. I’ve often thought of expanding this Little Dip into a Deep Dive, but as it says, you can also simply use our Search & Filter for the term “bias” for lots more on this topic.
Thank you Nick – to study quite regurlarly is definitivly on my list! All the best form Vienna/Europe 🙂