Disclaimer: The Feldenkrais Method of somatic education is presented on this website for educational purposes and self-guided study only. The Method and all recordings, live online classes, pages, blog posts, and documents of any kind available from this website are not intended to be a substitute for professional help or medical treatment. Nothing on this website is intended to diagnose or treat any pathology, disease or injury of any kind. This website, all media files found on it, all live classes available through it, The Feldenkrais Project, Twin Cities Feldenkrais, LLC, and the creator of any and all of these files, and anyone featured on these files, cannot be held responsible for any injuries or discomfort that might arise while doing these lessons. If you have any doubts about whether doing Feldenkrais lessons is appropriate for you, be sure to consult your medical practitioner.
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I love this discussion and these lessons. I’ve thought so many times about stretching and often ask myself, “What happens if I stop before I actually get to the stretch?” We are all so primed to think that that deep (sometimes painful) stretch is good and useful. One of my fundamental learnings from Feldenkrais is that I can often find the benefit prior to the stretch, absolutely before the strain.
My problem is that I don’t feel the strain until the next day. Then it’s too late. Maybe because I’m hypermobile?? I don’t know, but I feel the “work” or “overworked” too late to make changes in my practice.
There’s a kind of recalibrating to ourselves that happens in Feldenkrais study. Often people surprise themselves at first like this, discovering they’ve done too much after the fact, though they didn’t sense it was too much during the lesson. It can be hard to be patient and present with very tiny movements, but I recommend experimenting with doing the movements almost “microscopically”. Especially in these shorter Getting Oriented lessons, err on the side of “these movements I’m making must be too small to be useful” and see what happens! You may be surprised that you can get a ton of benefit from a lesson that you “did” more in your imagination than in visible movement. If you can learn the value of this end of the movement spectrum you’ll speed up the calibration process of keeping yourself comfortable (even the day after) by really learning how little you need to “do” to benefit from Feldenkrais. The process takes time and a little trust, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Let me know how it goes!