Usually, Feldenkrais practitioners focus on exploring and clarifying the skeleton. Our potential for movement rests in our bones. Most adult skeletons, whether belonging to an athlete or a sedentary person, are remarkably similar. Therefore, each of us has a potential high performer inside of us. Sometimes, however, it is the soft tissues (skin, fat, muscles, ligaments, tendons, and fascia) that hamper the movement of the bones.
Injuries to the soft tissue often have impacts on our movements, even after the injury is long-healed. These include adhesions, or tissue layers sticking to each other, the skeleton, and even the internal organs. The Feldenkrais Method can be applied to these residual effects of soft tissue injury, both in Awareness Through Movement lessons and in Functional Integration lessons.
Donald VanHowten, a Feldenkrais practitioner and teacher in the field of bodywork and personal development for more than 35 years, is a forerunner in this application of the Feldenkrais Method to soft tissues and internal organs. His CD series, Clarifying Relationships of Your Organs Through Movement, is a wonderful way to experience this special application of the Feldenkrais Method. I have had the privilege of studying with Van and am finding this work very effective at relieving long-term pain and disability due to soft tissue injury, including my foot injury that I mentioned in a previous post. It is also peaking my interest in our embryological beginnings, but that topic is for another post.
One thing I make sure to emphasize to my students or anyone else who asks me about Feldenkrais is that it is a learning method, not a medical treatment. That being said, people who practice Feldenkrais can improve their function by learning about themselves and how they can go beyond what is habitual for them.
Sometimes, a habit can begin with an injury. I hurt my left ankle several months ago in a yoga class. Being a physical therapist, I worked on it myself, without success. I went to another physical therapist and although it improved a little, it still bothered me quite a bit. He suggested I do nothing more, just let it heal up on its own, preferably in a boot.
I declined completely immobilizing my whole left lower leg because I felt that would create more problems than it would solve. Instead, I chose to wrap it and laid off heavy exercise for several months.
The discomfort eventually resolved, but every morning my first couple steps were quite stiff. Yesterday, I did a Feldenkrais lesson for Ankle Movements and today is the first day there was no stiffness.
Feldenkrais did not heal my ankle. It showed me how to go beyond the habits of my injury. By exploring the repertoire of ankle movements and some of the relationships between the ankle, knee, hip and spine, I rediscovered what it was like to move without pain or stiffness.
Would this have worked if I had done it before my ankle had healed? I am not certain. What I do know is that I was not ready to learn until yesterday.
Filed under: Feldenkrais, Fitness, Omaha, Somatics | Tags: Emotional health, Feldenkrais, Fitness, Nia, Omaha, Somatics
photo credit: Nia International Inc.
Sometimes, you just have to get up and move. Alot. Plus, there is the cool music. For anyone who ever got bored during an Awareness Through Movement class, don’t despair, try Nia, “movement-medicine for the body and soul.”
“Nia simultaneously addresses the body, mind, emotions, and spirit, and puts them on the “same page” using music, movement and personal expression to integrate one’s neurology (including the mind, emotions, and spirit) with one’s outer body, or musculature. To achieve this whole-being integration, Nia addresses the whole person using a comprehensive, holistic exercise approach designed with a combination of nine classic movement forms.
Martial Arts: T’ai Chi, Tae Kwon Do, Aikido
Dance Arts: Jazz Dance, Modern Dance, Duncan Dance
Healing Arts: Yoga, Alexander Technique, The Teachings of Moshe FeldenkraisNia teaches you how to physically interpret and internally direct your actions and choices, and to listen to the voice of your body and allow the body to be your guide in discovering Dynamic Ease. Practiced barefoot to music, Nia is self-guided, adaptable and safe for any fitness level, from stiff beginners to highly fit athletes. Delivering cardiovascular, whole-body conditioning, Nia is based on creating a loving relationship with the body and following The Body’s Way – the innate intelligence of the body.”
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Nia International headquarters in Portland, Oregon, to take a couple classes with Carlos and Debbie Rosas, the founders of Nia. They are amazing folks with a beautiful vision – “Through movement we find health”- who have a following of over 2000 professional Nia teachers worldwide. Lately, I have been taking some Nia classes with local Nia blue belt Janice Batt. She is the embodiment of Nia: a tall, beautiful, warm, confident woman who inspires me to move with pleasure and joy. Janice teaches classes in Omaha at Prairie Life and Nebraska Dance. She is organizing the first Nia white belt training in Omaha in early August. Come move with us!
An article on Feldenkrais and Nia by a Nia teacher
Filed under: Feldenkrais, Healthy Aging, Somatics | Tags: Aging, Feldenkrais, Somatics
When I was in my Feldenkrais teacher training, I volunteered at the annual conference for the Feldenkrais Guild of North America in San Francisco. Hundreds of practitioners and trainers attend this event every year, and I was looking forward to meeting as many of them as possible and learning as much as I could about the Method from them.
What stood out for me were the people who had been practicing Feldenkrais for many years looked far younger than their chronological age. They moved smoothly and their faces were (don’t laugh) less wrinkled. I realized then that Feldenkrais was the way to age successfully. I just didn’t know why or how yet.
It has only been 7 years since I began my Feldenkrais training in Sonoma County with Russell and Linda Delman and Alan Questel. In that time, I have learned and taught hundreds of lessons. My ideas about Feldenkrais continue to evolve. Here are some of my ideas about how to stay healthy as you age using the Feldenkrais Method.
Awareness Through Movement lesson; photocredit:
Go to Ground. Keep your ability to get up and down from the floor. Come up with different ways of doing it. There are many Feldenkrais lessons that can prepare you and then take you through this most important transitional movement. If you lose the ability to get up and down from the floor, you can regain it. The requirements for being able to do this are essential to a healthy body:
- Strong legs and abdominals
- Flexible hips, knees, ankles, ribs, and spine
- Good balance and coordination
- Confidence
- Easy breathing
If you lack any of these essential requirements for a health body, the Feldenkrais Method is a good way to restore your abilities.
Lie on Your Belly. Contrary to what you might hear from others, lying on your belly is good for you. A healthy human body should be able to briefly rest in just about any position that is anatomically possible, except extremes that would damage soft tissues or bone, or during pregnancy. Lying on your belly is possible if you have a healthy body. Here are the rewards for lying on your belly:
- Erect posture.
- Flexible ribs.
- Flexible spine, including neck.
- Flexible shoulders.
- Flexible ankles.
- Easy breathing.
If you are unable to comfortably lie on your belly, there are lessons in Feldenkrais that can help restore this ability to you.
Boogie Boarding; Photocredit:
Extend Your Middle Back. By the time we are middle-aged, most of us have experienced neck or low back pain. There are many reasons for this, but one antidote that can work in most cases. Maintaining or restoring the flexibility of your thoracic spine and ribcage is crucial to preventing and treating most cases of neck and low back pain.
Why the middle back? It is probably the part of your back that you are least aware of, unless it is in pain. Although very flexible in babies and young children, the thoracic spine and ribcage become stiffer as we age because often we don’t move them that much in our daily functions. Instead, we tend to compensate with our necks and low backs, which can result in overuse, injury, and pain to those areas. If we restore the natural flexibility we were born with to the middle back, we can experience the following benefits:
- Little or no neck or low back pain.
- Erect posture.
- Lower risk for falls.
- Lower risk for spinal compression fractures.
- Easy breathing.
- Improved ability to get up and down from the floor.
- Comfort while lying on belly.
As you can see this last “secret” is a key to the first two. There are many Feldenkrais lessons that can help you improve your awareness and mobility of your thoracic spine and ribs.
Move Your Pelvis. There are many schools of thought and movement pertaining to the body that emphasize the pelvis. In Eastern martial arts, the pelvis is said to contain the Tan Den, or be the center of your chi. Moshe Feldenkrais taught that it was the locus of the potent self. The pelvis is central to many dance forms including belly dance, latin styles, and blues. It contains or is closely associated with our vital organs of reproduction, absorption, and excretion. That being said, many of us hold our pelvises quite still, either from social habit, physical, or emotional injury. Restoring natural movements to our pelvises can help restore more youthful functioning to the body, including:
- A flexible, healthy spine.
- Erect posture.
- Little or no back, neck, and jaw pain.
- Confidence.
- Easy walking.
- Comfortable sitting.
- Sexual pleasure.
All human functions can be improved by practicing the Feldenkrais Method. There are lessons for vision, walking, sitting, balance, sport, work, and breathing. Because Feldenkrais helps you improve the movement of your attention, thinking, sensations, and emotions can all be improved. To find a practitioner near you, click here.
- Holly Bonasera, M.P.T., G.C.F.P, licensed physical therapist, certified Feldenkrais practitioner, and middle-aged person
Watch, listen, and learn from a model for healthy aging in action, Feldenkrais teacher trainer Ruthy Alon, originator of Bones for Life.
If you want to know more about how to use Feldenkrais to reduce the appearance of wrinkles, watch this blog for a future entry on that subject.
Feldenkrais trainer Mark Reese, Ph.D. on aging elegantly. This article is on the German Feldenkrais guild website; please page down to find it among the English articles. It is worth the extra effort 
Filed under: Feldenkrais, Fitness, Somatics | Tags: Feldenkrais, Fitness, Somatics, sport performance
What does Feldenkrais, a method of learning, have to offer the fitness community? How does freedom from boredom with your training routine without having to change it sound? Or how about a built-in injury detection and prevention device hit you? Or improved athletic performance without increasing your training time?
How does practicing Feldenkrais relieve training boredom, prevent injury, and improve performance in sport? By teaching you to move your attention. Chances are, you are attending to a few specific areas or your body while you work out or compete. Some of you may be completely on automatic pilot, especially during that 100th rep. The thing is, you are using a very small part of your consciousness when you do a routine task. We all know the old saw about only using 10 percent of your brain. Imagine what adding a little bit more of your brain to your sport will do for you.
Sounding like too much work? Not interested in radical changes? Not to worry, Feldenkrais is subtle and you will hardly know you are doing it after you become familiar with the approach. Once you get through the initial approximations and find the best way to apply it to your training or sport, you will be happy with the results. And maybe apply it to other things you do, like your job, your everyday movements, how you play with your kids or pets, the applications are endless.
Photo Credit: NY Times
What do I mean? To give you an example, take swimming. How many strokes does it take to make a lap? Do you breathe on one side only? If so, is it because you can only breathe on that side? How do you make your turn? How do you feel as you swim, what are your body sensations and emotions? Can you visualize your stroke in your own body in real time, or do you see yourself in your mind’s eye as if from another person’s point of view?
These are the sort of questions that may come up when you apply Feldenkrais to swimming. And they are all areas for potential change. Imagine being able to use fewer strokes per lap, being faster and smoother and easier in your style. What would it be like to be more versatile? To enjoy your swimming even more than you do now?
How do you transfer what you learn in a Feldenkrais class to your sport? Or in the case of swimming, a land-based lesson to the pool? It’s easy. Feldenkrais teaches you to attend to yourself. You will become an expert in knowing how your body works, what is possible and easy, what is more difficult, or even impossible at the time. You will experiment with variations in your movement patterns and expand your repertoire of possible ways to do the same movement. You will grow your perceptions of yourself, in field size and in accuracy. You will include more of yourself in your movement, lessening the work for individual parts. You will reduce the wear and tear on your muscles, ligaments, tendons, bones, joints, and nerves. You will last longer and perform better. You might even be happier. When you know what you are doing, you will be better and more easily able to do what you want, to paraphrase Moshe Feldenkrais, the originator of the Feldenkrais Method.
Moshe Feldenkrais on exercise:
And that’s how we can avoid the tedium of repetition of exercise, by finding that if you differentiate yourself; if you know that the object is to differentiate – it means make a difference between two similar movements or similar actions. And the next thing, generalize – it means involve your entire being. If parts of yourself do not participate in the movement, it will never be as good as you can make it. And it will never become a habit with you because it’s uncomfortable so long as you don’t involve your entire person in it………. That is not learning. That’s exercising. So, slowly, the most important thing is not to achieve the movement, but to find the process of organizing yourself for the action and introducing to that a generalization. Involve your entire self and not those little bits which (you) are used to. And as, especially if you carry it over in other walks of life, it’s extraordinarily important.
From - Feldenkrais® Professional Training Program Transcripts. Amherst, Mass. 1981. Ed. Humiston, B. Week 7, 8, 9. Morning Session Tape #61. Page 7 and 8 of 38.
- by Holly Bonasera, M.P.T., G.C.F.P.
a licensed physical therapist, certified Feldenkrais practitioner, and avid cross-country skiier
Another article on Feldenkrais and Fitness.
A great swimming blog, includes training tips and international coverage of the sport.
Say “FELL-den-cries” if you want to move more gracefully and with less pain, if you want to improve your sport performance, if you want to have better balance, better posture, or an improved sense of well-being.
The Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education is a self-learning technique that improves your ability to sense yourself accurately. Have you ever had the experience of seeing a video or photo of yourself, or even hearing a recording of your voice, that did not match the way you think you look or sound? Practicing Feldenkrais can help change that dissonant perception so that you look and sound and even feel the way you think you do.
We all have habits of the mind and body, a sort of automatic pilot of everyday function. These habits are linked to activities that may be necessary, like walking, driving, reading, and thinking, or optional, like golf, knitting, skiing, meditating, studying, singing, painting, cooking or cleaning. Practicing Feldenkrais can improve your ability to do all of your everyday functions by increasing the efficiency of your thinking, moving, sensing and feeling. Harmful or extra patterns of behavior that have become habit through past injury or experience may be reduced and removed by choice, increasing your repertoire of possible, comfortable and safe behaviors through gentle exploration and innovation.
Many people are drawn to and benefit from learning Feldenkrais, including artists, athletes, office workers, retirees, people recovering from physical injuries, people with stressful jobs, and people in recovery from addiction or trauma.
Awareness Through Movement lesson, Photo Credit:
Most people studying Feldenkrais take a weekly 30-45 minute Awareness Through Movement® class, which is often taught in a neighborhood recreation center, gym, dance studio, hospital, or other community facility. Public Feldenkrais lessons are verbally guided by a Feldenkrais practitioner or teacher training student and usually take place on a mat or in a chair and are appropriate for most age-groups and abilities. Wearing loose, layered clothing is recommended for ease of movement and comfort. Towels, pillows, pads, foam rollers, and other props may be used as necessary to increase the comfort of each student during the lesson. All movement variations in each lesson are optional.
Functional Integration, Photo Credit:
Some Feldenkrais students also take private sessions with a Feldenkrais practitioner. These are called Functional Integration® lessons. They usually last 45-60 minutes, may involve manual and verbal guidance, and are tailored to the needs and goals of the individual. Clothing suitable for easy movement is worn by all participants.
For more information about the Feldenkrais Method or to find a local class or practitioner, please visit the Feldenkrais Guild of North America.
For a listing of classes and practitioners in Omaha, please visit Feldenkrais in Omaha.
