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Learning
Through Movement: The Feldenkrais Method ®
By Louise
Runyon
You bend over to pick up a pencil, and experience back pain for months
afterwards. You have a car wreck, and years later are still dealing
with the repercussions. You've been through extensive psychotherapy,
but have not resolved key issues. Why is this, and is there anything
you can do?
 We
all have patterns of movement, arising out of our experience. We break
an arm and stop moving parts of our shoulder and chest and breath. We
orient ourselves to the right in response to a parent who grabbed us
by the left hand. Parts of our spine or a hip freeze from the trauma
of surgery. The events subside, but the movement patterns remain. The
Feldenkrais Method ® offers embodied, experiential learning through
the exploration of movement possibilities other than the habitual.
Whether working one-on-one with a trained practitioner or in group classes,
Feldenkrais® students explore small, gentle movement options. The
brain recognizes order and efficiency and, when given choices, can release
the muscles from years of held tension in a single moment. People frequently
discover that their ribs can move, for example, and suddenly movement
is able to flow through their whole body: this missing piece enables
many things to fall into place. Someone may become acquainted with their
collarbones, and how the muscles around these bones have been pulling
this person down and forward for a lifetime: when they feel their collarbones
rotate and lift, the person has a whole new perspective. Someone else
may learn that they have been “holding on with their eyes”
– focusing so exclusively in a certain direction that their head
is prevented from being part of their movement. These kinds of discoveries
mean that people learn, in an embodied way, that they have choices.
Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984) was a physicist and engineer who lived
most of his life in Israel. He developed his method in the course of
attempting to heal his own injured knees, discovering for himself the
amazing self-organizing ability of the human nervous system. He found
that when presented with different movement possibilities, the nervous
system has a way of choosing the most optimal, efficient path, which
over time becomes part of a person's new repertoire of movement.
Feldenkrais became engaged in the process of helping others re-learn
how to learn, drawing on the brain's unique ability for self-healing
and self-realization.
In the Feldenkrais Method ®, students work slowly and gently, with
small movements. Unlike physical therapy or conventional exercise, quality
is emphasized over quantity. This approach enables people to come to
a heightened awareness of what they are doing and how they are doing
it, which allows them to make different choices, both consciously and
unconsciously. Because the unmoving parts of ourselves are generally
the parts of which we are unaware, by filling in these “uncharted
areas” of our map we soon begin to move differently.
The method is practiced in two ways: Functional Integration® is
an individual hands-on session, widely recognized for addressing both
minor and serious muscular-skeletal and neurological problems, chronic
tension and pain, and the motor development problems of children. Awareness
Through Movement® lessons are verbally-guided group classes. Both
offer new movement possibilities to the brain in an organized way, resulting
in improvements in coordination, posture, breath, self-image, and sense
of well-being.
Functional Integration, an individual is guided through small directed
movements by the gentle touch of the practitioner, while lying or sitting
on a low padded table. Custom-tailored to each person, this process
provides the most direct and personal feedback. In Awareness Through
Movement ® lessons, students begin by noticing how they contact
the floor as they lie on their backs. Invariably, by the end of the
lesson this has changed: they lie more comfortably, more of themselves
is in contact with the floor, their breathing is fuller, and pain and
dysfunction are frequently gone.
Although Feldenkrais developed his work in an attempt to heal his own
knees, he discovered that learning through movement offered even more
than the gift of being able to walk again. He became, more than anything
else, interested in the question of human potential. Like Feldenkrais,
most people come to the method because of physical pain or disability.
Very often, they come away with more than just physical relief. They
find that if they are not always compelled to orient themselves to the
left, or to stand mostly on one foot, they can also act in non-habitual
ways in the world. Some find that issues with which they have dealt
in therapy for years become resolved when they are no longer carrying
them in their movement patterns.
We are designed, through the evolution of the human brain, to function
exquisitely throughout our lives. Very often we feel helpless when we
do not function, when debilitating injuries result from something as
minor as bending over to pick up a pencil. Learning through movement,
the basic premise of the method, helps us access that which is possible
in our lives, to get more in touch with “how we were meant to be.”
Louise
Runyon is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitionercm, certified Bones
for Life™ teacher and dancer/choreographer. She can be reached at
(404) 728-8991 or at louiserunyon@aol.com
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