Sunday, March 11, 2007

What is the Feldenkrais Method®?
and
What is WakeUp Feldenkrais?

What is the Feldenkrais Method?

One word: Learning.

people moving
An Awareness Through Movement® lesson. Photo by Rosalie O'Conner.

Two words: Neural rewiring

Three words: Refining Our Awareness

Four words: Learning how to Learn

Four words: Increasing Our Self Connection

Five words: Transformation thru Undoing Stuck Habits

Six words: Expanding horizons thru Learning and Awareness




SEE

THE GLORIES OF FELDENKRAIS

FOR A HUGE RANGE OF POSSIBLE BENEFITS






    One sentence:
  • This is a system of mind/body whole self learning
    based on how we learned
    when we were a genius,
    which is to say,
    how we learned to roll over and sit up and crawl and walk and talk when we were babies.


  • Two sentences:
  • This is a way of learning how to learn,
    based on the primacy of movement
    in life in general
    and human life in particular.

  • Our brains are set up to learn,
    and moving is the most primary way
    our brains were set into motion (literally and figuratively) to learn,
    and learning by moving with awareness
    is the quickest and sweetest way
    to radically improve almost anything in our lives.


  • Three sentences:
  • We are alive and amazing and
    have a brain
    that loves to learn.

  • By going slow
    and minimizing effort
    and looking to reduce unnecessary effort
    and concentrating on the process rather than achievement,
    we can radically improve
    the quality of our movement and our being.

  • This work,
    being about learning,
    consists of lessons
    and these lessons can be with verbal instruction,
    as Awareness Through Movement® lessons,
    or touch guided lessons,
    called Functional Integration®


  • Four sentences:
  • A man named Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984)
    had a smart and curious nature
    and loved sports and thinking
    and wrecked his knees and
    set about learning how to heal himself.

  • He succeeded.

  • The ways he discovered involved returning
    to a discovery and playfulness
    as well as understanding that we function as mind/body unities
    and that connection and relationship
    and inner functioning/organization were what brought about change.

  • He discovered,
    and created ways for others to discover,
    inner learnings and possibilities of transformation,
    for both "body" and our whole lives,
    that had previously been considered "impossible."


  • Five sentences:
  • Human beings,
    more than any other creature on this planet,
    are dependant on
    learning
    to become who they are in life.

  • Some of what we learn is stupendous,
    to walk, talk, play dodge ball, find a mate and
    some of what we learn is "bad habits,"
    ways of moving and interacting and thinking
    and feeling that
    contradict
    our having a rich and full life.

  • A man named Moshe Feldenkrais, 1904-1984,
    discovered, in the course of healing his own wrecked knees,
    that by focusing on the
    LEARNING
    that takes place in the brain and the brain/body,
    he could achieve spectacular results
    in people as varied as children with cerebral palsy
    and star professional basketball players
    or world class musicians.

  • Freedom from being stuck
    in habits and patterns that aren't working,
    can be achieved by
    learning OPTIONS
    in ways we move, think and go about living.

  • This system can seem "slow,"
    because it focuses on the little places
    that are missing in our inner connection and awareness,
    and yet, because it fills in these missing areas,
    is much "faster" at achieving
    real and organic and long term improvement
    and transformation.





Books on the Feldenkrais Way, c/o the Feldenkrais Guild Bookshop


See, if you haven't yet:
U Tube Short Wonderful Video on the Feldenkrais Way


Or
Wikipedia, on the Feldenkrais Method





What is Wake Up Feldenkrais?

One word:
Feldenkrais®.

Two words:
Waking Up

Three words:
Learnng New Options

Four words:
Expanding joy and effectiveness

Five words:
The Work of Byron Katie

Six words:
Transforming Lives thru Learning and Awareness


See More at
What is Wake Up Feldenkrais?



The Feldenkrais Method is a learning system
that
enables people
to transform from
poor to fair,
from fair to good,
from good to great,
from great to greater.

In the words of Moshe Feldenkrais:
"Making the impossible possible,
the possible easy,
and
the easy elegant."



In what?
Traditionally the Feldenkrais Method has been used by
people
who want to improve and transform the
quality of their movement in life,
from a cerebral palsy child who has very little useful movement,
to an adult with a sore shoulder or back,
or someone getting older and frustrated to no longer be able to do some activity they used to love when they were younger,
to someone who
excels
at music, sports, yoga ,
even at a world class level,
and wants to become even more excellent.

It has also been widely experienced
that Feldenkrais work
increases everyday joy,
decreases depression and anxiety,
and can
radically improve thinking
and problem solving abilities.


With an in-depth exploration of this work,
people often realize suprising
and dramatic changes
in their life,
changes they didn't even know
they were hungry to make.

Moshe Feldenkrais:
"What I'm after isn't flexible bodies,
but
flexible brains.

What I'm after
is to restore each person
to their human dignity."


How is this done?

This is a learning system,
and brains learn best when awareness is heightened,
pain is minimized,
interest and curiosity is heightened,
novelty is encouraged,
and pleasure and success are ongoing.

This system is about increasing our options,
in moving, thinking and feeling,
about experiencing,
in real, physical and mental experiments,
how we can be more than we were but a few minutes before.


In the Feldenkrais Method
there are two categories of work, roughly.
One, called
Awareness Through Movement® lessons,
hands on elbows, moving
An Awareness Through Movement® lesson. Photo by Rosalie O'Conner.

involves verbal instructions,
to which a person (often in a group) follows
slow and interesting movements that
heighten awareness,
decrease stress,
increase pleasure and ease in moving and thinking,
and connect us more to our
here and now
physical and mental selves.

For upcoming classes, see Current Classes and Offerings

The other, called
Functional Integration® lessons,
involves touch guided sessions
on a low and firm but comfortable table.
The client/ student is fully clothed
and is moved in
gentle and
interesting and
pleasurable
ways
that reduce pain
and increase mobility,
self confidence, and
leave a sense of a shift to new level of organization.


These lessons are as pleasurable as a massage,
but are for the brain as well as the body,
for the Whole Self, really,
expanding your sense of yourself,
opening new ways of moving,
and thinking,
and feeling.

Opening you to freedom
to begin to become more of what you
really want to be.

For prices and details,
see,
the end of the essay on
Back, Neck, and Shoulder Pain, One on One Lessons

or see the Posting:
Functional Integration, Amazing and Transformative Lessons






For another option,
of how to understand Awareness Through Movement
and
Functional Integrations,
see:
Feldenkrais.com.





Contact Phone: 707-996-1437

Email Chris Elms, M.A.


Chris Elms pic

Photo: Luke Mogelson







You can also try the Awareness Through Movement lessons,
in a mini-form,
via the computer cartoon program
Desk Trainer.
Here the lessons are 5 to 8 minutes long and the first one is free. The program costs $30 per year.

In this very blog
there are lots of instructions for small
and medium length lessons.
Just
click on the label: Movement Lesson
and a batch will come up for you
to read
and have some
learning time.


There are a bunch of articles in this blog,
and at Feldenkrais Guild Articles,
and at almost all the Feldie Sites listed in the sidebar to the left.

See especially the slightly difficult,
but worth the trouble, articles of Dennis Leri, my trainer, at Semiophysics

BOOKS:

The best to start with is Relaxercise
Go to the end of their list of books by practitioners.
Actually, while you're there A Guide to Awareness Through Movement, has detailed pictures and instructions, and
A Busy Person's Guide to Easier Movement
has gobs of short, useful lessons.

Also wonderful,
and with a GREAT explanation of the Method:
Awareness Heals.

Then would come: Awareness Through Movement by Moshe Feldenkrais, himself.

And also by Moshe, and quite wonderful,
The Elusive Obvious,
which is what the Feldenkrais Method is all about. (I.e. We live in gravity. We have two legs. We are tall, cylindrical beings,
and so on.)

CDs and DVDs as well as books, via:

See Feldenkrais Resources.

Achieving Excellence.

Excellent CD on necks, joints, backs, and DVDs on Back, and Special Needs Children:

The Anat Baniel Method.


Contact Phone: 707-996-1437

Email Chris Elms, M.A.





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