The Feldenkrais Method of Movement Education
The Feldenkrais method is becoming more known everyday. It is relatively recent as a method. Like so many other pioneers before him Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais developed his method after hurting himself. He had an accident during a football game resulting in damage to the knee. Dr. Feldenkrais consulted the best surgeons of his day to discover that the surgical methods of his day had a 50 percent chance of leaving him an invalid unable to walk on his damaged leg. This was not acceptable to him, so he began studying the human mechanics, cybernetics, systems theory, neuroscience, anatomy, physiology and many other disciplines that deal with our race.
Dr. Feldenkrais also had a black belt in Judo. He had met the founder of Judo Jigoro Kano and learnt from him. This knowledge of martial arts along with all the other disciplines gave him a unique perspective on the way that he moved and functioned. First and foremost Moshe was a scientist, he used his own body as a laboratory to test out all his theories. He explored many avenues and in time it led to the development of his method.
The Feldenkrais method is divided in table work called Functional Integration, this entails a Feldenkrais practitioner moving the body and limbs of a student lying on a low table in very precise, slow deliberate movements. I write student and not patient, because Moshe insisted that his method is not a therapy but a method to bring about learning.
It also has a group discipline that is called Awareness Through Movement, this is practiced in a hall with people lying comfortably on a mat following the verbal instructions of the practitioner. The whole method is held in these precise movements. Moshe called them lessons. Each lesson dealt with one area of our function and Moshe created more than one thousand lessons. These lessons based on human development. Moshe had observed baby infants from a few weeks old onwards and seen what stages they go through to be able to move, roll, orient themselves, crawl, sit and finally walk. He saw that these infants were always experimenting and always searching. The movements if the Awareness Through Movement lessons and like those initial baby explorations. They invite the student lying on his or her mat to explore and bring their attention to bear on how they execute the movement or lack of it.
Slowly with time, the students gains more possibilities of movements, as the nervous system is charting out lost territory on a map. As the map fills in slowly, the main roads, small by-roads and paths appear as well as the villages and towns and what was a big void on the map now is familiar territory. The Feldenkrais method gives us choice where we had non. We can after a few lessons do things, in two,three or four different ways and not one as before3,or 4 not one habitual way.
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