Throughout our lives we all develop habits of moving and acting. Because they are our habits, they tend to feel right to us or become “invisible” - we may not even know we’re doing them.

The Feldenkrais® Method teaches you to become aware of these personal habits and to discover more comfortable and coordinated responses to your movement challenges. Rather than correcting you or showing you “the right way”, a Feldenkrais practitioner draws your attention to how you actually move and offers alternatives for you to explore. While these explorations are based firmly in biomechanics, the design of the skeleton for efficient movement, and learning theory, it is your own intentions and intelligence that guide the process.

Developing your awareness, you learn to recognize the details that help you achieve your intentions, as well as those that may be contributing to pain or injury. With awareness comes the ability to do more of what you want with ease and efficiency.

Accomplishing your intentions with less effort and more skill is not only easier on muscles and joints, it can be deeply satisfying for your whole self. Because of the intimate connection between body and mind, many people find that exploring new habits of movement supports and enhances their yoga and meditation practice, or their psychotherapy.

There are two complementary ways to experience the benefits of the Feldenkrais® Method- Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration.

  
 
Jessica Newman with a student during a Functional Integration

Functional Integration

These individualized lessons are tailor made to you. Rather than a fixed technique, they are created specifically for your movement habits and goals.

With gentle, precise touch (and sometimes words) I will bring your awareness to how you move and suggest more effortless ways of moving. As a more optimal balance between the skeleton and the muscles is discovered, people often effortlessly find a more vertical posture, and report feeling more centered, coordinated, and at ease.

The benefits of the lessons often generalize to daily life. Lessons usually take place with the student lying on a low padded table. However, they may also be taught in sitting, kneeling, standing, or other configurations depending on the needs of the individual. Lessons often end with a take home movement exploration to help integrate your new awareness and skill into your daily life. Clients remain fully clothed at all times.

 

Awareness Through Movement

These verbally guided lessons are a chance to learn to move with greater ease, coordination, and spontaneity for everyday life. Carefully sequenced movement explorations based in motor development, the martial arts, and bio-mechanics help you find out for yourself how you’d prefer to move. As habits of tension and effort drop away, there is often a sense of delight in discovering new things about something so basic to ourselves as our movement. The lessons are intriguing, non-competitive and allow people to learn at their own pace. People often report that the increased curiousity, personal awareness, and fluidity in movement fostered by these classes often shows up spontaneously in their daily lives.

 Jessica Newman with students in an Awareness Through Movement class

Photos by Leila Simon Photography