An overview of the  Feldenkrais Method

®

by Ralph Strauch

What is the  Feldenkrais Method?

The Feldenkrais Method is a way of learning —

learning to move more freely and easily, to carry
less stress in your body, to stop doing the things
that cause you pain. It is not the verbal/intellectual
learning you were used to in school. It is learning
through, and with, your body — learning that you
knew as a child but lost touch with growing up.
Through gentle movement and directed attention,
it enhances your self-awareness to put you back in
touch with yourself, with the fluid, easy movement
that is your birthright. We call this kind of learning
somatic education.

Why should you be interested in learning, you

might ask, if you’re suffering from back pain, the
aftereffects of a stroke, or repetitive stress injury?
Conditions like this are usually thought of as
physical conditions, requiring physical treatment. But
that way of thinking is incomplete and
disempowering. It is incomplete because it
overlooks the role that your subconscious
responses play in the pain and limitation you
experience. It is disempowering because it
disregards your power to change those responses.

Pain and limitation come from two types of

sources — underlying physical conditions, and the
subconscious choices you make in organizing your
body and your movements. A stiff back, for
example, may result from a combination of
inflamed muscles (a physical condition) and a
subconscious tendency to hold your back tight and
resist movement. This tightness may be partly a
response to the inflamed muscles, and partly a
habit developed over a lifetime (subconscious
choices). It prevents your back from participating
in your movement, thus increasing the stresses
your movement impose on your back. Medical
treatment addresses the physical conditions and
neglects the subconscious choices, while the
Feldenkrais Method helps you to change those
choices.

The Method is taught in two formats — group

classes and workshops in Awareness Through
Movement, and individual lessons in Functional
Integration.

In Awareness Through Movement classes the

— 1 —

practitioner guides you through a sequence of

gentle non-strenuous movements. Attentive
repetition helps you to discover how to move
more comfortably and efficiently. Students often
experience immediate improvements in posture,
lightness of  movement, and freedom from chronic
discomforts.

In a Functional Integration lesson you typically

lie on a low, padded table wearing loose,
comfortable clothing. The practitioner uses gentle
touch to explore your habitual patterns of
organization and movement, and to suggest easier
and more functional ways of being. Each lesson is
adapted to your specific needs; there is no set
sequence or number of lessons.

Though they appear quite different, Awareness

Through Movement and Functional Integration are
variants of the same underlying process. By
slowing down and noticing how your body
functions, you gain feedback upon which your
nervous system can build enhanced self-awareness
and improved functioning. In Awareness Through
Movement you attend to and learn from the
feedback provided by your own movement, while
in Functional Integration that feedback is enhanced
by the practitioner’s trained awareness and skilled
touch.

A short history of the  Method

The Feldenkrais Method was developed by Dr.

Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli physicist and
engineer, and an active athlete and martial artist.
Finding himself unable to walk when an old knee
injury flared up, Feldenkrais wouldn’t accept his
doctor’s recommendation for surgery. The injury
hadn’t crippled him when it occurred, he
reasoned, so perhaps his current disability
stemmed not from the injury itself but from
something he had done in response to the injury.
Perhaps he had adapted in some way that made it
worse. And if that were the case, perhaps he could
learn to adapt differently, and reduce his pain and
limitation.

Feldenkrais began to explore the way he used

his knees, initially with small, gentle movements
because anything more was painful. He turned his
trained analytical mind to the question of how we
function as human beings, educating himself in
anatomy, neurology, and related subjects, bringing

An overview of the Feldenkrais Method

®

by Ralph Strauch

his experience with judo and other forms of
movement to bear as well.

He taught himself to walk again, without pain.

He also developed a revolutionary understanding
of how human beings learn and function that
became the basis for the Feldenkrais Method. He first
articulated this understanding in Body and Mature
Behavior, and later through other writing and
teaching. His book, Awareness Through Movement,
provides a good introduction to his thinking.

Feldenkrais devoted himself increasingly to his

work with movement, teaching classes in what
would later be called Awareness Through
Movement, as well as working individually with
people (called Functional Integration). This
eventually became his full time work. He began to
train practitioners in 1969, with a small training
group in Tel Aviv. He taught two trainings in the
United States — in San Francisco (1975-77), and in
Amherst, Massachusetts (1980-83). At his death in
1984, he had trained approximately 300
practitioners, the majority of them in the United
States.

The Feldenkrais Guild was established in 1977 to

support and represent the practitioners that
Feldenkrais had trained. After his death the Guild
assumed responsibility for the Method through
such actions as accrediting professional trainings
and adopting a code of ethics and standards of
practice for practitioners. As practitioners were
trained and practitioner organizations established
in other countries, the Guild limited its activities to
the US and Canada. The International Feldenkrais
Federation was established in 1992 as a federation of
practitioner organizations throughout the world.

As of late 1996, there are almost 3000 trained

Feldenkrais practitioners in more than 30 countries
through the world, (1000 of them in the U.S.), and
the number is growing rapidly.

When should you consider
the Feldenkrais Method?

The Feldenkrais Method does not treat medical

conditions, per se. Instead, it helps you learn to
become more self-aware and to move in more
efficient, less painful ways. This can help you
reduce limitations or discomfort caused by the
way you organize your movements and your ways
of being in the world. This includes a wide range

— 2 —

of limitations, so the Method is widely applicable.

Poorly organized movement plays a significant

role in most muscular/skeletal complaints. The
poor organization may precede the complaint, as
when chronic unconscious tensions lead to back
pain or repetitive stress injury, or it may result
from the complaint, as in the case of protective
muscular “splinting” around an injured shoulder
that is not released after the shoulder is treated, or
both. The Feldenkrais Method can help you reduce
excessive tension and move more easily and
fluidly.

Even when a clearly defined physical condition

is present, poorly organized movement may be a
major component of the resulting pain and
limitation. Back pain may be caused by a herniated
disk pressing against a nerve, for example, because
of excessive compressive forces resulting from
chronically tensed muscles. While the Feldenkrais
Method does nothing to treat the herniated disk
directly, it can help you learn to move with less
tension — thus reducing that compressive force
and the resulting pressure on the nerve.

Chronic tension and the immobility it

produces play a significant role in some chronic
pain; reduced tension and enhanced mobility can
lead to reduction of that pain. The Method can also
benefit people with conditions such as
fibromyalgia, and can be used to enhance self-
awareness and mobility for people with
neurological limitations such as stroke or cerebral
palsy.

Emotional stresses are held in the body as

patterns of tension and lack of awareness. The
Feldenkrais Method can provide a gentle, safe way to
unlock those stresses and restore self-awareness,
whether they are the stresses of everyday life or
result from trauma such as sexual abuse or combat
experience.

The benefits are not limited to those who are

injured or ill. Lack of awareness imposes
significant unconscious limitations on all of us.
The Feldenkrais Method provides a tool for self-
exploration and self-improvement that can benefit
everyone, from the seriously impaired to the
normally functioning, and even to high-
functioning people who want to function at a still
higher level. World class athletes and performers
have enhanced their performance using the Method.

You can experience the Feldenkrais Method

through different avenues, including individual
work in Functional Integration, classes or workshops

An overview of the Feldenkrais Method

®

by Ralph Strauch

in Awareness Through Movement, by working with
Awareness Through Movement tapes at home, or
various combinations of these. All these avenues
are experiential. You cannot benefit from the
Method by reading or thinking about it; you must
participate. The benefits come from direct
experiential involvement; the Method is simply a
tool for shaping and directing that involvement.

The particular combination that works best for

you will depend on your individual
circumstances. Classes must accommodate the
needs of a number of people simultaneously, while
individual sessions can focus more directly on
your particular needs. Individual sessions are
often best for someone who has a significant
impairment, or who wants to explore a particular
problem in depth. Classes are less expensive than
individual sessions, and provide a different kind
of involvement. Some people start with individual
sessions and move to classes as they feel more at
ease with their movements. Others begin with
classes, possibly supplementing them with
individual sessions when they encounter an issue
that seems better addressed in that way.

Tapes are inexpensive and easy to use. You can

listen to them at your convenience, and you can
explore the same lesson in different ways. Tapes
are most valuable after you have gained some
understanding of the process by working with a
live practitioner, but can be used by themselves if
you are unable to work with a practitioner.

How long you spend with the Feldenkrais

Method is up to you. Some people come for a short
time to deal with a particular problem and leave
when that problem is solved. Others find deeper
levels of themselves to explore, and stay with the
Method for an extended period or return to it from
time to time for new inspiration.

The process of growth and self-exploration is a

life-long process. The Feldenkrais Method is a tool to
use in that process, which different people will
find useful in different ways. Decisions about how
you can best utilize that tool are ultimately yours,
they are not decisions that a practitioner can make
for you.

Contraindications, caveats, and cautions

The Feldenkrais Method is gentle and non-

invasive, and has no contraindications in the
medical sense of that term. There are, nonetheless,

— 3 —

some cautions and caveats that should be noted.

The Feldenkrais Method should be thought of as

a tool for long term change and not as a treatment
for acute conditions. Working directly with
inflamed areas should generally be avoided, either
by working indirectly through other areas of the
body, or by waiting until the inflammation
subsides,

Pain is a signal of something wrong; it should

not be ignored. Feldenkrais practitioners have no
medical training and are not qualified to diagnose
or treat medical conditions. If you have persistent
pain or other symptoms you should seek the
advice of a competent physician to determine if
any condition requiring medical treatment is
present. Once you understand the situation
medically, you can then decide intelligently how
to utilize the Feldenkrais Method, by itself or in
combination with other modalities.

“No pain, no gain” is NOT a Feldenkrais motto.

If you feel discomfort during a Functional
Integration session you should bring this to your
practitioner’s attention. In Awareness Through
Movement, you should be easy and gentle with
yourself. If you experience discomfort, you should
do less — even if this means imagining the
movement, or stopping temporarily. The process is
about learning, not exercise, and you do not gain
from effort or stress.

These cautions are particularly important when

you work with tapes, because you’re on your own
with no one to monitor you. Lessons may involve
many repetitions of the same movement. Done
gently and with awareness, those repetitions can
help you learn to move more easily. Done roughly
and with effort, the same repetitions can create
injury.

Some final thoughts

After their first Functional Integration session,

clients sometimes ask “How can something so
gentle and non-invasive be so powerful?” The
answer lies in the nature of the interaction between
practitioner and client.

A clients asks that question, I believe, because

of prior experience with some modality where the
practitioner’s aim was to produce some physical
change — to realign her spine, perhaps, or
restructure her connective tissue. To do this, that
practitioner needed to exert enough physical force
to bring that change about, so the client came to
equate force with efficacy.

An overview of the Feldenkrais Method

®

by Ralph Strauch

In Functional Integration, no physical change is

intended, so no requirement for force exists. Your
interaction with the practitioner is an exchange of
information. The practitioner explores and
monitors your organization and your response to
touch and movement, and feeds back information
about what you are doing and possible
alternatives. This exchange requires little effort, so
you experience it as gentle and non-invasive.

Another question I’m asked is “What makes the

Feldenkrais Method different from other
modalities?” I’ve covered parts of the answer —
that the Method is a learning process and not a
treatment, and that it is gentle and non-invasive. I
want to look now at one more difference which I
believe lies at the heart of the Method — the
ultimate source of knowledge on which it
depends.

For most modalities, their ultimate source is

external. In medicine, for example, it resides in the
body of scientific medical knowledge — about
pathology, the effects of treatment, etc. The
medical practitioner is assumed to know more
about that knowledge than you do, and so takes on
the role of an authority figure. His job is to
determine how you deviate from some ideal
dictated by that knowledge, then move you back
into better alignment with it.

The ultimate source of knowledge on which the

Feldenkrais Method draws is your innate organic
sense of rightness and comfort. The Feldenkrais
practitioner is not an authority who will teach you
the “right” way to move, or do anything else.
Instead, his or her job is to help you uncover and
remove the unconscious blocks that keep you from
accessing your organic sense of rightness and
comfort, so you can draw upon it more freely and
effectively. This allows you to become more of the
person you were really meant to be.

What I find most personally appealing about

the Feldenkrais Method is the opportunity it offers
us for greater control over our lives. This isn’t
something that someone else does to you; it’s a way
of getting in touch with knowledge and capability
you didn’t know you possessed, and using that to
make your life better. This aspect of my work is
immensely satisfying as to me as a practitioner. Not
only do I help my clients in the short term; I
empower them and give them tools they can
benefit from for the rest of their lives.

— 4 —

I also find the underlying ideas deeply

satisfying intellectually. In my earlier career as a
mathematician, my research focused on the use of
information to improve decisionmaking. This is
what the Feldenkrais Method is about. It helps you
learn to make better use of information available
from your body — to improve your movements
and your interactions with the world around you.
When I met Moshe Feldenkrais, part of what drew
me to him was the way his work applied principles
and concepts in which I believed, to improve the
way we function as individual human beings.

References

Feldenkrais, Moshe.  Body and Mature Behavior,
International Universities Press, New York, 1979

Feldenkrais, Moshe.  Awareness Through  Movement,
Harper and Row, New York,  1972.

Ralph  Strauch, Ph.D.,  has a private practice in the
Feldenkrais Method in Pacific Palisades, California, a
suburb of Los Angeles. He was trained by Dr.
Moshe Feldenkrais, and brings to his work a
wide-ranging background and experience.   He
received his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University
of California and was formerly a Senior
Mathematician with the Rand Corporation, where
his research focused on human and organizational
decisionmaking processes.  He began exploring the
relationship between mind and body through T'ai
Chi and related disciplines in the late 1960s. Ralph
is the author of THE REALITY ILLUSION: How you
make the world you experience,  and

 LOW-STRESS

COMPUTING: Using Awareness to Avoid RSI.

Ralph Strauch, Ph.D.

Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner

®

P.O. Box 194

Pacific Palisades, CA 90272

(310)454-8322

rstrauch@somatic.com

www.somatic.com

This article was prepared for inclusion in Choices in
Health Care: A Resource Guide to Contemporary Medicine
and Therapy., Adriana Elmes, Ed., in press.

This article is copyright 1996 by Ralph Strauch; all rights are reserved.

You may reproduce and distribute it freely, so long as you do not

charge for it and this notice and my contact information are retained

in tact with the article. Please let me know when you reprint or post

it. To obtain permission for commercial distribution, contact the

author.

The terms Feldenkrais Method,  Awareness Through Movement, and

Functional Integration are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais

Guild.

For more information or a list of practitioners near you, please contact

the author (address above) or the Feldenkrais Guild at 800/775-2118 or

<feldngld@peak.org>.