“I see obvious improvement in my child’s movements and behaviour in each session with Sophie.”
Katherine
Humans are singular systems that are always moving, sensing, thinking, having feelings, and acting in relation to their environment. Following this, if you intervene to raise the level of function in any one of those areas, then necessarily the level of function of the whole system would be raised. In Feldenkrais Method we use improving moving, sensing and perceiving as the basis for this holistic development.
Anyone can work with Feldenkrais Method, no matter what age or physical condition. It uses the power of neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to change) to improve our sensory-motor and neuro-muscular functioning. It does this by useing gentle touch, movement and ways of directing attention and enhancing perception, to send new information to the brain and nervous system. This process restores or creates new neural connections, improves sensory-motor and neuromuscular functioning and creates new possibilities for perception and movement. And since everything we do involves moving, the method can help us improve anything we like. That’s why it helps people with such a wide range of concerns, from chronic pain and tension, stress and anxiety, injury recovery and prevention, and neurological difficulties, to high performance improvement and transformative self-development. Feldenkrais Method seeks to improve the quality with which we live our lives. People find that they feel better not only in their movements and bodies, they also develop more choice and control in their thinking and feeling life too and improve the quality of their lived experience.
Moshe Feldenkrais (Doctor of Science, Sorbonne) was an engineer, physicist, inventor, martial artist and student of human development. Born in eastern Europe, he emigrated to Palestine as a young man. Later he studied at the Sorbonne and worked in the Joliot Curie laboratory in Paris during the 1930s. His interest in Ju Jitsu brought him into contact with Professor Kano who developed the sport of Judo. Dr. Feldenkrais was a founder of the Ju Jitsu Club of Paris and was one of the first Europeans to earn a black belt in Judo.Escaping the Nazi advance he went to Britain and worked on anti-submarine research for the Admiralty. It was there in the 1940s that he began to develop his Method and wrote his first book on the subject. A knee injury, and uncertain prospects for surgery, began Feldenkrais on what was to become a life long exploration of the relationship between movement and consciousness. In the 1950s, Dr. Feldenkrais returned to Israel where he lived and worked until he died in 1984 in Tel Aviv.In developing his work Moshe Feldenkrais studied, among other things, anatomy, physiology, child development, movement science, evolution, psychology, a number of Eastern awareness practices and other somatic approaches.
“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains. What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.”
Dr. Feldenkrais authored a number of seminal books on movement, learning, human consciousness and somatic experience. He taught in Israel and many countries in Europe through the 1960s and 1970s and in North America through the 1970s and 1980s. He trained his first group of teachers in Tel Aviv in the early 1970s. This was followed by two groups in the USA – one group in San Francisco, California and another in Amherst, Massachusetts.In his life Dr. Feldenkrais worked with all kinds of people with an enormous range of learning needs -from many infants with Cerebral Palsy to leading performers such as the violinist, the late Yehudi Menuhin. He taught over a number of years for the dramatist Peter Brook and his Theatre Bouffes du Nord. He was a collaborator with thinkers such as anthropologist Margaret Mead, neuroscientist Karl Pribram and explorers of the psychophysical Jean Houston and Robert Masters.The breadth, vitality and precision of Dr. Feldenkrais’ work has seen it applied in diverse fields including neurology, psychology, performing arts, sports and rehabilitation.
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