Olivia Cheever
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Feldenkrais Method

At first glance, this work can look a lot like garden-variety exercising. In a Feldenkrais class, I guide students through slow sequences of gentle movements, often done lying on the floor or maybe rolling around much as a baby does.

What you can’t see is how the repetition of seemingly simple, nonhabitual movements is actually working to radically reeducate your nervous and muscular systems, by waking up your brain to new possibilities.

There are two complementary ways to work with the Feldenkrais Method. Awareness Through Movement® (ATM) is the verbally-guided, group lesson form. Functional Integration® (FI) is a hands-on individualized session. In both, you learn to be aware of what you’re doing as you’re doing it. This means noticing nonjudgmentally where you’re carrying needless tension and exploring alternate ways to move with efficiency and ease.

Moshe Feldenkrais, the genius who invented this system of somatic education, used to tell those of us he trained that the flexibility he cared about was first in our minds and only later in our bodies. Since we were learning how to be our own teachers, he called himself the last teacher we would ever need.

The Feldenkrais Method is a passport to independence. One of my students calls it a “get out of jail free” card. Worth noting: Feldenkrais practitioners (some 3,000 trained worldwide since 1969) think of the people we work with as students, not patients. This is meant to be an educational modality, not a medical treatment. Paradoxically, when you focus on learning, healing seems to happen on its own.

Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America.

 

 

 

Feldenkrais and Feldenkrais Method are registered service marks of the Feldenkrais Guild® of North America.
Bones For Life is a registered service mark of Ruthy Alon, its originator.

Serving the Boston, MA area with classes in Westwood.
Private coaching also in Needham Heights, MA.
Call 617-413-5680, or email ocheever@comcast.net.

© Copyright 2017 Olivia Cheever. All rights reserved.