Are you truly providing the best cutting edge modalities for your clients? Are your mind-body programs really addressing the entire person? I once thought my sound education in kinesiology and fitness training was as all I needed to forge ahead and truly impact people lives. How wrong was I!
In 2002 I serendipitously came across the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1984), the founder of the Feldenkrais Method®. The method facilitated my own recovery after a series of knee injuries after all other modalities of functional rehabilitation and exercise therapy failed to fully restore my function. Not only has my entire well-being been transformed, but now am trained as a Feldenkrais Practitionertm and am able to work with people in capacities I would never have dreamt of.
What exactly is The Feldenkrais Method?
Dr. Feldenkrais was a physicist, mechanical engineer and martial arts expert who developed his unique style of working with humans from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. He wrote, “The aim is a body that is organized to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency, not through muscular strength but increased consciousness of how it works.”
Feldenkrais’ legacy teaches this increased consciousness through either group lessons called Awareness Through Movement®, or hands-on called Functional Integration®. In group lessons, individuals refine self-awareness by being verbally guided through movement sequences. In Functional Integration, the practitioner guides the student manually using non-invasive and non-coercive touch. In both forms, attention is place on a person’s movements, their ability to tune into their kinesthetic and spatial relationships to themselves and their environment is key. As well the way in which their thinking is brought into new and novel movement sequences is attended to in order to discover how they take on new movement challenges and change. In a nutshell, the method is about learning new ways of moving, seeing how you relate to such newness and opening up your brain (and therefore body) to greater complexity and diversity. The by-product of this: better movement and mobility, clearer thinking, greater options for your functional living, and finally greater freedom in life.
Feldenkrais’ Functionality Fitting into Fitness
“Feldenkrais attracts me because it moves away from the “cookie cutter” approach so often found throughout the fitness industry” says Diana Rochon, Strength & Conditioning Specialist. “This is especially true in terms ‘functional’ assessments that presume all movement problems are found in the problem muscle.”
Think for a moment how you’d teach a client how to squat. Then think for a moment how you’d teach an infant how to squat to pick up a toy? When rehearsing how you’d teach an adult did you have to bring attention to cueing specific muscles? Do you think an infant is concerned about what muscle is firing and when? Where they should place their head? They surely aren’t following a step-by-step protocol and they certainly aren’t activating their core. Movement initiates by finding support within themselves skeletally and from their environment, through curiosity and when safety prevails. When this happens, muscles do their job and there is proportional organization throughout their whole self. A Feldenkrais lesson brings us back to this natural human efficiency.
World Cup downhill mountain biker Claire Buchar says after one (Feldenkrais) lesson, “My squat improved significantly. I was able to go deeper in my squat, and lift more weight due to greater mobility in my hips and more power from the correct places”.
Is it time for a dogma shift?
To truly make a leap in helping people enhance function and performance we must challenge our current dogmas and facilitate an internal experience for our clients. Feldenkrais’ teachings can provide this. “Feldenkrais is an experience that each fitness professional should strive to feel for themselves to see how it can enhance their view of movement and where it may lead their training philosophy” say Rochon.
To learn more about the method and how to become trained in the work visit either www.feldenkrais.com or www.insidemoves.org
Irene Gutteridge, BSC, Registered Kinesiologist and Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner. She offers variety of services for elite and recreational athletes, general and rehabilitating populations and fitness professionals focused around The Feldenkrais Method within Whistler and Vancouver. She can be reach through www.scientuitive.com or irenegutteridge@telus.net.
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