Feldenkrais® - by Richard Rogers, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner

 

Not many Rhode Islanders know about the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education.  Feldenkrais® is a type of Movement Education that can benefit our senses of fitness, well-being, gracefulness, and stress reduction.  The movements, taught by a Certified Practitioner, gently help us to explore how we actually move now and how we might move more easily from now on.   We can practice at home, which helps us to remember and to reinforce what we’ve learned.

 

To move more easily when we walk, let’s say, or when we use a chair to sit down or stand up, means that we ask less effort of our muscles, which results in less wear and tear on our joints, our bones, ourselves.  That means less ache and pain, and can even mean freedom from pain.  The “noise” in our central nervous systems grows quiet.  We breathe more fully and easily.

 

Feldenkrais is great for perfectly healthy people.  It can be especially helpful to people who are ill, injured, or disabled when it is used as an adjunct to therapy, medication, exercise and diet.  People who need to exercise and who find that work-out movement pains or tires them may discover that Feldenkrais could help them get moving and enjoy moving.

 

We each learn differently, and at different speeds.  Feldenkrais supports the way humans best learn.  No competition nor correction happens either in Feldenkrais Class and Workshop Groups, called Awareness Through Movement (ATM)® Classes, or in individual private sessions with the Practitioner, known as Functional Integration (FI)® Lessons.  

Those of us who are older adults, or who are “getting there,” can get a real boost from Feldenkrais. Many testimonials exist from athletes, dancers, actors, artists, singers, musicians, writers, and teachers, telling us that Feldenkrais enables them to achieve new peaks of personal performance, or that it makes it possible for them to keep going, to avoid burnout, or to defer an unwanted retirement.

 

Is Feldenkrais for you?  If you want a massage, an adjustment, a “quick fix” or a substitute for therapy, none of these is Feldenkrais. If you like to learn, and think you might be interested in an exciting way of learning to learn through physical movement, then Feldenkrais could be exactly right for you.

 

Richard Rogers is a GUILD CERTIFIED FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONER who trained with Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.  Richard has practiced the FELDENKRAIS METHOD® since 1983.  He is also a Certified BONES FOR LIFE® Teacher and Trainer. Richard can be reached at CROSSROADS MOVEMENT CENTER, 2128 Main Rd. (Rt 77), Tiverton, 625-1128.

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