Functional Integration (FI) session is the formal name for the hands-on aspect of the Method, done one-to-one with a practitioner and tailored to the individual client. Using a gentle touch, I support you to explore how to reconnect within yourself to move out limitations and constraints. Lessons focus on addressing your needs with regards to settling the nervous system, decreasing pain, recovering from surgery and injury and/or improving the quality of everyday activities.
Moshe Feldenkrais, the founder of the Method, created over a thousand Awareness Through Movement (ATM) lessons. These carefully structured lessons take students/clients on a journey of self-exploration through generally small and gentle movements. These lessons are for exploration, not exercise. Lessons offer up a chance for habits to be revealed and transformed from compulsions into choices. In these lessons, rest is a space for intelligence gathering and integration.
The Feldenkrais Method® is a portal to self-learning and internal systems/culture re-configuration. Through slow and gentle movements (in structured Awareness Through Movement® lessons or individualized Functional Integration® sessions) we gather evidence, based on your first-hand experiences. We test out options to arrive at easier, clearer, more effective ways of moving. We see and work with you in your wholeness – shaped as you are by distinct combination of thoughts, feelings, sensations and movements/actions.
The movements and sensory observations engage you at a systemic level, e.g., the nervous system, the skeletal system, the muscular system, the visual system etc. With each movement, these systems are taken into a conversation with one another – you unconsciously learn and reconfigure yourself.
In Feldenkrais, rest is a space for intelligence gathering and integration. Quality matters more than quantity. We encourage self-learning through exploration, curiosity, non-judgement, ease and playfulness. Engaging with the Method is an opportunity to practice and expand self-awareness, to bear witness to yourself and to start reshaping your internal culture.
The Method is accessible to people of all shapes, sizes, ages, identities and movement abilities. I endeavor to adapt individual sessions, classes and workshop content to meet diverse student circumstances. I regularly (and upon request) hold classes which are only for people from Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities.