Studying Feldenkrais Method: Awareness Through Movement® at Home
- If you wonder whether beginning movement and awareness self-study is safe and appropriate for you, check with a healthcare professional.
- Move Slowly, Breathe, and Move Restfully. These lessons prompt neuroplastic changes--you are literally rewiring your habits of movement and awareness to create better self-organization and decrease injury and discomfort. Moving quickly, comes from habit; moving slowly with attention prompts learning.
- Do not continue if you experience discomfort. Even slight discomfort is an opportunity to move more small, or even to stop. Use your curiosity to try to discover a way to move that doesn't involve resistance or discomfort. Please improvise and adapt the movements and even your position as needed for your comfort. A good learning environment is filled with self-compassion, and gentleness.
- Move with Awareness. Repeating movements like a robot does not help us change our way of movement. Boredom is often a sign that you need a rest, or to try to find other sensations associated with the movement.
- Do as much or as little as you like. You are learning how to learn in an intrinsically individual way, by following what feels good to you, and trusting your innate curiosity and intelligence. Feel free to stick with things longer, or for less time by using the pause button. No need to do a whole lesson--it is fine to play with a little at a time.
- For most lessons you’ll need to be able to lie down on a carpeted floor, or smooth blanket or mat for about an hour. Yoga mats generally create too much friction, though a bath towel on top of a yoga mat can work.
- Dress in layers or be sure the room is warm enough. This is not aerobic or strength-based exercise; these lessons are a challenge to your awareness, coordination, and self-use, and we learn and improve in those spheres most efficiently using slow and often small movements.
- Have a bath towel or two nearby to fold to different heights for head support as needed, depending on the positions (lying on your back, side, or front). It’s assumed that you’ll take the time to place whatever support you need under your head at the beginning of the lesson, and with every change of position. Unless required for your comfort, using a regular pillow or a cervical roll for your neck is not recommended because it dampens the free movement of the head.
- The directions are always relative to you, in your current position. For example, while lying on your back the ceiling is forward, not up. Up is toward the top of your mat. Or, lying on your right side, forward is toward the wall in front of you, the ceiling is to your left, up is still toward the top of your mat. I’ll repeat and clarify directions frequently.
- If you “get lost” it’s usually best just to wait until the directions clarify things. After all, that’s what the live students did when the lesson was recorded! You may rewind the recording as much as you wish with the 10 seconds back button. Even if you don’t rewind, you’ll often find your way after a minute or two, and it’s easier to enjoy the lesson if you’re not grabbing your device to rewind frequently.
- If you can’t get comfortable and you are unable to alter the configuration or movements in a way that helps, you can skip a lesson and come back to it after trying other lessons. Most of the lessons are very unique in their positions and movements. The order of lessons and collections on this site is one that works well for many people, but not all.