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Methodology

From the very beginning students will be involved in all aspects of the Feldenkrais Method. The emphasis will be a practical understanding, where all the subjects are studied in an integrated manner through practice and discussions and not in an academic fashion.

 

During the training students engage every aspect of themselves: physical, intellectual, emotional, and imaginative faculties. The integration of these four domains fosters profound psychological and emotional growth whereby students develop more self-knowledge and become able to act in a more potent manner with greater self-expression.

 

Skills of contact and touch will gradually be introduced as well as the understanding of the structure and logic of the two modalities of the Method. The focus of the teaching will be towards independent and creative thinking with technique, but not on technique as an end in itself.

 

Based on the daily explorations on oneself and with one another, students will understand how movement emerges, how habitual patterns are established, and what the functional possibilities of the human body are.

 

 

The following teaching strategies will be used:

1. Awareness Through Movement lessons

These individual explorations enable individuals to experience the availability of all human movement and functioning.  Lessons that will be utilized in the training include movements from sports, dance, and the martial arts; and patterns of neurological functioning and developmental sequences as manifested in babies, infants and children.  Movement patterns will be done with different qualities of attention and in all sorts of positions from sitting, to lying on the back and stomach, in standing, and walking.  Varieties of lessons will be chosen to give the student and overall understanding of the Method.

2. Functional Integration

Functional Integration explorations will be taught from the beginning of the program always within the context of a Function. Functional Integration will be taught in a very open-ended exploratory way but which will from its inception include finer and finer tuning into the needs of the person to whom the lesson is being given. Students will learn the Method and how it is applicable to all sorts of “clients” from the highly disabled to the highly integrated athletic/dancer type of individual.

Besides practicing on each other, students will receive private Functional Integration lessons from the faculty. They will also have the opportunity to observe and analyze innumerable lessons being given to other people and to discuss Dr. Feldenkrais’s Functional Integration lessons recorded on video.

 

3. Personalized Supervision

 

The progress and learning of each student in the training program will be closely supported, guided and followed throughout the four years. Personalized supervision will be an ongoing part of the training process and will be used to build your skills and understanding.

4. Group Discussion

Discussions in group around the topics of each day and the doubts of the students will be a common practice. Students will have a continuous opportunity to speak and be heard.

 

5. Group Process

The training process as a whole is an educational setting which provides innumerable opportunities for direct experience and understanding of the fundamentals of the Feldenkrais Method. Students will learn to make their habitual patterns of movement and thought become more flexible and how these patterns are related to their self-image. They will be part of each other’s personal process and witness the profound riches of individual differences.

 

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