Feldenkrais

Feldenkrais

At some point in my early twenties in Tel-Aviv, between dancing with the Rina Sheinfeld Dance Theater Company, piling on ballet and modern technique classes and getting my ya-ya’s out at Capoeira, my body got very tight and very tired. Rina recommended that I check out the Feldenkrais Method, and I promptly located a small class not far from the studio where we rehearsed.

Moshe Feldenkrais had developed much of his method in Israel in the mid-1900’s, so I was extremely lucky to have some of his original students as teachers. Three mornings a week I would get on the floor with three to five other classmates, all retirees in their sixties or older, and after what seemed like an hour of doing very little and basically chilling out, I would get up refreshed, energized, loose and ready for rehearsal.

“What I am after is more flexible minds, not just more flexible bodies”
-Moshé Feldenkrais

The Feldenkrais Method is a movement pedagogy which teaches us to reduce pain or limitations in movement, improve physical function, and promote general wellbeing by increasing our awareness of ourselves and expanding our range of movement. Moshé Feldenkrais was a physicist and an avid student of Judo and Asian martial arts. With an equal dose of intellectual and physical intelligence and with a powerful conviction that we could improve our capabilities and functioning in daily life by developing our range of skill and ease in movement, he created an incredible method that has helped to heal and influence people all over the world

In New York, you can check out the Feldenkrais Institute (http://feldenkraisinstitute.com/) and you can find lots of information at www.feldenkrais.com.

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