FAQs

Infants & children lesson plans are organized around an intensive model

8-10 sessions over 1 or 2 weeks.  We continue this frequency once a month, or once every 6 weeks for as long as your child is making progress. This is the optimal frequency that growing brains need for consistent and progressive outcomes.  Children are brilliant learners by nature, and high frequency produces the best outcomes.

For adults, a lesson plan is more lenient and frequency is generally less often depending on the severity and/or long-standing nature of the neuro movement challenge.

I accept self payment only.  Though, I do recommend deducting this as a health care expense if you itemize medical/wellness expenses  on your yearly taxes.

Moshe Feldenkrais 1904-1984

excerpted from Moshe Feldenkrais  A life in Movement by Mark Reese

Established scientist, great integrative genius, and a master at turning scientific insights into practical ways to help people, Moshe Feldenkrais will be remembered for his powerful contribution to the field of integrative medicine and education; fusing eastern thought and western science into a powerful methodology for human growth and development.

Grounded in physics, biology, and learning, his method remains the most advanced and comprehensive basis available for developing human potential.

The odyssey of Moshe Feldenkrais’s life is as fascinating as the explorations that led him to establish his method. His journey ranged across the face of Europe amidst many of the central crises of the twentieth century: as a child he experienced first hand the turmoil of the First World War; as an adolescent, the establishment of a Jewish Palestine; During his mid twenties he left for France and eventually became a graduate of l’Ecole des Travaux Publiques de Paris, in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Later he earned his Doctor of Science in Physics from the Sorbonne in Paris, as a young adult he worked with the Nobel prize winning scientific team of the Joliet-Curies in ground-breaking nuclear research;

His years in France nurtured another pivotal relationship; the one with Jigoro Kano, the creator of Judo, who deputized him to introduce that martial art and spiritual discipline to France. Feldenkrais  returned to Israel in 1949 where he continued to integrate and refine his ideas into the system known as the Feldenkrais Method.

In his struggle to overcome his own major injury, he pioneered a unique way of teaching people to learn how to learn, and to change their brains, by increasing awareness of whatever they did, providing the foundation for a gentle but powerful approach to alleviating human suffering.

Medical schools teach medicine, and as this is a therapeutic and educational approach, you’re less likely to find medical physicians familiar with this approach.  Categories of health practitioners more familiar with The Feldenkrais Method are: Chiropractors, Homeopaths, Osteopaths, Naturopaths, Massage Therapists, OT’s, PT’s and speech and language therapists.

The body of scientific research is growing for the Feldenkrais Method

Visit this link for detailed list of current research.

International Feldenkrais research here

I request that you, or your child pause these therapies for a short time, in general, for a few weeks,   in order to see how your nervous system responds.  Then adding the other therapies back in after we can observe the effect of this approach.  Sometimes one therapy can affect the other negatively, or diminish  outcomes, reducing the potency of the learning.

There are some therapies that work very well with this method: therapeutic horse back riding, homeopathy, computer based training of the brain, vision therapy, cranio-sacral therapy, and other gentle, process directed, versus skill acquisition or goal directed therapies.

For an adult who is working with a manual therapist, this is a bit more flexible, but still I request that you take a pause from a traditional therapy to observe more clearly your response to this kind of process-directed learning.  Learning how to learn is an important skill gained with this method, whereas in other therapies you aren’t encourage to think or feel, only to perform the required ‘exercise’ for the hoped for outcome.

The similarity is that both practices touch people, but beyond that our Method is very different. In massage, the practitioner is working directly with the muscles, in chiropractic, with the bones and spinal nerves. These are structural approaches that seek to affect change through changes in structure (muscles and spine). The Feldenkrais Method improves your ability to regulate and coordinate your thoughts, sensations, emotions and movement; an integral approach to change. We refer to this as a functional approach wherein you can improve your use of self inclusive of whatever structural considerations are present.

No, not generally.  Once a new pattern is mapped and reinforced, it won’t be lost.  Stress, anxiety, fear, and other emotional obstacles can cause regression of skills or learning, which can be recovered with a classes lessons or a refresher intensive. But a mapped pattern is never lost.

For beginners, or those new to this work a period of time is required to be engaged in this process in order for new patterns to be mapped in the nervous system.  For any one challenge, I recommend a 6 month time for appointments and/or classes.

Yes!  I consider this ‘NEW FITNESS”.

Because instead of working harder, you learn how to work smarter,  And this informs every other other fitness regime.

Feldenkrais & the ABM for children approach are done in two different formats.

In group classes, called Awareness Through Movement, (ATM) or Transformational Movement Lessons (TML), the Feldenkrais &/or ABM teacher verbally leads you through a sequence of movements in basic positions: sitting or lying on the floor, standing or sitting in a chair. The teacher guiding the students in novel movements  allowing people of all levels of performance to improve and transform their movement skills, flexibility and strength very quickly and without struggle. This form is used with school-age children up to mature adults.

Functional Integration (FI), or, in the ABM for children approach, Functional Synthesis(FS) are performed with the person fully clothed,  lying on a wide table or floor.   At times, various props (pillows, rollers, blankets) are used in an effort to support the person’s body configuration or to facilitate certain movements. The learning process is carried out without the use of any invasive or forceful procedure.  With children, toys are frequently used to inspire novel thought & action through play.

Functional Integration (FI) & neuromovement lessons (NML) are a hands-on form of tactile, kinesthetic communication. The practitioner communicates with you through slow, gentle touch.

The ABM neuromovement model for children derives from the methodology of the Feldenkrais Method but has some significant differences (shorter lessons, more frequent lessons, dedication to developmental sequences in lesson planning) that may matter to a parent when deciding on therapies. Both practitioner types, will serve your child and family in similar ways if they are skilled. Skill comes with at least 1000 hours of clinical practice.

I am a professional therapist that proficiently applies and incorporates both approaches, but foundationally, consider myself a Feldenkrais practitioner. Having served in a support role at the ABM Center in San Rafael for Anat’s Children Mastery courses, I can confidently advise that  a parent focus on the proficiency of their child’s therapist, rather than the label.  Empathy, holding a container for family trauma, playfulness, creativity, patience, skill with emotional expression, & warm-heartedness is essential when serving children and their families.

Please visit the section of my website here

Some clients attend classes only,  some schedule private work only, and some clients choose both weekly classes and private lessons with me when they want additional support, attention or accelerated progress.  We review  the program and variations on frequency of session/classes on a personal phone call or after an initial private lesson

ADULTS

BACK, NECK, & JOINT PAIN, POST SURGICAL REHAB, COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENTS, BALANCE & COORDINATION DISORDERS, EMOTIONAL TRAUMA, ARTHRITIS ALL TYPES, EPILEPSY, CEREBRAL PALSY, PTSD & PTSC
DEPRESSION, CHRONIC PAIN, FIBROMYALGIA, VISUAL IMPAIRMENTS, ISCHEMIC STROKE, PARKINSONS, PARALYSIS – COMPLETE & PARTIAL
FOCAL DYSTONIA, ORTHOPEDIC TRAUMAS, MIGRANES, SCOLIOSIS.

CHILDREN

COGNITIVE VISUAL IMPAIRMENT, PTSD & PTSC, ANXIETY, DANDY WALKER SYNDROME, CEREBRAL PALSY all forms, ATAXIA, PRE-POST NATAL, ISCHEMIC STROKE, ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER, AUTISM/ASPERGER”S SPECTRUM, SPINA BIFIDA, DYSTONIAS- FOCAL & GLOBAL, PREMATURE BIRTH, ARTHROGRYPOSIS, EPILEPSY DISORDERS, CONGENITAL DISORDERS, MUSCULAR ATROPHY, HYPERTONICITY, HYPOTONICITY, HYPERACTIVITY, SENSORY INTEGRATION DISORDERS, SCOLIOSIS, BIRTH TRAUMA, HEMIPLEGIA, HEMIPARESIS, PERIVENTRICULAR LEUKOMALASIA
CHROMOSOME DELETIONS, PDD-NOS, OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDERS, MACROCEPHALY, MICROCEPHALY, TRISOMY 13, 18, 21,

Successful brain development happens when the conditions for learning are optimized.  And both the Feldenkrais and ABM neuromovement models are the best methods available for helping injured brains wire and map new movement patterns.  Using the explorational style of an infant as the foundational environment, we apply specific conditions that make forming these new patterns more likely.

Yes. Seniors have a particular affinity for this approach since it involves slow movement, applied with gentle effort.  Improved Cognition, flexibility, balance, & visual improvements are hallmark outcomes of this work for seniors.

These common physical disorders are the most frequent reason people seek my help. Both back pain and sciatica can be healed with this approach.  Read more here

A common strategy in physical therapy or physical rehabilitation is to say ” okay, we’re going to learn how to reach out and grasp something”  And then this one way of reaching out is taught repetitively, and without present moment sensing of the internal feeling state… until the action is performed as instructed.

But actually, what the brain wants you to do is to reach out and grasp that thing in a hundred different ways— a thousand different ways.  Feldenkrais and ABM approach more accurately, and do a better job at reconstructing  true neurological representation of these complex domains that relate to the subtleties of the function.  Ultimately generating  or reconstructing; mapping so to speak, those new domains in a more natural form.  And that’s critical in terms of driving a brain; not just as a capacity to perform a movement, but to perform that movement in ANY circumstance.  This is the difference.  And is much closer to true recovery.

Based on an interview with Michael Merzenich 2017 –  World-renowned scientist & researcher in Neuroplasticity