What is the Feldenkrais Method, who its for and how it works

Here’s an audio resource for if you’re new to my world, or looking for a refresher or resource to pass on to a friend or family member. Thanks for listening and sharing!

If you’re a skimmer, below is the transcript from this podcast episode 🙃

Hi, I'm Shrutee Sharma, and today we're going to be talking about what is the Feldenkrais Method, who it's for and if you're brand new to this world and want to find out if this is the right fit for you, if you've already worked with me or a Feldenkrais practitioner, this might be a really good refresher. You might also pass it on to someone who is curious about how you use this method for healing your physical pain or discomfort, or perhaps gone back to a favorite sport or activity without re-injuring yourself. 🏃‍♀️🌿

My Personal Journey to discovering The Feldenkrais Method

I first came across The Feldenkrais Method when I was trying to heal from my knee pain. I went to the doctor and they did some X-rays and MRIs of my knee. And fortunately, there was no internal damage to my meniscus or ligament or any kind of degenerative changes, and I was excited that I hadn't damaged anything seriously to the point of needing surgery. So the surgical intervention was not available to me. ❌🩺

I was referred to physical therapy, and I considered myself a pretty good patient. I would do the foam rollers, massage my IT band, do the clamshells and all the exercises that they told me to do, but I wasn't really making consistent improvementto the point of integrating back into my life, even though I had stuck to therapy for almost a year. 😕

Then I had become a regular at the chiropractic office, where, after a while, someone mentioned that I might just be the candidate for a Feldenkrais practitioner. So with much skepticism, I made an appointment. I was very surprised with the relief that I got in just one session, whereas with all other therapies I had tried. I had been telling myself that I needed to give it some more time and maybe a little more time and keep going, but here I was with this immediate shift in how I was able to stand with much more comfort than I had been able to in the last two years prior to that, and that really piqued my interest, so I continued going. ✨🙌

What struck me about the Feldenkrais Method as different from other things I’d tried

💡What really struck me was these little details of how I was moving in my body that I had absolutely no idea about, just these subtle exercises that didn't really feel like exercise, but they were so calming that I could do on my own, that I could start to help myself, and that just opened a whole new world for me to know that we can do amazing things with our body if we know how to use it right, and we could also throw ourselves into discomfort if we don't know how to use it right.

And that relearning how to use my body is an actual thing. It was magical for me, and I was blown away that nobody had pointed me to this information before, that I could read my body and understand how it works and use it to restore my health, the health of my knees, and continue to use the same principles to be more athletic or do more of what I enjoy doing. 💪

📚 Since then, I've become a Feldenkrais practitioner myself. This was seven years ago, and really what I'm passionate about is that there are non-surgical, non-drug, non-symptomatic approaches to treating pain that get to the root cause and also empower you to take charge of your body from an educated place.

I'm not opposed to surgical interventions, per se. I know that there are cases where surgery is a very good option to address some kind of internal damage. I work with people post surgery to educate them and have them re-pattern how they move in their bodies, so that they don't re-injure themselves, and they have a future in the sport or the activity that they enjoy. 🏥➡️🏌️‍♂️

🌄 I dream of a world where, when people are having conversations with their medical providers, that the Feldenkrais Method is an option that they weigh just as much as other options, that people feel that they have the power, the confidence to be able to use their own body without strain and pain, whether it is that they choose to go all out athletic with it and ski on black diamonds, or that they just want to be able to enjoy the outdoors with their family, walk their dogor socialize without suffering in pain.

What you need to know for healing your pain

When I'm talking about The Feldenkrais Method with someone for the first time, the best place to start is to understand how our body works, that our whole body is a connected system. The hip bone IS connected to the knee bone, and that is connected to the foot bone. And that's for real.

When we even think about reaching for that coffee mug in the morning or getting out of the car, taking a step to walk, to go somewhere, your brain, your prefrontal cortex, creates a whole cascade of engagement through your muscles and joints to make this intention happen for you.

Let's just take walking as an example. Walking isn't just done with your legs. It's your pelvis that is walking. Your chest is walking. Your shoulders, all of you are walking. It's really how you shift your weight from one leg to the other. It's a lot more useful to study how you shift weight from one leg to the other, and what makes you linger a little longer on one leg than the other, and what makes it so that maybe you collapse your feet or tweak your knee or back stepping with the other leg.

It can be very limiting when we're thinking about stretching or strengthening an isolated muscle, simply because that's not how our body works. Every movement, even the smallest of movements you make, involves more than a dozen muscles in a certain sequence that cannot be pre-engineered, but are things that our brain has the capacity to make happen in milliseconds, choosing the most optimum coordination cascade.

When I'm observing people in my office that I work with, more often than not, I experience that the place they're having the pain is not where the pain is originating from, but the pain is originating from a larger overarching body pattern. And this body pattern lives in the way that they sit or walk, bend over, do the things that they do.

And I'm not talking about some kind of postural fixes, but I'm talking about the very subtle ways that we create compression, as opposed to propulsion torque, as opposed to translating the ground forces through your joints. And so any approach that is kind of hyper focused or zoomed in on a pain point misses out this larger lens of where the pain is coming from in a way that is actionable, outside of leg length discrepancies or a certain scoliosis or shape of your spine, kind of diagnosis which is generally not actionable.

2 Ways you can access The Felenkrais Method for your healing

The next question that arises once you know that there is an overarching body pattern and the root cause of your pain often lives in a different place or habit than where you're experiencing the pain is, well, how do we work with that? 🧩

There are two ways that one can work with a Feldenkrais practitioner:

1️⃣ One is hands on, where the practitioner works, one on one, with someone, ideally in their office. This works very well for someone that is experiencing a severity of pain and needs direct hands on help, and also for someone that needs very specific feedback and tools to support their goals. It could be a performance goal, or it could be wanting to get better at a certain activity, or taking it to the next level. Athletes and professionals in their fields have a very honed awareness, which a Feldenkrais practitioner can tap in to take them to the next level of performance.

2️⃣ The other one is by verbal guidance. This is where a Feldenkrais practitioner uses their voice, works very well in a group, and guides them through movement exploration. It could be moving a certain part of their body, but then guides their attention and uses their capacity for curiosity and playfulness to kind of illuminate them of how other parts of them are involved. Maybe the hip is involved, maybe how their chest is involved. And some of them have a very pleasant surprise at the end of being able to do something that was initially not possible.

Both of these ways have some things in common that separate them and set them apart from most other approaches to help with pain:

One of them is the capacity to listen — in a one on one work it comes through with a listening touch that is very different from a manipulative touch or a corrective touch.
A listening touch opens the practitioner to the whole wealth of information and subtle body cues that are available when they touch in this way and can be leveraged for the person's improvement.

This is an interactive process where the touch allows for a deeper listening of what this person's patterns are and what they need to make the shift that they're looking for, and then they can use the same touch to educate the person at a very subconscious nervous system level, as well as a conscious conversation that is verbally guided, but is also using touch in a group.

The same goal is achieved with expanding a person's brain image of a particular kind of movement, of how movement is a harmony between all the parts of us, and not about isolated movements or mechanical repetition.

The other quality that separates this work and how efficient it is in working with chronic pain and performance challenges is based in neuroscience, neuroplasticity 🧠. These days, this has become a buzzword, and we, in the Feldenkrais Method, use this concept or apply this concept by expanding the range of possibilities in a person's joints, their body, their nervous system, and not so much as trying to stop them from doing one thing, or trying to get them to do or move in a certain way, because we understand that the human body is capable of so many infinite possibilities, and each of these possibilities is contextual. It depends on what the person wants to do or what they do in their life, and that each person's brain is capable of, within a millisecond, creating the whole coordination cascade of what muscles need to engage, what parts need to move to make this possible.

What is really happening when you’re in pain

When a person is in pain 😣, I find that they're often stuck in a particular possibility, a particular way of moving, so their body isn't available for other ways of moving in other contexts. This starts to create conflicts, so that all the joints are not working harmoniously for their potential, but that there is wear and tear ⚠️ because of the conflict. And when a practitioner can start to connect the dots for the person 🧩, and they can experience how a way of moving that is harmonious seems so light and strong and fluid, then their nervous system is going to choose that — because nervous systems are smart, intelligent to discern what is stuck or clunky from what is fluid. It just might take practice to turn around the grooves of a habit. The grooves of the habit are really deep, and if someone has been doing this for a while, they just might take a little bit of consistently experiencing a different way of moving for it to gain some traction. And it's usually not years and years, but a matter of weeks 📅 — even in case of chronic pain that has been happening for many years.

Support available to you in my practice

In my experience, this is where finding someone to work with is a very important piece of the transformation 🔑 — someone you get along with, someone that you're receptive with. I work with people one on one and in a group. In my one on one work, we work typically over a course of four to six months, and generally, the first stage is where I'm helping a person tone down the intensity of their pain, and once they're in a better place where their pain is not occupying a lot of their head space, and they're able to have basic functionality in their life, then the focus of the one on one work starts to include a guided, custom, curated program. This is where the person can start really taking charge of their change, be able to sustain it and go through their process of unlearning from old patterns, typical exercise mindsets or myths that have become part of our popular narrative, down to some very specific things that are personal to your own environment growing up or as an adult.

There is SOS support available through same day or next day sessions in the case of flare-ups or additional support needed — especially in the beginning stages. And there is text and call support to mentor as you go through the guided program and start to cultivate your own practice 🌱.

If you want to learn more about how this work applies to your unique situation, please browse the blog on my website, look at articles — they're fantastic resources to share with a friend, your partner. You can find these at www.shruteesharma.com. You can also book a 1:1 consultation, which is the starting point for working with me one on one, as well as apply for my Sensory Movement Club, the group program. All of these resources I've created for you to really understand what it means to relearn how to move in your body.

I hope this encourages you to take a step forward 🚶‍♀️. If you loved this episode, I would appreciate it if you passed it on to a friend. I always appreciate when you share so that we can continue spreading the word about the Feldenkrais Method as a non-surgical, non-drug, non-symptomatic treatment that gets to the root cause of your pain 🌿 and empowers you to help yourself for life.