FAQs
How are Feldenkrais®and landscape architecture connected?
Landscape architects design the environment... and your brain is constantly changing in response to your environment.
Landscape architecture is a demanding creative profession where we are tackling some of today's most pressing issues, including designing for social equity and a swiftly changing climate.
Every design begins as a thought or idea, which literally occurs in your nervous system.
The Feldenkrais Method® improves how your nervous system operates, which in turn, affects how you do everything.
Your brain consists of billions of neurons, each with thousands of connections to other neurons, which are constantly reorganizing themselves moment to moment in response to your environment. This process is called neuroplasticity.
Feldenkrais lessons use movement to activate this neuroplasticity so that your nervous system improves itself as it connects the inner landscape with the outer landscape.
This reorganization is your brain learning.
Recent neuroscience has shown that both optimal learning and creative flow work similarly in our brains. They both happen by literally making new connections between things (ideas, neurons, brain regions) that were previously unconnected.
The optimal conditions for learning are also the strategies for finding creative flow.
Although commonly used for physical improvements, Feldenkrais-based movements can enhance the creative process, so we can design to our highest potential. Plus, it can be particularly useful when you feel stuck with a creative block or when working under stress.
What is the Feldenkrais Method?
Your nervous system controls everything about you… your movement, your thoughts, your emotions, your personality, what you like, what you fear... literally everything!
The Feldenkrais Method® uses movement to activate and reorganize your nervous system, so you can think clearer, feel better, move easier, with more power, and be your most creative and productive self.
Who is it good for?
Actually, anyone who wants to improve something in their lives. The lessons help ease pain and stress or anxiety. They also help enhance physical and mental focus, coordination and flexibility.
Musicians, dancers, actors, designers and other creatives use this method to enhance their skills through heightened learning and creativity.
Is it like yoga or Pilates?
Awareness Through Movement® classes are similar to yoga or Pilates classes in that they are group classes lead verbally by an instructor. However, in Feldenkrais, the classes are lessons rather than exercises.
When you exercise, you work to push your limits. In Feldenkrais, what you can do is much less important than discovering HOW you do it. This is accomplished by finding ways to make things as easy as possible.
Each lesson is designed for you to learn more about yourself and discover more effective ways of doing things. So, practicing the Feldenkrais Method can improve your yoga, Pilates, and anything else you do.
How does it differ from massage & chiropractic?
In massage, the practitioner is working directly with the client’s muscles; in chiropractic, with the client’s bones. These are structural approaches that affect change through changes in physical structure.
The Feldenkrais Method works with the client’s nervous system and its ability to self-regulate, coordinate and reorganize for more efficient movement and mental clarity.
What happens in a session?
In Awareness Through Movement® classes, the teacher verbally leads students through a sequence either on the floor, standing, or sitting.
By moving with increasing awareness, students discover their unique habits, and explore new alternatives for moving, thinking and responding to their environment.
There are hundreds of lessons, varying in complexity, for all levels of ability. A lesson generally lasts 40-60 minutes.
How are Feldenkrais Practitioners trained?
All Feldenkrais practitioners must complete 800 hours of training over 4 years which includes Newtonian mechanics, kinesthesiology, physics, neurophysiology, developmental movement, biology, non-violent communication, voice regulation and learning theories.
