How the Feldenkrais Method® Works & Who It Helps by Pat Barragan, GCFP

The Feldenkrais Method® is an approach to movement re-education that re-awakens the body's awareness of what is healthy. 


The subtle, gentle and deliberate movements of Feldenkrais help re-train the brain to re-establish a healthier and pain-free way of using your body. 

Feldenkrais replaces old patterns of movement, while improving mobility, motor functioning, breathing, and blood circulation, as well as increasing self-awareness, ease and efficiency of movement. The results can be dramatic. 

In group classes, the instructor leads a sequence of gentle exercises that gradually evolve into greater range and complexity. These precisely structured movement explorations involve thinking, sensing, moving and imagining.  Many lessons are based on developmental movements and ordinary functional activities (reaching, standing, lying down, sitting, looking behind, etc.); some are based on more abstract explorations of joint, muscle and postural relationships.

In one-on-one treatment, the patient lies comfortably while the practitioner uses touch and tissue manipulation to gently guide the body through subtle yet precise movements that help forge new neural pathways to maintain movement and muscles to experience better ways to work.

Feldenkrais helps people whose ability to move has been restricted by aging,injury, illness, disease or condition. Patients suffering with chronic or acute pain can also benefit.

While Feldenkrais can bring immediate relief, it can also help avoid re-injury by teaching patients how to move in a better way so as to prevent problems in the future.

Call 310.475.6038 today to schedule an appointment with one of our staff Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners® for assistance with an injury, illness or condition that limits your movement and/or causes pain.  

Core Principles of The Feldenkrais Method®
(excerpted from The Brain's Way of Healing by Norman Doidge, M.D.)

The mind programs the functioning of the brain.
A brain cannot think without motor function.
Awareness of movement is the key to improving movement.
Differentiation - making the smallest possible sensory distinctions between movements - builds brain maps.
Differentiation is easiest to make when the stimulus is smallest.
Slowness of movement is the key to awareness, and awareness is the key to learning.
Reduce the effort whenever possible.
Errors are essential, and there is no right way to move, only better ways.
Random movements provide variation that leads to developmental breakthroughs.
Even the smallest movement in one part of the body involves the entire body.
Many movement problems, and the pain that goes with them, are caused by learned habit, not by abnormal structure.