Have you ever felt that you were losing your touch at something? Maybe your movements have become less and less skillful?

You can learn to move with renewed purpose and understanding of your body using the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education.

The Feldenkrais Method was developed by a Russian named Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. He was somewhat of a renaissance man, being a physicist, an educator, a martial artist and a mechanical engineer.

Feldenkrais was actually his own test subject for the method that bears his name. When knee injuries hindered his ability to walk, he used his knowledge to teach himself to walk again.

The Feldenkrais Method teaches you to move with purpose, instead of automatically. It teaches you how to be mindful of all your movements, and to then try to perfect them. In this way, movement is combined with knowledge to make each and every thing we do easier, and with greater range of motion.

Range of motion is something often talked about with strength training. The muscles are challenged more when the entire muscle is engaged during the lift and the return. It takes focus to keep the tension in the muscle on the return when you want to just let it drop.

The basis of the Feldenkrais Method is to learn new ways of moving that use less energy. Who wouldn’t want to learn to do things more efficiently? This is one part of the equation on movement.

Learning to function better within the body translates into every area of your life. This method is helpful to people who suffer from arthritis, back pain, shoulder and neck pain, knee pain, as well as those who are physically fit but want to be even more mobile and efficient in their movements.

The Feldenkrais Method involves two steps: Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration® lessons. Awareness Through Movement involves the teacher verbally instructing students on how to move their body in different ways.

You begin with basic movements that you learn as a child and build upon these with increasingly more complicated movements, each requiring thought from the student.

The next step is Functional Integration. During this part of the lessons, there is a point where touch is introduced into the equation. Students are instructed to lie down on a table and perform movements with the verbal and physical assistance of the teacher.

The touch is never intrusive and the teacher doesn’t push the student beyond their limits at the time. As each goal set is achieved, students gain confidence to continue to improve their overall dynamics and range of motion.

Thanks to this method of training, people have learned to move without pain for the first time in years, and to do things they haven’t been able to do because of limited mobility as a result of illness or aging. The Feldenkrais Method teaches people to use their body to their fullest potential through purposeful movement no matter what your age or physical condition.