8469 Sheridan Drive, Williamsville, New York 14221, United States
What is the Feldenkrais Method®?
“The lessons are designed to improve ability, to expand the boundaries of the possible, to turn the impossible into the possible, the difficult into the easy and the easy into the pleasant.”
–Moshe Feldenkrais
Additional Information
The Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education®, developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais is used world-wide to enhance performance in the arts and sports, to rehabilitate injuries and accidents, to enhance functioning for adults and children with neurological conditions, to ease the pain and stiffness of repetitive strain conditions, Fibromyalgia, back problems, sitting, MS, Parkinson's, ALS, knee and hip replacement surgery, brain trauma, sciatica, working at a computer, etc.
The Feldenkrais Method® taps into stages of neuroplastic healing and creates conditions where the brain's pathways can be rewired. Dr. Feldenkrais pointed out that that every time the brain is used, five components are triggered: motor, movement, thought, sensation, and feeling. Your brain directs your body’s movement and in return receives information which it immediately uses to enhance and improve your neuro-muscular activity.
With a focus on building awareness for how the nervous system finds the most comfortable way to organize the body’s movement, improvements in coordination, balance, and posture are achieved. Chronic pain begins to heal and clients harness a more acute sense of awareness, better self-use and a better informed body map and self image.
How does the Method work? Not through strengthening, stretching or correcting ourselves, but by learning how to access and use our brain's enormous capacity to reorganize stiffened, fused, and hurting parts into a coherent, fluid, moving whole. At any age and in any physical condition we can access and develop this capacity and thus improve movement and body intelligence dramatically.
The Feldenkrais Method® is conducted in two distinct modalities: group classes called Awareness Through Movement® and private sessions called Functional Integration®. Buffalo Feldenkrais offers both modalities by appointment and/or registration.
"The unity of the mind and body is an objective reality. They are not just parts somehow related to each other, but an inseparable whole while functioning."
-Moshe Feldenkrais
In order to change our mode of action, we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us
About Moshe Feldenkrais
The Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education was developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais. Born in Russia, Feldenkrais immigrated to Israel at the age of thirteen. After receiving degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering, he earned his D.Sc. in Physics at the Sorbonne in Paris. He subsequently worked for a number of years in the French nuclear research program with Joliet Curie.
Physically active, Feldenkrais played soccer and practiced the martial arts. He studied with Jigoro Kano, the originator of Judo, and in 1936 became one of the first Europeans to earn a black belt in that discipline.
A chronic knee injury prompted him to apply his knowledge of physics, body mechanics, neurology, learning theory and psychology to a new understanding of human function and maturation. His investigations resulted in the formulation of a unique synthesis of science and aesthetics, known as the Feldenkrais Method® . Dr. Feldenkrais wrote five books about the method as well as four books on Judo.