Susan Hillier has a wonderful article that explains the Feldenkrais® Method. When I read it, I though, “Wow, I wish I had written that”. Here is what she says:
The Feldenkrais® Method is a way of exploring movement, posture and breathing through hands-on touch, used by dancers, musicians, athletes, actors and people living with and rehabilitating from a range of illnesses and injuries. Terms integral to the method such as awareness and integration are not easy concepts.
But think of it this way – in order for any system to work at its peak, it needs a mechanism to receive feedback on its performance so that it can adjust and improve.
Remember how you learnt to play a musical instrument or play a new sport. You became aware of feedback to improve; you listened to the sounds you were making with the violin and adjusted how you used the bow or where you put your fingers to make a better sound.
When you used a tennis racquet, you monitored where the ball landed after you hit it to gauge how to adjust to strike the next ball. Then you monitored the new way and either continued to adapt and integrate and the cycle of improvement hopefully continued.
If you didn’t adapt then you probably got stuck in a habit or relatively fixed way of being. So we use our senses for feedback (sound, vision, touch and body position/motion) to learn a new skill or to refine and improve an existing skill – to learn to perform better.
To read the full article, click here.
