FELDENKRAIS® METHOD
Relaxercise by David Zemach-Bersin, Kaethe Zemach-Bersin, and Mark Reese
The extraordinary exercise program based on the revolutionary body-improvement system developed by Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.
With these brief (ten to thirty minutes) exercises, anyone can learn to improve their posture, flexibility, and physical comfort, and end the energy drain caused by muscular tension. This popular application of techniques - never before available in such an easy-to-use form - targets such key areas as the lower back, shoulders, neck, spine, eyes, feet, and jaw. Enhanced vitality and elimination of pain and stress will be yours through these thoroughly researched and patient-tested techniques that actually reprogram the neuromuscular system.
How Relaxercise WorksScientific discoveries have demonstrated that your brain and nervous system are the command and control center for your entire body. Relaxercise works to revitalize and improve your body by enhancing the communication between your brain and the rest of your body. By using the powerful connection between your brain and body, Relaxercise can bring about extraordinary physical changes and improvements with astounding efficiency and speed.
When we were small children, we learned how to sit up, roll over, crawl, stand, walk, and run. These accomplishments were achieved through an important natural process of trial and error. To learn how to walk, we first had to learn to stand up, maintain our balance, and take a single step. Only after falling down and getting up, over and over again, were we finally able to take many steps, one after another, without losing our balance and failing down.
Scientists call this process sensory motor learning. "Sensory motor," because it involves the use of our senses - sight, hearing, balance, and touch - in conjunction with movement. And "learning," because as a result, we learn how to do something new.
Sensory motor learning is how all physical learning takes place. It occurs through an information feedback process between your senses, muscles, and brain. As your body moves, your senses of touch, balance, and sight send your brain information about your body's position and muscular activity. Your brain responds by modifying the outgoing messages to your muscles.
With these brief (ten to thirty minutes) exercises, anyone can learn to improve their posture, flexibility, and physical comfort, and end the energy drain caused by muscular tension. This popular application of techniques - never before available in such an easy-to-use form - targets such key areas as the lower back, shoulders, neck, spine, eyes, feet, and jaw. Enhanced vitality and elimination of pain and stress will be yours through these thoroughly researched and patient-tested techniques that actually reprogram the neuromuscular system.
How Relaxercise WorksScientific discoveries have demonstrated that your brain and nervous system are the command and control center for your entire body. Relaxercise works to revitalize and improve your body by enhancing the communication between your brain and the rest of your body. By using the powerful connection between your brain and body, Relaxercise can bring about extraordinary physical changes and improvements with astounding efficiency and speed.
When we were small children, we learned how to sit up, roll over, crawl, stand, walk, and run. These accomplishments were achieved through an important natural process of trial and error. To learn how to walk, we first had to learn to stand up, maintain our balance, and take a single step. Only after falling down and getting up, over and over again, were we finally able to take many steps, one after another, without losing our balance and failing down.
Scientists call this process sensory motor learning. "Sensory motor," because it involves the use of our senses - sight, hearing, balance, and touch - in conjunction with movement. And "learning," because as a result, we learn how to do something new.
Sensory motor learning is how all physical learning takes place. It occurs through an information feedback process between your senses, muscles, and brain. As your body moves, your senses of touch, balance, and sight send your brain information about your body's position and muscular activity. Your brain responds by modifying the outgoing messages to your muscles.
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What are you Afraid Of? by Lavinia Plonka
The ordinary manner in which we carry ourselves physically, our automatic gestures, and the accustomed comforts of our bodily habits inadvertently reinforce fear's hold on our lives. "What Are You Afraid Of?" explores how our fears often arise from physical and mental triggers that have been learned over the course of our early lives-and can be un-learned. Fear, explains award-winning movement teacher Lavinia Plonka, is not the product of intractable psychological demons; instead, it often revolves around repetitive body/mind cues. By teaching the body new habits through a series of exercises and postures, the cycle of fear can be broken.
From Publishers Weekly: According to the author, a seasoned workshop leader in movement therapies, "fear is often the process of taking a past negative experience and posing it as a potential future negative experience." Children who are raised by overprotective parents, for example, can turn into adults who are so frightened that they will not even drive a car. Their fearful disposition, Plonka says, may be expressed by rigid posture or shallow breathing. She offers a series of physical and mental exercises designed to uncover the layers of anxiety that mask the cause of current fears, such as fear of starvation, illness or death. For example, she recommends dealing with fear of injury by doing breathing exercises, "discovering your options" through body movement and writing down new ways to handle fearful emotions. Many of Plonka’s strategies for living bravely are drawn from the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, a pioneer in the field of how the nervous system is impacted by "movement, repetition and rest in a safe environment." While the author doesn’t delve deeply into the psychology of fear, her sensible and clearly explained program should help provide relief for many beset by debilitating anxiety. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
From Publishers Weekly: According to the author, a seasoned workshop leader in movement therapies, "fear is often the process of taking a past negative experience and posing it as a potential future negative experience." Children who are raised by overprotective parents, for example, can turn into adults who are so frightened that they will not even drive a car. Their fearful disposition, Plonka says, may be expressed by rigid posture or shallow breathing. She offers a series of physical and mental exercises designed to uncover the layers of anxiety that mask the cause of current fears, such as fear of starvation, illness or death. For example, she recommends dealing with fear of injury by doing breathing exercises, "discovering your options" through body movement and writing down new ways to handle fearful emotions. Many of Plonka’s strategies for living bravely are drawn from the work of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais, a pioneer in the field of how the nervous system is impacted by "movement, repetition and rest in a safe environment." While the author doesn’t delve deeply into the psychology of fear, her sensible and clearly explained program should help provide relief for many beset by debilitating anxiety. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
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Body & Mature Behavior by Moshe Feldenkrais
"Body and Mature Behavior" is a unique study of human development that is concerned with the relationships between movement, emotional maturity, and behavior patterns. Moshe Feldenkrais, the developer of the Feldenkrais Method®, was superbly aware of the muscular responses, tensions, and rigidity that lead to both physical and emotional problems. The book’s subtitle speaks to the primary themes of the book - anxiety, sex, gravitation, and learning. Feldenkrais outlines his primary topics in an intellectually rich and eloquent style. From the very Introduction, Feldenkrais delves straight to the heart of his case: a condensed description of the conditions of our existence, touching upon topics like neurology, prehistory, child development, individual-societal relationships, and more. A fascinating discussion of gravitation and the anti-gravity mechanism is followed by a discussion of the effects of emotion (especially anxiety and the attitude to sexuality) on posture and on personal patterns of movement. Feldenkrais speaks to the importance of acknowledging the inseparability of the body and the mind.
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Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora by Moshe Feldenkrais
"Body Awareness as Healing Therapy: The Case of Nora" is Moshe Feldenkrais' classic study of his work with Nora, a woman who has suffered a severe stroke and lost her neuromuscular coordination, including the ability to read and write. Feldenkrais uses rational and intuitive approaches to help his student relearn basic motor skills. One can observe here the groundwork of Feldenkrais' extraordinary insights which became known as the Feldenkrais Method. We follow his detailed descriptions of the trial and error process which led him to see the ingredients that were needed to help Nora reshape her attention, perception, imagination and cognition.
"Moshe Feldenkrais deals with man as a totality: physically, mentally, and psychologically, and concentrates on self-image, which is often hazy or distorted. Through his exercises, one learns how to reduce force and increase sensitivity." -Library Journal
"...a rare gem. This book has inspired my students and me for over a decade with its intimate revelations detailing how Feldenkrais went about solving the problems of his case. It is of interest to medical practitioners who work directly with the body, as well as educators and psychotherapists." -Don Hanlon Johnson, author of Body, Spirit and Democracy
"...an important literary and scientific achievement that reveals Feldenkrais' bold and original insights about learning and the brain. Nora's story is an inspiring account of the nervous system's ability to heal from trauma and the remarkable human capacity to learn." -Mark Reese, so-author of Relaxercise
"Moshe Feldenkrais deals with man as a totality: physically, mentally, and psychologically, and concentrates on self-image, which is often hazy or distorted. Through his exercises, one learns how to reduce force and increase sensitivity." -Library Journal
"...a rare gem. This book has inspired my students and me for over a decade with its intimate revelations detailing how Feldenkrais went about solving the problems of his case. It is of interest to medical practitioners who work directly with the body, as well as educators and psychotherapists." -Don Hanlon Johnson, author of Body, Spirit and Democracy
"...an important literary and scientific achievement that reveals Feldenkrais' bold and original insights about learning and the brain. Nora's story is an inspiring account of the nervous system's ability to heal from trauma and the remarkable human capacity to learn." -Mark Reese, so-author of Relaxercise
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Embodied Wisdom: The Collected Papers of Moshe Feldenkrais
"Embodied Wisdom" includes all of Moshe's English language articles and interviews and is a must-have for anyone interested in the Feldenkrais Method®. Carefully edited by Elizabeth Beringer, "Embodied Wisdom" contains some of Feldenkrais's most concise and accessible writings. These thoughtful articles and lively, sometimes humorous interviews, explore a diverse range of subjects: the importance of bodily expression, the primacy of hearing, the mind-body connection, martial arts, sleep and consciousness, movement and its effect on the mind. "Embodied Wisdom" gives readers the opportunity to deepen their understanding of the scientific and spiritual principles behind the Method and offers sound strategies for incorporating it into their lives.
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The Master Moves by Moshe Feldenkrais
From the introduction by Carl Ginsburg:
In this transcript of Moshe’s five-day public workshop at Mann Ranch in northern California in 1979, the full range of his thinking and his teaching style can be explored. All his major ideas on movement, human development, sensitivity, awareness, and so forth are presented both as exposition and exploration through movement lessons. These lessons, part of his unique contribution to human development, are the key to understanding the Feldenkrais Method®. There are both old and new lessons presented here. But the lessons that may be familiar from previous Feldenkrais books are taught in a new way. In a workshop situation, Moshe inevitably explored his teaching process, both to pace and move with the group, but also to evolve the ideas he was presenting.
As you read and interact with this book you may note some very unique aspects of the Feldenkrais® work. For one thing, Moshe’s emphasis is on the kinesthetic, feeling aspect of your self-organization. You may become aware as you explore the lessons, that Moshe guides you away from visualizing or verbalizing what you do until you have begun to have some kinesthetic experience of yourself in movement and action. Moshe’s push towards the kinesthetic is based on his observation in himself and others, that the feeling and proprioceptive senses are the least trusted and the least attended to in our culture. His further observation is that profound change in the kinesthetic, feeling image of yourself results in change in all aspects of your self-organization.
A second unique aspect of Moshe’s work is his insistence on function. Function, in this sense, is anything you do such as walking, standing, twisting, and so forth. A function is integrated when you carry it out with the whole of yourself, without self-interference. As you explore the lessons, you may become much more aware of the movement of your own structure in space, and the relation of parts of yourself, your pelvis and head for example, to the whole of your action. In the transcript, Moshe emphasizes some of these relationships. They are clues to a functional integration for yourself. Only your own experience can make his words clear to yourself. There is no learning in the Feldenkrais® way without doing: i.e., doing the lessons.
In this transcript of Moshe’s five-day public workshop at Mann Ranch in northern California in 1979, the full range of his thinking and his teaching style can be explored. All his major ideas on movement, human development, sensitivity, awareness, and so forth are presented both as exposition and exploration through movement lessons. These lessons, part of his unique contribution to human development, are the key to understanding the Feldenkrais Method®. There are both old and new lessons presented here. But the lessons that may be familiar from previous Feldenkrais books are taught in a new way. In a workshop situation, Moshe inevitably explored his teaching process, both to pace and move with the group, but also to evolve the ideas he was presenting.
As you read and interact with this book you may note some very unique aspects of the Feldenkrais® work. For one thing, Moshe’s emphasis is on the kinesthetic, feeling aspect of your self-organization. You may become aware as you explore the lessons, that Moshe guides you away from visualizing or verbalizing what you do until you have begun to have some kinesthetic experience of yourself in movement and action. Moshe’s push towards the kinesthetic is based on his observation in himself and others, that the feeling and proprioceptive senses are the least trusted and the least attended to in our culture. His further observation is that profound change in the kinesthetic, feeling image of yourself results in change in all aspects of your self-organization.
A second unique aspect of Moshe’s work is his insistence on function. Function, in this sense, is anything you do such as walking, standing, twisting, and so forth. A function is integrated when you carry it out with the whole of yourself, without self-interference. As you explore the lessons, you may become much more aware of the movement of your own structure in space, and the relation of parts of yourself, your pelvis and head for example, to the whole of your action. In the transcript, Moshe emphasizes some of these relationships. They are clues to a functional integration for yourself. Only your own experience can make his words clear to yourself. There is no learning in the Feldenkrais® way without doing: i.e., doing the lessons.
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Running with the Whole Body by Jack Heggie
If you run, walk or hike, this book was written for you. In the easy 30-day program, you will learn a series of exercises, based on the Feldenkrais Method® that will enable you to make dynamic improvements in your running and walking, and help you to become a smoother, more powerful runner. You will discover the "drive point" in your arms and shoulders and learn how to use your whole body to run faster with less effort and pain.
Lessons Include:
Lessons Include:
- Feet, Hips and Shoulders (Standing & Walkking)
- Muscles of the Back (On Back)
- Connections in the Back (On Stomach)
- The Hip Joints Alone (Side Lying)
- The Shoulders Alone (Side Lying)
- The Hips and Shoulders Together (Side Lying)
- Hips and Shoulders (Standing)
- Shoulders, Spine and Hips (Sitting on the Floor)
- The Motion of the Feet (Standing)
- The Drive Point (Standing)
- Running with the Whole Body (Standing)