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Joanna Myers is a
35-year-old professional violist who plays with the Ann Arbor and Saginaw
symphonies. She's also a certified Feldenkrais instructor,
leading people through the very movements that helped her overcome a
troubling tremor caused by tendinitis in her left hand years ago that
threatened her ability to play."You're experimenting with how you move," she
said. "The improvement builds with each lesson. You're engaging in
organic learning. Change happens quickly, and in an effortless way."
Like yoga and Pilates, Feldenkrais (fell-den-KRICE)
has been around for a long time. Moshe Feldenkrais, a Russian-born
judo black belt, physicist, mechanical engineer and educator, first started
full-time teaching of his technique to improve the way people move, think and
feel in Israel in the mid-1950s. And like yoga and Pilates did, Feldenkrais is
creeping into the consciousness of American households. Every week this
spring in the Detroit metro area, there are new Feldenkrais classes
starting at local YMCAs, colleges, hospitals, physical therapy clinics and
parks and rec departments. "It's definitely more popular locally," said
practitioner Joan Clarahan, 52, a physical therapy specialist at the
Rehabilitation Institute of Michigan. "There are many classes. Doctors
refer patients to me as a physical therapist specifically to incorporate this
into their physical therapy. I think it's one of those things that's all of a
sudden going to go big."
Awareness through movement
Sometimes Feldenkrais classes are sneaky: they pose
as courses on pain-free horseback riding, better running, a way to improve
yoga form. Generic Feldenkrais classes are often called
"Awareness through Movement" instead. "Because Feldenkrais is such a
strange-sounding word, people think that it's a religion, or a cult,"
said Marjorie Levine, an occupational therapist in Southfield who leads an
introduction to Feldenkrais for gardeners. "It's marketing."
Sandy Hubar, a 54-year-old nurse and dedicated student of
Myers', first got into Feldenkrais by taking a class on ways to
improve her running and walking."The first class I went to, it was really bizarre to
me," she said. "I was lying on the floor, making small movements
that made absolutely no sense. I sat up - and my posture was a lot better. It
doesn't make sense that it's going to work. But as you get used to it, you
know what's going to happen. "I wanted to walk better. I had no idea that my
posture or whole body movements would change."
It's helped her swing dancing, horseback riding, walking
and sailing, she said. "It feels really good. You feel really relaxed
afterwards - you sleep really well," Hubar said. "I love yoga.
Yoga's hard. This is sooo easy."
Small, gentle movements
Michele Schoel's voice is calm and soothing."Sit on the edge of your chair, feet flat on the
floor. Now gently turn your upper body, neck and head to the right. Stop
before there is any pain, tightness or discomfort. Note the spot on the wall
where your eyes have stopped." Schoel is a 43-year-old physical therapist and certified Feldenkrais
Method practitioner from Farmington Hills. She works at the Abilities Center
in Walled Lake, where she and another therapist use Feldenkrais to
help children with disabilities. She's leading a demonstration of the method. The focus is
on small, gentle movements done with focus and concentration, first to the
right, then to the left. There is no stretching. There is no force. "Now turn your head, eyes and shoulders to face
forward. Keep your head and eyes facing forward and turn just your shoulders
to the right, then back to the middle, five times. Don't force the movement.
Don't hold your breath."
Despite its recent successes, Feldenkrais is
anything but a fad. Its instructors tend to be physical therapists,
occupational therapists and massage therapists. And like Myers and Clarahan,
Levine and Schoel, almost all of them got into teaching Feldenkrais
because they had an injury or pain or other problem that it helped. "Now turn your head, eyes and shoulders to the right
again and see if you are turning farther than the first time. Return to
facing forward." Schoel took the rigorous 4-year, 800-hour program to
become a certified Feldenkrais instructor after the method helped her
overcome pain and posture issues related to back surgery she had in her early
30s.
The key to Feldenkrais, and what sets it apart from
yoga and Pilates and its more-strenuous brethren, is its total focus on how
people move. While those other disciplines may ask you to work on achieving a
particular pose or position, Feldenkrais is all about making tiny
motions that force you to think about how you move - and force your brain to
focus on those movements.
If you've tried Schoel's exercise, you're probably struck
by two things: how easy it was - done properly, you should have felt no pain
or tension - and how much difference there was in how far you turned before
and after you tried it. "You teach your body to move in ways it has
forgotten," Schoel said. "The idea is to get more fluid movement
throughout your skeleton. As we grow, we develop movement habits. This is
neurological retraining."
Finding qualified teachers
"There's a lot of kinesthetic evidence to show that
it does help in a lot of ways," said Colleen Greene, wellness
coordinator for the University of Michigan. But she has steered clear of
scheduling Feldenkrais sessions on campus, for one simple reason: She
has no good way to select who will lead them. "It's difficult to know how well they know what
they're doing," she said. "If I'm leading a step aerobics class and
I don't know step aerobics that well, people won't get a good workout. With Feldenkrais,
people could get hurt." If she were seeking a Feldenkrais class or
practitioner, she'd look for someone with an additional medical background -
a physical or occupational therapist, for example. And she'd go to class to
watch."There are lots of different teaching styles,"
Greene said.
Easing pain and tension
Hubar's friend Cyndy Cleveland, a 47-year-old master's
degree coordinator for the Erb Institute at the University of Michigan, says
she adores the classes. She takes group sessions when they're available, or
she and Hubar and others will arrange their own group lessons from Myers. Cleveland does a wide variety of activities, ranging from
dancing to skating to sailing to swimming.
"It feels really different from anything else I'm
doing," she said. "It's really 'Less is more.' "Levine agrees. The 55-year-old occupational therapist has
been practicing Feldenkrais for eight years. She got into the method
after it helped her cope with debilitating arthritis. A decade later, she was
certified.
"With Feldenkrais, we don't ever try and fix
anything," she said. "We attempt to improve the whole system. The Feldenkrais
Method is about learning, not about doing exercises."
"Most of us use a lot of muscles to hold ourselves
up," Clarahan said. "We overwork our muscles. If our muscles are
working to do what the skeleton is supposed to do, they're not free to move.
We feel restricted or tight or sore. You don't have to stretch; your muscles
just start to release. It's how you coordinate what you have." Individual Feldenkrais sessions are different from
group classes. The practitioner focuses on specific problems, selecting the
appropriate lessons from the hundreds that the method includes. In the
individual sessions, instructors will provide hands-on help to guide
individuals through proper movements. For Cleveland, it has helped with the upper body and back
tension she feels after working in front of a computer for 10-12 hours a day.
"I couldn't shake it," she said. "I'd get a
massage and it would feel good for a day." Now she takes a break and does a few of the exercises from
her Feldenkrais sessions. "And then I'm fine. It's amazing."
Nora Foster, a 57-year-old dietician from West Bloomfield,
started taking Schoel's classes after she saw a book that mentioned the
method in a doctor's office where she was working. She was having trouble
getting rid of her everyday stress-related neck and back pain. "I didn't think it was going to do anything. You
don't feel like you're doing anything," she said. "You lay there
and you do this little movement this way, this little movement that way. It
builds. The movements, they just seem quirky. You might spend 15-20 minutes
just moving your eyes."
But she could see an impact immediately, she said. "You notice that you feel different. It really helps
your balance, your posture. And I felt a lot better. It's so easy, I really
liked it. I did get results - I wouldn't say they were real dramatic. But I
know I'll go back to it when I get the chance."
Contact HEATHER NEWMAN at 313-223-3336 or
hnewman@freepress.com.
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