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  MOVEMENT MATTERS
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GET TO THE ROOT - LEARN THE SKILLS - LIVE THE SOLUTION​  
     FELDENKRAIS PRACTITIONER CFP   -   PHYSIOTHERAPIST - HEALTHY AGING CONSULTANT  
Individual Sessions - Classes - Workshops - Online Zoom Consultations ​
      Phone: +61-0419-923-413      Email: sandyleathem@gmail.com     Clinic: Movement Matters

THE FELDENKRAIS METHOD 
"Feldenkrais is an embodied process of learning through movement with awareness
leading to an improvement of the self- image, co-ordination and action.
The aim is a body that is organised to move with minimum effort and maximum efficiency,
not through muscular strength but increased consciousness of how it works." -- Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc.
The Feldenkrais Method® works by influencing neural organisation rather than muscle strength.

SO YOU MAY ASK WHY The Feldenkrais Method(R)?
You may well have observed throughout the course of your life, that your sensory-motor system has continually responded to daily stresses and traumas with specific reflexes.
These reflexes, repeatedly triggered, create habitual muscular contractions, which we cannot - voluntarily -- relax. These muscular contractions become so deeply involuntary and unconscious that, eventually, we no longer remember how to move about freely.

The result is stiffness, soreness, and a restricted range of movement. Maybe you feel movement limitations around your neck, back or hip with associated stiffness, tightness or pain?

We call this habituated state of forgetfulness sensory-motor amnesia (SMA). It is a memory loss of how certain muscle groups feel and how to control them. And, because this occurs within the central nervous system, we are not aware of it, yet it affects us to our very core.

Our image of who we are, what we can experience, and what we can do is profoundly diminished by sensory-motor amnesia (forgetfulness). And it is primarily this event, and its secondary effects, that we falsely think of as 'growing older.'" While "forgetting" might be inevitable with age, decline is not.

As a Feldenkrais Practitioner I frequently bring clients attention to parts of themselves that seem to have "gone off the radar." You may well have noticed that in a confusing moment, you may not be certain of what you are feeling, or sometimes even how to go about "contacting" the part of yourself that you are being asked to move. On other occasions, I speak of "re-establishing diplomatic relations" with parts of yourself that you have not moved, freely or at all, in a very long time. Both expressions refer to the same phenomenon of sensory-motor amnesia. 

THE FELDENKRAIS METHOD helps you to re-member and remember yourself, so that your actions in the world become more effective and efficient. You are the teacher, learner, textbook, and laboratory!
The syllabus is life, and the course materials are gentle body movement, curiosity, and ample good humor in the process of discovery. 

We do this by discovering and tapping into the extraordinary capacity the brain has to heal and change through engaging  neuroplasticity. 
If there are activities that now challenge you due to developing poor habits over time or injury, we've got a bunch of quirky ideas and movements that will 'blow your mind' as you re-discover your incredible brain's ability to learn and overcome limitations movement and beliefs and thus inspire and empower you to participate more fully in your life. 
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Your amazing brain has something like 100 billion neurons (a.k.a. brain cells), that have the ability to create new neural patterns and pathways. For the first time in history, thanks to recent brain research we're now able to better understand the language of the body and tap into it's extraordinary capacity to heal and recover from injuries and past challenges
 
Exciting, isn't it I so look forward to hearing from you, do feel free to call me for a chat.

​"When we live in our thoughts, disconnected from our senses, our feelings and the people around us! That's when we do the most violence to ourselves, each other and the most violence to life in all it's forms"... Russell Delman.                                                                                  

By engageing the basic and fundamental principles of NEUROPLASTICITY via The Feldenkrais Method we can easily access the brain's remarkable capacity to change and heal.  
The Feldenkrais method is a truly remarkable brain based approach that helps people improve their quality of life on every level.
We help people with movement who want to LEARN how to recover, re-group, or even re-invent themselves to be better than they are. 
The practice of the Method grows the skills of resilience, focus, creativity, and adaptation across multiple domains in life. 
Best of all, it can elevate your mood without increasing your waistline! Through specifically designed gentle movements anyone can change their habits. 
Whether you’re into paddling, cycling, singing, computing, studying, standing, sitting, driving, swimming, surfing, running, dancing or just want to move through your day with greater ease and wellbeing, you will find enormous and surprising benefits. ​​

Norman Doidge MD is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, researcher, author, essayist and poet. He is on faculty at the University of Toronto’s Department of Psychiatry, and Research Faculty at Columbia University’s Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, in New York. He is the author of two New York Times Bestsellers. 
DR. NORMAN DOIDGE,
Dr Norman Doidge while talking about his new book, 'The Brain's Way of Healing', tells the story of Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais.
Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais is the creator of the Feldenkrais Method, and its contribution to the concept of neuroplasticity of the brain --- the idea that the brain is not, in fact, hardwired, but is plastic and changes in structure with use regardless of our age.
Since the brain organizes movement, then movement must also influence the development and structure of the brain.
Published on Oct 23, 2015


By tapping into the vast potential of your brain, you can discover:
  • improved coordination
  • reduced pain
  • greater ease of movement
  • a renewed sense of fun!

Gentle movements experienced either within a group setting or individually with a practitioner help you access the potential of the mind-body connection to regain lost coordination and fluidity. 
Participants frequently find themselves moving in ways they have never moved before! By bringing awareness and attention to places in your body where you feel stuck,  you can discover new options, and by working at the deep level of the nervous system resulting changes can take place instantly. For those with a yoga practice, the workshop helps you enter deeper into an embodied experience of yoga. For runners, the program can help you find out how to automatically reduce impact and strain on joints.
For surfers, it can bring back lost use of the shoulders.
​Whoever you are, the program can enrich your life and your passions by giving you the opportunity to enter activities with a higher degree of natural body awareness, and greater ease.

FELDEN-WHAT?

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Feldenkrais is the name of the founder ... Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-1989). 

Let's begin with the question "what makes the Feldenkrais way of thinking about body movement and posture so profoundly different from traditional trainings.

In a nutshell the answer lies in 'waking you up to learn' by igniting your curiosity and giving you 'choices', more options. 

Feldenkrais awakens the organic simplicity and inherent integrity of 'how' your human body is designed to move! 

My passion is to awaken your curiosity to learn how to choose between movement habits that result in stress, 'wear, tear' and injury that occurs when we go against our natural movement design. 

The same easy, co-ordinated frredom we all once engaged in as infants, toddlers and young children.

Poor movement habits insidiously accumulate over time and become the source of muscular and joint discomfort, tension, tightness, limitation, inflammation and pain and all too frequently lead to medication and worse still surgery! 

My hope is to have you question HOW you unconsciously move around in your day to day life, at work, at home and at play! After all we only have one body and one life so why not learn again how to move well, feel well and be well!

"Feldenkrais offers the most important human capacity, and that is awareness. 
Through awareness we become connected to this moment, and from there our true humanity can come forth. Only then do we truly begin to become human in our function."
 Russell Delman


Benefits of Feldenkrais?

  • Easy, enjoyable and efficient movement
  • Improve posture, breathing and digestion
  • Improve balance co-ordination and spacial awareness
  • Alleviate the effects of stress and reduce pain
  • Enhance performance skills eg sport, dance, music, singing
  • Greater self awareness, self confidence and motivation
  • Injury prevention and rehabilitation
  • Discover how habitual stress and poor posture can contribute to pain and limit flexibility

Who benefits?

  • Anyone can benefit from the Feldenkrais Method.
  • Beneficial for those experiencing joint and movement limitation and pain.
  • People who demand peak physical performance, recovery, and injury prevention - dancers, sportspeople, musicians and actors.
  • Older people can easily regain their ability to move safely without strain, pain or discomfort.
  • singers, dancers, musicians, keyboard operators, vehicle drivers, hairdressers, nurses and more.
  • Conditions of the central nervous system such as stroke, cerebral palsy and multiple sclerosis.

HEAR WHAT MY FELLOW PRACTITIONERS HAVE TO SAY -


My colleague Anat Baniel beautifully demonstrates how specific movement patterns and sequences can and will re-train the brain and nervous system to engage and expand potential, no matter the 'problem' or age of the client. 



GROUP WORKSHOPS give participants an opportunity to explore 'unconscious' habitual compensations and adaptations made over time.

Stress, stiffness, tightness and pain is frequently associated with poor movement habits . Through verbally directed lessons participants re-discover how to move as humans were naturally and organically designed to do so!

Easy and playful Feldenkrais, Awareness Through Movement Lessons guide you to learn how to engage, your whole-self to move, as you spontaneously and naturally did as a young child.

Dr. Michael Merzenich

Dr Michael Merzenich on the Feldenkrais Method
In this video, renowned neuroscientist Dr. Merzenich discusses the ways in which his understanding of how to enhance movement and learning is consistent with the Feldenkrais Method.


History of Feldenkrais - who was Moshe Feldenkrais?

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eMoshe Feldenkrais (1904-1989), was a distinguished scientist and engineer, whose career included work at the Curie Institute in Paris in the 1930's. He was also a respected Judo instructor, and was a founder of the Ju Jitsu Club in Paris. Moshe Feldenkrais is the originator of the Feldenkrais Method®.

He suffered crippling knee injuries. Despite being given little hope of ever walking normally, Feldenkrais refused surgery and instead applied his extensive knowledge of anatomy, physiology, psychology and engineering, as well as his mastery of martial arts, to healing his own knee.
Moshe used his own body as a way to explore how he could combine his acquired knowledge with a deep curiosity about how humans work.

He taught himself to walk again and in the process developed an extraordinary system for accessing the power of the central nervous system. He recognised the vital importance of working with the whole body and indeed the whole self to improve human functioning and achieve lasting, radical change.

A great read is 'A Life in Movement' - The Definitive Biography of Moshe Feldenkrais - Mark Reece 
feldenkraisbiography.com


This is a montage of little BABY LIV doing what babies naturally do during their first year of life.
It is these first beginnings that form the initial pieces that a student would learn while doing a Feldenkrais Awareness Through Movement Lesson. To awaken to the ground as support and gravity as a constant 'educator' engages a curiosity and exploration towards discovering effortless and more refined movements we use to highlight the principles of The Feldenkrais Method
This basic developmental stage forms the major foundation of the work of Moshe Feldenkrais and this method.
This video clip is the beginning of a series of video clips used to highlight the foundations and principles of The Feldenkrais Method

Websites

https://www.feldenkrais.org.au/node/29118
http://www.feldenkrais.org.nz/
http://www.feldenkrais.com/
http://www.feldenkrais.co.uk/

© Copyright 2012 Sandy Leathem, PO Box 759, Ocean Grove, Australia 3226 ABN 33 146 756 135
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