I went back to a bodyworker after many months of doing this work, and they felt my feet and said, "Wow, you have restructured your feet!"

Learning how to solve a movement problem is a skill that we use as a learning strategy in Feldenkrais Awareness through Movement®. This skill is very useful for dealing with pain and the skill can be generalized in one’s life.

The injury that had seemed so permanent now feels fundamentally changed. Something else is here now, and I like the (new) feeling: integrity, strength and ability.

We know, through the teachings of Moshe Feldenkrais, that difference is what makes us human. We already live in a world where this is true, so now the challenge is to really live as if this is true, to move beyond our personal limitations which were inflicted on us in a range of ways to make us conform to parental and societal expectations. These limitations enable us to form the habit of discounting our own sensations and our vowed and unavowed dreams.

Age gracefully I’m so inspired by my Feldenkrais teachers in their 80s. They continue to improve their movement habits even as they age – just as others their age seem to keep declining…

Feel More. Update your habits. Learn to slow down. Improve your brain’s map of your body. Discover the gifts inside pain. Grow your attentional flexibility. Be mindful and spontaneous. Become yourself…

Learn to respect your physical sensations as intelligent signals. By doing Awareness Through Movement, you will begin to learn to identify the sensations that precede your pain or discomfort. Then, you will be able to take the radical, proactive step of stopping whatever you are doing, and with a few minutes of ATM, interrupt the cycle of habitual stress and pain. This is what learning to take care of yourself means.

Create new metaphors to counter the "war on pain"→ movement towards curiosity as an approach, rather than self-violence. Deborah Bowes shares her thinking behind her self-paced Feldenkrais Series: Curiosity, Self Image and Pain

Feldenkrais Podcast #4 with Deborah Bowes

We talk about:
• How Feldenkrais reassures the limbic system
• The relationship between pain and self image
• The phenomena of pain
• Feldenkrais is a bio-psycho-social model and pain is a bio-psycho-social experience
• The importance of empathy and compassion in changing neural pathways

The people who are coming to me via the NY Times article are intelligent, curious, fascinating people--therapists, professors, lawyers, artists, writers---open and eager to learn. It has been an honor to work with them. PAIN is the reason they all came to the method and they are finding that the same process which helps reduce their pain also supports overall well being, and for many, more vibrant creativity. It is a paradigm shift from our pain-no-gain culture.