the Feldenkrais Method with Emma Alter

One of my colleagues was collecting ideas as to why people don’t like Feldenkrais. One cropped up quite a bit, which I found particularly interesting.

“Feldenkrais is too slow”.  I know what they mean.

I started practising Feldenkrais long before becoming a teacher. There were days where I found it hard to concentrate, hard to understand what the teacher was asking. Various occasions, I’d look around to see that other people were doing it different to me. And enough of them, that it was clearly me doing it wrong!

We don’t always like to look at how we’re doing what they do. It can be confronting to see your limitations of course.

It’s the slowness of movement that allows us time to learn.

In Feldenkrais’ own words: “The delay between thought and action is the basis for awareness.”

When we move slow we have an option to reduce effort. We can feel the differences in stimulus when it’s smaller. We raise our sensitivity by slowing down, and reducing effort. An increase in sensitivity means we can sense the differences. Differences between one way and another, or one co-ordination and another.

Over time we get better at differentiating (sensing differences), reducing our judgement. And learning to observe ourselves with more clarity. Then, improvement and change is possible.

First we do it slow, like slow practice for a musician. Second, we learn to move with less strain and forcing. Then we speed up movement, from a learning to action speed. At that point, we can do it with more ease, less force, and more pleasure in moving.

Moving slow allows us to co-ordinate


To organise our breath with moving. To control what we’re doing in a lesson whilst keeping the breath free.

When we hold the breath, we’ve stopped taking in information. Learning is unlikely to go with struggle or efforting. Slower movement gives time for our brain to re-wire. It leads to more skill at differentiation and observation. So that improvement is greater.

We all have drivers of action, which usually come from childhood. And one of these, is what’s known in transactional analysis as “hurry up”. For these people it’s hard to slow down, even if it would be useful. So if you recognise that in yourself, it can be useful to note it, and see if you can create a new option. After all as the Zen proverb goes “If you don’t have time to meditate for 15 minutes …you need to meditate for an hour!”

Thoughts, opinions? Do reply, I enjoy a good conversation!