This week marks the end of the practical part and extra time for my research study: Feldenkrais in Practice. 188 people filled in the first questionnaire, and I’m just waiting on the last few to fill in the final questionnaire, to analyse the results.
Meeting you where you are
In Feldenkrais we try to meet people where they are. For people who are busy, or are new to Feldenkrais, an hour can feel like a long time to carve out of a day.
In this project, aimed at musicians, I wanted to create short lessons to slide into their practice sessions. Too long, and no-one would take a large chunk out of practice time.
I was aiming for 10-15 minutes. It soon became clear teaching live that 15-20 minutes was more realistic. It takes people time to get down on the floor and up again. Time to set up the questions so that participants can notice a difference by the end. Some of the movements took longer than others to describe so everyone understood. So the rhythm was a 15- 20 minute lesson, and 15 minutes afterwards for any questions and feedback. Those sessions were really interesting too, as short snippets don’t allow for the weaving in of theory that we tend to do in a longer session.
I’ve missed the morning sessions, now we’ve stopped. Despite not being an early bird, it was a buzz seeing 40 people up to do a lesson at 8 am with me. That numbers stayed steady through the whole month made it feel very worthwhile. And to hear the difference it has made to people’s lives has been really wonderful.
I’ll just share a few comments from participants after individual lessons:
Feedback from the lessons:
“I have been runnning for the first time in two decades for a few months. Just before you began this I was taking a break because my ankles were hurting. I ran the other day and it was like flying. No pain. “
“in relation to a very long standing problem I notice I can lift my right leg as well and as freely as my left leg, putting on socks, shoes etc. No physio, massage, osteo required. Magic”
“Transformative! Very stiff in turning to start with, despite having done the Breathing lesson from yesterday right before. [I had a] small range of motion, and clunky quality of movement in turning head and spine.”
“At the end of the session I felt release in my jaw, sides and back of the neck, back of the skull, shoulders and torso (front and back), fingers and toes. Wow!”
“Thank you for putting together this course, I thought it worked brilliantly! Daily practise really does make a difference as it allows concepts and physical awareness to sink in at a deeper level.”
Next steps for this project:
Post sessions, I’m re-recording the videos, to make it into a package for anyone who would like to try out the course for themselves. I’m hoping this will be finished in the next week. I’ll let you know when it’s available in my shop in case any of you would like to try them out for yourselves! I’ll be writing up the results in the next month or so, and will share them with you too.
Transform how you move, feel and live 