There’s something special about this video which ends with Moshe Feldenkrais’ famous quote: “Make the impossible possible, the possible easy, the easy elegant.” I think the specialness lies in seeing the freedom and joy in movement and the satisfaction from being able to enjoy and explore one’s environment.
This video features babies discovering developmental explorations as they begin to grab their toes, roll, crawl, creep, and pull themselves up. Also shown are Awareness Through Movement (ATM) Feldenkrais classes featuring adults of all ages and varying abilities moving on the floor and exploring the same developmental movements that the babies demonstrate. The ATM teacher has broken down the movements into steps that the participants can follow, one step at a time. The ATM students may be moving in ways that they did as infants and toddlers or, if they skipped developmental milestones, such as crawling prior to walking during their early years, they may be moving in ways they never experienced before. Curiosity, gentleness, awareness, and discovery are encouraged during these lessons.
© International Feldenkrais® Federation. Produced by Marcela Bretschneider. All rights reserved.
Many people seek the Feldenkrais Method in order to relieve pain or to achieve a goal they’ve set to develop more efficient movement to improve performance in sports, music, or dancing, etc. Over the years, we experience injuries, illnesses, and place demands on our bodies. As children, many of us have been confined to uncomfortable chairs and desks that restricted our use of ourselves and may have created some patterns that are perpetuating discomfort and/or tension in our bodies.
From the beginning we only learn a limited array of movement choices available to us. We learn how to do something one way and when that is successful we tend to use that approach over and over again. These habits in the long run can cause a variety of potential problems, physical and emotional. Learning ATM creates an opportunity to discover alternate choices available to us that we never would otherwise consider. With a larger palette of choices available, we can move gently into new directions beyond the ones ingrained from our initial explorations as infants and toddlers.
Learning how to bring attention to how we move in a way that uses our whole selves can calm our nervous systems and reduce stress and pain. Watching the kids in the video scampering up the hills and climbing over obstacles illustrates how many of these functional ATM movements are relevant in day-to-day life. The contralateral movement (oppositional arm and leg movement, such as left arm moving with the right leg) discovered and integrated by crawling and creeping is shown to be useful by the child climbing over the tree stump and also by the rock climber who is using the same movements to scale the mountain.
While this video doesn’t show the Functional Integration (FI) aspect of the Feldenkrais Method, it shows the developmental ATM movements, many of which inform the FI.
For information on what Feldenkrais can do for you, click here.
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