Feldenkrais Practitioner | Awareness Through Movement | Functional Integration
MY FELDENKRAIS STORY
Hello, my name is Alice.
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I am a Feldenkrais Practitioner, dancer and writer and I combine these three disciplines to inform my Awareness Through Movement classes and Functional Integration sessions: I am fascinated by how the stories we tell ourselves shape our movement habits and how, in turn, our bodily sensations shape the narratives we carry about ourselves and our self-image.
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I became acutely aware of this whilst managing injury and pain throughout my dance career.
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I discovered the Feldenkrais Method ten years ago whilst working for Pheonix Dance Theatre, Leeds. I had injuries that I simply couldn’t shake and movement habits that exacerbated these injuries. I couldn’t sustain enough stamina to get on stage and I was deeply miserable. In the winter of 2014, I had my first Functional Integration session with Caroline Scott, and I was transformed – momentarily in body yet continuously in mind.
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“Nothing is permanent about our behaviour patterns except our belief that they are so.”
- Moshe Feldenkrais
Moshe Feldenkrais was one of the first practitioners to realise a human being’s neuroplastic capabilities (the ability of the brain to form and reorganise synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury.) This is where I was hooked. Injury had narrowed my experience within my body into such tiny space that I was winding down and in on myself. However, what if this didn’t have to be the case? What if my movement patterns weren’t destined to remain but could continually improve as I aged?
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Our behaviour is malleable. The way that we approach ourselves and movement is malleable. The way that we solve problems is malleable. That is what I love the most about the method: the possibility for change and, therefore, the autonomy that it promotes for each individual.
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Ten years later, I still experience pain but, thanks to The Feldenkrais Method, I have strategies to organise myself around it in many creative (and often counter-cultural) ways i.e. through awareness, slowing down and rest. I continue to perform and workshop movement and, most importantly, I now do so on my own terms.