FeldSciNet for Researchers and Practitioners

Moshe Feldenkrais encapsulated his method in this statement: “Organic learning is essential. It can also be therapeutic in essence. It is healthier to learn than to be a patient or even be cured. Life is a process not a thing. And, processes go well if there are many ways to influence them. We need more ways to do what we want than the one we know—even if it is a good one in itself”. In this chapter (in the 2011 open access book A Compendium of Essays on Alternative Therapy available at http://www.intechopen.com/books/show/title/a-compendium-of-essays-on-alternative-therapy), I expand on Feldenkrais’ statement and make these key points:
• The Feldenkrais Method of somatic education self-identifies as a learning method that may have therapeutic effects. It presents itself as an approach to health promotion, when health is viewed broadly and not just as the absence of disease or injury.
• Through individual Functional Integration lessons and group Awareness Through Movement lessons, Feldenkrais teachers guide students to sense, move, think and feel in ways intended to facilitate self-improvement and create more individually appropriate options for functioning.
• The Feldenkrais Method shares many principles with dynamic systems theory, including: emergence of self-organized behavior via subsystem interactions; perception-action-cognition coupling; and an ideal of reliable, yet flexible and adaptable, behavior.
• Practitioners around the world complete similarly structured curricula typically spanning four years to earn certification, and follow comparable standards of practice.
• Others have categorized the Feldenkrais Method with a range of complementary and alternative medicine approaches, most appropriately with the Alexander Technique.
• Feldenkrais Method effectiveness and safety research has increased considerably in the past decade. Results are mostly favorable, but remain sparse and subject to design limitations. Much more research is needed that rigorously combines appropriate quantitative and qualitative methodologies to further evaluate the Feldenkrais Method.

In the Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness, Alan Fogel, PhD shares his expertise as a developmental psychologist and embodied self-awareness practitioner (Rosen Method Bodywork) in a manner that restores key concepts to the foreground for more expert readers while simultaneously preparing newcomers to delve deeper. He was a colleague and friend of Esther Thelen, PhD, GCFP for over twenty years, and began his interactions with the Feldenkrais Method® community in the early 1990s at the invitation of Mark Reese. Fogel has searched the literature of neuroscience and neurology, clinical psychology and psychiatry, immunology, cognitive science, linguistics, exercise science, evolutionary science, and developmental psychology to provide discipline-specific insights with common ground in human anatomy and physiology. Woven throughout his descriptions of the neurophysiology of posture, emotions, and chronic tension are practice examples, occasional experiential sidebars, and case reports that illustrate the scientific themes. He offers Feldenkrais practitioners foundational information to enhance their work and to answer students’ questions. Fogel hopes practitioners will see and make use of the common ground he lays before us in the Psychophysiology of Self-Awareness. (revised 4-12-10)

In this project a 30-week program of two ATM lessons per week will be provided to people aged 55-75 who have Osteoarthritis of the hip, knee or ankle.
Participants will be assessed at the Rehabilitation Sciences Research Centre, Melbourne, Australia before and after the program to determine outcomes. Tests include 3-dimensional gait analysis and leg power test, pre-post testing for function (timed up and go, four square step test, and 6 minute walk test) quality of life and activity level.