How these modalities can help improve how you feel through how you move
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Posture habits affect how your body moves and can cause stiffness, tension and stress. Both the Feldenkrais Method and the Alexander Technique have to do with body alignment and movement.
Physician Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli, developed his program during more than 40 years of research. As a scientist and an athlete (he earned a black belt in judo), Feldenkrais applied a scientific approach to movement for the purpose of improving and supporting good health.
Mara Neimanis, owner of Buffalo Feldenkrais in Williamsville, said that F.M. Alexander and Moshe Feldenkrais, the founders of their eponymous programs, were contemporaries.
“The Feldenkrais Method uses movement as a way to communicate to the brain and change patterns of behavior,” Neimanis said. “A lot of the movement sequences are based on early childhood development and are ‘primordial movement’ that we’re born with. It’s a way to reteach the body to move more effortlessly and to look at patterns that are with effort so you can address them and change them. It’s neurological.”
Moving in ways that avoid pain and reduce risk of injury eventually becomes a way of living — an awareness that eventually becomes force of habit. Neimanis said in that way, FM is similar to AT. But AT lends more of a corrective aspect, a certain way to hold the head, whereas FM is based upon what the individual is going through on a particular day.
“It’s about how to stay aware of what you need,” she added. “Feldenkrais is more of a challenge because it’s always asking, ‘How can you organize this? How can this be easy?’ Even if you’re at the computer and it’s now working. ‘How can you do this? Should you leave it?’ It’s based in reality. It gives you more than taking a deep breath. You’re looking for the path of least resistance and how you do it.”
The various lessons and strategies integrated into FM provide tools to meet any circumstance as well as any type of client. Neimanis has helped people of any ages and across a wide array of medical conditions.
Participants in an FM class begin by lying down to gain a sense of proprioception and by the instructor’s verbal cues, begin moving into various positions so the instructor can see how their bones are moving and how they correlate with eye movement.
Classes typically last about an hour and they meet weekly.
Many students who engage in FM are musicians, actors and singers, as proper alignment help them perform better and avoid injury.
“The classes are conducted very slowly,” Neimanis said. “It’s repetitive. When I first started, it drove me crazy. You’re working on the quality of the movement, not the volume or how far you can go. The quality is ultimately the home base of how something is. Can you find the ease in it or not? If you can’t find that, how can you find the quality to a capacity? We build strategies and aren’t afraid to change directions.”
The Alexander Technique developed a century ago by F.M. Alexander. The program teaches students about how to improve and self-correct their posture to foster proper movement, improve performance and alertness and relief chronic issues caused by poor posture. Many of the people seeking to learn through the Alexander Technique are involved in music performance, acting, dance or other performing arts because of the toll these careers take on the body.
Katie Fittipaldi is certified to teach Alexander Technique and instructs at the Eastman School of Music and the Eastman Community Music School, as well as offering performance programs in the surrounding area. She is also a cello teacher.
“In AT, we acknowledge that our system works as a whole: the mind and body works together and works best when it’s free to move,” Fittipaldi said. “We’re interested in creating gentle conditions for movement to move freely. We don’t stiffen ourselves in a position. We let those relationships among body parts be in a relationship that’s unstuck and dynamic and ever changing. The system knows how to calibrate. We don’t have to manage all of this directly.”
Fittipaldi likens it to young children who move freely and without effort or thought about posture. She discovered AT because as a cellist, she wanted to play with less tension and anxiety.
Self-awareness is the first step in AT as students focus on how they’re breathing and how they’re positioned while typing, playing an instrument or doing anything at all. A student may notice he’s holding his breath, tapping a foot or suspending his shoulders. Making the posture more comfortable and easier is the next part of the lesson, along with developing a helpful and healthful habit that holds the body comfortably and without causing problems.
Fittipaldi helps students find the helpful positions and develop the healthful habits.
“It’s about being curious about how we’re responding to live and then letting go of things that aren’t helping us,” she said.
As students continue to learn, they apply AT to other things they do all day, such as sitting in an armchair, walking across the room, standing at the kitchen sink to wash dishes.
“We’re more aware when we’re moving in ways that are hurting us and we can choose ways that are not hurting us,” Fittipaldi said. “If we’re cultivating that kind of relationship with the body, it opens the door to the possibility of pain reduction. They often come with neck, arm or back pain. It’s helpful for injury reduction and prevention.”
In addition, musicians and athletes often come in to improve their performance. And like their professional pursuit, it takes practice to improve in AT. But Fittipaldi sees AT as a way of approaching everyday movement, whether sitting, standing, walking, riding a horse, washing dishes or anything else.
“AT is a gentle way to bring more presence, calm and choice to what we are doing,” she added. “And if we find that we are responding to life in a way that is not particularly helpful, AT offers a way to let go of ways of thinking and moving that are no longer serving us.”
This may include tightening, bracing, straining, generally making things harder than they need to be. Fittipaldi said these responses are often evident during stressful times but can surface at any time.
“Let’s say I’m at Wegmans waiting in line and I give myself some space to stop and tune in,” Fittipaldi said. “I can ask: Am I moveable? Free to breathe? Gripping the cart? I wonder if this could be easier somehow?”