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Gain Without Pain Feldenkrais Therapy Shows How Small Changes in How You Move Can Have a Big Impact on How You Feel

Posted on: Monday, 18 April 2005, 21:00 CDT

The most hallowed institution of the most hallowed American sport recently enshrined a bloody sock.

The Baseball Hall of Fame's inclusion of pitcher Curt Schilling's sock - bloodied during the World Series when he pitched with a crudely patched ruptured tendon - pretty much sums up all that practitioners of the Feldenkrais Method rail against.

Feldenkrais is a dissenting voice in our national pep chorus of play-through-it, shake-it-off, no-pain-no-gain patter.

Americans tend to think "if I don't sweat, if I don't hurt, I don't burn, I'm not getting better," said Connie Butler, a Feldenkrais practitioner and physical therapist from Downers Grove. "In Feldenkrais, these are all warning signs to find another way, find an easier way."

Feldenkrais, an educational therapy that teaches people how to move optimally, maintains it's possible to ease chronic pain, recover from injuries, and increase flexibility, balance and coordination through small, easy movements.

Adherents include actors and athletes, cerebral palsy and Parkinson's patients, average Joes with pesky pain and average Joes who want to feel above average.

There are two types of Feldenkrais learning techniques. Awareness Through Movement Lessons are group sessions during which the teacher talks students through a series of easy exercises. Lessons have reassuring names like The Effortless Gardener and Gentle Lessons for Breast Cancer Survivors.

Functional Integration lessons are one-on-one, hands-on sessions during which the teacher makes gentle adjustments to the student's body.

Very gentle. During a Functional Integration, the teacher might cradle the student's head, moving it a quarter-inch to either side, until the neck muscles relax and the body begins to incorporate information about the movement.

The Feldenkrais waltz

To the outside observer, a Feldenkrais lesson can look a lot like doing nothing.

To the practitioner, Feldenkrais is an art, a dance, an improvisational jam. Steve Duke, a music professor and Feldenkrais instructor at Northern Illinois University, describes a Feldenkrais lesson:

"You're pushing on a person's foot ... and you feel like nothing goes through," he said. "There's a block. You don't feel like there's any give or connection, so you turn and change a little. ...Suddenly you reach a little place, you begin to feel a little bit of movement going through. The pelvis moves a bit. ... There's a little movement in the chin. ...You make tiny, fine adjustments. They're almost participating in the movement. A dance begins to happen. They take your lead. Everything begins to soften. ... You're discovering the (connections) of how that person moves. You can feel the most subtle difference. Move your hand an eighth of an inch and it's a completely different movement. ... And now you're in that space where you're really connecting. Now you can expand that movement to make it really functional and useful in what they're trying to do."

Movement potholes

A Feldenkrais parlor trick: Fold your hands so that your fingers interlock. Now recross them the opposite way, with the opposite thumb on the outside. This tiny adjustment makes many people feel slightly off.

Likely, for no particular reason, and without conscious thought, you have folded your fingers the same way all of your life. You've developed a - relatively benign - movement rut. Now that you're conscious of it, you can change it, which is the essence of Feldenkrais.

As babies we teach ourselves to sit, stand, reach, walk and run, improvising the activities that constitute the bulk of our daily activity. Once we stumble upon a movement that works for us, we tend to stick with it - for better or for worse.

Perhaps you stand with most of your weight on one leg. Perhaps you lift your arm with your tiny shoulder muscles rather than your sturdy lower back muscles. Perhaps you don't have the slightest idea if you do these things or not.

Most of us don't, and that's why we hurt, according to Moshe Feldenkrais, an Israeli engineer, physicist and martial artist who developed the method in the 1940s after suffering a debilitating knee injury. Integrating aspects of physics, psychology, neurobiology, infant development and Eastern awareness practices, Feldenkrais taught himself to walk pain free.

A path to healing

Connie Butler, the Downers Grove physical therapist, incorporates aspects of Feldenkrais into her practice. Through the state of Illinois early intervention program, she treats children at risk for various developmental delays.

She said many of her patients do not respond to traditional physical therapy but thrive when exposed to Feldenkrais' educational approach to healing.

In working toward her doctorate, Butler is studying the similarities and differences between the medical model of physical therapy and the educational model.

She said Feldenkrais picks up where physical therapy leaves off. For example, patients who have undergone knee surgery may regain full range of motion and strength, but still feel their leg isn't going to hold up or that it is disconnected from the rest of their body. According to Butler, Feldenkrais eliminates this sensation by re-educating the receptors in our joints that let us know where we are in space.

Butler said Feldenkrias also taught her a more holistic approach to healing.

"When I first started, if I had a shoulder problem, I'd look at the shoulder," she said. "Now I ask questions. What is working so hard over time to cause the pain? Usually it's because some other body part is on vacation."

Anecdotal evidence of the method's effectiveness abounds, but peer reviewed medical literature remains scarcer.

There is, however, a growing body of research that supports the use of Feldenkrais for a variety of conditions. For example, a 2001 study of multiple sclerosis patients found significant improvements in balance and balance confidence as a result of a series of Awareness Through Movement lessons.

Cleaning out closets

Julie Francis discovered Feldenkrais while researching alternative therapy methods for her daughter, who was born with cerebral palsy. Her daughter had not responded well to other forms of treatment, and Francis approached Feldenkrais with jaded caution.

A weekend workshop, which cured the sciatica that had plagued her since her daughter's birth, won her over. Francis describes the experience of receiving her first Functional Integration as "waking up a part of me" and "better than a massage."

A trained engineer, Francis said Feldenkrais' emphasis on the human skeleton appealed to her interest in the physical properties of structures. Even more so, Feldenkrais appealed to her "passion for de-cluttering."

In addition to working as a Feldenkrais practitioner, Francis eliminates the detritus from people's homes as an employee of California Closets.

"It sounds a little 'woo, woo,'" Francis said, explaining the parallels between California Closets and Feldenkrais. "But they're both about changing habitual patterns. ... Feldenkrais is the physical manifestation of uncluttering."

Feldenkrais on stage

Feldenkrais is particularly popular among performers whose craft requires exquisite body control. Julius Erving, known for his balletic moves on the basketball court, is said to be a disciple.

Music professor Steve Duke became involved in Feldenkrais because he sensed a "missing link" was preventing many of his students from making the leap from classical to jazz saxophone.

He said he found Feldenkrais "gave (his students) the kind of awareness to understand the techniques needed to play both styles." It also cured his back spasms.

At DePaul University, acting majors take two years of Feldenkrais as part of their movement training.

"We manifest our emotions in our bodies," said Scott Illingworth, a Feldenkrais practitioner and director at the Theatre of Western Springs who majored in acting at DePaul. Feldenkrais, he said, helps students gain control of their body language.

It's even infiltrated Hollywood. Melissa Etheridge used Feldenkrais to help her adopt the bearing of Janis Joplin for a film role.

By any other name

"The most unfortunate thing about Feldenkrais is the name," Julie Francis jokes. She said it tends to conjure images of cultish behavior.

It's not a cult, but those who practice Feldenkrais describe it with the zeal of the converted.

George Krutz, founder of the Feldenkrais center of Chicago, said his patients tell him, "It just makes everything easier."

In essence, Feldenkrais inverts the famous Tom Hanks quote in the baseball film A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard ... is what makes it great."

Feldenkrais shows it doesn't have to be hard. Everyone can do it. The easy can make life joyful.

Source: Daily Herald; Arlington Heights, Ill.

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