WAC Wellness Articles

This section of wac.net contains Wellness articles covering various topics which have appeared in WAC Magazine. Click the article titles at left to navigate through our library. Happy reading!

Mind Over Motion

By Tamela Thomas, Wellness Manager

You may have noticed a recent emphasis on mind-body training, either on the news or in your inner circles. Familiar activities that enhance the mind-body connection include the martial arts, yoga and meditation. But the truth is, many practices encourage a more conscious connection between our minds and bodies. True mastery of almost any method brings heightened awareness and a more efficient mind-body interaction.

This month's article examines Feldenkrais, a practice that helps you achieve this awareness through movement. It also happens to be one of the more recent additions to the Wellness Center's Integrative Services menu. Our hope is that this article will provide you with the information you need to assess whether this service is valuable to you. 

Feldenkrais: It's in the Way That You Move

By Jeff Bickford, Guild-Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner

Do you crave more vitality? Would you like to relieve tension and the effects of stress? How about improve your posture and flexibility? Or perhaps you need help regaining full movement after an injury or illness. All of these needs are literally within reach; all you have to do is learn to move differently.

The Feldenkrais^® Method of Somatic Education focuses on the way your brain organizes itself when you move. It uses gentle touch, movement and verbal cues to communicate directly with the sensory-motor areas of your nervous system. Educational rather than therapeutic, the Feldenkrais Method puts you in charge of improving your well-being. During private Feldenkrais Functional Integration^® lessons, you sit, stand or lie on a table, fully clothed. The practitioner then observes the way your mind tells your body to move. After noting how you could move with greater skill and efficiency, the practitioner teaches new sensory-motor organization through touch, guided movement and verbal cues. The goal is to guide you toward effortless movement, no matter what you do in your life.

The Feldenkrais Method views sensations, thoughts and feelings as different aspects of nervous system experiences. For example, unclear thinking and emotional stress show up in movement organization, just as an inability to move your sternum or ribs affects the way you think or feel. The Feldenkrais Method addresses all problems as movement issues and uses guided movement and touch to reset your sensory-motor organization. This not only results in easier everyday movement, but it also changes how you think and feel.

Feldenkrais isn't about curing or fixing people. It isn't a medical treatment. It's about helping people take control of their lives by learning alternative movements so they don't "go through the motions" in ways that don't work for them. Even when someone has an organic problem or disease, the Feldenkrais approach can help that person find greater ease. For instance, when a person with arthritis seeks help from the Feldenkrais Method, the practitioner's job isn't to get rid of the disease, but rather to help that person move in more comfortable ways that won't stress the affected joints.

Feldenkrais also helps people improve their performance, such as athletes, dancers, musicians and visual artists. But whether you seek relief from a sore shoulder, hope to play better golf or need to clarify an emotional issue, Feldenkrais does not advocate one "right way" to move. Rather, the Feldenkrais Method hopes to help you find your own right way. As you discover what works for you in any given situation, you become an authority on your own well-being.

Moving Stories

A real-estate broker with recurring back and neck pain thought her back was supposed to be straight and taught herself to keep her back flat. To compensate, she was overusing her upper back muscles, contracting the muscles of her lower trunk and pulling in her stomach. Once she learned to distribute her movements and let her back bend, her pain and stiffness decreased. She began to move with greater ease. Best of all, she learned how to change her movements if the stiffness returned.

An excellent tennis player felt his game was just a little off. Turns out, he wasn't differentiating the movements of his eyes from those of his neck and torso. Changing this allowed him to follow the ball with his eyes and head, but respond to the other needs of the game with the rest of his body.

A client in his mid-30s had suffered a stroke out of the blue. After much physical therapy, he was able to move fairly well. Since he could not feel his movement (his brain received no feedback when he moved his limbs), he frequently stumbled and stuttered. Active visualization as he was moving helped—vivid images of movement activate the related parts of the nervous system. Still, he stumbled occasionally. Finally, when he imagined the space in front of him opening like the Red Sea for the Israelites, he was able to walk confidently without stumbling. The same image helped him speak easily and smoothly when he had to testify in court—no trace of a stutter!