The Feldenkrais Method® was created by the Israeli scientist Moshè Feldenkrais in the last century. It is a somatic learning process aimed at developing body perception skills to obtain a functional improvement of the person. This happens by "reprogramming" the central nervous system through gentle, non-invasive, and non-habitual movements. The resulting learning is obtained by the student through awareness of the change in his own self-image.

“In order to change our mode of action, we must change the image of ourselves that we carry within us..”

The Method therefore uses movement to teach people to "use" themselves with greater ability, efficiency, and simplicity to achieve the desired goals. It acts by reorganizing in a more functional way the movements and actions we perform in daily life (e.g. reaching to pick up an object, sitting down or getting up from a chair, walking, running, playing an instrument, etc.); in doing so the students are led in a very deep process of personal self-discovery that generates, in most cases, also a greater general well-being.

“There is little doubt in my mind that the motor function, and perhaps the muscles themselves, are part and parcel of our higher functions. This is not true only of those higher functions like singing, painting and loving, which are impossible without muscular activity, but also of thinking, recalling, remembering and feeling.”

What the lessons specifically entail are sequences of simple movements, which are to be performed effortlessly and in the slowest and easiest way possible to encourage the exploration of the motor repertoire, which is then inevitably improved and expanded. Most of the lessons take place in a prone or supine lying position, or in the absence of gravity to facilitate the reorganization of the neuromuscular patterns: in this way the process of motor evolution is reignated thanks to the discovery of new and different ways of acting. This increases the person's ability to choose more freely and therefore respond appropriately to different situations, allowing a general recovery of growth and development on all levels.

“What I’m after isn’t flexible bodies, but flexible brains. What I’m after is to restore each person to their human dignity.”

The method uses a technique based on touch and manipulation (so-called Functional Integration) and a group technique (Awareness through movement, or ATM). The manipulative technique is necessarily individual and is adapted to the specific needs of individual people. Historically it was the first to be developed. The group technique was then created to allow as many people as possible to benefit from the same effects of manipulation.