2023 June intensive: The power of relearning fundamental patterns
Welcome to the Treasury. I’m so glad you’re here!
Just starting? Read how to do a lesson and more in the FAQs.
Want personalized help? Schedule a zoom coaching call.
Want more background? Check out my blog, Vital Clarity, especially New to Feldenkrais.
Each page has seven lessons, designed to do as a set.
Use these sets to plan your practice, or follow your curiosity. As with all Feldenkrais lessons, practice listening to yourself in a kind, meditative, spacious way. Think of it as a gift of self-awareness and self-inquiry. I love questions! Email me if you’re wondering where to go next.
New index!
Here’s a new, searchable index with all the lessons on one page. It will likely become the regular index as I’ve had lots of good feedback. Let me know what you think.
human movement
starter kit
7 lessons
Introductory package
Not sure where to start? Use these seven lessons to check in with your fundamental patterns, then see what you’d like to develop from here.
SEven best series
49 lessons
Introductory package
This series offers a good place to start with a compilation of lessons from Moshe’s teaching. I return to these favorites again and again, and I often give them to my clients to practice at home.
(These are not the same as in the anatomy section.)
Flexible low back
Happy hands and arms
Free your hips
Wake up your spine
Effortless posture
Destress and calm
Unwind your shoulders
Anatomy
198 lessons
(Requires a full subscription.)
Note that each lesson will affect your whole being, no matter how it’s categorized. A ribs lesson will help your shoulders, an ankle lesson will soften your back, a neck lesson will improve your balance. The nervous system is an interconnected whole.
View the anatomy index for detail, or jump to a section:
Spine and pelvis
Hips and legs
Ribs
Feet and ankles
Hands and arms
Upper back and shoulders
Jaw, neck, and eyes
Breath
65 short sequences around ten minutes each
Feel how quickly your nervous system responds when you bring awareness to your sensations, even for a few minutes.
Breathe and calm
Shoulders and neck
Sitting upright (all are in sitting)
Hips and low back
Spine and upper back
More spine and upper back
Stand, walk, and balance
Tips for AM and PM
Fundamentals
92 lessons
A detailed study of the fundamental planes of human movement: folding, twisting, and side bending.
These lessons refine your understanding of weight-shift, counterbalance, and the diagonal distribution of force. While always gentle, they are straight out of Dr. Feldenkrais’s judo background.
Flexion and rolling (includes clocks and baby rolling)
Extension and diagonals
Side bending and twisting
Skeletal Life workshops
32 lessons
Treat your body with awareness and kindness as you increase your skill.
I taught these sequences in weekend workshops over the summer of 2018. I’ve included some of the commentary from our discussions.
Graceful posture
Elegant expansion
Five lines
Trusting balance
Balancing
21 lessons
Balance in standing
More balance in standing
Finding the top of the hip
Standing up from a chair or the floor
Coming soon:
Hoisting vs. levering
Centering for strength
Calm and de-stress
14 lessons
plus 19 short lessons
Gentle pressing and rolling
Help for anxiety/four-part breathing
Short lessons to relieve tension
Coming soon:
Finding resilience
Meditative movement for healing
Chair lessons
10 short lessons
Improve the basics of human movement with ten twenty-minute lessons in a chair. Explore bending, twisting, and breathing as well as the feet, jaw, eyes, and more.
Many more chair lessons coming soon!
Longer series from trainings
147 lessons
Expand your ability to solve movement puzzles as you explore five, eight, or ten lessons on a single theme. While these are usually taught only in four-year trainings, anyone can do them. These wonderful lessons are almost never available to the public.
Introduction
Amphibian lessons - 7
Arms integrate on stomach - 8
Bell Hand - 7
Book on the foot - 7
Bridging - 7
Circling head - 11
Dead bird (eyes, neck) - 4
Five lines - 11
Four points - 4
Gluing the lungs - 4
Grasping the chin - 4
Highest point of the hip - 7
Hooking the big toe - 7
Hurdle lessons (scissoring legs) - 3
Judo roll - 6
Leg over to stand - 4
Leg swing and footprint - 9
Pelvic clock - 8
Pretzel legs - 7
Reaching like a skeleton - 4
Rhythmical breathing - 5
Sawing arms - 10
Sitting on heels - 6
Splits - 4
The Esalen workshop
This 45-lesson series is a phenomenal compendium of Dr. Feldenkrais’s thinking about human maturity and evolution, offering multiple opportunities to rewire all of our early learning.
While these are my versions of Moshe’s teaching, they follow each lesson precisely as he taught it.
Moshe Feldenkrais (front) teaching at Amherst.
Alexander-Yanai (AY)
550 lessons (work in progress)
Dr. Feldenkrais developed these from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s in his studio at the corner of Alexander and Yanai streets in Tel Aviv. The Feldenkrais community calls these “The AY lessons.”
Many, but not all, of the lessons in the Treasury are AY lessons. Note that I have yet to cross-reference all the existing AY lessons. Soon, I will record the remaining AY lessons to complete the set.