Feldenkrais is traditionally described as an approach to learning through movement that helps people improve self awareness, sense of self, balance, coordination, ease, functional confidence and habitual management patterns. The classical form of Feldenkrais Method it is used extensively by performers, athletes, and has a place all over the world within the practice of physical and psychological therapies, and universities training the performing and creative arts.

The rise in awareness of impact of trauma has encouraged more Feldenkrais practitioners to take the work in expansive directions. Through a more contemporary trauma informed lens Feldenkrais can be described as a somatic, movement-based practice that aids trauma therapy by discovering and re-entering  retraining the nervous system.

Many professionals, including myself, find that Feldenkrais works well with and as an adjunct to traditional talk therapy allowing survivors to safely process and “renegotiate” traumatic memories.

Through using gentle movement and guided awareness, it helps the survivor feel safe in their body, reducing chronic tension, anxiety, and emotional dissociation. It works by connecting bodily sensations with emotional states, facilitating the release of “stuck” trauma energy. 

Feldenkrais can be considered both similar to and different from Somatic Experiencing. They are both ‘bottom up’ somatic modalities that work with the entire nervous system. Both methods work to give clients more options than the repeated, limiting, habitual ways in which we always respond to our circumstances and environment.

Both approaches use extraordinary listening, acceptance, recognising patterns without judging them or trying to manipulate them.

Both approaches are kind, calm, and use a gentle slow and methodical process of introducing small manageable amounts of sensation or emotion to the whole system, through the body. In both approaches this way enables the individual to process without overwhelm and traumatization.

Both work within what is doable so that the system can find other non-habitual responses and an approach where the teacher / practitioner individual is fully present to the unique person they are working with.

However classical Feldenkrais is traditionally an experiential learning method and Somatic Experiencing (SE) a therapy for trauma. Additionally a Feldenkrais Method Teacher completes 160 days of training and a SE teacher 36 days training.

Feldenkrais incorporates principles from modern motor-learning science, developmental studies, physics and embodied cognition. It uses slow, guided movement, refined attention and sensory discrimination to support changes in coordination, organisation and behaviour. These mechanisms align closely with contemporary behavioural psychology, which recognises that shifts in sensory awareness, movement patterns and attentional focus can influence how people act, adapt and respond to their environment.

Many people develop habitual ways of moving that are workable but not necessarily effective—patterns that may contribute to stiffness, imbalance, discomfort or reduced mobility. Feldenkrais provides a structured way to notice these patterns and explore alternatives in a calm, connected manner. Through this process, the nervous system updates its options, often resulting in improved comfort, posture, coordination, ease and freedom in movement and self.

Feldenkrais work began in the 1950’s and emerged into the public gaze in the 1970s as one of several movement-based learning approaches that drew on ideas from physics, motor-development studies, systems theory and early neuroscience. Later approaches, such as Hanna Somatics, continued this evolution of embodied education, highlighting that these systems developed in parallel rather than from a single origin. Feldenkrais therefore sits within a broader landscape of exploratory learning methods that use movement as a pathway to improved self-organisation.

You can learn Feldenkrais in two ways: group lessons, where participants are verbally guided through sequences designed to increase awareness of movement; or individual sessions, where a practitioner uses precise, supportive touch to clarify skeletal organisation and encourage more efficient patterns of action.