How would you most like to experience yourself?
How would you like to live?
If you only had one-half hour to live, what would you like your quality of life to be?
No doubt you have a specific question, need or desire that brings you to consider an individualized session. Yet consider this, your specific need exists because you are not experiencing yourself as you would like. You desire and believe that a different quality of life is possible.
In a Functional Integration session my role is to help you sense yourself and discover alternatives to your habitual patterns of organization and self-use. Only from sensing yourself can change happen. I use non-invasive gentle touch, kinesthetic and oral communication to help you be more aware of your habitual patterns of organization and movement. Using your new awareness, you learn to pause between thought and action – an important pause because this moment gives you the power of choice. Together, as one system, we create conditions for your learning and modifying patterns that don’t serve you well at this moment in your life.
A Functional Integration session generally lasts less than 60 minutes.
In a Functional Integration session lying on a Feldenkrais table is typical. However, other positions are also used, including sitting, standing, lying on the floor.
Yes … if the answers to these questions are also yes.
Might you like to experience yourself differently, in a healthier way, at this moment in your life?
Do you desire to move with more ease through daily life or in particular leisure activities?
Might you like to reclaim or improve balance and flexibility?
Do you yearn to be more adaptable and flexible in how you respond in daily situations?
Are you recovering from an injury or struggling with pain, and wish to improve quality of life?
Do you wish to expand your potential or performance in a sport or past-time you enjoy doing?
Our work begins with noticing and paying attention to four interwoven aspects of human existence – moving, sensing, feeling (emotion), and thinking – in a respectful way that creates a safe setting for learning. We illuminate which parts of yourself move well in an integrated (coordinated) way and where movement is restricted. Through this journey you construct awareness of your routine and automatic patterns, and complementary to this awareness spontaneous change often begins.
I will encourage you to be curious and playful, and find enjoyment, because these qualities help you to be open to discovering choices you might not have known existed. Using your newfound awareness and insights, we shift into exploring movement alternatives. From alternatives arises possibility, evolution, and self-improvement.
Moving slowly and expending less effort to move rewards you with more sensitivity and clearer awareness of what you are doing.
Doing less, especially when you notice pain, provides more opportunity for self-observation and reduces shifting into self-protection. (Pain is your body’s way of telling you it will shift into self-protection if you ignore the message.)
Being curious nurtures discovery, which is a key aspect of learning and transformation.
Practicing self-care (resting when you need to regardless what others are doing) prevents fatigue and provides opportunity for integrating what you are learning about yourself.
Monitoring your breathing so it’s free, unencumbered and uninterrupted informs you if you are using just the effort needed and moving with clear intention.
Imagining when you can’t physically do fires the neural pathways involved in the action.
Witnessing differences from start to end of class and across sides of yourself illuminates the power of learning.
Focusing on the journey rather than on achievement (and endpoints) is what learning is about.
“When you know what you are doing, you can do what you want” (Dr. Moshe Feldenkrais)
The Feldenkrais Method Functional Integration
Scott Clark, a Feldenkrais practitioner in the United Kingdom, works with a woman who wants to reduce tension in her shoulders and across her back when cycling. (6:47 minute video by the Feldenkrais Guild of the United Kingdom)
From Marcy
It is truly a blessing that we met and your patient, simple, elegant, rooted, approach makes sense at the cellular level. If I had infinite time to just play and explore I'd improve faster, easier. My friend Danie [who observed the session] really, really appreciated your approach. She has been around Feldenkrais and found the simplicity so refreshing.
From Ina
Thank you for an amazing and eye opening session today. I have written my notes and am going to let it marinate for a few days.
From Randy
I gotta say, your techniques are doing wonders for me. Simply wonders.
From Molly
Your straightforward, wholehearted enthusiasm for what you know - and for teaching it - comes through and is appreciated.
From Sheila
I have become so much more conscious of how I stand, sit, walk because of the classes. I’m amazed at how subtle changes can make so much difference. Katherine – your style is wonderful, making it fun as well as informative!
From Lili
That was an excellent and very helpful lesson yesterday! My body remembers the feeling, but not all the techniques to get back; and my knee is still much better.
From Barbara
Sitting on the back porch with the dogs, I triggered pain when I asked my shoulder to do something. So I went back to zero and envisioned the movement, after which I did it painlessly. Thanks for the gift – and the Nijinsky story to reinforce it. Also, feeling the difference between the resilient strength of your skeleton holding your hips high vs the rigidity of letting your muscles do that job finally made sense to me in how a female tango dancer can do all the effortless-looking following of someone else’s elaborate improvisation. What a good session. PS. When I envision a movement, I envision it as a dance movement. Meaning complete, I think. Or at least trending that way…