The Feldenkrais Method®: How Does It Apply In The Voice Studio?

Our 2-hour course will begin with a discussion of the basic philosophical underpinnings of The Feldenkrais Method® and the recent discoveries in neuroscience relating to brain/body interaction that have validated his theories.

How these basic principles of somatic education can be applied in the voice studio will then be explored with concrete examples.

Moshe Feldenkrais, born in 1904, engineer and physicist, developed the method that bears his name over years of self-study. He was trained as a scientist, working in the Joliot-Curie lab at Radium Institute in Paris while simultaneously working on doctorate in engineering at the Sorbonne. During WWII he worked as a scientific officer for the British Admiralty.

Personal knee injuries combined with the study of Jiujitsu as a teen, followed by the study of Judo under its founder, Jigoro Kano, in Paris, shaped his life long quest to understand through scientific inquiry, how we can learn to change our habitual patterns to provide more efficient and flexible ways to move and function in the world through our somatic awareness. In short, he saw that how we perceive ourselves, our inner self image, dictates how we move and function. In order to change how we move/function, we need to learn to shift our attention from goal oriented to focus on the quality and ease of movement, through structured lessons, verbally directed or hands on, allowing our nervous system to explore new options or pathways.

The result was the development of The Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education, and its subsets, Awareness Through Movement® and Functional Integration®.