Ira Feinstein: How did you find out about the Feldenkrais Method?

Maggy Burrowes: I was living in a small town on the south coast of the UK called Brighton. It's an adventurous, very forward-thinking little town. I'd been taking various classes at the natural health center for a long time when a Feldenkrais workshop was offered by Garet Newell, who had come to the UK with the intention of running a training and moved into the neighborhood. At the time, I'd never heard of Feldenkrais, but I thought, well, I'm just going to try it out. 

I have hypermobility issues, and it is easy for me to injure myself when moving too enthusiastically. I'd been dealing with a long-running lower back issue that manifested mainly as intermittent sciatica. Whenever it came on, I would limp around for a week or so until it got better. As luck would have it, and I do think it was luck, I had an attack the night before the Feldenkrais workshop. So I limped in on that first day and...

Ira Feinstein, MFA, recently spoke with Dwight Pargee, MS, about the Feldenkrais Method, Pilates, and the importance of core agility. Dwight is offering a free Discovering Core Ability & Agility class on April 13. We hope you'll join us. 

Ira: How did you find out about the Feldenkrais Method?

Dwight: In 1989, I returned to the United States after playing international rugby in Australia for a couple of seasons, during which I got five concussions. I had post-concussion syndrome, though there wasn't even a word for it back then. I was trying everything I could to put myself back together, Tai Chi, yoga, and reflexology because I was a little blurry. I was existing outside myself in a strange way; people who've had concussions know what I'm talking about. 

My background is in sports physiology. At the time, I was working at a physical therapy clinic. One of my wise mentor PTs said, "You should check out Feldenkrais. It might help." So, I...

On March 24-25, David Zemach-Bersin will teach an online ATM workshop "for Practitioners only" called The Roots of Uprightness: Your Inner Reptile. David looks forward to exploring the maturation of our anti-gravity function and the importance of the reciprocal relationship between the extensors of our back and our abdominal muscles for well-organized uprightness.

Below is an excerpt from the Q&A session after David's 2022 Advanced Training, First Things First, in which he talks about how these ideas apply to Functional Integration^® lessons.

David: I am in Pennsylvania, USA, and Raz Ori joins me from Tel Aviv, Israel, and Anastasi Siotas from the Mediterranean island of Crete. I'm honored to have them join me so we can have an enriching dialogue between the three of us. Let's have the first question.

Raz: There is an interesting question regarding the workshop title, First Things First. You mentioned that it was inspired by virtual...

Ira Feinstein, Managing Director

When I was in my twenties, my favorite job was at a small nonprofit that gave me a sense of direction, a loving and supportive work environment, and a small paycheck. I could pay my bills and go out to eat now and again, but otherwise, I lived frugally. During that time, I found myself in pain—both physically and psychically—and I set out to find ways to alleviate both. I discovered— and found significant relief from—one-on-one Feldenkrais lessons, but the cost was prohibitive. Luckily, a friend of a friend offered to give me lessons for one-quarter of his regular price! It was still a lot of money for me, but I adjusted my budget just enough to make it work. The sessions became the highlight of any given week for almost two years. A decade-plus later, I’ve realized that even if I could’ve paid full price, there is no way I could truly quantify how profoundly those lessons changed me. To say that I might not...

Ira Feinstein: What brought you to the Feldenkrais Method^®?

Paris Kern: I'm a singer and a guitar player, and in the late 80s, I was canceling concerts because I was in so much pain. I went down all the typical allopathic channels looking for a solution. After a while, I saw an osteopath, who was the first person who actually listened to what I was telling him about myself. He said, "Why don't you go to this massage therapist? She's really good." I went to the massage therapist. I would feel good for a few days and then return to square one. After a while, she said, "This person is doing a Feldenkrais^® workshop. I think you'd probably like it." So, I went.

Ira: What was that first workshop like for you? 

Paris: Finding the Feldenkrais Method was coming home for me. I was raised by a father who was a psychiatrist and an environmentalist mother, both of whom thought in systems. My father was instrumental in creating the concept of the Family System...

Ira Feinstein, Managing Director

The grooves of my anxiety were set at a young age. It was 1987. I was nine years old. My 41-year-old father went to work one morning and never came home. A fatal heart attack. This, alone, would've been traumatic enough if not for my 40-year-old mother's breast cancer diagnosis a year earlier. I spent the next two years until her death waiting to be an orphan. I lived in a state of high alert, always looking for signs that her death was imminent. Every time she failed to greet me at the door after school or was late coming home, I feared the worst. I can still remember the adrenaline pumping through my body and the freezingness of the fear. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't see. The only thing that was real was the sound of my heart thumping erratically in my chest and the refrain, "She's dead, she's dead, she's dead," playing on a loop in my mind. 

Even into my early twenties, despite years of therapy and anti-depression medicine, the same wash of...

• Soothe & Calm: Short Feldenkrais exercises for a healthy nervous system
• Your Restorative Breath